GOVERNMENT & PLACE
Are we strengthening the system, or adding to its complexity?
Places aren't short of ambition. The challenge is turning it into something tangible and specific enough that partners can buy into it, act on it and see the results.
When outcomes depend on employers, education, communities and a wider supply chain beyond government's direct control, progress comes from creating the conditions for others to act - without creating another programme, network or agenda.
Our Services
STARTING POINTS, NOT PACKAGES
Every organisation starts somewhere different. Our propositions bring together some of the challenges we most often help solve, but they’re not fixed packages. We can work with you on a specific question or deliverable, bring independent perspective to an existing programme, or shape a broader piece of work around the outcome you’re trying to achieve. If your challenge doesn’t fit neatly into one of these areas, talk to us.
01 Connected Policies and Place
See where policies and partnerships connect and where the system pulls against itself.
02 Making Place Make Sense
Turn the place offer into something employers can understand, back, and act on
03 From Engagement to Shared Leadership
Make existing partner structures work harder, moving from participation to genuine ownership and leadership.
YOU DON'T JUST NEED EMPLOYERS AT THE TABLE.
YOU NEED THEM INVESTED IN THE PLACE OUTCOME.
I TURN AMBITION INTO A ROLE OTHERS CAN PLAY
I help places translate strategic ambitions into clear asks, making it obvious what employers need to contribute, resource and deliver to support wider skills, employment and education objectives.
I DESIGN FOR PARTICIPATION, NOT JUST ENGAGEMENT
I understand the practical, commercial and operational realities that influence whether employers participate. Successful partnerships are not built on enthusiasm alone; they require a proposition that is meaningful, achievable and worth sustaining.
Employers shouldn't be passive participants in reform. They can be architects of skills and employment opportunity. Yet too often they're faced with multiple front doors into the same system. I help places create the conditions for meaningful participation by giving employers clear roles, aligned incentives and practical routes to action.
I BUILD THE CONNECTIONS, NOT MORE NETWORKS
I identify how employers, schools, careers networks, adult skills programmes and public-sector initiatives can work together more intentionally to create a simple, coherent architecture for shared leadership.
I HELP PLACES DEMONSTRATE VALUE, NOT JUST ACTIVITY
I help places articulate the social, economic and educational outcomes they are trying to achieve, ensuring programmes, partnerships and participation are connected to impact rather than measured purely through activity. This creates a clearer line of sight between investment, contribution and lasting value.
We're developing an ambition, policy or programme. How does it connect to everything already happening around it?
Government does not operate in neat policy silos and neither do the employers, places and partners expected to respond to it.
National policy, devolved priorities, sector strategies, public investment and local programmes often address different parts of the same challenge. Individually, each may make sense. Together, they can create a crowded landscape of overlapping asks, initiatives and routes into participation.
For employers and delivery partners, those boundaries are largely irrelevant. They experience the cumulative demand: jobs, skills, work experience, social value, investment, engagement and partnership - often coming from different parts of the system at the same time.
I help government and place leaders look at that landscape from the outside in. Where are ambitions reinforcing one another? Where are the same organisations being asked repeatedly to participate? Where is existing infrastructure being underused? And where would connecting what already exists create more value than introducing something new?
The more connected, consistent and coherent those demands are, the easier it becomes to participate, invest and deliver.
01 Connected Policies and Place
HOW WE HELP
I map the policy, programme and partnership landscape through the experience of the organisations expected to respond to it.
That means identifying duplicated asks, disconnected routes, competing priorities, underused infrastructure and opportunities to bring activity around a clearer shared outcome.
From there, I help leaders make practical choices about what to connect, adapt, stop, scale or design differently, so new ambition strengthens the wider system rather than adding another layer to it.
TOGETHER WE'LL EXPLORE
Which policies, programmes and investments already shape the ambition
Where employers and partners are experiencing overlapping or competing asks
Which existing networks, infrastructure and routes could do more
Where activity can be aligned around a clearer shared outcome
What should be connected, adapted, stopped, scaled or designed differently
02 Making Place Make Sense
How do we make backing the place ambition make sense for employers too?
Once we understand the collective offer of a place, the challenge is making it usable.
Employers rarely see a single, coherent proposition. They encounter programmes, campaigns, pots of money, and partnerships from different directions.
The result can be strong ambition that's hard to act on.
I help turn that landscape into a clearer proposition to industry. What we're trying to achieve, where employers can contribute, and how the route in can be simple and compelling.
This is about more than communications and rather, designing the ask, roles, incentives, entry points, and choices that make participation make sense. Because if the proposition is unclear or too complicated, employers will step back or build something alongside it.
Make a route into the place ambition so strong and that backing becomes the obvious choice.
HOW WE HELP
I turn a place’s collective offer into a clearer proposition to industry.
That means bringing together programmes, priorities, incentives and opportunities and translating them into something employers can understand and act on: clear roles, credible asks, practical routes into participation and a stronger explanation of why engagement matters to them.
I help shape the mechanisms around that proposition too — from employer engagement and partnership models to procurement, social value, investment and supply chains — so participation is designed around how organisations actually make decisions.
The aim is not simply better communication. It is to make it easier for business ambition and place ambition to reinforce one another.
TOGETHER WE'LL EXPLORE
What are we actually asking employers to contribute?
Which parts of the offer will matter to different employers — and why?
What might make participation feel difficult, fragmented or low-value?
Where do business priorities and place priorities naturally align?
What routes, incentives or mechanisms would make it easier to act?
How can employers see the contribution they are making to the wider outcome?
03 From Engagement to Shared Leadership
How do we move employers and partners from being participants in government-led activity to becoming co-owners of the ambition?
A place might have a clear strategy and strong employer participation, yet still rely on government to convene, connect, and lead.
The question becomes not only who is engaged, but who has influence, responsibility, ownership. And it's not always about creating new structures. Most places already have chambers, LSIPs, sector boards, employer forums, and cornerstone groups. The challenge is whether we're using them in ways that enable shared leadership or simply to attend.
Shared leadership means being clear about where government sets direction. where others should influence and where employers and partners can take genuine ownership.
Government can hold the golden thread, it shouldn't have to do all the leading.
HOW WE HELP
We help governments and places turn employer and partner engagement into shared leadership.
We review the boards, networks, forums and relationships already surrounding an ambition and assess whether they are structured to do more than simply convene people.
We then help recast and connect that infrastructure — clarifying the purpose of different groups, defining their roles and accountabilities, strengthening how intelligence moves between them, and agreeing the outputs or decisions each should be responsible for.
Where needed, we reshape existing forums, create stronger links between them, develop leadership communities, and design conferences, roundtables or other moments of convening that move people from discussion into ownership and action.
The result is a clearer architecture for shared leadership: existing infrastructure working harder, with employers and partners able to influence, champion and lead — while government retains the golden thread connecting it all.
TOGETHER WE'LL EXPLORE
What would genuine shared leadership of this ambition look like
Which decisions should government retain, and where should others have greater influence or ownership?
Where is responsibility currently unclear, concentrated or missing
Which employers and partners have the legitimacy, reach or capability to lead?
What insight needs to reach whom — and at what point — to shape decisions?
How will we know that shared leadership is actually changing what happens?