Making the different parts work towards the same purpose.
Organisations are made up of different responsibilities, perspectives and priorities. What makes sense in one part can have consequences somewhere else, and collectively those choices shape where an organisation goes and what it is able to achieve.
Whether the question is where to go next, why something isn't working, how to deliver together or what has happened, finding a way forward often means looking across the different pieces rather than at each in isolation.
That's often where I come in.
When I can help
Shape the way forward
When you need to make choices about future direction. I help organisations understand their context, bring different perspectives into the conversation, work through priorities and trade-offs and turn broad ambitions into a practical way forward.
01
Connecting immediate priorities with longer-term direction
Make things work across boundaries
When something isn't working across different parts of an organisation. I help organisations understand how the different pieces connect, where things are getting stuck and why. We then turn that learning into practical changes that make sense across the organisation
02
Using specific experiences to see the bigger picture
Build partnerships that can deliver
When several organisations need to move from agreeing to needing to partner, to actually being able to deliver together. I help build the shared understanding, relationships, structures, governance and ways of working that enable collective delivery.
03
From an ambitious idea to a partnership ready to deliver
Review or investigate
When an organisation or Board needs an independent understanding of what has happened or is happening. I undertake work ranging from informal reviews to formal investigations, bringing together evidence and different accounts while looking beyond the presenting issue where needed.
04
Establishing the facts in a complex organisational transition
Every commission is different. These four elements provide a backbone to how I work, but how they come together depends on what the work actually needs.
How I work
01
Dissect the brief
Explore what prompted the work, the context and assumptions behind the brief. Get clear about what the work really needs to understand before deciding how best to approach it.
02
Bring perspectives and evidence together
Gather the perspectives, experiences and evidence needed to understand the issue from different angles.
03
Make sense of the complexity
Look across what we have collectively learned to identify patterns, tensions and connections. Understand what is driving them.
Turn shared understanding into proportionate action
04
Work through choices and trade-offs, translating what we have learned into practical ways forward that people can own and deliver.
A lot of my work sits where responsibilities, teams or organisations intersect.
Organisations need clear structures, governance, roles and responsibilities. But many of the issues they need to resolve cut across them. Decisions in one place have consequences somewhere else and different people can be responsible for different but interdependent parts of the same issue.
I pay particular attention to those connections: what is happening between the different parts, where things are getting stuck and what needs to change for the organisation or partnership to work more effectively as a whole.
Who I work with
I work primarily with charities and other social-purpose organisations addressing complex social challenges, with particularly strong experience across housing and homelessness, health and social care.
I work with these organisations both on their own organisational challenges and when they need to work with others, whether through relationships with funders, commissioners and public bodies or through partnerships involving multiple organisations.
About
I'm an independent consultant building on 20 years' experience across housing, homelessness, health, social care and the wider voluntary and public sectors, including eight years in senior leadership roles.
I've spent much of my career in roles that required me to look across an organisation rather than from the perspective of one function: connecting strategy with delivery, finances with ambition, and organisational decisions with their consequences for people and services.
That experience has shaped the work I do now. I'm drawn to questions where the different pieces need to be understood together, and where progress depends on people with different responsibilities and perspectives finding a way forward.
Before becoming a consultant, I held senior leadership roles at St Mungo's, including Director of Development and Interim Executive Director of Transformation. I've led through periods of growth, change and financial pressure, and understand the reality of making difficult decisions collectively, often with imperfect information and being responsible for what happens next.
Have something you're trying to work through?
Get in touch to discuss what's happening and whether I can help. If I can't, I may know someone who can.
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