Alastair demolishes conventional wisdom to produce dramatic, surprising but highly practical solutions to challenges in business strategy and operations.
He specialises in helping businesses find opportunities for discontinuous improvement. Audiences come away from his talks with new ways of dealing with intractable issues.
Alastair has been described by the Institute of Business Consulting as “an outstanding contrarian consultant” and by the editor of Management Today as “a man who resides permanently outside the box.”
In his Management Today columns and in his presentations to business leaders, he takes aim at generally held beliefs. He shows, drawing on his own consulting experience together with recent findings from psychology and social science, how these beliefs mislead us and how we can replace them with better, more productive approaches.
After three years as an internal consultant for the Pearson Group he became Commercial Director of a subsidiary. For the last ten years he has worked as an independent consultant and management troubleshooter. He has been, among other things, finance director of six companies for periods ranging from five years to ten days.
• Everything You Know About Business Is Wrong: How to Unstick
your Thinking and Upgrade Your Rules of Thumb
• Discontinuous Improvement: a mindset and a set of practical techniques for faster improvement
• Be Distinct or Be Extinct!
• Think Differently
• Productivity and Profitability
• Solving Problems which cannot be solved by normal means
• The Weird Side of Change
His recently published book, ‘Everything You Know About Business is Wrong’ brings inspiration and practical help to business leaders excited by the opportunity to challenge the status quo.
Everything You Know About Business Is Wrong: How to Unstick Your Thinking and Upgrade Your Rules of Thumb (Headline, publication date 4 August 2011).
"Within two days we were getting reports of real tangible business benefits. Great!" – Chris Chater, the NLG (Chief Executive group)
"I have never seen an audience give such rapt attention to a presentation about finance." – Len Rayment, British Business and General Aviation Association
"Engaging, interactive, informative and thought provoking. I'd have no hesitation about recommending Alastair as a very suitable speaker for any business audience." – Carl French, Institute of Directors
"The event was helpful and relevant - I came back to the office with fresh ideas and a renewed sense of optimism for the future of the IT business." – Participant, Professional Computing Association Conference
"Alastair's ideas have legs. Months after the event, we found that they were cropping up in helpful ways in all sorts of different discussions." – Denis Kaye, Yorkshire Leadership Group