Testimonials

Nic Gibbens, CEO

My senior leadership team have told me that bringing Adrian on to help coach us has been my best decision as CEO and I heartily agree! His expertise, compassion, patience and good humour has served to educate us, keep us aligned and focussed and, perhaps most importantly, provided us with much needed context and perspective as we negotiate the highs and lows of running a business. I can honestly say that our company, and my job as a CEO, has massively improved as a result of having Adrian work with us.

Harvey Fame, CEO, CMOS

Adrian has been working with our Leadership team for the last 14 months and he has helped bring clarity regarding our long-term strategy and how to execute the plan. In particular, with his guidance, we have nailed our Hedgehog. The formulation of our Hedgehog was our lightbulb moment – the Hedgehog Concept gave our team the necessary tools and discipline to support our strategic thinking and to guide our decision making.” We absolutely love our Hedgehog and now have it so established that anyone at the leadership table can use it to help them make strategically aligned business decisions and it also prompts them to consider which other parts of the business may be affected by the decision.

Warner Cowan, CEO

The Gazelles approach

The Gazelles approach helped Height gain this sense of direction – partly by making it ok to say ‘no’ to work, and supporting Height to focus on customers in its areas of it would add most value.

Height was guided by Gazelles’ tools for business scaling and Adrian’s one-on-one and team coaching.

This process helped Height put the spotlight on its own core customer.

Height had dabbled in work in the education, management consultancy and health sectors, outside its core areas of expertise in construction and infrastructure. These were ultimately less satisfying projects.

“If you looked at our website it was not very clear what we were about. It seemed like we were providing a lot of different services, and to anyone. We didn’t have a clear direction, or plan, let alone definition of our offering.”

With Adrian’s coaching, Height defined and categorised itself as a specialist tendering and procurement consultancy. This reflected Height’s very strong talent base in engineering and infrastructure project delivery.

With Adrian’s support, Height was bold enough to state that it was ‘Australasia’s leading technical tendering and procurement specialists,’ and make this its tagline. Result The net result since working with a Gazelles coach is that Height has reduced its cost of sale, and has seen a 2.5x increase in sales and associated margin.

In summary

• Gazelles influenced Height’s positioning as a sector specialist, and set up clear staged goals for growth

• Height repositioned itself as construction and infrastructure sector specialists/experts in the market

• Height’s sector expertise has led to an increasing level of strategic advisor work, and greater sales overall.

Sarah Simons, CEO

Adrian has been fantastic for the company. Revisiting the One Page Strategic Plan, helping us to negotiate the easy and hard topics and aligning the people with the business. NumberWorks'nWords highly recommends Adrian and the Gazelles group.

Greg Allen, CEO

A business mentor and coach is critical to help any business accelerate to its potential. Adrian has been an excellent coach and mentor to Winscribe over the past 14 months assisting us in galvanising our global strategy across a highly diverse and complex set of markets.

Rogan Clark, General Manager

Hi Adrian, Firstly a massive word of thanks for the session you led with my team. It was invaluable in allowing us to work through the opportunity space as a business whilst at the same time better understanding our strategic business imperatives and priorities. The combination of the frameworks you used and the way in which you applied them and facilitated the session was exceptional. I was surprised by how quickly you succeeded in getting the team to distill and focus on what was essential to our success as a business. The more expansionary part of the session and the use of the stratagems to flush out potential "fourth options" was excellent and it allowed us to channel the creativity and insights of the team. All the material was well presented, and the examples felt relevant and thought provoking. The overall outcome of the day is that the team now has a clear and shared view of our strategic opportunity space as well as being aligned on our priorities - no small feat! We also have an excellent foundation for our business planning for the coming 18+ months. Thanks again for your time, the session exceeded all of my expectations.

Neil McGowan, Managing Director

I have had the pleasure of working with Adrian Pickstock of Quad Consulting since November 2015 After 20 years in business we were facing significant change in our market and the technology and systems required to operate effectively while allowing for scale. During the first 12 months with Adrian we achieved some outstanding milestones, each one elevating us towards our new BHAG. Adrian worked closely with myself and our Operations Manager, providing invaluable insights and techniques while pushing us to think differently about how we tackle day to day challenges. Adrian's entire program provided us the guidance needed, though one of the greatest insights Adrian introduced us to was 'Blue Ocean Strategy'. BOS has taught us to think differently about our business, our market and our service delivery. This saw us embark on a strategy that would set up apart from our completion. We have since completed a number of Blue Ocean initiatives, now forecast to deliver an annual revenue increase of 22% in our 2017 financial year - In addition the knowledge and skills we have learnt from or time with Adrian will continue to pay dividends for years to come. I would have no hesitation in recommending Adrian to any business owner wishing to achieve greater results.