“I don't teach leadership from the outside. I've held the title, carried the pressure, and made the calls — in businesses I ran myself and in organisations where getting it wrong had real consequences. Here's the evidence.”
I've led when it actually mattered:
friends Life, Shreeveport, CGI (logica)
I've grown businesses, not just morale:
Debt Explained, CreditSights
I've taught leadership that gets awarded, not just attended
An externally accredited, award-winning programme — Owens Illinois Europe, Pathway to Performance, 2009–2020
Co-developed and delivered a CMI-registered leadership programme, winner of the Training Journal Silver Award in 2018. Delivered across three sites — Harlow, Alloa and Lausanne — with a dedicated multi-year push to put the entire management structure through it, not just a few people at the top.
“Every leader I work with gets the same thing: someone who's actually done it, not just studied it. That's what sits behind Polly in Your Pocket — and it's why the three-step model works.”
Recovering from a regulatory breach — Friends Life, 2010–11
Appointed Programme Director after a breach affecting over 10,000 customers. I owned the recovery end to end — designed the response, ran delivery across London and Salisbury, and led the culture and process change needed to stop it happening again. The regulator signed it off without penalty, and the new ways of working stuck.
Sixteen years, blue-chip and government clients — Shreeveport Ltd, 1991–2007
As a founding Consulting Director, I led engagements with HMRC, the Valuation Office Agency, Sainsbury's and Kingfisher, and ran the confrontational, high-stakes work of embedding change at the Department for Work and Pensions in 2006–7 — going directly into the teams most resistant to it. Shreeveport was DWP's second most successful supplier under its consulting framework, behind only Deloitte.
Building a joint team under pressure — CGI (Logica), Ministry of Justice account, 2011–2013
As Transformation Director, I built and led a working team spanning CGI and the client, using genuine rapport rather than process alone to get results — the partnership went on to extend one of CGI's largest public-sector contracts.
Tripled revenue and delivered a full exit — Debt Explained, Contract CEO, 2013–2017
Brought in to reverse falling client retention and revenue, I rebuilt the business from the ground up — proper sales, account management, client success and invoicing functions, new people in the right seats, and a culture built on honest feedback and fairness. Revenue tripled. The business was sold in a buyout at 10 times its revenue when I joined — a valuation that wasn't remotely on the table when I started.
Scaled a new office from the ground up — CreditSights, Glasgow, 2018–2020
Set up a new office and a new corporate finance product from scratch, building the team and the offshore development relationship that made it work. That office has grown from 4 people in 2019 to more than 40 today.
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