Appleby Consultancy

Appleby Consultancy

At Appleby Consultancy our highly experienced consultants know how to design and manage complex multimillion pound programmes. Whether it is setting organisational strategy, efficiency programmes, redesign and recovery programmes or helping to get your business to meet your vision, we consistently deliver above and beyond expectations. We combine strategic knowledge with a ‘get your hands dirty’ delivery style. Our consultants don’t just give you a list of things you need to do and sit back and watch, we do what is needed to get your organisation, business, programme or project on track and make it a success. You won’t find this combination of independence, experience and direct style anywhere else.Problems we can help your organisation with include:

Our consultants start by gaining a full understanding of your organisation’s needs to work out exactly what the issues are using empirical evidence and by listening to the people at the centre of the organisation. Too many consultancies fall back entirely on data analysis to give you the answer; we realise that is one part of the puzzle, but talking to the people on the front line and understanding the organisational behaviour is the other. We take the time to understand the intricacies of the relationships in the project team, programme group or the whole organisation.

Once we are clear on the issues, we can help you fix the problem. This may involve making changes to the existing organisation to get the right people in the right roles, or it may necessitate a more fundamental organisational change by going back to first principles around responsibility, accountability and capacity.

We typically bring a very small team through the ‘investigation stage’ and then flex the team at ‘implementation stage’ to meet our client’s requirements. We break down the problem, help the executive team understand their options, agree a way forward and ensure the team is focused and ‘bought in’ on how we will make the change.

We know first-hand what it takes to deliver complex change. Our independence enables us to talk straight, get to the point, and always put you and your objectives first. We often get involved in targeted short term roles to fix focused challenges facing the programme in order to get it back on track.

We don’t use a fixed process; our consultants use their extensive experience in delivery to design the process around each client’s circumstances. Depending on the scope and complexity of the task, it could be a light touch, or a more structured and involved approach. Either way we will make sure that your people are at the heart of the change that you want to achieve.

Programme ‘Desktop Review’

When an organisation is under delivering in their strategy or programmes the first thing the executive team wants to know is ‘why?’ The second thing they want to know is 'how do we fix the problem?’ That’s where our desktop review comes in. We bring a clear and focussed objective of quickly identifying the risks and issues and then critically give a menu of recommendations on how to fix the issue and reduce the risk to the organisation. Our process is ‘flexed’ to the size of the problem, but typically consists of data analysis, RAG Risk rating, interviewing the key players and review of the original business case or strategy.

Programme Delivery

When a project or programme is at risk, you need a targeted approach in order to identify the risks and issues quickly to get the programme back on track. We are committed to helping our clients with their toughest challenges and our consultants have a lot of experience in being the go-to people when projects or programmes go bad. Our consultants have been involved in many turnaround situations over the years and know what it takes to bring a project, programme or business back from the brink and set it on course for success.

Not every organisation is setup to deliver large projects and programmes. Either the business doesn’t have the skillset required, or more likely they don’t have the capacity. Too often assurance reviews are put in place only once things have started to go wrong. If your business falls into one of those categories then our consultants are experienced in coming into teams to run specific complex programmes and organisational change.

Organisational Strategy

Good change starts with setting a clear vision of the future. This provides the foundation for enabling everyone involved to see what needs to be done and why it is worth doing. Whilst the majority of businesses have a detailed budget, there is no substitute for a well thought out strategy that takes into account the circumstances in which the business currently operates or is likely to operate in the future. We focus on working with our clients to develop and implement practical strategies rooted in a clear sense of what the organisation needs to change and get done.

Organisational design and development involves more than defining job roles and reporting lines. We view it as a dynamic activity which involves making sure your people, ways of working and culture are aligned to help you achieve your strategic aims and ambitions.

We offer you supportive challenge to ensure that your objectives have buy in, are achievable and meet the vision of the organisation. This means the client team participates wholly in the process – in the analysis and development of ideas as much as the decisions.

We believe that strategy is as much social as it is analytical. It’s about helping groups of people come to the right, often difficult, decisions and act on them. The real heart of strategy is to get people to change what they do in the right way, so you have to engage and take people with you, gathering them around a shared understanding and purpose.

Our consultants are skilled in the tools and techniques that can accelerate the development of an effective strategy. They will transfer these skills to key people in your organisation so that they will have ownership towards the plan they will have helped to develop.

To deliver your strategy, the most important thing is that you have a leadership team who completely understand and own the approach, and are going to carry it through – a challenge which we think may require our leadership development programme.

Business Case Development

A good business case takes you from an idea to a clear and measurable case for doing it. The case should be built on facts and data and have a clear implementation plan, so you can see exactly what the benefits will be, how much it will cost and how you are going to go about it. If you get it wrong, you’re going to be under pressure all the way through a project.

Our consultants have designed dozens of business cases and will work with you to build the best case for your programme that creates a foundation for success. We build the business case together, so that it fits your organisation and objectives and has the buy-in from all stakeholders.

This allows us to combine your business knowledge with our technical expertise in creating and managing the business case, and it is this co-creation that helps ensure that the case keeps momentum during implementation.

Typically we will use the 3 case model to produce:

Deep-Dive Analysis and Benefit Tracking

Every situation is different, but we usually cover a number of core areas when building business cases with our clients. To gain accurate and detailed understanding of realistic benefit realisation, we need to understand the costs and the realistic benefits. We look at the financial analysis and modelling, implementation plans and risk to ensure that the costs are reasonable and realistic and that the benefits are achievable. The aim is to rigorously build the case around empirical evidence that everyone can buy into and work from. A lot of our work at this stage is about helping our clients discover and drive out these facts so that together we can use them to increase understanding and confidence.

From that point on, it’s a matter of continually tracking and checking your actions against the costs and benefits, as well as reviewing these as the project progresses. This benefits assurance ensures that through the lifecycle of a project you maintain a clear and accurate picture of exactly what you will get and how much it will cost.

Stakeholder Engagement

It’s vital to gather the facts and figures for a case, but that’s only part of the story - there’s also a huge amount of work around the people. Business cases are as much social as financial, and we are highly experienced and naturally attuned to gathering together and bringing along everyone with a stake in the business case. This involves both building the understanding and support of people and establishing the necessary governance. Our consultants have a wealth of experience working with challenging stakeholders to engage them in the process and get buy in, in order to ensure the programme is given every opportunity to succeed.

Leadership Development

Organisations demand fast change and effective leadership as well as financial success. Leaders are under pressure to deliver immediate results whilst equipping their business to meet future challenges. Most business leaders tell us that their senior teams are held back by a lack of collective alignment, rather than a lack of talent.

Good leaders are interested in, and aware of, the impact they have on others, and can adapt and change their behaviours to achieve better results with their team.

Appleby Associate’s Leadership Development programme brings clarity around purpose, values and goals, as well as individual roles and behaviours. We focus on enabling leaders to capitalise on their strengths and accelerate development in the areas in which they could make even more impact.

Our consultants are trained to offer business-focused insights, new learning, and inspire people to act. The programme is tailored to existing leadership models and to the organisation’s own leadership teams’ practices.

The Leadership Development workshop covers:

Performance Management

Proactive performance management is key to going from good to great. Setting the right performance measures that drive behaviour is critical. Our consultants are experienced in implementing performance management plans including setting targets, understanding data capabilities to capture metrics and using performance management software to accurately and clearly display position vs target.

The performance dashboard is relevant to every level of the organisation. As these cascade, the focus of measures will change from primarily strategic to mainly operational measures.

Our consultants can identify key measures that are designed so that you focus on the things that will have the biggest impact on achieving your goals and the greatest ability to drive action amongst your people.

Team Building

Having the insight, knowledge and skills to build effective teams is a core requirement of all leaders. Fully-functioning teams are characterised by high morale and productivity, a sense of accomplishment, and desire to complete challenging tasks, solve problems and communicate openly.

Strong teams lead to major gains for all businesses by allowing individuals to better combine their skills to achieve more and to respond quickly to rapid change. This programme will show you how to generate a sense of involvement and belonging, empowering teams to become mission focused.

Our Team Building programme will help you develop effective techniques that will allow you to build fully-functioning teams. By the end of the programme, you will have learnt: