Engagements led by Dr Stephen McCormac, organised by theme

Externally backed services business.

Situation: A services business backed by external capital had a strategy that required the leadership team to deliver work it had not delivered before. The question was whether the team was composed for the next phase.

Intervention: Belbin profiling with Observer Assessments for each leader, confidential interviews recorded with consent and synthesised with structured AI assistance, gap analysis against the operating model the strategy required. Remuneration banding contributed by a partner firm specialising in remuneration.

Outcome: Two splits surfaced in the team. Believers and unbelievers on the strategy. Self-promoters and leaders who serve. The operating executive went into the next planning cycle with a sequenced plan covering role changes, role redesigns, additions where capability was missing, and a remuneration position the remcom could act on.

Full case on the Leadership Team Assessment page.

Mid-market services firm.

Situation: The chair of a mid-market services firm commissioned a structured read of the operating model ahead of a board decision on the company's next phase.

Intervention: Structured read across strategy and direction, organisation and talent, commercial process, marketing, and intellectual property and risk. Leader interviews, a pre-read pack, and a review of how decisions were actually made.

Outcome: A sequenced operating model agenda for the board. The structural questions that had been driving friction were named and put on the table for resolution.

Full case on the Operating Model Transformation page.

Founder-led B2B sales and marketing services agency. Startup-to-scaleup transition.

Situation: A founder-led B2B sales and marketing services agency at sub-£1m revenue needed the architecture to scale. The path to a credible exit valuation required a five-year plan, an operating model, governance, sales discipline, financial reporting, and a successor in the operational seat. The founder was running everything; the structure did not yet exist.

Intervention: Strategy Advisor role across eighteen months under Ambrose and Bell. Authored a five-year plan to £10m revenue and a £14m exit valuation. Built the operating model function-by-function with Critical and Hygiene classification, plus the future org chart. Designed the corporate governance system from zero: standing board agenda, deck-of-record template, risk register, and a bi-weekly board cadence (fourteen board decks authored). Installed the sales operating system (account taxonomy, MANT qualification, four-phase pipeline), the financial reporting framework (revenue waterfall, breakdown model, rolling eighteen-month forecast), and the client delivery operating system that took the founder out of daily delivery. Onboarded a successor as operational lead under a structured induction plan.

Outcome: The successor took over operational running of the business per the induction plan. Strategy and methodology validated through the handover. The work designed the architecture for the scaleup phase; execution then passed to the next operating leader.

Executive coaching practice.

Situation: C-suite and C-1 leaders have engaged Stephen as their coach since A&B was founded. Engagements span manufacturing, marketing, executive recruitment, technology, communications infrastructure, advertising, and education. Cadence runs on fortnightly or monthly under accredited contract.

Intervention: One-to-one coaching delivered under EMCC Senior Practitioner accreditation and the Henley Business School Professional Certificate in Executive Coaching at Level 7. Solutions-focused, systems, and gestalt approaches selected per engagement. Operator-context coaching, not pure facilitation.

Outcome: Seven coaching engagements held since founding. Confidential by contract, anonymised by role and sector. Three named programmes operate inside the practice: 1:1 Executive Coaching, Leadership Cohort Programme, and First 100 Days Programme.

Full practice detail on the Executive Coaching page.

Multinational service business. Enterprise automation function.

Situation: Manual process bottlenecks across operations. No in-house automation capability. Previous attempts had failed to scale.

Intervention: Multinational service business. Enterprise automation function. The function was embryonic when Stephen arrived. He joined the strategic lead to take it operational. Most of the work sat in the operating model around the technology: governance, sourcing strategy, delivery rhythm, and the demand pipeline that fed the function with the right processes in the right order. Robotic process automation and AI-enabled redesign across target domains.

Outcome: Function operational with a permanent team in place. Delivery pattern transferable to adjacent functions.

Global confectionery and petcare group. SAP and BI programme.

Situation: Group-wide SAP and business-intelligence programme. Fragmented data, multiple instances, decision support behind the curve.

Intervention: Programme role on SAP and BI delivery. Tightened governance across the SAP and BI tracks, stabilised scope, drove the consolidation onto a single reporting backbone.

Outcome: Group reporting platform stood up. SAP delivery brought back inside the programme rhythm.

European industrial machinery clients. Robotics integration consulting.

Situation: Industrial machinery OEMs working through robotics integration into manufacturing lines. Real-time control, sensing, and integration questions to resolve.

Intervention: Technical consulting on robotics integration. Architecture review, control-system design choices, integration approach across the cell.

Outcome: Integration roadmap signed off. Engineering teams on a defined path with a credible delivery plan.