Steve Ross

Steve’s consulting and professional career spans over 30 years and has included hands on assistance to private sector organisations in strategic and business planning, sales and marketing, financial management, human resource management including change management, leadership development and mentoring.

Professionally Steve undertook a Bachelor of Arts in Accounting at University of South Australia early in his career. Steve developed quickly into a variety of senior accounting roles which then developed into commercial, general management and ultimately CEO roles.

Steve’s skills and experience have been developed over many years working in a range of organisations that needed significant change to be successful. Steve played a key role within many organisations in building successful businesses that were previously not performing to their potential. This played a key part in developing a skillset and mindset that could be used to help organisations be successful. Not only did Steve find this very stimulating and challenging, it also gave him great satisfaction in helping businesses he worked in enjoy success.

At a point in time Steve decided to ply his skills to help many businesses as a consultant and over the past 15 years has done just that. Steve has worked as a consultant for the past 15 years joining Gibsons in 2006 as a senior consultant and then purchasing the business with his business partner Paul Dignam in 2010.

As a Strategic Business and Human Change Specialist consultant, Steve has helped a range of Small to Medium Enterprises and Government Entities with issues and challenges and ultimately partnered them in a journey towards business improvement and excellence.

Steve achieves this by following a very simple process.

Diagnosing the issues and opportunities facing the business,
Developing strategies and plans to build a business that addresses the issues, takes advantage of the opportunities and delivers outcomes consistent with the owners and key stakeholders vision and goals for the business and for themselves.
Assist the owners and the management team to develop the relevant people, skills, culture, systems and structure to effectively transform the business into a high performance business and then to sustain it.

Capabilities and Specialisations

Whilst Steve possesses a broad range of skills across a range of disciplines he achieves success through high level strategic and tactical skills coupled with exceptional people skills that enable him to develop solutions and strategies, and with owners and managers successfully implement those solutions and strategies within his clients.

Key Capabilities include:

  • Strategy Development
  • Strategic and Business Planning
  • Sales & Marketing
  • Financial Analysis and Review
  • Change Management
  • Coaching, Mentoring and Training
  • Leadership Development
  • Human Resource Management
  • Building High Performance Teams
  • Measuring and Managing Business Success

Applying these capabilities and skills are only effective when a relationship based upon trust exists between the client and consultant – Trusted Advisor. Working together in that way has provided a powerful framework for personal and business success for many individuals and businesses.

The following are examples of successful consulting partnerships undertaken across a range of businesses and industries:

Developed and implemented practical strategic and business plans across a range of businesses and industries facilitating growth and substantial improvement in financial and operational performance.

Implemented change management and leadership development strategies and processes to successfully improve the performance of businesses and the teams driving that performance.

Developed and implemented major succession strategies plans to assist a quasi-government entity change its business model to a model based on systems and processes supported by effective teams rather than on key individuals.

Business restructures to improve financial, operational or human performance.

Developed and implemented effective sales and marketing strategies and plans to position businesses to take maximum advantage of their unique selling proposition in what is of value to the marketplace it serves.

Effectively mentored, coached and advised owners, key managers and management teams into becoming more effective in their roles and more effective as teams within the business with demonstrable improvements in individual and business performance.

Industry Experience

  • Mining Services
  • Professional Services
  • Manufacturing
  • Construction
  • Horticulture
  • Wholesale & Retail
  • Government
  • Not For Profit

Jock O’Keeffe

Corporate planning and business improvement specialist to government and industry

Jock has broad experience as a Company Director, CEO, senior executive and management consultant with highly developed commercial and business skills. His capabilities extend to strategic planning, company management, finance, business development, growing management talent and skills, advising on local and state government practices, transforming business structures and the systems to support them, and enhancing organisational culture for performance enablement.

The primary role of management consulting in both the private and public sectors is to assist business owners, managers and organisation executives in measuring, managing and improving the performance of the business. Jock has exceptional credentials in this area with the skills and experience that make a difference.

  • expert in performing business reviews at all levels, from strategic and ownership perspectives through to detailed finance, process, resources and process reviews and analysis
  • extensive experience developing strategic business processes and programs to efficiently and cost-effectively establish capability and infrastructure
  • specialist in developing and maintaining “strategic growth partnerships” with customers, suppliers or other stakeholder groups to improve business sustainability
  • deep understanding of leading-edge information,  communication and technology management practices
  • the management of large and small teams to success, by establishing the appropriate leadership development paths, coaching and mentoring, adapting cultural practices, and by providing training and guidance in appropriate performance management regimes
  • extensive experience in dealing with complex budgets, resources and expectations, and helping companies achieve  successful growth through imaginative and efficient management of these parameters
  • program and project management capabilities that ensure plans are executed as expected.

Before and during his consulting career, Jock worked with many different types of companies and organisations, in various industry sectors, and with a wide range of organisational characteristics. Some examples of this breadth and depth include:

  • Board Director: Many board positions encompassing public and private companies, government enterprises and not-for-profits.
  • CEO: Several CEO roles including the USA subsidiary of Australia’s largest software company
  • General Management: Roles included a Regional GM position based in SA for a top 10 Australian public company.
  • Executive Roles: Marketing, Business Development, Sales, Operations.
  • State and Local Government liaison: Interfacing with both political and administrative arms of state governments and an extended period operating in the local government marketplace.
  • Industries: Mining, Technology, Utilities, Government (Local and State), Aviation, Health, Logistics/Distribution, Communications, Tourism, Retail.

Graham Pridham

People Management, Development and Strategic Human Resources Specialist

People management, development and strategic human resources specialist

It’s been said many times that “culture eats strategy for breakfast”. Graham has developed HR professionals into value adding business partners, improved HR systems to deliver outcomes and not outputs, and aligned values, leadership and behaviours to enable growth.

Graham is a strategic thinker with a strong HR and business background who thinks first from the business end to build compelling and engaging processes that align organisations to their business strategy. He knows how to get the best engagement and alignment between people to achieve operational objectives.

Put simply, Graham will help you get the right people in the right place doing the right things at the right time.

Graham’s professional career spans over 25 years and includes senior Human Resource Management responsibilities in large companies, and consulting to government, NFP and private sectors in the areas of strategic HRM, cultural development, people optimisation, leadership, performance management, talent acquisition and growth, workforce planning and job/organisational design.

In recent times Graham has worked closely with both start-ups and established SMEs to help develop and implement practices that align people activities to the markets that client businesses operate in. His advice, counsel and support has enabled better alignment of leadership, team and individual activities to achieve higher levels of engagement between internal and business goals. He knows what matters to SMEs – improved revenue, lower costs, and greater efficiencies.

Professionally Graham holds a Masters Degree in Global Human Resource Management from the University of Liverpool, UK.

Capabilities and Specialisations

Achieving success only happens when our clients are successful. Graham facilitates this via advanced people skills that motivate and drive outcomes.

Key capabilities include:

  • Strategy and planning
  • Key stakeholder mentoring
  • Organisational cultural development
  • Strategic workforce planning
  • Organisational design and re-design
  • Top down and bottom up goal alignment
  • Talent pools & pipelines
  • Performance management
  • Hr people and process improvement
  • Learning & development
  • Employee engagement
  • Compensation & benefit design
  • Retention strategies
  • Talent attraction & employee value proposition
  • Policies and procedures
  • Compliance risk management
  • Career planning
  • Competency frameworks
  • Recruitment

Sector experience

  • Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG)
  • Pharmaceuticals
  • Hospitality
  • Manufacturing
  • Agriculture
  • Software development for the financial services sector
  • Education
  • Government
  • Not For Profit
  • Professional Services
  • Labour Hire
  • Oil & Gas

Jean-Jacques Lasm

Strategic & HR Specialist

Jean-Jacques, or JJ, has over 20 years of executive management experience. While JJ trained as an engineer (BTech, MTech) and worked for a French multinational as a Chief Engineer, his interest has been in business. Consequently, JJ completed an MBA (CQU) and moved into facilitating the formulation and execution of business strategies for client portfolios of over $150 million as a Service Director for Telstra. From there, he progressed into consulting across industries in Australia and Africa in diverse positions including Chief Executive Officer, Executive Director, National Manager, and General Manager. For the last 15 years, JJ has been helping private and public corporations with market capitalisation between $15 million and $800 million to formulate and execute strategies for better governance, better business health and bigger profit.

JJ is a certified Quality Management Systems auditor (Exemplar Global) and a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors with extensive experience on Not-For Profit boards including Heartkids Australia. JJ has a background in organisational strategy and organisational development especially in facilitating strategy implementation. He is adept at supporting business owners and their teams to create and follow their unique plan and path to better businesses.

Capability  

  • Organisational Strategy Development
  • Strategic & Business Planning
  • Strategy Execution
  • Business Development
  • Business Improvement
  • Quality Management Systems Audit
  • Personal Development & Talent Development
  • Training, Coaching & Mentoring

Industry Experience

  • Professional Services
  • Mining
  • Construction
  • Engineering
  • Education & Training
  • Hospitality & Tourism
  • Information Technology & Telecommunications
  • Agricultural Processing & Manufacturing
  • Real Estate
  • Not-For-Profit

 

Sarah Hannon

Relationship management and sales specialist

Sarah Hannon has been a Business Development Manager for Gibsons Consulting since 2014.

Sarah’s role involves maintaining and developing relationships with Gibsons’ future and current clients, and maintaining quality control for Gibsons’ client management.

Sarah is heavily involved in the sales process, client management and quality control. She is a key person in the reorganisation of the business development process which has led to improved conversion rates and customer satisfaction. Being responsible for the implementation of quality feedback loops Sarah’s work with Gibsons has contributed to our highly regarded reputation for quality of service.

With almost 10 years in Management, Licensee, Shareholder and State Manager roles in Victoria and Queensland, Sarah is experienced in leadership, coaching and training of sales groups with the outcome of increasing revenue per sales person. Sarah has been instrumental in the set up of sales organisations and in expanding the geographical locations of sales operations for a multinational firm.

Along with a Degree in Business and Finance, Sarah holds a Diploma in Business Management, two International Diplomas in both ITEC and CIBTAC qualifications.

A Certificate Real Estate and Property Valuation and currently she is undertaking her qualification as Lead Auditor in Quality Management Systems.
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