Independent Transformation Director and Advisor
Two ways to work together, depending on what your business needs right nowHow I work
The work I do tends to start when something across the business has stopped joining up. Each function is well run on its own, but the connections between them, where finance meets HR, where operations meets commercial, where the data is meant to tell one consistent story, have quietly come apart. Usually the people closest to it are too deep in their own area to see where the disconnection is actually coming from.
It shows up in different ways. Finance can’t explain a variance because the HR numbers don’t match. A process gets redesigned in operations and nobody tells commercial until the reporting falls over. The shape of the problem changes, but the root is the same, and that’s the space I work in. There are two ways I tend to do it, depending on what you need right now.
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1. Independent Transformation Director
When an organisation is taking on significant change, a finance transformation, a system implementation, an operating model redesign, or a programme that cuts across several functions at once, I come in from the outside to run it alongside your leadership team. That might be from the very start, shaping and scoping what the programme needs to be, or once it’s underway and the cross-functional complexity has started to bite.
What you get from someone outside the organisation is a perspective that isn’t shaped by its history. I’m not invested in how things got to this point or in the decisions already made, so I can keep a programme honest and ask the questions that tend to go unasked when everyone’s too close to it.
The common thread across every assignment is the cross-functional bit. Functional Transformation programmes never happen in isolation. It is often a combination of Finance, HR, operations, commercial and data, and the programmes that stall are usually the ones where those connections weren’t made early enough. That gap is what I focus on.
In practice that means three things. Understanding what’s actually happening across functions before anyone jumps to a solution, which means mapping the data flows, the dependencies and the gaps that are causing the pain. Designing the programme around how your business actually works, its priorities and its people, rather than around a methodology or a vendor’s implementation playbook. And delivering through your teams, working alongside your people so the change holds together after the engagement finishes.
Making sense of the problem
Understanding what’s really happening across functions before the solution gets decided. Mapping the data flows, the dependencies and the gaps that are causing the pain.
Building the programme
Designing the approach around how the business works, its priorities and its people, not around a methodology or a vendor’s implementation playbook.
Delivering through your teams
Working alongside your people through delivery, building the relationships and capability that mean the change holds together after any engagement.
Neil demystified the relationship between people data and finance data, enabling clear traceability of cost and revenue. He worked across finance, HR, legal and operations, and his contributions were critical to creating our enterprise data model.
2. Advisory
Not every situation needs a full-time programme director. Sometimes a CFO, CHRO or senior leader just needs an experienced view to think through a specific problem, pressure-test a decision, or get clarity on where things stand before committing to a direction.
I work with senior leaders across a range of advisory areas. Enterprise data foundations and readiness, Transformation scoping and planning, Operating model effectiveness. The cross-functional situations where finance, HR, operations or commercial aren’t connecting and nobody can quite say why. And getting genuine visibility of financial and operational performance when the picture is currently being pulled together from five incomplete sources. I’m also a certified GC Index Coach, which I use with leadership teams to understand how their energy for impact lines up against what the work actually requires, and where gaps in the team’s make-up are holding progress back.
Advisory engagements are deliberately flexible. It might be a focused piece of work over a few weeks, retained support that you draw on at key decision points, or a single session to work through one specific problem. The format fits around what you need rather than a fixed model.
The aim is always the same, whichever way we work. To leave you clearer, more connected, and able to carry it forward without me. The best sign a piece of work has landed is that your team doesn’t need me once it’s done.
The aim is always the same. To leave you clearer, more connected, and able to carry it forward without me