ABOUT ME

Over the past 30-odd years, I’ve worked across most parts of the IT services world: Business Analyst, Pre-Sales Support, Technical Solution Manager, Bid Tool Designer, Trainer, Program Manager, Global Sales Support, and Recovery Specialist for accounts in trouble.

But for the last 14 years, I’ve been focused on something more fundamental—helping organisations build risk thinking into how they go after work. Not just tacked on at the end, not reduced to a checkbox or legal review, but embedded from the moment someone says, “Should we go for this?”

And by risk, I don’t just mean the usual suspects - delivery challenges or contract loopholes. I mean real risk. The pressures the customer is under. The internal disconnects that blow up later. The assumptions no one’s checked because they’re inconvenient.

Because unless you understand the risks your customer is carrying - the political, strategic, or operational tensions shaping their decisions - you’re flying blind. And someone else, who does understand them, is going to write a tighter, more compelling bid.

When risk is treated as a blocker, it becomes one. When it’s treated as insight, it becomes a competitive edge.

I’ve worked on or reviewed hundreds of deals-some worth over a billion dollars, others as small as a $50K addendum that still managed to sneak in unacceptable obligations. Size isn’t the issue. Risk doesn’t scale neatly with deal value. A poorly framed commitment in a tiny contract can cost more than a well-managed major program.

Across it all, I’ve had the chance to work globally with teams in more than 20 countries. I’ve lived and worked for several years in Japan and the United States, and collaborated with people across Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Different expectations, different pressures, but the same patterns emerge.

I’ve seen:

  • Sales teams overpromise, assuming delivery will figure it out

  • Solution managers forced to commit before the scope was even stable

  • Margin models built by shifting risk downstream and hoping it sticks

  • Legal advice ignored because “we’ll lose momentum”

  • Governance meetings that approved bids no one believed in

And when the music stops, I’m often asked to review what went wrong. I’ve sat in post-mortems and project recovery reviews where the pain was obvious—and the root causes sat squarely in the bid. I’ve seen:

  • Service levels accepted that couldn’t be measured, let alone met

  • Pricing models that collapsed with the first change request

  • Transitions locked in before any understanding of technical dependencies

  • Subcontractor accountability blurred beyond repair

Almost every time, the fix would have been obvious if someone had asked the right questions a few weeks earlier.

That’s why I now choose to work with organisations who want to do things differently. Who are willing to qualify out early. Who want their teams to get sharper at spotting the real risks—and use that insight to shape better bids. Who are tired of reactive fire drills and want to win work that is profitable, deliverable, and worth doing.

That means:

  • Training teams to treat risk as an advantage - not just something to record in a risk log

  • Helping sales, solution, and delivery work as a unit - not as silos with handoffs

  • Strengthening go/no-go decisions so fewer bad bets make it to the table

  • Closing the loop by feeding lessons from delivery back into pursuit

This isn’t about adding more process. It’s about better judgement, earlier. And that leads to better outcomes, for everyone involved.

If that’s where your organisation is heading, I’d welcome the chance to help.