As Managing Director at JA Consulting I work with a great small team all of whom are just brilliant. (see www.jaconsulting.co.uk) William Murray Communications is the UK’s leading food & drink specialist PR & marketing agency.As chair my focus is to use a combination of experience and insight to work with the board of directors and drive the business forward.I often get asked why so many of my clients have worked with me for over 25 years?Fundamentally I am always asking the tough questions to make sure that whatever my clients do will actually make a commercial difference. I make no apologies for challenging our clients hard. It is this passion and focus I have which means my clients have often stayed with me for decades. Given my background as an ex-director of EY, it wouldn’t surprise you to know that my client list contains all of the Big 4 firms, many of the top consulting firms, global and UK law firms.I have a belief that if you get the people together, they can support each other to grow and solve their own problems. That was our focus with our first client Castrol in 1989. Most of the work I do now is around change management. I also work in the Defence sector. I also help organisation create persuasive bids. In addition to that work I have held a number of non-executive roles. Whilst every client is different these are fairly typical results:Over an 18 month period we worked with a top firm to help their partners more effectively manage their accounts/prospects. They increased their sales by £45 million. We were called into support one of our defence clients to help them with a piece of change management. As a result of our interventions, the project was delivered on time/to budget. I’ve coached over 100 individuals in different firms to help them make it over the line to partnership. I’ve also worked with very senior partners, particularly focusing on how they develop and then implement local strategies.