Senior Advisor

As a Senior Advisor to companies, often Private Equity funds, I strive to create value. With my vast international experience, I support and help companies understand where their focus needs to be, in order to create value. In my corporate career I have lead several businesses through turnarounds and/or transformation. I am now fortunate to be able to share that knowledge and experience.

I think that Value Creation and/or Performance equals Potential minus Interference. In my experience, when the performance of a company is below expectations, it is because there is interference. Individuals within the company spend too much time on things that interfere with their focus. Often too much time and effort faces inward, not outward.

Creating value in a business is about embracing uncertainty, it is about accepting and understanding all the decisions you make. It is about creating hypotheses about the future and trusting those decisions.

Or as the great Wayne Gretzky said:

“I don’t not skate to where the puck is, I skate to where it is going to be.”

I translate that into business language. It is not what business or market you are in right now that matters. What matters is what business and market should you be in.

It is about being comfortable with not knowing. It is about leading the business into uncertainty because the future is, by definition, uncertain. The Pandemic that started in Spring 2020 is a great example of that.

Therefore, it is about building an organisation that is ready, willing and able to embrace change because the change will come and, unless you are the trendsetter, you had better make sure that your organisation is ready.

It is about making sure that decisions are taken where the competence to take these decision are. This, for some business leaders, means that they need to learn to let go and trust. I help them with that. I talk to them about being in charge NOT in control. Once this is embraced and implemented the people and business grow.

This often requires taking, what appear to be, difficult decisions. From my experience across other businesses, I am fortunate to have learnt what is successful – this allows me to advise on the correct and proper course of action.