People

ABOUT US

Our work developing businesses is informed by decades of experience working at senior commercial levels in a range of companies; from start-ups to global corporations.

In addition, we’ve spent years working with businesses and business leaders to help them bring about change and achieve their goals. We are also practising psychotherapists and accredited Insights Discovery practitioners. This hybrid of skills means we can work on the hard business outcomes, as well as all of the cultural and behavioural aspects required to help achieve them.

WHAT MAKES US TICK?

• Having meaningful positive impact with our clients and the world beyond them
• Big complex challenges
• Collaboration and harmony
• Equality and democracy
• Walking our own talk

Lasy Lawless – Founder

“Lasy is warm and nurturing but also refreshingly direct. She is super smart, analytical and strategically focussed but she also has great intuition and is sensitive to other people’s needs. Her superpower is her ability to discover the personal developmental aspect that will benefit you the most, challenge you around it and guide you through the trickiest parts of what you are learning in the safest possible way: just enough so you stay on your learning edge, not so much that you become defensive and reject what you are being offered. The result is rapid life-changing learning. She is also immense fun to work with.”

In her own words:

I am passionate about organisational development and transformation. I’m also pragmatic, strategic and business-focused. My approach is person-centred – which means, I expect and support others to take their own, full responsibility.

As a trained accountant, I worked for Big Finish – a conglomerate of TV and film post-production companies, at a time when that world was being radically changed by digital technology. As Group FD, after 10 years sitting in over a dozen boardrooms devising strategy, I realised the old ways of doing things were finished. Traditional power structures no longer delivered.

That’s – at least in part – why I re-trained as a psychotherapist. It seems to me that understanding what motivates people, and how to create strong challenging relationships at all levels, is the single most critical success factor for any business.”

Jamie Pyper – Founder

“Jamie is warm and fun but also insightful and gently provocative. He is practical, pragmatic and positive. Jamie loves working collaboratively. He learns fast and quickly adapts his style to suit the client. His superpower is in how clients immediately feel comfortable enough to be themselves and therefore seamlessly explore whatever it is that they want to work on. Jamie is great at co-creating solutions that feel achievable. He offers encouraging feedback throughout the process yet he gently – but firmly – holds individuals and groups to account.”

In his own words:

I’m motivated by impact in my work, by big challenges and helping others learn and develop. I was lucky enough to work for some innovative and culturally forward-thinking organisations in the high-tech industry and built a strong business background in bleeding-edge multinational technology companies working in Silicon Valley for much of the 90’s as a director at both Psion and Palm in strategic business relationship roles.

Having lived in these business cultures, I became fascinated by the kind of results that a more human approach to the workplace could achieve. Ultimately, I decided that’s what I’d like to help other organisations achieve. Having been coaching my own teams for years I decided to train as a psychotherapist to deepen my understanding and ability to have impact. Being this ‘hybrid’ helps me join dots between the businesses needs and the developmental/cultural needs of the people within it.

I am fortunate to have been able to build a career in what I love doing, whether it be as a non-executive director helping companies through challenges and developing strategies, or taking groups or individuals through a learning process by workshops, peer-to-peer learning or coaching.

Championing business that works in 21st century is a passion so I spend part of my time working with the Employee Ownership Association and I’m a regular contributor to the Meaning Conference that happens every year in Brighton, which showcases truly inspiring companies and ways of doing business.

Steve Stark – Associate

My first job was as a jelly bean machine salesman.

I soon transitioned to a life on the airwaves and found myself running radio stations, production companies, and classified ad platforms. After more than a decade of outside broadcasts, licence wins and mergers I switched to advising people like Haymarket Publishing and Virgin Media on emerging digital opportunities in data and gaming.

For five years I co-directed People Who Do, which was concerned with helping people and teams be more productive and effective using a variety of tools and techniques. Working with clients like Channel 4, United Business Media, and Nokia taught me about the way organisations work and the way their people exist within them.

Combining that experience with an aptitude for designing practical ways to change things I now spend my time helping organisations understand and change their culture to become better places to work.

I work for moments of transformation: those times when a person starts to feel the benefits of the work they did together. Practical and pragmatic I believe there’s always a way.

In my spare time I make cider, help run a scout troop and for a while, I kept bees.

Ian Scott – Associate

Rather than assuming the apparent is either the issue or solution, I approach each challenge with curiosity. Using rigorous qualitative and quantitative methodologies, honed from an academic background in social anthropology and advanced research methodologies, I am able to explore the issues from the inside without preconception.

I have considerable experience in project management of employee research, previously overseeing multi-country surveys with tens of thousands of participants. For fifteen years I held senior positions in global market research companies and management consultancies such as The Hay Group, providing strategic guidance to household names, including the BBC, Vodafone, Toyota, and DHL. I then moved into the not-for-profit sector, where I continues to spend time working with some of the country’s leading charities.

Ian’s role is to identify and explore the resident culture, and to develop benchmarks for the future and for comparison with other organisations within our database. This, while tailoring our methodological approach to the requirements of the client.

Alastair Reid – Associate

For 8 years I was Managing Director of Red Design where I led a team that created many moments of magic for some of the world’s biggest names and brands. From TomTom, to Playstation. From the French President to Fatboy Slim.

We experienced several years of double digit growth, won lots of awards, and helped many of our clients change how they told their stories, and how they bought their products to market.

During this time, in what was a very demanding, high performance environment, I became very interested in the people side of the business. I worked with a number of coaches and mentors who helped shape my thinking. I saw the amazing things that could be achieved with the right blend of people, coaching, support, leadership, team dynamics, learning, challenge, strategy and purpose. In essence a healthy work culture.

And at the same time, I became very interested in the point where brands and cultures intersect. In the age of digital transparency, your brand is defined more by what you do, than what you say. And what you do is in large part powered by your culture.

Many of the world’s most respected and successful companies, (not least Google), share that philosophy. Making culture the prime driver of their business.

I now combine my experience in design, creativity, coaching, leadership and strategy to help others be the best they can be. I work with individuals, groups and companies helping them understand their culture and approach to work. And then help them improve it through coaching, and designing and delivering tools and workshops.

Often it starts with helping them work out what’s really important to them, and then aligning that with their work, removing obstacles and embracing opportunities along the way.

We’re practicing psychotherapists too, which means we’re hybrids who can work on the hard business outcomes as well as all of the behavioural aspects required to help achieve them.

CONSCIOUS BUSINESS PEOPLE