Stuart Mitchell · Operations & Transformation
Making major change deliver real operating results.
When change is under way but cost, capacity or service is still off plan, I bring business, operations and technology together to redesign how the service works and lead implementation.
Interim & fractional leadership · Contract & advisory assignments
Restoring control, margin and growth.
Financial services & complex service operations
Your situation
What needs to change?
The starting point is the result the business needs and what is preventing it.
Getting value from change
The investment needs to show up in the operation.
The programme is progressing, but the expected improvement in cost, capacity or service is not coming through.
Technology and AI investment can depend on changes to work, roles, controls or supplier arrangements before the benefit can be realised. Those operating-model and service-design decisions need to be part of the plan.
What must the business do differently for this investment to pay off?
Improving cost and capacity
The operation needs to do more with the capacity it has.
More work is arriving, costs need to reduce or queues are getting longer. The response needs to reflect where the operation is constrained.
I start with demand, hand-offs and rework, then agree what the business will do with the capacity released. Clearing a backlog, avoiding recruitment and reducing expenditure need different actions.
If we release capacity, how will the business use it?
Recovering a difficult transition
The change needs to work while the service keeps running.
Service is deteriorating while work moves to a supplier, a new system or a different operating model.
The immediate job is to agree what must be stabilised and what evidence is needed before more work moves. Recovery needs one plan across the teams handing work over and those taking it on.
What has to be working before more work moves?
Relevant experience
Some of the work I have led.
Three examples of what I have been responsible for. Client identities and commercially sensitive detail are withheld.
Redesigning the route from application to offer.
I led the front-to-back redesign of a mortgage operation with service, data and technology colleagues.
Getting an operating-model change implemented.
I owned the change recovery plan and led redesign, readiness and implementation.
Recovering a difficult offshore transition.
I led recovery of a customer-operations transition covering around 1,000 FTE, with responsibility for parallel running, the supplier ramp-up and the UK ramp-down.
These are outcomes achieved with operating and delivery teams. Each case explains my part in the work.
About Stuart
I work with the people who run the service.
I have led operating transformation inside a bank, held senior leadership inside a global technology and professional services business and led recovery in outsourced operations.
That experience spans operating redesign, implementation and the commercial decisions behind change.
More about my backgroundThe economics of improvement
If we release capacity,
what will we do with it?
Faster work can clear a backlog or create room for growth. A reduction in expenditure needs a decision about which cost will come out, and when.
I want the operating owner and Finance to agree how the capacity will be used before it is counted in the business case.
Read the argumentInsights
Judgements behind the work.
What is released capacity actually worth?
Faster work creates an opportunity. The business still needs to decide how to turn that capacity into value.
Read the articleIs the benefits plan executable?
Before committing to a benefits forecast, test the operating actions, shared resources and decisions it depends on.
Read the articleRecovering a transition while the service keeps running
What must be working before more work moves, and what evidence would justify that decision?
Read the field noteA first conversation
Tell me what needs
to be different.
Tell me what the business needs to improve, what is already under way and where progress is stuck. I’ll give you a straight view on whether I can help and what responsibility I could take on.
Useful starting points
- What does the business need to improve?
- What change is already under way?
- What responsibility do you need someone to take on?
A 30-minute conversation with Stuart to understand the work and whether there is a fit.