You are here: Home | Alan Little
Alan Little
Phone: +44 (0)330 323 0275
Accreditations & Experience
Alan has over 35 years consultancy experience working internationally with blue-chip companies in most industry sectors and every functional area. He has built and managed consulting practices across the whole spectrum of organisation development, talent management and human resources and has consistently delivered pioneering solutions to clients.
His 1st in psychology led to an early career in social psychology research and then the steel industry. He then joined Hay Management Consultants UK and established businesses in executive assessment, employee surveys and management development. He became CEO of Hay New Zealand and a member of the Asia-Pacific Board in 1979 and was elected a world-wide partner in 1981. He grew the business from its start-up phase into a diversified practice serving most of NZ's biggest companies. He returned to the UK in 1983 and became a member of the UK Board and MD of the Organisation and Management Development Division, with a portfolio of practice units including organisation design, assessment training and development, outplacement and career counselling and strategic management.
He was head-hunted to Price Waterhouse (later PwC) in 1988 as a direct-entry partner, responsible for the European HR consultancy. This was transformed from a disparate HR services 'emporium' to a powerful change management business, based on a shared, multi-disciplinary methodology and innovative process consulting skills. Subsequently, based on his experience of shared services projects, Alan was a founder member of PW's new Business Process Outsourcing group delivering radical cross-border finance and HR transformation model to international clients.
He left PwC in 1998 after 10 years as a partner to join a venture-capital backed start up in HRO, Exult, as Head of Global Client Relationships. He was also worldwide Client Director for the foundation client, BP responsible for a $600m, groundbreaking project. In 2002, he returned to his first love, consulting, rejoining the Hay UK Board and spending 5 years as Head of Consulting Services. After so many years in large-scale consultancies, he became an independent in 2008, working in strategic thinking, executive development and CEO coaching. He also worked for professional services companies on business strategy and planning, marketing, product development and employee development.
He became a Faculty Member of LeaderShape in 2011 because he shared the belief that new forms of leadership are a critical factor in the necessary transformation of many organisations where current business models are simply not delivering what society needs. He also brought complementary skills in competences, assessment, and talent management, including work in the area of emotional intelligence: one of the most important management concepts in the last 50 years.
Throughout his career, a consistent set of principles has motivated him – to deliver projects based on deep understanding of business issues; to marry hard-headed content analysis with effective behavioural processes; to take a holistic view of business; and to ensure that ownership of solutions and their implementation is embedded in the client, not consultant-driven. Alan sees methodologies as tools to create tailored solutions, not 'products' and sees a deep understanding of competences and jobs as the building blocks of organisational insight.