I work alongside you when your stakes are highest and your room is loudest.

A newly appointed CEO came to me. She had been promoted from COO, and she knew she would be facing the PE board regularly. She wanted to be prepared.

Her first question, when we sat down, was the one she couldn't ask anyone else: "What does a CEO actually do?"

We covered a broad agenda over the next hundred days. She attended the board meetings with confidence. She presented the growth strategy. She cleared out the deadwood her predecessor had carried. The chairman and the non-executives signalled their approval in the clearest way open to them: they increased the funding for the business.

A CEO came to me with a problem he couldn't act on. His company was delivering a critical software release for a UK healthcare client. It was off the rails. The development lead was the owner's nephew. To fire him was to rupture the family. To keep him was to lose the project — and the firm's reputation with it.

No one inside could judge the nephew without it becoming a family matter. So I proposed an independent assessment of the whole programme — not the individual, the work: scope, architecture, delivery, team. Findings on evidence a family member could not dispute and the owner did not have to own.

The nephew moved companies — redeployed, not sacked, his standing intact. The release shipped.

A UK technology company hired me to assess their opportunity in South East Asia. They wanted a strategic view of what the market might hold, before committing to it.

I did the work — the market, the partners, the route in — and produced the entry report they had asked for. The opportunity was real. But two things had to be faced. The local partners I met were keen to move at once. The company was not yet ready: the product worked in demonstration, but not at the scale a live market would demand. Left alone, that mismatch would have cost them both.

So I set the pace. A programme the company (and the SE Asia partners) could absorb, no faster. The opportunity stayed open; and entry was timed to win, not fail.

I founded a consulting business in New York for a UK technology company. Zero to thirty million dollars in revenue in two years. Profit from year two. Headcount from four to forty-five.

The accounts were Fortune 500 — financial services, logistics, food and beverage, manufacturing. Sceptical buyers, complex sales, and a market where no-one had heard of us. I built the commercial platform, the partnerships, the delivery model, and the management.

The Group then handed me their Asia business to rescue.

The British government asked me to evaluate a critical overseas transport operation. It was a lifeline for several communities. It was being defrauded at scale.

I recommended closing it in its current form and relaunching it on a sustainable basis.

The senior official looked at me across the table. He asked one question. "What happens to the population? They depend on these services."

I gave him three actions. "Restart. Rebuild. Provide continuity."

He gave me four words. "Can you run it?"

I built the replacement. Profitable. Logistically sound. Sustainable. Acquired by a local consortium. Still running a decade later.