Formicio

Making change happen
 
Associate
 
jane.northcote@formicio.com
 

Overview

Jane Northcote is an experienced management consultant and mentor who works with individuals and teams in large organisations to make change happen. Jane has led and supported a wide range of business transformation projects, including structural re-organisation, Business Reengineering, sales revenue improvement and operational cost reduction.

Expertise

Jane’s specialist area is the implementation of business change. She uses structured techniques in meetings, conversations and workshops to enable people to take co-ordinated action and deliver improved business results in their organisations. Her focus is in the shift from strategy to action, and from decision to results. Her book Making Change Happen describes this practical, action-oriented approach.

Jane can provide help, advice and insight on:

• Action-oriented delivery of business change.
• Translating plans into action.
• Creating and delivering training courses, particularly in the areas of business change, business development and conversations that work.
• Creating and leading development programmes to generate capability.
• Designing and leading meetings that deliver results.

Background

Jane studied at Oxford University, where she gained a MA honours degree in Physics specialising in atomic and nuclear physics. For 35 years her career has been an exploration of how the very small relates to the very large.

She started as an engineer and integrated circuit designer. The digital telephone exchanges in the UK contain silicon chips that Jane designed. After moving through line management and sales, Jane joined CSC Index in 1990. This firm pioneered Business Process Re-engineering and Jane worked on a series of projects to implement large-scale change in international corporations in Europe.

Jane has been an independent management consultant for 12 years working with many large organisations in this time. Her special interest remains how individual small-scale actions have large-scale consequences. She creates events and interventions that enable people to learn, exchange information and take action.

Jane became a founding partner of Formicio in 2010.

Jane’s guiding principles

• Everything you do or say has an effect on the people around you.
• Accountability matters: progress occurs when people make commitments and act on them.
• We can often have a big effect by selectively encouraging (or stopping) existing action, rather than simply adding something new.
• It is always worth looking at data: before, during and after action – increasing our awareness is a never-ending discipline.

Publications and speaking

• Jane’s book – Making Change Happen: a practical guide to implementing business change – published 2008 is recommended reading on MBA courses.
• Jane is a Guest Lecturer on the MBA course at Cranfield University.