He Built 2 Multi-Million Pound Consultancies Using Toyota's 70-Year-Old Playbook with Steve Boam

Steve Boam is CEO of Develop Consulting, a consultancy specialising in operational improvement, transformation and capability development across sectors including healthcare, manufacturing, rail and construction. Steve began his career as an engineer at Toyota, spending two years in Japan working inside Toyota City before founding KM&T, an international consultancy that grew across the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Europe. After fifteen years, he founded Develop Consulting, applying many of the same principles to build a more focused, sustainable consultancy.

In this conversation, Craig and Steve explore what working inside Toyota taught him about building high-performing organisations, why the Toyota Way is about far more than lean, and how those principles shaped two successful consultancies. They discuss why Steve has always believed consultants should leave clients stronger rather than dependent, how Develop Consulting has balanced a core team with a wider network of associates, and why sustainable growth has become a more important goal than simply growing as quickly as possible.

This is a thoughtful, practical conversation with a consultancy founder whose philosophy has remained remarkably consistent, from the factory floor in Japan to building consultancy businesses designed to continuously improve, develop people and create lasting impact.

Host: Craig Herd, MD at Consultancy Growth
Guest: Steve Boam, CEO at Develop Consulting

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hi, and welcome to the Consultancy Growth Podcast. I'm Craig Hurd, and my guest today is Steve Boone, founder and managing director of Developed Consulting. Steve's career started at Toyota, first as an assembly engineer in the UK and then living in Japan. That gave him a grinding in the Toyota production system and the Toyota way, which has shaped everything since. In this conversation, Steve and I talk about the lessons learned from Toyota, his first consultancy, and now his second, building deliberately, more strategically, built for sustainability rather than rapid growth. This is a fascinating conversation with somebody who's built two consultancies over 25 years and learned the difference between growing fast and growing well. If you get value from this episode, I'd encourage you to subscribe. You get brand new episodes before anyone else. But for now, here's Steve Boom, Develop Consultancy. Let's get into it. Your career started at Toyota, and first as the assembly engineer in the UK, and then in Japan. Take us back. You know, what was the experience like? What did it set in motion for you?

SPEAKER_00 0:57

So I started as a qualified engineer, went into Toyota. First thing we did was said, that's brilliant. Please take off the shirt and tie. Here's a t-shirt, you're online building cars for three months. The method in that was you had to really understand their business model, how their production facility worked, build empathy with the production workers, and understand what it was like on days, nights, and other things. So you really built a true understanding of the Toyota way and Toyota's production system. After our three months, I was done an assembly engineer for the best part of six years. And in that time, they move you around quite regularly. So you've done manpower lines, you've done equipment lines, we launched two new cars, we launched a brand new production facility for the Corolla and a 200 million pound extension. And then it was my turn to get a project really. And it really was you are now worthy because you've got enough experience and been around the different divisions, departments, how budget responsibility, how equipment responsibility, etc., to take on the new car. So the kind of drawings landed three years before the car was due to be produced on my desk. Um get yourself a team, get yourself together, understand the drawings. Obviously, we didn't design the car, we were just implementing the car. And we need to save 30% of the cost of producing this car is the target. So that was the added challenge. So that then took me to Japan and to live in Japan for nearly two years because previously we'd inherited cars and made them fit the factory for three years. And this was the first opportunity to scrutine every nutbolt, wire harness component and all of the equipment so that we could seamlessly put the car in and save lots of money along the way. So, yeah, so that took me to Toyota and Toyota City.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

And um, you know, you've mentioned a lot of people have heard the Toyota production system. They've either heard it kind of third or second hand. I mean, if you have experienced it and been part of the Toyota team, could you talk about that? You know, what did being on the inside give you that you couldn't have got otherwise?

SPEAKER_00 2:38

Yeah, it's really interesting because when we talked about Toyota being lean, Toyota then recognise that term lean. That was the professors Waimaka Jones through the 80s and try to study what Toyota were up to and how are they producing such you know quality-focused, safety-focused cars at the cost and how are they being so productive? So to actually go and live in Japan, in Toyota City, be part of the management team as an engineer and get that one-to-one coaching, guidance, and support. And don't get me wrong, you know, it was a hard role. I had to learn Japanese to be able to hold meetings in Japanese along the way as well. But it was once in a lifetime experience. I was the second European to ever go, and I think there's been two or three since. But it was really about getting one-to-one with the engineers, with the equipment engineers, with the designers of the car and challenging the design. You know, for example, why do we need four screws to hold in a speaker? Could we do three, 25% saving? You know, in fact, why are we using expensive screws and grommets in the first place? Could we use pot rivets? So, you know, reduce the cost in that way. And that's just a small example. We would literally scrutinity the whole car, the whole Corolla, which is how we got 30-30% out of it. But yeah, as a Western person, you know, what an opportunity to come work with the Japanese, live, understand TPS. And what Toyota talk about is two things, TPS and the Toyota way. TPS are the tools and techniques that are, you know, readily available in the books. So from firehouse standardization, the way you manage quality, the way you manage logistics and parts. But what they talk about more than that in Toyota to this day is the Toyota way, which is about people and process. So it's how do you manage and set up your processes and challenge and continue the challenge? And how do you look after your people, have respect for your people, partners, suppliers, and how do you develop your people along the way? And if you can keep those in check, you know, really good people, being really well developed and really good processes, then you've got a really repeatable business.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

Yeah, that's great. And I've heard you describe your personal goal as transferring that knowledge to as many people as possible, you know, your own teams and your clients alike. What did that instinct to pass it on rather than just apply it to yourself and your own business? Where did that come from?

SPEAKER_00 4:32

Yeah, I suppose that goes back to the Toyota way as well. You know, everything in Toyota was transparent, everybody in Toyota pulled together. The teamwork in Toyota is almost military style. You know, I've never seen teamware like it. The NHS comes close, especially in the crisis, but teamwork is absolutely fantastic. You know, everybody pulls together, everybody supports each other. There's very flat hierarchy in Toyota. And because of that, they have this thing called Nemowashi, which is all about sharing, you know, sharing the good, sharing the bad, and make sure everybody's on the same page and everything's understood and everybody's bought into the process, the business case, the new car, whatever, wherever it might be. So I suppose that's where it came from. When I left Toyota, I went and supported another consulting, went to support other automotive um clients such as Jaguar and Rover, implement their lean and continuous improvement journey and start that with them in the Midlands in Hellwood. And really, I suppose that wanting to go and support people, help them understand what I've now understood, you know, TPS in that away, was my drive really to support clients and go further with that.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

That's great. So it's almost part of the philosophy, part of the approach to share it. So it'd almost be disingenuous to keep it to yourself.

SPEAKER_00 5:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

And then so you were head-handed out of Toda 2001, and then after a few years in the industry, you founded KMT and grew globally over 15 years. You know, what made you want to go out on your own at that stage? Because it sounds like things were going well with what you were doing, but what made you want to start your own consultancy?

SPEAKER_00 5:51

So I'd worked for a couple of consultancies, enjoyed my time there, enjoyed the clients we were working with, but I just felt that I could do it slightly different and slightly better. So I joined forces with someone who got no consulting experience, but had got a business startup experience and marketing and other skills that I didn't have as an engineer in the business world. So we got together and formed KMT. And we searched long and hard for the name KMT. And, you know, what were we trying to do? Why were we going to be different, etc.? And that's why we landed on knowledge management and transfer, because we said, well, that's what we're trying to do. And that's not what all consultancies do. They're sort of the bigger consultancies are renowned for their reports and you know their planning rather than the actual execution. So we said, no, no, we want to be hands-on. We want to take hands-on people, primarily Toyota at the time, and we want to go and support businesses to implement what we know, held them in a shoulder-to-shoulder, hands-on way, and not do it for them, but do it with them, so that when we peeled away, they carried on on their journey.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

Interesting. So that focus of helping businesses stand on their own two feet rather than becoming dependent on your consultancy, is that something you thought was always important, or is that part of that Toyota way? Where did that come from?

SPEAKER_00 6:55

It probably does come back to the Toyota way again because, you know, they support their partners, they support their suppliers, whereas other automotive OEMs, you know, punish their suppliers and hold their suppliers to account or blame in some cases. Toyota's not allowed. Yes, it's firm but fair. So they really support, encourage, work with, get the best technology, get the best ideas from their suppliers. And don't get me wrong, if things are going, you know, not to plan or not well, yeah, they support to start with, and then they get a bit more strict. So I suppose that's where I originated from. But we looked around long and hard, and there was lots of consultancies that were just happy to take the paycheck or happy to support for a bit and already get the result. And we were like, no, we want to be different to that. We want to really help our clients to think of how they're going to change their business, their models, the way their people behave, their processes, co-design with us, embed it, sustain it, and then we step away. And, you know, as they say in consulting, you're only as good. This is your last job. So it was important to us to have that sustainability and clients that we could reference and shout in about how good we were.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

Yeah, that's great. And I mean KMT grew to multiple millions and it was an international business. You know, looking back, what were the driving factors? What were the moments that really caused it to accelerate and become what it became?

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Yeah, we started as a UK business, and I'd got previous experience of working in Australia, and Australia had got very few consultancies down there at the time, and a resource gap really in the experience at a senior level within businesses. So we were invited to go and do some work for Qantas Airways, so on aircraft maintenance and aircraft turnaround. And that really started the catalyst for us in Australia and then New Zealand eventually, so Australasia. And it was sort of by design, but kind of by accident at the same time. So, you know, we're invited down to do this project, we're invited down to sport. We then soon realized when we were on the ground that there was lots of other businesses that could do with our support. Well, the Toyota Way continuous improvement was fairly undiscovered down in Australia, where it was more saturated in the UK and Europe at the time. So that was really the catalyst. That then allowed us to start and build a network there and build a team there, put local management in and HR and finance, etc., and really have the footprint. So we had two really strong footprints. And that then was the catalyst for us to really look at other regions. So Singapore was our third region, and then Canada was our fourth region and office with a small office in Europe, really. Europe was a different beast because of the language and some of the cultural barriers.

SPEAKER_01 9:06

And would you say then that part of the growth strategy, well, accidentally with Australia and then perhaps in other countries, but was it looking for that, what did they say, white space or blue ocean, you know, the spaces in which there wasn't such saturation of what you were teaching and implementing?

SPEAKER_00 9:19

Yeah, we kind of came up with a strategy at the time, about three or four years in, and we said, look, you know, consultancies can be high risk, consultancy can fluctuate, markets and sectors fluctuate. So our plan was always the team used to laugh about our five by five by five, so it's not what you eat sort of thing. Five territories, five or more sectors within those territories, and then five or more clients within each sector was a kind of aspiration. But it stood as well through 15 years that because you know, we eventually got to the kind of five offices, we eventually got to five or more in the bigger offices sectors. So we were spreading the risk across multiple sectors because it's highly unlikely that automotive, rail, and defence are all going to be, you know, on a downward trend at the same time. You know, automotive might be down at the minute as it is for mainstream OEMs, but defence is on the rise, you know. We've just seen announcements of more spending defence this week. So it's not perfect, but it's a guiding principle, and it's, you know, it was a way to mitigate our risk and get into some interesting sectors that needed our help, which always keeps our consumers interested, challenged, and loyal to the business to stay really.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

And you know, building KMT over nearly 15 years, you know, what did it ask of you that you didn't expect when you started and what did it cost you along the way? What were the hard moments?

SPEAKER_00 10:28

Yeah, so as a startup business and as a small business, you have to be very adaptable. You have to be everything from, you know, HR until you've got a HR team, you know, after we've got a finance team, legal until we've got a legal team. So yeah, the things that challenged me along the way were how to set up in these territories, what the legal implications were, you know. So that in Europe you need notaries and you need director on the ground that's a native, etc. So, you know, all these challenges to opening different territories that we didn't sort of foresee at the time. Now, they're not insurmountable, and then, you know, like anything, you put them in a plan and you work through them, and that's what we preach to our clients. But yeah, so there was lots of things on the back office, the business setup, the sort of legalities, accountancy, that kind of thing along the way that that challenged us. I suppose sacrifices having offices and businesses that literally one end of the world to the other, you know, so the time zones are a challenge to be able to support your people in territory. You know, once the UK is coming to a close, Australia's just waking them, Canada's halfway through the day sort of thing, you know, and you wake up at 4 a.m. to drive to somewhere in the UK to a project, to be there to sort of the starshift meetings, etc. And Australia's just finishing in day. So it did become a 24-hour operation for you know the guys at the top leading it.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

Was there anything about the way you built it or the way it grew that you would do differently? You know, it felt like a good idea at the time, kind of thing, but actually just lessons learned. You would build it differently then, or do you think it was the right way at the right time?

SPEAKER_00 11:50

Yeah, I think at the time it was the right way. And then to give independence and sort of empower the local teams was the right way. Finding those local teams, developing those local teams, finding the right people to join those teams, getting the right dynamic and sort of the dynamic we'd built in the UK, trying to replicate that in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, or Europe, it was hard because it's people, right? And as we preach to our clients, you know, you bit back to it where you've got people and process. So the processes are easy. You can transfer you, stand the business side processing operating models, stand the way you do the accountancy, etc. That's the easy bit.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

You were saying put people and process, and process is the easy bit, but managing people across territories is is hard work.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

Managing people across territories, getting the right team as you expand that team, make sure the dynamic's good, replicating the dynamic, you know, the family feels we used to call it in the UK, head down to the other regions. That's the hard bit. The people, but was always the hard bit.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

And just kind of touching on that a little bit more. Culture of the business. How strong did you think of the culture of the business was? I I would imagine it was a great emphasis for you. And did it have to adapt or change per country or territory? You know, was there certain things about your culture that didn't make as much sense to somebody living in Australia or wherever else? Or did actually your culture was your culture and just people bought in or they didn't?

SPEAKER_00 13:02

Yeah, we set it to have a family feel, which some people, you know, would say, Wow, really? That's you know, that's just a cliche, whatever. But everybody who worked for us at the time and still works, say, no, no, no, it really is a thing. You know, because with consultancy, you are opposite ends of the country, you might be on a one-man project, you might be on a five, six-month project. So keeping the team together and the team communicating is hard. And there's various ways, especially now with teams and weekly meetings, weekly check-ins, town halls, etc., weekly comms, that you can do it. But to get the real feel and the real dynamic, and what we created was a real KMT family, and we've got a kind of developed family now. And the reason I call out family is because not everybody has to get on all of the time perfectly. But when somebody needs support and an email or a cry goes out for has anybody ever seen one of these or got experience of this, within minutes, you know, the whole team are responding to say, Oh, you know, let me help you out or let me sign postage somewhere, or and that's that kind of family feel. And we try to get our teams together once a quarter, probably about three times a year, now and back then, because again, building relationships, having shared experiences, getting people in the same place at the same time to share how the business is going, how their projects are going, how they're getting on personally, and that kind of thing is really important to us. So, you know, we maintain that all the way through KM ⁇ T in each region, and then we've maintained that through develop as well.

SPEAKER_01 14:15

Great. Well, I mean, coming to that, you know, after 15 years of KM ⁇ T, you chose to start again and found developed consulting in 2018. You know, what made you want to build a new consultancy and build for a second time?

SPEAKER_00 14:28

So the simple answer is I felt the work wasn't done. You know, my mission hadn't been kind of completed. So we decided to go again as develop. But we sat down and myself and Darren, the chairman of my original business partner and FD, Roger, and we sat down and said, right, what are we going to do differently? What's the good stuff we're going to take forward? You know, what are we really good at? And what are we going to do differently? Particularly on the business and people side. So our offer, what we offered, how we offered it, the results we got and still get, it was kind of second to none. So that wasn't in question. Yeah, we need the same type of people doing, you know, really good projects, getting really good results, carrying on with our knowledge transfer and that kind of bit. And then we looked at the back office and the business side and said, what would we change? You know, we'd grown with significant overhead into each office to be able to run those offices. We've got rented offices in each location. We got, you know, finance staff, HR staff, etc. And we said, well, do we want to replicate that? One, do we want to be international anymore? And and for me personally, I was quite happy to be more UK focused for family reasons and travel and, you know, complexities of running around the world, etc. And we said, well, okay, maybe we could scale this back. Maybe we don't need a you know a big office and a big back office team. Maybe we could keep it with a smaller number of FTE consultants and a wider associate pool, as we call that. So yeah, we took a long hard look, you know, practice what you preach, sort of thing. The good, the bad, the ugly, then put a plan down how we were going to go again, what we're gonna call it, how we're gonna develop it, what sectors we wanted to work in, what people we wanted to employ, and how we wanted to go forward. And you know, after eight years, I'm really pleased with the way it's gone, it's developed, it's grown. I'm really pleased the way some of the people have grown. Some of the people have been with us for a long time. They came three from KNT, and then we've got some new people as well along the way. They've only been with us a few years. So it's a really nice blend.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

That's great. I mean, tying those two things together. So that meeting eight, nine years ago, when you thought, let's do the things that we didn't do as well as we could have better, were there some key decisions there that have stuck with, and you go, thank God we decided to do that, whether it's the socio model or the national versus international focus or something else entirely. And were there any things that actually you started out by saying and thinking we're going to do this, and actually that fell away and something else took its place? Like how has it changed from that kind of whiteboard session eight, nine years ago?

SPEAKER_00 16:33

Yeah, so I suppose fundamentally we've delivered nearly everything we said. You know, we're in multiple sectors, we're still in the NHS, we are in multiple industry sectors, we're in some industry sectors we weren't in, and some sectors that we were with in KMT that, you know, perhaps we'd like to get back into, but the money hasn't been there or the desire or spending hasn't been there from the sector's point of view, such as defence until recently. So I think from a client point of view, well, we get with the workers, right? So we've kind of found our way through it, what's working for us, what isn't working for us. From a back office point of view, I think we've delivered pretty much everything we said we deliver, you know, in terms of accreditations, in terms of accolades, in terms of having a very small office for the team and not necessarily utilising that office fully as we were before and keeping the cost low on that. I think we're doing a lot more remote even before COVID. We were doing a lot more remote team star meetings with internally and with clients, and then that paid dividends through COVID. And I think because we were smaller and more agile, we managed to get through COVID a lot better than some others because we got lower overheads and because we've got more flexibility. We still maintain work in the sectors we were in, so rail and modular housing and things still can't go in as prime sectors through COVID. So yeah, I think we've done pretty well. Now, don't get me wrong, lessons learned. Has everything gone perfectly? No, there were certain NHS contracts really light to have gone for, but our size precluded us from those until we got to a bigger size and things like that. So yeah, there's a few knotbugs along the way. It wasn't all plain sailing.

SPEAKER_01 17:56

Were there a few of those that really really stick out or still kind of gonna be shivers?

SPEAKER_00 17:59

Not so much shivers, just more, you know, disappointing that the UK try and promote SMEs and really, you know, want SMEs to thrive, but then actually there are certain procurement rules that preclude SMEs from even being able to bid or or get involved. So yeah, I suppose you know there's bits like that that stick out as a bit of a thorny issue along the way. And then once you get to a certain size with amount of accreditation and things, then yeah, they're kind of paying significance.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

And um I just wanted to to double down on the decision from international to be more UK focused. In hindsight, has that been a good decision and has that that's probably had more impact on you personally than the business? I don't know exactly what you can tell me, but has that been a beneficial thing for you?

SPEAKER_00 18:41

It's been beneficial because you know, we're UK focused, we work in the length and breadth of UK though, you know, in different sectors. So sometimes it is quicker to get to Europe by plane than it is to PRIMET, for example, by car. But so I think from a staff point of view and a being able to keep the team more local, being able to get around the projects more easily and support each project between me and the other directors, I think that's been beneficial. As the UK economy has been through, you know, a bit of a tough time in the last couple, if not five years. Yeah, would there have been other opportunities in the US, in Canada, in you know, Australia? Possibly. But we kind of made a conscious decision to be out of those markets and not wanting to keep flying people in or out or set up an office in Australia again. So yeah, I think it's paid dividends for us as people. We've done okay along the way. Could we have probably earned more revenue and you know made more money along the way? Possibly if we'd have had a wider reach.

SPEAKER_01 19:31

Yeah, maybe. One of those maybes. But uh probably a much more complicated consultancy if you were international and across, you know, a big white footprint. I mean, you've talked on the strength of the consultancy team. How have you developed a really strong consultancy team? Is that how you hire? Is that how you train? Is that cultural fit? What does that look like for you?

SPEAKER_00 19:48

Yeah, absolutely. So we only hire people that have got real, you know, in-depth consultancy experience in improvement, primarily Toyota kind of experience. Doesn't mean they have to be from Toyota that they understand the kind of the tools, techniques, the approach, and then they've had exposure to it. We consciously don't hire juniors, although we are in our next phase of strategy, wanting to bring on some younger models, as it were, to develop them and develop them through, because some of our guys are nearing the 60 mark. And even though they've got no aspirations of slowing down, at some point they will. So we need to be bringing on the next generation and balanced books, exactly what we preach to our clients. We primarily have gone with a mixed model, as I said before. So we've got about 30 on the core team plus office staff and management, and then we've got around about 100 associates to allow us to flex up and down. That's primarily for the NHS side because the contracts can be completely dependent on funding and other things. But what we look for in a person is yes, their experience, but their attitude, you know, will they fit well and gel well with a team? You know, one of the asset tests is could you see yourself stood next to this person in a tougher situation with a tough client, you know, scrutineering you? And would they stand firm as a team and would we get through it together, sort of thing? So that's one of our criteria is you know, personality is very important to us.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

That's great. And are there moments or particular hires over the last eight years or even the 15 years prior where that's proved itself to be the right criteria? You know, you've really thought, thank God I had this person, or thank thank God we had the team we had, you know, challenging moments of COVID or whatever that might have been.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

Yeah, it's really interesting. You know, we talk about this DC family, and it really is a family, and everybody's working together as a family and supporting each other and communicating well, etc. Um, we took everybody to Dubai for our fifth anniversary, and there was about 40 odd people there. And when we look around the table at the dealer on the main evening, we said there's not a single person that hasn't earned and doesn't deserve to be here in the whole team. And that was a real testament to, you know, the way they've performed, the way they've developed, the way they've integrated, the friendships they've built, etc. So it was really pleasing to see that, you know, we'd built a really, really strong team. And then we got some strong associates to, you know, complement that team along the way. Some of them used to work for us. At KMT, some of them we work with in other sites and other clients. But yeah, a really strong core team with a really strong network of associates around the side is is probably our biggest strength.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

That's great. And there was something interesting you said when we're preparing for this podcast, and you made this distinction between, you know, there's growing a consultancy and then there's sustainably growing a consultancy. And I think you even went as far as to say, if we want to just boost revenue, we probably could. Like we know what that playbook looks like, but the goal is no longer just massive acceleration for its own sake. It's more sustainable growth being the developed consulting mission or path. Could you talk to just the difference there? Maybe when you learned that what the difference was and why your focus now is sustainable growth rather than just rapid?

SPEAKER_00 22:43

Yeah, absolutely. It's really easy to motivate a team when they're winning. It's a lot more difficult to motivate a team when they're behind budget and then struggling. So we were consciously put down uh you know the first five-year plan and the second year, five-year plan in terms of revenue growth, sales, and profits. And we wanted modest improvement and modest growth rather than, you know, seismic growth that we've seen in the past, 60-70% in some years, because you know, we don't want to be boom and bust. And we appreciate some of the sectors are cycling, you know, and some are in decline, some are in growth, some are just getting cash injections, etc. So to have a nice balanced portfolio that you can sustainably grow and achieve the revenue targets and the profit targets with really important to us. Now, along that journey, we've had a number of years where we've exceeded the budget. And the easy thing to do would be to, you know, set that as the new norm. So, you know, you beat your budget by 25%, excellent. We'll now set the new bar at 125% and off we go again. But we carried on with the original growth plan and the original growth curve. And I think our biggest driver for that was that we're not greedy for revenue and profit. We want a healthy revenue and we want a healthy profit, and we manage our people along that journey. But it was the bigger you get, the more people you need. The more people you need, the chance of dilution or not getting quite the right quality or not having the right person with the right skills on the right job, the risk increases. So we wanted sustainable growth so we could utilize our full core team and get the best out of them and then use our associates and our close associates really well before going into the unknown territory of starting to bring people in that you've not worked with before, you don't know their credentials, etc. So this was really important to us. And the beauty about doing that is you can really reward well for overachieving budgets, which again is not everybody's primary driver, but is a driver nonetheless for people to continue to do well and look for opportunities and help push the business.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

You've also chosen not to sell the business or to take on private equity investment or sell off part of the business. What's behind that decision and what does staying independent allow you to do?

SPEAKER_00 24:42

Yeah, so staying independent allows the flexibility and to be able to take risks or seize opportunities and to invest in things or develop things yourself. We've had a number of offers or interest rather along the way for us to fold into a bigger consultancy or private equity or other methods, and nothing's for free, right? So as much as it's tempting and the financial side is tempting, you've got to weigh up the balance, in my opinion, on, you know, yes, financially we'd be stronger, better off, maybe, or more money to invest. But then the question is, what would you want to invest in? And do you really want to diversify because that brings risk as well? And that you take off the primary goal of what we do and what we're here to do and start to get distracted. So yeah, it's been a conscious decision to not necessarily take investment and not look to sell along the line. The thing that we've always said is if we can create an attractive business, manage it really well, good processes, good people, good reputation, good results and the market, if it's attractive to us, then it will be attractive to other people along the way. And at that point, you have options, you know, options to stop, options to continue, and a few options in between to, you know, get investment, sell bits, sell all of it, etc.

SPEAKER_01 25:49

Yeah. I got some really good advice a couple of years ago about building a consultancy, which was even if you have no plans to sell it, build it as if you're going to. And what it really meant was, you know, private equity look for structure, they look for planned growth, they look for growth, you know, for certainty, you know, founder, independent, all these things. And so if you build a consultancy in that way, it doesn't mean you have to ever sell or take on money or anything like that. It just means you have a stronger firm because of it and a good mindset rather than an event, whether it happens or not. And I wanted to ask, what does going further mean to you for your clients and for the business itself?

SPEAKER_00 26:22

Yeah, so we had a brand consultant then after a couple of years of Govers DC. And it was really interesting to do an exercise across the whole team of, you know, what does development to you? What do you think it means to your clients? And takes external advice for ourselves. So we kicked that around for a bit. And what came out of it was, you know, as you'd expect, some key words about, you know, sustainability and value for money and, you know, these kind of things. But he said, the one thing that you've all articulated is that you're not trying to make your clients perfect, but you're trying to get them to the best that they can be under the circumstance. That might be financial circumstance, market circumstance, etc. But you're trying to get them to be the best they can be. So you're actually trying to get them to go further, further than they would have done without you. So we kind of latched onto this kind of strap line saying, well, that's pretty neat, actually, because yeah, we are. We're not trying to make them perfect. We're not trying to make them the most profitable, we're trying to make them go further and achieve their short, medium, and long-term goals, whatever that might be. And in some cases, we're trying to get them out of distress and back onto a stable platform. So yeah, go further, kind of sund it up for our clients. We then looked at it internally and said, well, same applies to us, really, right? How do we make our people go further? How do we make our people want to develop in various things and learn new things like, you know, AI and 3D printing and all these things that we're going to be involved in at some point within our clients? So yeah, it kind of just stuck from that exercise really. And then we've used it through our external branding, PR and comms, and and our internal branding, really, and and team based and things like that.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

That's great. And this might be the same answer, maybe slightly different, but you know, when you look back at everything from Toyota through to now, you know, what's the through line? What's the thing that has stayed constant from the factory floor of Japan to the consultancy that you've now built today?

SPEAKER_00 28:08

I suppose it's that desire to always want to improve. And, you know, it was drilled into us in Toyota that, you know, we're not after huge improvements here, we're after incremental, hence the word Kaizen, you know, change in small steps. Incremental improvements. So 1% here, half percent there. How do we get there? So that training, that mindset, that way of life of can we be better today than we were yesterday? And if the answer is yes, fantastic. Don't worry too much about what the competition are doing because they won't be able to keep up with us. So I suppose that mindset has really stayed with me through the KMT days. Can we make our clients the best they can be? Can we be the best we can be? Don't worry too much about the competition. Let's just do good things and do the right things for us and uh KMT family. And I think that's carried through as some of the best bits to take forward to DC as well. You know, we want to look after our people, we want to reward our people along the way, as Toyota has always done with their people. But it's that desire to make things the best they can be under the circumstances and help people really learn something new, sustain something, and then carry on as we step off and leave them to. And we've got clients that you know I've worked with for over 20 years now, on and off, and they're still doing things that we taught them five, 10, 15, 20 years ago, and they're still sustaining some of those things or most of those things and using it to drive their business forward.

SPEAKER_01 29:28

How cool. You know, if you think about the next five or ten years, even, you know, for yourself, for your family, for developed consulting, for your employees and clients, you know, what are the things that you want for all those around you?

SPEAKER_00 29:40

Yeah, so I think to keep on the growth trajectory by maintaining the diversification across the portfolio, across the sectors is really important to us. Keeping a core team that's really like-minded and really want to work together. Now that will change as people start to retire or go part-time or finish completely. So we have got that on the horizon and that will change the dynamic of the business. And it's my role and our role is leaders to make sure that doesn't destabilize the business as we go forward. It'd be great to get some new fresh blood in and train them and teach them in the ways that we've worked and bring them on as well. So, you know, that's an exciting challenge. And just to navigate the markets, really. And then ultimately, what do we want as owners and investors? We want options, right? So, as we said before, if the business is attractive, if the business is well run, the people are, you know, good at managing the business, then the business has options, you know, for all the people that work in it and for myself included, and and the owners. So yeah, just to keep doing what we're doing and keep on that trajectory, right?