Hello, I am Neil Macgeorge

Drawing on decades of line and consultancy experience I work with clients to identify routes to faster growth, helping to create and then implement strategies for sustainable success.

Focusing on the commercial and customer strategy arena, I collaborate with companies to review the business from a strategic, market, customer and operational standpoint to determine what needs to be improved and how. The result is refreshed growth plans rooted in market reality, dovetailed with operational plans which enable the business to deliver effectively and efficiently.

Most of my career has been in marketing, commercial and strategy roles in consumer goods and services companies, including international, multi-site, omnichannel and subscription businesses. I also worked in strategy at a global consultancy followed by a corporate strategy role in a FTSE 50 drinks company. I have run large chunks of business and P&L’s up to £2.5bn in complex, rapidly changing environments and made major changes to strategy, brands, products, portfolios, routes to market, commercial ops. and contracts, team structures and people to improve performance.

I have found that the experience from companies in varied sectors, with different business models, ownership structures and cultures equips well me to bring new perspectives and ideas.

What differentiates me is the blend of having the classic consultant toolbox along with the critical insights from years in leadership positions facing the challenges of delivering results cycle after cycle. This means not only being able to quickly identify what needs to change but also how to work with people to make it happen.

I believe in pragmatism and simplification, but without over simplifying.  

Finally, I have been involved with The Marketing Academy for many years, mainly as a mentor, then as a judge.

Many companies are missing growth targets. Some have become unsustainably short term in outlook, focusing too much on efficiency and not enough on effectiveness.

We see an emphasis on short term costs, rather than longer term value creation.

In Marketing, too much attention on “bottom of the funnel” activity has led to reduced advertising effectiveness and declining brand health.

Behaviourally, the urgent increasingly usurps the important, tasks dominate and the needs of customers and colleagues drop down the agenda.

Even when a business senses it needs to change it can struggle to find the time and resource to step back and figure out how. Internal politics, lack of bandwidth or knowledge, perceived lack of budget and so on, can all make it seem hard. Typically, it tries running harder, but usually in the same direction. Over time plans can lose credibility, targets become less realistic, morale falls, results suffer and investment becomes harder to attract. If any of this resonates, let’s talk, it may well be something I can help you with.

Frequently the biggest impediments to growth are internal. Whilst there will always be uncontrollable externalities, often the path to faster growth is found in better planning, resource allocation, communication and operationalisation – all of which a business controls.

The solution starts with work to diagnose what does and does not work and why, in the context of the business’s situation and objectives.

Finally, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”, doesn’t it? Yes, but if you are in the great position of having a culture that facilitates corporate agility and speedy, efficient action, it is worth checking that it does not inhibit sound planning through a tendency to rush to action before sufficient expertise and effort has defined exactly what should be done, why, how, by whom and when. I have witnessed this and it is all too easy to end up trying to do the right thing with the wrong set up, or vice versa. The opposite, “analysis paralysis”, is equally damaging of course.

Net: rapid, sustainable growth needs a strong plan and culture to implement it. Easy to say, harder to do. The start point is to check if something is missing from either component.

Point of View