Partners

Founder partners in the Alexander Partnership are David Nairn and Andrew Shepherd. We met in 1989 and have worked together ever since. David's background is in marketing, Andrew's in operations. Both of us earned MBAs, and studied in Californian schools - David at Berkeley, Andrew at Stanford. Brief CVs are here. We are the people who work for you on an assignment - we have no junior staff, so the people you see when we pitch to you are what you get when we work for you.

During nearly two decades as a partnership we have amassed expertise in a wide range of industries and have shared our methodologies with a large number of clients. Our collegiate style encourages the transfer of skills to client staff, as we aim not to be disruptive outsiders but rather to be catalysts for development and change within businesses, in ways which should be sustained long after the project on which we work is completed.

One way of achieving real transfer is to establish a 'joint case team' in which the Alexander Partnership works alongside some selected individuals from the client organisation throughout a project. If one or two appropriate members of staff can be made available, several benefits follow:

• consultant time can be more efficient, since client partners 'know' where to go for information within the organisation from day one
• more data/research/interviews can be conducted with the extra resource
• ideas can be 'kicked around' during the study with a high degree of client understanding and sensitivity
• partnering client staff gain an insight into our methodologies, picking up techniques they can deploy themselves in future
• when we have gone, deep understanding remains, not just a report - so when circumstances change, adaptation can often be effectively performed by your own staff, (though, of course, we would be happy to contribute).