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March Friday was founded in 2003 as a consultancy specialising in Leadership Development and Organisational Change.

Over the years we have developed a way of working that focuses on delivering both business and personal change simultaneously enabling us to bring immediate improvements in business performance and ensure changes are sustainable beyond our involvement. We achieve this by using current business challenges as the material for developing leadership capability.

We have coached senior individuals in large, global organisations, created development processes for FTSE 100 businesses and worked with

management teams of niche organisations and subsidiaries to transform performance. Read some of our recent case studies to get more of an idea what we are about.

Our work is based on the research and experience of founding consultant Graham Abbey. In his twenty year career he has held senior corporate roles (easyJet, Pearson, Morgan Stanley), consulted to major organisations (Barclays, Rolls-Royce, BT, HMRC), is in the process of completing a PhD on organisational change and has co-authored two books on personal effectiveness and talent management.

Call Graham on 07733 015265 or email graham@marchfriday.com

Read some of our recent case studies to get more of an idea what we are about.

National Grid

Development for the top seventy...

Facing an increasingly complex competitive environment, National Grid wanted to accelerate the development of its most senior 70 Executives. March Friday created Developing Business Leaders, an approach combining common corporate development goals with individual flexibility.
This included:

  • A diagnostic workshop to create a robust individual plan
  • Two tailored one-week business school modules focusing on the strategic challenges of growing a regulated business through acquisition
  • Live strategic projects
  • A menu of development options including coaching, mentoring and short courses

We worked with the Executive Board of National Grid to create a succession process integrated with this development activity. Developing Business Leaders was so successful that National Grid launched a second cohort of Executives 6 months ahead of plan.

Credit-Suisse

Driving change through the management team...

The management team of this Guernsey based Fund Administrator were wrestling with a radical shift in the profile of its work, bringing in the administration of complex funds, while sub-administering (i.e. outsourcing) simpler, vanilla products. To achieve this, the new executive team needed to build a new technical architecture as well as retrain the majority of staff.

With many simultaneous changes, we worked with the executive team to clarify their objectives and to build commitment to a way forward amongst all their stakeholders - staff, customers, suppliers and firm management. As well as running workshops with the executive team, we provided individual coaching support to key individuals

Virgin Atlantic

Improving customer service...

Customer service is at the heart of Virgin's business and the other airlines were catching up with their in-flight service. We supported the operational leadership team in identifying priorities for action, building a simple model of the impact of people issues and processes on Cabin Crew service. This was used as the basis to develop action plans across recruitment, training, management, communication and reward.

In support of these plans, we worked with the recruitment team to redesign the Crew selection and promotion processes as priority areas impacting on customer service. This support included a coaching relationship with the Head of Recruitment.

HSBC

Coaching for performance...

We provide executive coaching services to HBSC. Other coaching clients have included Barclays Capital, Virgin Atlantic, Credit-Suisse and Pets at Home.

Coaching for us is about creating a resourceful space to work on key issues for the coachee. A coach creates and maintains an environment where he or she can get clarity through questioning and reflecting, while keeping moving towards his or her goals and objectives. People benefit from executive coaching through:

  • being supported and challenged by their coach to increase focus and motivation
  • taking positive action towards goals
  • becoming aware of patterns of thinking or behaviour which has been holding them back
  • creating space to think about what is really important
  • learning more about themselves

These personal benefits translate directly into business impact, which is maintained as a consistent theme throughout our coaching work.