Tom Mitchell, one of the founders of Change Right, a new Bramble Hub partner, exudes passion for his business. And ‘passion’ is a word he uses regularly. Tom is a regular guy, hailing from Billericay in Essex, which means he speaks plainly and unguardedly. His co-founders, Joe Kipling and Michael Hughes, he says, will be the ones that approve this article for publication!
Change Right are specialists in workplace transformation, although Tom stresses that their services go far beyond this focus. “We work end-to-end, gathering requirements, working on a company’s ways of working, culture, processes and systems – not just the physical building. We begin each project by asking a series of critical questions, to really understand how a client works and operates, only by understanding this can we achieve successful and lasting transformation.”
“Rather than being two separate activities, we see design and change as part of the same process, and this is why we’ve developed an agile method for combining the two. Our approach is based on the Change Right playbook, an adaptive, flexible set of guiding questions that get us to the root of the transformation and allow us to work outside of traditional, rigid methodologies.”
Tom worked for many years for one of the Big Four consultancies, specialising in transformational change. One day, he says, he looked at his CV, and was unhappy with what it said about him. “I’d worked for companies in tobacco, alcohol, fossil fuels, … I decided to make a switch into areas that felt more ethical, where I felt I was making a difference to society.”
As he began to question the future direction of his career Tom was placed on a project within a large public sector department, delivering an organisation-wide IT transformation. “I fell in love with it. People were so passionate about what they were doing and I quickly realised that this was the arena I wanted to specialise in. I decided to move more permanently into the defence and security sector.” While his new project quickly ignited a new-found passion for his work, it also caused him to question his relationship with his employer. “I wasn’t happy with the way they treated people – either their staff or their clients.”
Tom’s thoughts about his previous employer echo widely-held viewpoints about the large consultancies. “The focus should be on delivering excellence to a client, but instead, they’d often put junior staff on projects while charging a high day-rate and using the project to boost their consultants’ CVs. I call it the consultant carousel – bring in smart people and take them out after six to nine months, just at the point when they can really start to add value. That approach might improve a consultant’s CV and maximise their billing potential, but it also damages client projects, and adds significant delivery risk.”
Feeling that the customer was not at the forefront or the priority, Tom resigned in 2019 and became a freelance contractor, securing a role on a project in another large public sector organisation. Becoming known for delivering excellent work, he was invited to bid on a project, and so found himself needing to put his business ideas into practice. He brought on Joe and Michael – consultants Tom had worked with before, that shared his passion, ethics and had extensive experience in the public sector (specifically in policing); and so Change Right was born.
