Adrian Cowderoy Consulting Ltd provides corporate change and business development in the area of digital transformation. It also provides strategic and tactical advice at board level.

One of our specialities has been the development of intelligence-led project management to help companies manage exceptional levels of known unknowns as well as the “unknown-unknowns”.

System change as standard

The company’s strategy is to go beyond process and technology change. We believe a sticky and organic change needs to be based on a view of the complete system.

  • We optimise how the different elements of the system work together.
  • We improve the overall efficiency, to maximise outcomes and benefits to the client.
  • We develop the individuals who have key roles within the system.

How we work

Leadership by example

At Adrian Cowderoy Consulting Ltd we can provide training in different forms, but we’ve found the best learning and development occurs by peer group discussion and practice. So our approach is to lead from the front, showing teams how to introduce and adapt new approaches. Our moment of joy is watching people take the methods and making them work even better than we did.

Building on strengths

We understand how modern management processes work, and why they sometimes fail. In most of our assignments we’ve helped clients improve existing methods, and fill the process gaps.

There are exceptions where we’ve had to rebuild entire project and delivery processes, sometimes at high speed. The only thing that remained by the end were the key people.

Digital first

In publishing, Adrian Cowderoy has been pushing for “digital first” since 2012 – creating low-margin or high risk content online, and then going for print if the business case exists. He’s worked on making strategic changes like this at the four different publishing houses, contributing to improved profit margins.

Riding the fourth industrial revolution

The founder, Adrian Cowderoy, was an entrepreneur in the digital era – the “third industrial revolution”. He inspired and led an EU initiative to improve quality management for multimedia and the web. He cofounded a predecessor to LinkedIn. And he designed a pioneering new form of trading platform for consultancy services.

Adrian brings the same entrepreneurial experience to the fourth generation, exploiting machine learning and AI, the Internet of Things, quantum engineering, and breakthrough technologies. He has an active interest in geopolitical trends and strategy. It helps him refine his understanding of social, economic, political and military impact of global changes. And it helps him look for commercial opportunities. (See his recent thoughts on adapting ideas from quantum warfare to industry. He is also working with Chipkoo Labs to help address the growing skills gap worldwide.)

Adrian Cowderoy Consulting Ltd - looking forward to the fourth industrial revolution
In quantum computing, the “truth” can be both true and false at the same time

Fiction and the intelligence profession

A unique aspect of Adrian’s approach is the insight he brings from writing fiction about the secret intelligence profession and its back-office functions. (For examples, see his short stories.)

Researching a highly secretive profession presents challenges. The methods of intelligence are well published, such as by people like David Omand (ex head of GCHQ), and there are cases that are public, and some of the intelligence technologies and other capabilities get journalistic coverage. But there’s little about the detail, the politics and the human stories. So Adrian studied the underlying dynamics and behaviour of the organisations he worked for, and the people in them. He extrapolated using these to the intelligence world, and he refined his model by putting fictional characters into difficult situations.

Reversing the fiction-writing research, Adrian brings a deep understanding of what people can achieve, and how they can exceed their own expectations. He is comfortable working with unknown unknowns. And he handles the whole picture from situational awareness, explanation, estimation through to the strategic choices for senior execs.

Writing stories about the espionage profession also led him to his discovery of intelligence-led project management.

“Fiction inspiring the real world.”

About Adrian Cowderoy Consulting Ltd

Adrian Cowderoy Consulting Ltd was founded in May 2015 as a boutique consultancy, focussing resources on one client at a time, and rolling forwards the experiences and new methods to benefit future clients. Since then it has grown in skills and ambition.

Company registration number (England & Wales) 9597151.

VAT 214 9283 09 UK.

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