About
I’ve spent my career trying to make organisations work better.
Mostly, that has meant working where people, process and technology meet — understanding how work actually happens, why it becomes unnecessarily difficult, and what can practically be done about it.
I’m an HR transformation consultant, but I’ve never been particularly interested in transformation for its own sake. I’m interested in better services, simpler processes, useful technology and organisations that work for the people inside them.
How I got here
My career hasn’t followed a single HR specialism.
I’ve worked across HR operations, technology, data and analytics, operating models, process improvement and large-scale organisational change. That breadth has shaped how I approach transformation.
A process problem rarely turns out to be only a process problem. Technology exposes weaknesses in operating models. Poor data often starts with unclear ownership or badly designed work. And organisational structures can create complexity that no new system will solve.
Over time, I’ve become much more interested in those connections than in any individual discipline.
Practical before theoretical
I tend to start with the work, not the methodology.
Transformation has accumulated an enormous vocabulary: target operating models, maturity assessments, digital roadmaps, employee journeys, service catalogues and countless methodologies.
They can all be useful. But they are tools, not outcomes.
I prefer to understand what people are actually trying to do. Where does the work go? Where does it stop? What information is missing? What gets duplicated? What requires a workaround? What causes someone to contact HR when ideally they shouldn’t need to?
Once you understand that, the right intervention usually becomes much clearer.
Understand the work
What are people actually trying to do?
Find the friction
Where does it slow down, get duplicated or fail?
Focus on what helps
Use the right tools and interventions to make it work better.
Sometimes transformation means doing less.
It’s not always about adding new systems or structures. Often the better answer is to remove a hand-off, eliminate unnecessary demand, automate something repetitive or simply give people the information they need in the first place.
What has shaped my thinking
My thinking owes as much to operations management as it does to traditional HR.
Ideas around flow, demand, constraints, waste and continuous improvement translate remarkably well into organisational services. An HR helpdesk, recruitment process or workforce-planning cycle is still a system through which work and information have to flow.
That perspective has made me naturally sceptical of adding layers to solve problems. Sometimes the better answer is to simplify, streamline and focus on what actually creates value.
Operational thinking
Influenced by operations management thinking: flow, demand, constraints and waste.
Practical outcomes
Focus on simpler, more effective services that work in the real world.
Experience
I’ve worked with complex organisations through significant change, including local government transformation, HR technology, people analytics, operating-model redesign and service improvement.
More recently, my work has included HR transformation and local government reorganisation at Surrey County Council, following earlier leadership of People Insights, Technology & Performance at Essex County Council.
The environments change. The recurring challenge doesn’t: translating ambition into something that can actually operate.
View my experienceAway from work
I’m naturally curious, which probably explains both my career and the unreasonable number of rabbit holes I disappear down.
Outside work, that curiosity tends to involve travel, sailing, diving, technology, music, cars and an ongoing attempt to become conversational in Spanish.
I also believe most difficult problems improve considerably after a good conversation and a decent cup of coffee.
What next
More space for what comes next.
After a long career spent inside organisations and transformation programmes, I’m planning to step back from regular consulting during 2027.
I’m looking forward to having more time for the things that work has tended to squeeze around the edges — travel, sailing, learning, writing and probably a few projects I haven’t thought of yet.
I’m not particularly interested in replacing one full-time career with another. But I expect I’ll remain curious about organisations, technology and how work gets done — and I’m unlikely to stop having opinions about them.
If something genuinely interesting comes along where my experience could be useful, I’m not ruling that out either.