My recent roles have tended towards corporate strategy and mentoring even when the prime role has been financial. People seem generally happy to hear and consider my advice; much of the progress made by companies with whom I have been involved has benefitted from my ability to communicate and foster ideas and my ability to support other people as they develop their own skills. Often this is associated with creating the disciplined environments in which there is space for people to flourish.

Over the last few employments I have learned to become much quicker at assessing corporate weaknesses and assessing what ‘treatments’ would be beneficial.

SMEs

Charities

Housing Associations

Building Societies

Establishing good teams of people. This has included building good teams in a previously fragmented and unhappy environment.

Running constructive and efficient meetings as officer, with colleagues, and as a board member and chair.

I ask questions and keep coming back with follow up questions until issues are fully aired and understood.

IT systems; I have not been shy of new IT systems. Several times I have introduced systems which were not ‘market standard’. One of them has since become the market standard in its field but all of them are still in use despite being nearly 20 years old in some cases.

Strategy;I have been credited with a good strategic mind by peers in several organisations.

Audit; this is a core skill backed by many years of experience both as a company auditor and within the Building Society where I rose to the Board and to Chair the Audit Committee.

Risk management; particularly within the Building Society and Housing Associations I have spent a lot of time successfully producing and reviewing risk processes.

Treasury and borrowing; experience of deposit portfolios of up to £100m and borrowings of up to £70m but also of managing much smaller amounts too.

Governance; I submitted my own submission to the Higgs report and have retained a great interest in this area. Within two Housing Associations I have been involved in changing the Board (in one case described by the regulator as dysfunctional).