HELPING LEADERS ACHIEVE BREAKTHROUGH RESULTS
Having over 30 years of experience in helping people achieve their goals, whether that’s in the office or in life, John’s proven techniques have seen him amass a long list of accolades and references in doing so.
In fact it was a consultancy client COO who happened to remark that “he loved the coaching”. When John asked him what he meant he told John that during the 8 years they had been operating the business in Eastern Europe they had tried 19 different consultants to try to get effective help. The client said his people told him that John and his team were the first guys who actually made a difference. He said, the Group CEO, who comes in once a year, just could not believe the change in the people in the business or the performance of the business. (John ended up spending one whole day with the board explaining to them what he and his team had been doing in their business).
Before joining ActionCOACH at the end of 2007, John was, for 7 years the Managing Director of a boutique consulting firm that operated a payment by results business model serving blue chip corporations around the globe. Clients loved their ‘minimum intervention’ approach, noting that their people’s performance changed very much for the better, with little to no disruption of day to day work, or of management time. Unbeknown to John, it was his innovation in how to deliver effective consultancy support that sowed the seed for becoming a coach.
In his corporate career prior to consulting John was involved in three major business turnaround projects: one in Germany where he ran a European Distribution Centre, massively improving its performance (from about 60% on time to 93% on time) and returning the business to profit; one based in the UK for a US multi-national, dramatically driving up quality (from 1800rppm to 0 as audited by Toyota) and reducing costs; and one UK engineering firm which needed to focus its resources on a critical new product design and introduction.
John has trained in various methods of Coaching, Psychology and other behavioural techniques and as such is qualified as: a Master Coach in Neurolinguistic Programming certified through ABNLP; a Master Practitioner in Time Line Therapy through Time Line Therapy Association; a Master Practitioner of Hypnosis certified through The American Board of Hypnotherapy; a Talent Dynamics Performance Consultant; and a Growth Accelerator Approved Coach and Registered Trainer certified through the Business Growth Service. He has recently trained with Marshall Goldsmith. He is also a Member of the International Coach Federation – ICF.
The second book I received from that first client was The Goal. Probably the first business novel. Thanks to Eli, who I met several times, including at his house in The Netherlands, I played a key role in the world’s first Theory of Constraints (TOC)/Just In Time (JIT) implementation at Lucas Diesel Systems in Gillingham, Kent. Senior management spent hours in heated argument about which was right, TOC or JIT. Those of us with no axe to grind realised that they both were, and that JIT needed to be subordinated to the rules of TOC. That first, spectacularly successful project, became the foundation stone of my early career.
Shigeo Shingo was the unsung hero both of Lean and of Total Quality, later usurped by the bullshit of Six Sigma. Whilst the West approached quality from the idea that there will always be something that goes wrong, Shingo set out with the philosophy that zero defects could be achieved. It was Shingo that developed SMED – single minute exchange of die. This simple concept drives the performance of every supply chain in the world – and yet so few people really understand it – even supposed lean experts! I used Shingo’s ideas in every factory I worked in, across the world. I later used Dorian Shainin’s methods (see the book World Class Quality by Keke Bhote) to help us achieve zero defects at Avdel Textron and thereby win business with Toyota.
Semler’s book Maverick was like the Lockheed Skunkworks approach, as written about by Tom Peters, being applied to a whole business. Today people rave about Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness, but he’s got nothing on Ricardo Semler. What Semler achieved in Brazil was simply stunning. I aimed to copy him and take it further. Self-managing organisations are the future. At Aeroquip, my first real management position, I implemented the single office concept to eliminate inter-departmental barriers. That work got me headhunted to Avdel Textron in 1996 where I was able to take these concepts further with self-managing plants and a self-managing virtual team that operated outside the confines of the organisation structure to win us business with Intel. We fastened ‘the chip inside’.
The founder and Chairman of Actioncoach. I’ve been in the Actioncoach community for nine years now and it has been the vehicle for me to achieve my goals and to get me back to the rate of learning that I enjoyed earlier in my career. It has also given me a whole extra toolkit for helping businesses grow. Brad is one of those rare people who can give you new value every time you hear them.
The sales coach. I met Jeffrey in 2008 too. He has some great ideas on selling which have influenced my work in a number of ways. Every sales person that I’ve trained can tell you what “The Vomit” is, and why they don’t do that anymore! If you’ve seen ‘The Little Red Book of Selling’, that’s Jeffrey Gitomer.
Having read ‘What got you here won’t get you there’ I was fortunate to meet Marshall in early 2016 at a special 2-day training event he ran exclusively for Actioncoach. Marshall’s work is just so relevant. Driving home on the Saturday evening, I called a client and used what I learned from Marshall to help him re-design an important team event that was taking place that Monday. I intend to keep learning from Marshall for quite some time!
In the early years the award for executive coaching was quite subjective based on who they thought was doing the best work. Latterly it has become more objective being based on coaching revenue.
