How I work

Campaigns struggle when the plan no longer matches the tasks. Scope changes by an inch on a Tuesday. A dependency stays invisible until Thursday. By Friday, you feel like you’re running a different job.

In networks of local markets, central hubs, specialist teams and partner agencies, ownership can get vague. Everyone’s responsible for the brand, but nobody’s responsible for the seam where the teams meet. That’s where dates slide and margin leaks.

Where I start

I focus on ambiguity. A programme runs well when ambiguity stays below a threshold.

Delivery shape

I name the workstreams and the owners, and I map the critical path: the single line of events that can stop the clock.

Visible scope

We agree what we’re doing and what we aren’t (MoSCoW). If a request changes the plan, we price the impact straight away and make a decision while it’s still small.

Closing the entry points

If a client can brief five people at once, you get five versions of the truth. I centralise brief intake so the team can give one consistent answer.

Keep risks actionable

Risks are things that haven’t happened yet. We name them, set actions, and track them to closure.

Evidence

Examples are anonymised to respect client confidentiality.

Team half the size it needed to be

For a multi-market rollout, the team couldn’t keep pace because capacity didn’t match the work. I rebuilt the resourcing plan from the actual workload, secured the people needed, and put a programme cadence in place with clear escalation routes. Once capacity matched demand, the programme functioned well. We still made a loss but by that point it was inevitable. The contract had been signed on the wrong assumptions, and delivery was about limiting damage rather than pretending the numbers would heal themselves.

Multi-agency reality

On a large programme with multiple collaborating agencies, the problem was selective visibility. Competing incentives meant information moved unevenly. I treated it as a multi-vendor environment, and put in place a sponsor-visible decision and dependency trail with named owners, timestamps, response windows, and escalation tied to delivery impact. It didn’t make the agencies cooperative, but it did make the programme governable.

Five ways to brief, five versions of truth

Leadership didn’t have a reliable view of what the account was working on. Clients were briefing different people separately and getting different answers. I made the work visible through one live board showing projects and owners. I set a single route for client requests so the team could respond consistently. Within weeks, leadership had line of sight, and the confusion stopped.

97 SOWs, 2 weeks, small team

A large volume of Statements of Work were due under a tight deadline, handled by a small team. We ran an always-on working session, grouped requests by similarity, and used templates to keep decisions consistent. We referenced past projects, pulled in support to validate numbers quickly, and made judgement calls with clear notes where assumptions were required. We hit the date by using structure under pressure