James, you have accumulated a wealth of experience and skills during your career. What is it about GRAPH Strategy that motivates you to continue your work in strategy consulting, and why is this area of business exciting to you? Whether it’s helping our clients to make acquisitions, develop new business models, or exploit new value opportunities, the work we do is always fast-paced and incredibly interesting. I’ve always relished investigating new businesses and tackling difficult questions. That’s really what’s kept me in the business of strategy consulting for the last 20 years. We work with private equity investors and founders of businesses, all of whom are brilliant and passionate about what they do. Our team at GRAPH is also an immensely capable and driven group of individuals, who have chosen to work for a fast-growing boutique firm; we all share a vision of how we can grow and create value and impact together. So, if I were to sum up what drives me forward – and what really is the ethos of GRAPH – it is the idea that we are constantly doing great work, with great people, for great clients. What is your leadership approach and what core values inspire this? How do you successfully share responsibilities with colleagues in order to manage the business and for employees to have a secure management? As a leader, I think I’m fairly hands-on in some aspects, and good at delegating in others. I still really enjoy the day-to-day work of consulting, so I like working alongside my team and being as involved and accessible to clients as possible. A key thing I’ve learnt in my career is that you can’t succeed unless you surround yourself with really great people. At GRAPH, we go out of our way to hire the very best. In addition to direct referrals from existing team members, we also have good relationships with top universities in the US and UK to bring in fresh talent. Once you’ve got great people on your team, I think that leadership becomes focused on creating an environment in which those people feel enabled – where they can thrive and have maximum impact. Less hierarchy means that team members can take on responsibility early in their career and feel a sense of ownership in the team’s successes. The other big thing I spend time thinking about is how we maintain our culture. How can we make sure that GRAPH is a firm that people feel is the very best place to build a career in consulting? There’s also the challenge of how to balance time spent working in the business versus on the business – it’s a challenge that I think every business leader will recognise. One of the investments we’ve recently made to address this challenge is creating a new Chief of Staff role in the UK office, to help ensure we’re heading in the right direction and that our key operations are positioned for success as we continue to scale. What is the philosophy behind the GRAPH Blueprint™️ and how has this methodology become a part of GRAPH? What makes this an effective delivery model? Fundamentally, our work involves helping clients make difficult decisions under tight time pressures. To be able to consistently deliver excellent outcomes, you need a repeatable process that doesn’t leave room for error. This is the idea behind the GRAPH Blueprint™️, our 5-stage delivery model. Our best practices provide more valuable data and analysis, more creative and constructive ideas, and avoid risky shortcuts and costly rework. Beyond the GRAPH Blueprint™️ , there are a range of tools, such as our Diligence Matters® toolkit and GRAPH Papers® article series, that we’ve developed Finance Monthly Deal Maker Awards 2024. UNITED KINGDOM 15
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