Ian Adkins

Stop the Drift. Align Your Strategy, Culture, and Delivery.

Delivering clarity and results with a proven, evidence-based approach, not a consulting army.

Delivering Strategic Transformation For:

Is this you?

You have a solid strategy. You have talented people. Projects are active, the dashboards are green, yet the needle on performance isn’t moving.

Meetings about the “big picture” quickly descend into operational firefighting.

Perhaps you hear phrases like:

“We’re doing so much, but what are we actually delivering?”
“Our leadership team isn’t aligned on the priorities.”
“The culture just feels stuck; it doesn’t support the direction we need to go.”

The issue is rarely a lack of effort. It’s a misalignment between your strategy, your leadership’s focus, and the daily behaviours of your organisation.

Pouring more money into traditional change programmes—with their generic templates and values posters—won’t fix the underlying disconnect.

My Approach

Evidence, not folklore. Behaviour, not buzzwords.

Lasting transformation doesn’t come from slogans or off-the-shelf models. It comes from a clear-eyed diagnosis of the system, followed by the deliberate shaping of the critical few behaviours that drive results.

My approach is grounded in 30 years of experience leading complex change in boardrooms, the military, and during crises. It is informed by deep research into behavioural science and what the evidence shows actually works.

Adaptive Transformation

I employ an evidence-based approach to any form of change with my clients, utilising the Adaptive Transformation Framework or 4Ds.

It has four stages:

Diagnose: We start by getting the facts, quickly and efficiently. We use a structured assessment to pinpoint precisely where strategy, leadership, and culture are misaligned and where value is leaking.
Design: Together, we co-design a practical roadmap. We focus on the critical few priorities and behavioural shifts that will have the greatest impact, building a coalition of your own people to lead the charge.
Deliver: We build momentum through small, controlled experiments and focused sprints. This isn’t a “big bang” rollout; it’s about testing, learning, and embedding tangible wins that energise the organisation.
Deepen: My goal is to make myself redundant. I ensure the new capabilities, metrics, and leadership habits are locked into your organisation’s DNA, leaving you stronger and more self-sufficient.

Above all, we remain focused on whether change is delivering the transformation you wanted and the real results you needed.

My Services

01.

DIAGNOSE

Strategic Transformation Alignment Assessment

A short, fixed-fee diagnostic to give you clarity fast. In 1-4 weeks, we conduct a rapid, evidence-based review of your strategy, leadership, and culture.

What you get: A concise, board-ready report identifying the primary sources of misalignment, a heat-map of where value is being lost, a prioritised list of quick wins and a direction for your transformation initiative.

02.

DESIGN & DELIVER

Strategic Transformation Design & Delivery

If you want to turn the diagnosis into action. We launch a 90-day transformation programme to build momentum and deliver early results.

What you get: A signed-off transformation roadmap, the first wins banked, your internal team built, empowered and coached to lead the delivery. We shift observable behaviour, not just write management reports.

03.

DEEPEN

Strategic Advisory & Interim Leadership

For longer-term partnership and deeper support, to further build and sustain transformation momentum, we can continue to work together in two key ways.

Strategic Advisory Retainer: Ongoing access for C-suite counsel, strategic sparring, and light-touch coaching to ensure that strong transformation leadership is maintained.

04.

DIRECT

Interim Leadership

For when you need a seasoned, hands-on leader to stabilise or energise a critical programme, stand up a new capability, or guide the organisation through a period of intense change.

This could be as an Interim Transformation Director, Programme Director, Programme Manager or Change Lead, depending on the situation.

Track Record

Challenge: A founder-led defence logistics firm needed a sustainable growth engine.

Outcome: I redesigned their corporate strategy and transformation framework, enabling a transition to a mature holding-company model. Revenue is on track to triple to $500m.

Challenge: Ireland's Health Service Executive needed to bring its corporate values alive for all employees.

Outcome: I guided an employee programme team to design and deliver new behaviours using a 350-strong champion network, lifting the culture engagement score by 13 points.

Challenge: A £900m strategic infrastructure plan at Network Rail was slowed by a slow planning cycle.

Outcome: I led a strategic planning process redesign that cut the planning cycle time by 30%, thereby accelerating delivery of critical infrastructure investment.

Challenge: The MOD needed to stand up a crisis response HQ in SE England during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Outcome: As a mobilised Army Reserve Colonel, I developed and led an 80-strong, £60m HQ and crisis PMO, delivering 70 critical support projects to the NHS and local authorities over 12 months.

About Me

I’m Ian Adkins.
I deliver clarity and results with a proven, evidence-based approach, not a consulting army.

For over 30 years, I’ve worked at the intersection of strategy, leadership, and culture. My career has given me a unique perspective on what it truly takes to make change happen.

As a chartered engineer, I learned to analyse complex systems and diagnose root causes, not just symptoms.

As a senior Army officer leading up to 2,000 personnel in operational and strategic roles, I learned how to build resilient teams, maintain calm in a crisis, and lead from the front with absolute integrity.

As a consulting director, I’ve guided C-suite leaders in global organisations across defence, IT, retail, and government, designing and delivering multi-million-pound transformation programmes.

And as a researcher, I am committed to an evidence-based practice that replaces management fads with the proven principles of behavioural science.

I don’t lead a large team. When you hire me, you get me: a seasoned, SC-cleared partner who provides candid advice and rolls up his sleeves to ensure the work gets done.