A collection of insights, ideas and points of view, curated by our expert network.
The company ‘Boards’ are known by many titles, but they all have the same responsibility – running and managing an organisation. Wake them up.
ViewPat is the Founder of S&S and created the “The Change Society” movement to shake up tired recruitment and consulting models.
Pat’s personal mission is to change the way the world engages with Interims and unite them globally through our proprietary “Teams as a Service” (TaaS) model. Pat believes interim teams can solve all business problems in today’s rapidly changing environment, which he has brought to life in his book, “the interim revolution” – How interim teams can transform your company”.
He has been placing interims for 15 years for companies of all shapes and sizes, has resourced over 50 successful transformations for the likes of Burberry, Argos and Sky and recently won Global Interim Recruiter of the Year by a major industry body. Father to Sullivan and Stanley and Husband to Helen, Pat enjoys a nice Pale Ale, fishing at a variety of locations around the world and is an avid Arsenal fan.
Emma is the Executive Assistant to Pat Lynes and the Sullivan & Stanley team. Emma oversees and ensures the smooth day to day running of the office and is the first point of contact for clients, candidates and colleagues in the absence of the CEO. Emma has worked as a Personal Assistant for almost ten years, seven of which have been within the recruitment industry.
Emma loves to travel and is always planning her next experience and trip. A keen scuba diver, she enjoys traveling to new places to dive; top of her list so far is Iceland.
Adrian is a Transformation expert and Executive Coach. His career has always been focused on delivery – projects, programmes, transformations, agility, omnichannel and change management. He has worked across most departments of most industries (Life Sciences, Retail, Telco, Broadcast/Media and Financial Services). He therefore has a unique breadth of experience across business and IT that is hard to replicate, and valued highly by Executives.
Outside of work, Adrian has a passion for photography, clay pigeon shooting and motorbikes (3 hobbies not easily combined) – and raising 2 little people to be fully rounded global citizens.
Kevin’s role as Chief Operating Officer is to complement Pat in his Chief Executive position driving the S&S vision, whilst building, implementing and operating a scalable and sustainable business, that supports the needs of our customers today and in the future.
Outside of work, when Kev is not spending time with his wife Helen and their three kids, you’ll find him playing a round of golf or fishing on a quiet lake. Kev also enjoys mountain biking, motorsports such as F1, baseball, rugby and is a big fan of Sci-Fi.
Leading customers for life strategy; driving customer centricity that permeates through the clients we support to deliver change along with the community of expert teams that enable this change. “Customer Service shouldn’t be a department. It should be the entire company” (Tony Hsieh).
Jacqueline is one of our Operating Partners here at S&S, working mainly client-side with the likes of Mastercard, Three and BCG. An experienced Change and Transformation Lead across multiple industries, she specialises in strategy to execution, people and culture and being ChangeReady.
Jacqueline strongly believes that the only way to be sure of success in a world where 84% of transformations fail, is to have strong foundations in place – allowing organisations to navigate through the complexities of change and ultimately deliver sustainable value.
Head of Product & Engineering at S&S, Matt develops cross-functional teams to deliver successful Products & Agile Transformations. He has ten years of experience in the software development market partnering with top companies to build high performing teams. He is passionate about driving deeper engagement with talent communities through knowledge sharing, crowd sourcing and community driven events. When not working Matt can be found on the golf course, at a wedding in Ireland or dabbling in politics over an ale.
Jacob is the Teams Partner for the TMT practice at S&S and is devoted to providing on-demand services to the CxO suite and partnering in transformation and innovation. Having spent his early years specialising in Strategy & Architecture, Jacob utilises his network of high-performance interims to feed into S&S’s fresh teams concept.
Away from work, when he’s not jet-setting overseas, Jacob can be found sampling foreign lagers and attending sporting events.
Ryan’s role is to help create a world-class associate experience by building and nurturing our top 5% expert network, The Change Society. Ryan uses his relationships to create pre-gelled and fully aligned delivery teams to help our clients solve the challenges their face when undertaking change. From on-boarding, right through to a variety of conversations about rates and contract extensions, the role is fully immersed in the associate world!
Outside of S&S, you’ll find Ryan either on a golf course, playing football or chasing around after his little boy Ralph.
Mat is the vital connection between S&S and its clients, ensuring effective client engagement to identify and assure deliverables and outcomes. Building on S&S’ foundations of delivering continuous value, Mat ensures ongoing team orchestration with a laser focus on client value and outcomes. Mat brings over 20 years of experience in Professional Services, Consultancy and Delivery focussed on technology and business transformation.
Mat is married to Jen and has two young boys, Ollie and Jacob. They love to spend time being active outdoors; especially paddleboarding and rugby in Chelmsford, Essex where he is a coach from Chelmsford RFC minis. He is also a passionate music fan, playing the guitar and catching live music wherever possible.
As the Head of Digital, Callum ensures the business strategy is aligned with our digital and marketing output, leads asset development and tells the stories that are uniquely S&S. He has essentially been our head storyteller since we started in 2016.
Callum also works closely with our partners and consultants on developing their personal brands as well as building our ChangeMedia product client-side. Yet another Australian occupying London, he previously worked for 7 years in a sports governing body in Melbourne, also within digital and content.
Away from Sullivan & Stanley HQ, Cal can be found on the basketball court, jetting over to random places in Europe or heavily critiquing the best flat whites London has to offer. If you come to London Bridge, he’ll let you know where the best spots are.
As the Compliance Manager, Sonia ensures that there is accuracy and compliance in everything that we do. She has seven years of experience in back office operations within the recruitment industry and is well equipped to answer the day-to-day contracts and compliance queries from our Associates.
Outside of the office, Sonia can be found exploring London looking for the best brunch spots and discovering new restaurants. She also loves to travel and is often planning her next adventure abroad.
As the Sales Operations Coordinator, it is Amy’s role to enable the Teams Partners by providing operational support and working closely with the COO to manage the sales activity. Amy previously worked at a large Law Firm, where she built her experience in office management support and was a Personal Assistant to a large team of attorneys. Outside of the office when she is not immersing herself in a new Netflix series or book, Amy is usually out and about exploring art galleries, restaurants, and taking in all that London has to offer.
Ken started his career working with mainframes and moved through operations, support and project roles to hold a number of CxO roles. Ken is now an advisor and works closely with S&S on client sites on a fractional basis. Ken has coached children in football for eighteen years.
Jane is an analytical, quality-focused professional with extensive, multicultural experience of shaping and directing financial services functions within demanding settings. As a strategic change agent she is skilled in identifying and capitalizing on areas of strategic operational improvement, delivery of complex change and the realisation of benefits. Jane is a strong communicator focused on building positive relationships with clients, peers, senior executives and external stakeholders.
A driven and highly experienced Transformation Office Lead, successfully helping to deliver large scale multi-faceted strategic programmes, portfolios or enterprise direction within an international framework. Alongside the expected scope of a gold standard service, also provides full ownership of the Delivery layer, giving Directors/Heads of the freedom to focus on the Leadership layer and Change Owners the opportunity to concentrate on the Execution layer.
I’m a consultant who loves being part of client teams – asking the difficult questions, making a plan, clarifying objectives, setting up, telling a compelling story, helping leaders support their teams, testing, learning, changing. I have experience working across telco, retail, finance, pharma, media and the non-profit sectors.
An APMG Certified Change Management Practitioner and Programme & Process Manager with a track record of driving successful large-scale transformation and change programmes for financial services, technology and logistics companies. Strong skills in leading business change management initiatives, process improvement and M&A integration programmes.Portfolio highlights include consulting with Ocado PLC’s Transformation Office to support their global expansion programme, coordinating multiple change initiatives across functions, as well as leading on the establishment of Ocado’s Centre of Process Excellence.
Insurance sector SME engagements with Markel International’s ‘One Wholesale Programme’ helping to redesign the Wholesale underwriting process, data & systems and redefine relevant process architecture for the Wholesale underwriting team.Career insurance sector experience of C-suite leadership of acquisition and merger integration programme, combining five companies into a U$ 60m insurance premium business in London, Guernsey and North America, and five years’ prior leadership of a highly profitable international market leading U$ 50m premium insurance company.
Living in Hungary, he has been working in software engineering for over 12 years and has broad experience across the Travel, Retail and e-gaming industries.
His main technical interests are Cloud, DevOps and running applications at scale. He is experienced in leading multiple teams, solving interesting problems and complex challenges.
Nowadays his work is very much focused on Retail, helping transform the way we shop for groceries.
Over 20 years leading digital transformation at Fortune 500 companies such as Samsung, Disney and Sony as well as CEO and founder roles at venture backed companies such as Nuddge and Snap TV. A global leader in digital transformation and innovation and a seasoned media and technology executive with experience leading companies and large teams in the digital media space across the United States, Asia and Europe. Hands-on operational experience pioneering new technologies, transforming legacy businesses, building teams from scratch and growing revenue generating businesses in the mobile, new media, video, music, internet of things, big data, health-tech and gaming industries.
Multi-disciplinary executive with broad experience in software product development and management.
Combining technical expertise with business analysis, organization skills and sales mindset.
On Product, I have built and mentored Product Design teams with Lean and Design Thinking methods, from concepting, assumptions validation to ideation and data-driven learning.
On strategic context, I carry in my belt tools like business model canvas, product canvas and 3 Horizons framework e.o. to inform the teams’ perspective and help assess opportunities.
I believe in Getting-Things-Done-Right, and that a (web) product’s success depends on 3 pillars: data, logic and user experience, applied on customer-validated assumptions for problem(s) and solution(s).
In the end, it is all about finding your sweet spot where you create worthy business value and maximizing the outcome while minimizing the output.
A leader that has the commercial acumen and technical expertise and entrepreneurial drive to help businesses succeed in the age of the digital customer and constant technology disruption.
I have enabled 17+ CxO level management teams to understand where they are on their digital journey, where they want to get to and how to get there. I provide unique perspective having driven change in complex, regulated corporate environments (Insurance, Legal, Finance, Investment) and start-up and scale-up environments too.
With 15+ years of experience in every aspect of digital spanning innovation, emerging technologies, customer and user experience, Technical delivery, Product Development and of course talent management I combine the essential business skills needed to deliver the ‘how’ with a clear vision for transformation to deliver the ‘ why’.
I am a user obsessed, creative and results-driven leader who has pioneered, delivered and grown multi-device B2C and B2B products and services around the world.
My adult life has been driven by a relentless passion for digital products, user engagement and monetisation, which has lead me to becoming a thought leader and influencer on disruptive technology, business models, trends and user behaviours.
I have deep knowledge in the areas of tv, entertainment, publishing, sports, gaming, eCommerce, telecoms, marketing, advertising & high tech.
I translate vision into clear and impactful strategy, drive P&L performance into ROI and growth, build strong and high performing teams, mentor & nurture talent, design digital experiences, deliver genuine value to end-users.
A world traveller with direct experience in different consumer markets for multi-national, SME and start-up businesses in UK, Europe, Eurasia, APAC and the USA.
On a mission to help make the online world stay a connected, useful, fun, engaging, safe, educational and rewarding place for future generations.
Senior digital advisor, agile leadership coach and conference speaker with a strong background in strategy, organisation design and human change.
Almost 20 yrs of collaborating with teams to deliver great products and services for global customers, across various industries. Focusing now on ethical, sustainable, purpose-driven businesses.
Starting with my users, delivering value, learning, challenging ways of working.
I’m a product and digital leader with international experience in Europe, the Americas and Australia.
I’m famous for:
– Assembling and directing high-performing, multi-discipline, international teams of 150+ people
– Exploration of new ideas and execution to realize them
– Solutions to problems – whether technical or political
– Creation of plans to gain C-level buy-in for initiatives
– Connections to the key people to add value and enjoyment to work
– Calm, considered direction in heated situations
– Interim leadership; dropping in to stabilise and grow organisations while helping to find the permanent fit
I enjoy:
– Creating compelling customer and client experiences
– Introducing data-centric products; gaining fresh benefits from new and existing technologies and relationships
– Building sustainable partnerships in multinationals, joint ventures and start-ups
– Being part of a diverse team of different cultures and disciplines
I deliver:
– Revenue (>€100m pa) from the introduction of data-driven digital products and services
– Strategic insight leading to partnerships, joint ventures and acquisitions
– Agile product development and project delivery processes
– Organisation and decision-making structures to remove friction and increase speed of execution
It’s great to make new connections, so get in touch if you want to talk about business, products, technology, data, monetization or interim leadership
Suzie was most recently the IT Director at Pets at Home and prior to that worked for Shop Direct (The Very Group) after a career as a consultant. Suzie is North West based and has recently landed her first interim role. Suzie gives up some of her spare time as a Scout leader.
Nigel began his career in the Armed Forces, completed an MBA and then spent nine years with British American Tobacco in HQ, regional and executive board roles. Since then, he has held national, international and global CIO roles. He is also a NED Trustee for one of the UK’s largest social care charities.