Projects

Our client work combines advice, counsel and coaching. All of our work is anchored on Alastair’s approach to being there with and for our clients.

Five ways in which we serve leaders, teams, organisations and boards are described below.

  1. Strengthen organisations’ approach to risk — to ensure that they have a systematic approach to risk governance, processes, capabilities, systems and culture

  2. Identify priority risks and actions to address them — by supporting strategic risk reviews that assess the most significant risks faced by an organisation

  3. Strengthen the capabilities of risk and wider corporate functions — through coaching and capability building for risk and wider corporate function leaders and their teams

  4. Help senior leaders and teams across roles increase their impact, fulfilment and growth — at moments of external, organisational, professional and personal change

  5. Support successful career transitions — to help leaders in journeys between roles, organisations and chapters in their professional lives

We work on these topics with clients 1:1 and with teams, committees and boards, with projects tailored to meet client needs.

To embed and extend impact, we also help design and deliver capability building programmes and share thinking on risk and leadership in smaller and larger group discussions and keynote speeches.

Strengthen organisations’ approach to risk

Leaders and boards across sectors need to take a more purposeful approach to ensuring their organisations’ impact and resilience in an ever-more volatile world. This includes ensuring they have the systematic approach to risk they need in place, including risk governance, processes, capabilities, systems and culture.

I work alongside clients on the steps needed to do this: understand current strengths and areas to evolve (diagnose), identify what a strengthened approach to risk will look like (design), and take far-reaching action to put new ways of working into place (deliver).

The way I support these efforts is tailored to a client’s context and can include:

  • Leading or co-leading an end-to-end review of a client’s approach to risk

  • Providing advice on how clients strengthen specific elements of their approach to risk, e.g. client risk, crisis response, geopolitical risk, reputation risk or third-party risK

  • Providing counsel, calibration and challenge to leaders of change effortsProviding counsel, calibration and challenge to leaders of change efforts

Identify priority risks and actions to address them

The core of an organisation’s approach to enterprise risk management — and a board’s role on risk stewardship — is to answer two questions: What are the most significant risks we face, whether evergreen, new or emerging? Do we have clearly owned actions in place, which will address our priority and wider risks?

One way to answer these questions is a ‘strategic risk review’, which uses multiple inputs to assess the most significant risks across an organisation’s risk taxonomy and identify targeted actions to address them. Example inputs can include interviews with board members, leaders and experts across the organisation, data and metrics, surveys and focus groups, incident reviews, and insight from external advisors.

Such a review can form the basis for dedicated board and executive discussions or workshops. It can be a powerful way to align leaders, wider colleagues and (where helpful) external stakeholders around priority risks and actions. It can also become a cornerstone of an organisation’s approach to risk.

I work with organisations across all stages of strategic risk reviews: helping plan the methodology, supporting the conduct of reviews, and helping clients move to action.

I also help assess risk in wider decisions on strategy, organisation and operations — by contributing as an expert advisor to board, executive team and wider discussions, supporting topic-specific and deep-dive reviews, and joining boards, committees and advisory and working groups.

Strengthen the capabilities of risk and wider corporate functions

Leaders of corporate functions — including but not limited to risk, legal, communications, compliance and audit functions — have an ever-more important role in enabling the sustainable growth and impact of their organisations.

They face significant opportunities and challenges as they do so, including how they combine roles as trusted counsellors as well as technical experts, and how they ensure they are perceived as both enabling and protecting their organisations. 

My work with clients in risk and wider corporate functions draws on my experience as Global Director of Risk at McKinsey & Company, my close collaboration across the firm’s corporate functions, and my advice on risk across sectors. My areas of focus include:

  • Coaching individual leaders and their teams, to build their impact, fulfilment and grow, bringing the experience and expertise of someone who has ‘sat in the same seat’ (with further detail on my approach to coaching described under the next service line)

  • Helping evolve the strategy, organisation and operating models of risk and wider corporate functions and providing support on the capability building and change that this leads to

  • Providing a sounding board on risk, strategic, organisational and people issues, through 1:1 discussion, joining team problem-solving sessions, or contributing to risk committees or advisory groups

  • Where helpful, playing an interim leadership role to build or strengthen risk functions, adopting a ‘Build—Operate—Transfer’ mindset to doing so

Help senior leaders and teams across roles increase their impact, fulfilment and growth

I help current and future leaders across roles navigate points of inflection — as a result of external volatility and organisational change, as they continue to grow in new and existing roles, and as they explore issues that span the personal and professional aspects of leadership. I also help new and existing teams create a sense of shared purpose, increase their effectiveness and cohesion, and strengthen their collective leadership.

I work with leaders and teams across roles and sectors, including working with:

  • Board and executive team members, their senior teams and their future leaders, in the private, public and social sectors

  • Partners and wider leaders in professional-services firms

  • Leaders of risk, legal, communications, compliance, audit and wider corporate functions (with my wider support to strengthen corporate functions described under the previous service line)

My coaching style has three core elements: creating a thoughtful, compassionate, protected space for open, trust-based discussion; combining listening, reflection and advice to spur clients to evolve their thinking; and enabling clients to explore, reflect, problem-solve and identify practical ways forward.

For 1:1 projects, I typically offer a series of six or 12 monthly coaching sessions of 90–120 minutes each. These are complemented as helpful with team sessions, manager and HR conversations, 360º feedback and psychometric surveys. To accelerate impact, I am also available to my clients for ad hoc calls and emails between sessions.

Support successful career transitions

Changing roles and careers is increasingly part of our careers. It is also inherently complex, raising issues that span the personal and the professional — including implications for leaders’ impact, purpose, fulfilment, growth, wellbeing, family and livelihood.

My support to leaders in transition combines space to think with tailored counsel and practical advice. This approach recognises that career transitions can benefit from moments of reflection, problem-solving and action; and that they can combine feelings of energy and deflation, opportunity and loss, and confidence and vulnerability.

I work with clients embarking on career transitions through a series of 1:1 coaching sessions, combined with hands-on support and ad hoc calls, with a common factor of being by clients’ side in a period of far-reaching importance and multi-faceted challenge. Topics I explore with clients cover the full journey ‘from setting off to landing’:

  • Setting off — taking breath and taking stock, framing aspirations, creating initial ideas, and leaving well

  • Moving forward — putting the basics in place (including outreach, networks and cvs), crafting and pursuing ‘experiments’, evolving your narrative, and looking after yourself

  • Landing — applications and interview preparation, confirming decisions on next steps, communicating your decision, and transitioning into new roles and organisations

How we work

Our work is characterised by Alastair’s approach to:

  • Being there with and for his clients as a trusted, collaborative counsellor

  • Providing clarity, insight and judgment, by connecting the dots on multifaceted issues that span sectors and regions and organisations’ internal and external stakeholders

  • Looking at issues through multiple lenses — of an executive coach, senior risk leader, management consultant, government advisor and orchestral and operatic conductor

  • Combining IQ and EQ, with conversations characterised by openness, humility, purpose, compassion, balance and calm, together with positivity and humour

  • Caring about the fulfilment, happiness and impact of people he works with

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