INTRODUCTION

These are the pages where I have the opportunity to tell you how fantastic I am, and why you definitely want me to help you. More specifically, this page talks about what differentates me from most companies, and my skills and experience page, which goes into even more shameless self promotion, details my business life that crosses multiple industries including hospitality, business IT, financial services, and international trade.

My aim is for you to see benefits from my services both during and after the engagement. What's the point if the whole thing goes to hell when we're done?

I speak, read and write English (please no jokes from the Brits) , Dutch & German and am currently learning Italian and Greek; but before you start rattling off in either Italian or Greek, please be aware that I am starting with tourist level and so most of what you say will potentially still most likely be Swahili to me! (I could hardly say Greek now could I?!) On the other hand, if you are a native or fluent speaker of either language and want to help me, please let me know.

BACKGROUND

Now for something a little more modest and perhaps somewhat dry. For almost two decades I have provided consultancy, advice and interim management services to commerce, industry, and government bodies across the globe. During that time I came to realise there is a dramatic void in the way most businesses (and more often the consultancies that advise them) approach the challenges of being in business, whether regarding day-to-day activities, strategic planning, or achieving medium or long term goals and objectives.

Irrespective of what one calls it, horse sense, street savvy or any number of synonyms that might apply, what I am talking about, the business void of at least the last two decades and still continuing on today, is common sense. Undoubtedly a lot of people possess it but sadly, relatively speaking, only a rare few ever exercise it.

FROM BAD TO WORSE

Further compounding the problem is the departure from simple moral and ethical values in the workplace, and in my experience no echelon of any organisation, whether government, commerce or industry, can entirely exempt themselves as each (as a group) are, in their own distinct ways, culpable for the demise of principles and common decency in business life today.

WHY AM I DIFFERENT?

I decided early on that I had seen enough corporate incompetence, and had my fill of managers who were too busy keeping their jobs that they never really did their jobs; of staff who spent more time debating whether the size and shape of their mouse pad conformed to regulatory standards than they did actually performing any useful work and of employees in general for whom process and procedures had ceased to be a means and had become the end, with almost religious connotations.

Very few to none of the mainstream business consultancies take a common sense approach to providing services to their customers either in terms of their own products and services or with regard to activities they have been hired to perform. I realised it was time someone took a different approach by going back to basics and strive to reintroduce straight talking and common sense thinking into the workplace.

I have built a network of like minded professionals equally committed to the same fundamental values and principles with whom I work closely or loosely as circumstances required to ensure the highest levels of quality in service irrespective of the clients requirements.

HISTORICALLY

I have worked with and provided services to large multinationals such as Microsoft, Euroclear Bank, ABN AMRO Bank, AEGON, Ritchie Bros., Gandalf, BJ Tubular Services to name a few, as well as with local government and many small to medium enterprises from various sectors. I have been fortunate enough to have worked in numerous countries across four continents; which makes thinking outside the box inherent and provides a balanced understanding of different cultures and their business practices.

THE STAKES - YOUR VISION, YOUR PASSION, YOUR BUSINESS

If you are tired of double-talk, tired of incompetence, tired of paying for no or little results, then call or email for an exploratory discussion as to how I might be able to make a difference for you, and let you start to see the benefits of being in business once again.