Caroline Gowing, JA Consulting’s Defence director, summarises the JA approach to business in one sentence: “How do you make organisations work for the people in them?”

JA Consulting is a small company led by a group of experienced and expert consultants, all of them focused on bringing about people-centric change. Caroline has a psychology and transformation delivery background, and is one of the company’s four directors. Her other senior colleagues are:

John Moss, one of the company’s co-founders, who comes from a general and sales management pedigree, and was at EY before setting up JA Consulting 30+ years ago;

Alison Fletcher, the other co-founder, who brings a background in general management, marketing communications and solution-focused thinking;

And Chris Smith, the Professional Services director with a specialism in IT change.

In addition to the directors, the company has around 20 associates working on projects at the moment. Every one of these has deep experience in some aspect of business transformation. Caroline explains, “We’ve deliberately constrained our growth. Instead we look to deliver quality work for quality clients, using quality consultants. We don’t employ graduates – we bring them in once they’ve already developed senior consulting skills. We operate very differently from the big consultancies. The Big Four,” she says, “look to provide support for activities that organisations can’t do themselves, and their model relies on them ‘landing and expanding’ – looking to stay in there.”

“We decided that we would never try to get on to government frameworks by ourselves. The trade-off in terms of time and effort was never going to be worth it. We needed a simple route to market, and Bramble Hub provides a good and cost-effective one”

“Good consulting,” Caroline continues, “is about really understanding the problem, and then applying the right expertise for short periods of time.” (She places emphasis on the word ‘short’). “When we are preparing for a project, we assemble a rainbow team with the right mix of skills.” Those skills may include psychology, behavioural economics, management and leadership support, business process analysis, and more.

How has change management evolved during the time that Caroline has worked in this field? “In some ways, very little has changed. Much of what we do isn’t new – there’s not a revolution underway. But the external environment has changed, and so much more change is demanded. It used to be episodic, but now it’s much more dynamic, iterative, constantly evolving. It’s become much more agile. So it has to be implemented top-down. We must ensure that execs are able to evolve the organization and ensure they recognize the impact of the people and culture aspects of delivering that change.”

Defence makes up a large share of JA Consulting’s business: the rest consists of professional services. Typically the company’s Defence work consists of larger, more strategic projects, while the professional services projects tend to be “smaller, and more agile”.

To help illustrate the company’s approach, Caroline talks about a flagship project that JA Consulting led for a large Defence customer.

“This particular location was switching to a new contracting framework. A monolithic contract with the incumbent supplier was expiring. The customer wanted the facility to open up the commercial landscape to allow for a greater choice of suppliers, and to change the basis of the facility’s relationship with industry. A new contracting framework had to be put into place that would impact the operation of the location as a whole: engineering, logistics, facilities management… everything was going to be affected. Beginning in 2019, our team set to work on achieving transformation at numerous levels: the organization and team structures; upskilling the workforce; working on cultural and behavioural changes – how do you change the way people see their roles? And of course, updating the business processes themselves.”

Among the most significant changes implemented for this client by JA Consulting was to advise the appointment of two new senior directors in the client organisation: one whose focus was on strategy, and one on operations. “This is central to the way we work – ensuring that our customers can take control of their own destinies, and are not dependent on us. Having now implemented the programme of change in one location, other facilities are now following suit and making similar changes, without the need for our involvement.”

The Defence Sector tends to appreciate working with small, agile companies like JA Consulting. “It’s important to be small enough to care about every client and to make every assignment a real success, but large enough to have the breadth of skills required,” Caroline suggests. And this brings us to JA’s relationship with Bramble Hub. “We decided that we would never try to get on to government frameworks by ourselves. The trade-off in terms of time and effort was never going to be worth it. We needed a simple route to market, and Bramble Hub provides a good and cost-effective one.”

How does Caroline see JA Consulting’s future unfolding? “We’re becoming involved with a lot of issues around sustainability these days. We have some amazing associates that specialize in environmental issues, and in managing the associated change. And one of my own passions is around facilitation: The ability to run really effective meetings is so powerful. We have a range of facilitators with different skillsets. We do this really well!”