Selected Work

● · SELECTED WORK

What the work looks like in practice.

Our engagements are confidential, so no client is named here. What is described is the situation, what we did about it and what changed.

These are engagements from across the sectors we work in. Each ended on handover and the client has carried the work forward since without us. That is how they are designed to end. Where a programme was later paused or redirected we say so, because in these markets that happens and a page of work that ends only in triumph is not evidence of anything.

How each one is set out

The situation.

What the client was facing, before we were involved.

What we did.

The work itself and what each part of it achieved.

What changed.

The difference at the end of the engagement.

Where it stands.

What happened afterwards, including where a programme was paused.

01Development Organisations·Sustainable enterprise programme

Turning a complex development programme into a structured pathway for enterprise growth.

An international development initiative needed to find, assess and strengthen emerging enterprises and to do it in a way its partners could actually run.

The situation

The programme had clear objectives and a wide field of candidate enterprises. What it did not have was the way between the two: a basis for selecting enterprises, a division of responsibility across local and international partners and a sequence that turned intent into delivery. The decision on how to proceed was already due.

What we did

Business assessment and selection.

Establishing what made an enterprise a credible candidate and applying it consistently across the field.

Stakeholder engagement.

Working across local and international partners so that deliverables, responsibilities and decision rights were understood the same way by everyone holding one.

Programme structuring.

Turning the objectives into something that could actually be run, measured and handed over.

Enterprise onboarding and implementation support.

Staying with the work through delivery rather than handing over a design.

What changed

The programme moved from a set of objectives to a practical framework for enterprise development, impact measurement and investment readiness, owned by the partners who had to run it.

Where it stands

We were brought in late, once it was clear the programme could not be carried in-house. The issues blocking it were resolved and the framework was handed over. The organisation then chose to pause the work in Guyana and restart it at a later date, for reasons of its own timing rather than anything unresolved. The framework is complete and waiting, which is the point of building one that does not depend on us.

02Energy and Natural Resources·Industrial services

Connecting what the business needed to what the technology could actually do.

A business in a complex industrial environment wanted better digital infrastructure, stronger customer engagement and cleaner internal processes. What it needed was the gap between those ambitions and the available solutions closed.

The situation

Digital projects in industrial settings fail less often on technology than on translation. The people who know the operation and the people who know the systems describe the same problem in different words and the specification that results answers neither.

What we did

Establishing the business requirement.

Setting out what the operation actually needed, in terms the business owned rather than the vendor supplied.

Working with specialist technology partners.

Bringing in specialists we have worked with before, under our engagement letter and to our standard, so the technical depth sat alongside the commercial judgement rather than replacing it.

Connecting requirement to solution.

Holding both sides of the translation, so what was specified was what the business meant.

What changed

The business gained a pathway from its current operation to more efficient and scalable systems, with the requirement defined well enough to be built against.

03Emerging Market Enterprises·Standards and business services

Turning formal standards into processes the organisation could keep running.

An organisation needed its approach to quality management to work as an operating system rather than as documentation prepared for an assessment.

The situation

Standards are written to be audited, not to be run. An organisation can hold a certificate and still lack the systems that make the standard true on an ordinary week. The gap shows the moment the person who prepared the documentation moves on.

What we did

Translating standards into process.

Converting formal requirements into procedures that fitted how the organisation actually worked.

Strengthening internal systems.

Building the structure that lets the standard hold without someone reconstructing it before each review.

Establishing continuous improvement.

Putting in place a way of improving that continues after the engagement ends.

What changed

Seven systems were documented and four rewritten against a standard that had not existed there before. The organisation moved from preparing for standards to operating to them, with readiness that persists between assessments rather than being assembled ahead of each one.

04Emerging Market Enterprises·Food and hospitality

Clarifying what the business was actually selling and to whom.

A growing food-service business needed its brand and market position to match what it had become, rather than what it was when it started.

The situation

Businesses that grow on reputation and word of mouth reach a point where the proposition is clear to the founder and unclear to everyone else. Growth then depends less on doing more and more on stating plainly what the business is for and to whom.

What we did

Clarifying the market proposition.

Establishing what the business offered that its market actually valued and what it did not need to claim.

Improving brand presentation.

Bringing how the business presented itself into line with the standard of what it delivered.

Identifying commercial opportunities.

Finding the practical routes to growth available to the business as it stood, rather than the ones available in principle.

What changed

The business gained a clear proposition, a presentation that matched its delivery and a set of growth routes it could act on without additional capacity.

What these have in common

In every one of these, the client already knew roughly what they wanted. What was missing was the way to get there: a basis for choosing, a division of responsibility and a sequence someone could actually run.

That is the work. Not producing the answer, but building the path to it and staying until the client can walk it without us.