Helping people, teams and organisations put a ding in the universe


* Credit to Steve Jobs for the ding. Always with a wee smile and sense of adventure just like this fabulous team from RBS NatWest Savings.

A passion for digital. A love of agility. A belief in people, teams and transformation.

Given I'm old enough to remember selling the virtues of a fax machine to my hotelier parents, I can safely say I've seen most of what the analogue and digital world has to offer.


From learning BASIC and having one of the first CompuServe email addresses to building my first website on Dreamweaver in 1992 it's been a digital blast.


And whilst I've had some success, I've had failure, too, in an online venture and the learning was, as they say, painful. I doff the proverbial to digital entrepreneurs who have made it work - I know it's a tough journey.


Now, I enjoy what I have always loved - training, coaching and facilitating people, teams and organisations to deliver innovation, products and services with Agile ways of working. It's a passion and goes way beyond being a job.


Agile values and principles, devops and CI-CD, data transformation, remote first working; the sheer and immediate possibility to work with people and teams around the world who can genuinely put a "ding in the universe". That's what keeps me excited.

Crawfurd Hill

#1 // It's about inspired people and empowered, self organising, autonomous teams

More than ever, delivering fabulous things depends on inspired people working in psychologically safe teams. Any reading from the worlds of tech, military, government will tell you this. As the really bright agilists at the UK Government Digital Service said "people and teams are the delivery".

#2 // It's about relentless user passion and centricity - at all times

Just like Amazon, the best people I have worked with clients get that "customer obsession" into our teams and delivery - fast feedback loops, fast experimentation, relentless iteration and learning. Always. Doesn't matter if it's an SAP integration for an internal customer, or a new mobile app for a telco.

#3 // It's about creating, sustaining and nurturing the right culture

All too often, we arrive in organisations whose cultures, frankly, suck. As Drucker said, "culture eats strategy for breakfast". We try and inject a "culture first" approach to change; psychological safety, being valued, being fulfilled. Human first, really.

#4 // It's about transparent learning loops

Covid has dramatically illustrated the need for organisational (and personal) agility in crazy, complex times. Yet our organisations public and private have been found wanting. We have silo thinking, command/control, lack of transparency and trust. Cue the need for ever more "radical" transparency and learning loops.

#5 // It's about hiring smart people and then trusting them

To paraphrase Steve Jobs; "why hire people smarter than you and then tell them what to do?". We need to invest trust in the capability, smarts and collective nous of our people and teams.

#6 // It's about leaders asking "how can I help?"

Couldn't agree more. I've worked with very few leaders in thirty years who get this one right. Set the clarity of the vision and the mission, provide the air cover and capability and then let your talent get to work making it happen. Bit like good parenting, really.

#7 // It's about working with people who dream big, get s&%t done, and have fun

...Linkedin's Jeff Weiner put it thus. Crude it may be, but I think there's an irresistible logic to this trinity. He described it as the "people I like to work with" sitting in the middle of this quasi Venn diagram. I tend to agree.

#8 // Deliver value, show it, learn, repeat

Transformation is difficult. There's a lot of blah, blah, blah, especially when it comes to Agile delivering change. In my experience, nothing gets the juice going more than delivering some tangible, consumable value early and showing it to customers, colleagues and stakeholders. You earn your stripes, people breath easier, and belief starts to grow. Simple, but so rare!

Inspiring and facilitating innovation and transformation

My journey includes helping teams to imagine and create new insurance apps, online savings products, health portals, new digital platforms, new API stores and much more.


Big belief in design thinking, human centred design, discovery, inception, lean startup and rapid build-measure-learn.


Facilitated Google Design Sprints, Lean Inceptions, hackdays, mobbing, dual track Agile. Love it.


Clients

Coop Insurance
RBS NatWest
Informa plc

British Airways

Sopra Steria

Philip Morris International




Facilitating digital transformation

My journey includes working with teams and programmes to help re-architect core banking platforms, migrate crusty old servers and apps to the cloud, slicing and dicing monoliths for microservices and coding and integrating new ERP systems for well known sports retailers.


Lots of work integrating "waterfall" people, projects and processes into new Agile delivery models, on the way working closely with the likes of Bain, McKinsey and BCG on enterprise transformations.


I have also managed multinational PMO on four continents in the thick of a major transformation. Challenging.


Clients
Philip Morris International

RBS NatWest

Coop Insurance

Informa plc

HMRC


Fully digital, fully e-commerce,
fully multi channel

My journey includes creating and running one of the UK's first Shopify partner agencies, helping pivot or re-brand several brands to online success in retail, adventure sport and health.


Further back, I also managed tech communications agency Firefly, working with Dell, Compaq, Motorola and others - right through the first dotcom boom.


Work has included full "concept to cash" value stream building with multi-channel e-commerce and integrated supply chain and distribution creation and operation. Lots with Amazon FBA and AWS.


Clients

Le Col

Coop Insurance

Qufora



Coaching agility

I'm Agile in spirit and deed and have been for more than a decade.


It's a strong belief that delivering fabulousness for our users comes down to iterative, inspired, learning people and teams.


And (I believe) you don't get that by standing them metaphorically in front of a Jira board and tell them to write "great user stories" and then publish "tickets".


I have also consulted, coached, lead, co-sourced Agile and DevOps teams and scaled them, too, with success using frameworks/approaches including SAFe, LeSS and Spotify.


And I've worked closely with CEOs, CIOs and boards to help them on the journey to - by helping them be part of the change they want to see.


Clients

Coop Insurance

RBS Nat West

HMRC

MoD

Informa plc

British Airways

IAG

Some of the favourite jobs

Everyone has their favourites. Places I've enjoyed. Friends made. Peers learned from. Outcomes realised.

Some of the recent jobs, gigs and projects

Just some of the diverse bunch I/we have been working with recently.

Drop me a line to discuss anything digital, transformational or Agile.

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