Episode 60 - Simon England - Garwood Solutions/Accenture

In today’s episode, I speak to Simon England, Director at Garwood Solutions, Former senior Managing Director at Accenture and Independent Director of HCL Technologies, the 150,000 person global technology and services firm. If you’ve been listening to the show for a while, you may remember that Simon’s colleague Rob Garner featured back in Episode 51 at the beginning of the year. I always like to ask my guests who they would recommend for the show and Rob pointed me to Simon. Highlighting his extensive career leading various business units for Accenture as something he thought could be of interest to my listeners, and he wasn’t wrong. Over the past 36 years, Simon has built up a wealth of experience in leading, transforming, and growing organisations across both the public and private sector. Before joining the team at Garwood Solutions, Simon spent 27 years with Accenture, leading various business units and helping to turn around others. Between leaving Accenture and joining Garwood Simon spent a year leading the stabilisation and recovery of Capita’s largest, and very public, transformational outsourcing contract with Primary Care Support England, overseeing a 900 strong team to turn the programme around. Given the current climate and Simon’s phenomenal track record of both growing and turning around businesses, I was super excited for this conversation and my gosh did it deliver. In today’s interview, we dive into a whole range of topics, including: • Simon’s uncommon path into consulting, his entrepreneurial streak and how starting out on his own helped him build the consulting career he’s had • His lessons learned from his 27 years at Accenture and what you can take from them to help you on your own journey • And Simon’s advice for consulting firms - big and small - on what you should be doing now to help you stabilise your business and succeed beyond Covid-19 While we’d recently started working with the Garwood team just prior to this interview, it was great to get the chance to speak to Simon outside of that, hear his insights on building such a successful career and have the chance to share them with you to in this interview. With all the uncertainty at the moment, I’m sure that you’ll get a lot of confidence and clarity from what Simon has to say. Whether you’re currently focusing on the short term health of your business or your long term career path, there’s tons in here for you to learn from and apply in your own life. You can find out more about Simon on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-england-88763376/ You can find out more about Garwood Solutions at - https://garwoodsolutions.com/ Specific things we discuss in the show: • The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tao-Te-Ching-Hackett-Classics-ebook/dp/B005CW9YB2/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= • Getting The Balance Right: Leading and Managing Well by Peter Shaw - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Getting-Balance-Right-Leading-Managing-ebook/dp/B00AQD8KZI/ • Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World by Don Tapscott - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Grown-Up-Digital-Generation-Changing-ebook/dp/B001FA0PMC/ • The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company by William Dalrymple - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anarchy-Relentless-Rise-India-Company-ebook/dp/B07VPR8LS1/