The LCS Impact Awards

Individual Impact Award Winner: Darren White

Darren White has been the recipient of an Individual Impact Award by LCS this year ‘Introducing Lean and OPEX thinking to a FTSE 100 with a single resource.’

• Background

I’ve been a Lean Sigma BB for circa 20 years, but normally working as part of a Consulting team or being embedded 100% of the time within a single business unit; two very standard approaches which I’m sure we all recognise. I was extremely fortunate that my employer, St James’s Place, were progressive in their thinking, and gave me the opportunity to develop a fulltime Operational Excellence role, after I had successfully demonstrated the value of Lean thinking with a small number of Practices. My remit was to build a culture of Lean and Operational Excellence thinking within our Partner network by providing consultancy services, where I would be the only OPEX resource, and where there was no existing collateral in place.

• Activity

From early 2022 through to the mid-point of 2023 my typical OPEX consultancy engagement would be 100% bespoke. I would work with the senior management of the Partner business & SJP Field Management Team to assess their issues, capability, and growth opportunities. We would jointly devise a coaching plan, which would typically be delivered over 2 months.

By mid-2023, several key and repeatable themes had emerged, allowing me to create my first OPEX Directory of services i.e. 10 topics which had most strongly resonated with the those I had worked with so far, and had always added value to those businesses. The OPEX proposition V1.0 was born.

• Impact

One of the most frequently conducted engagements has been a topic I call “Volumes v Capacity”, where I help the Partner Practice assess the amount of incoming work to the back office and compare this to the resource available, ensuring suitable allowances are factored in. I have guided over 30 Practice businesses to make appropriate resourcing and hiring decisions, as well as unearthing circa £410k of spare capacity.

Together with my Business Processing & HR colleagues, two other elements of the consultancy team, we have achieved to date a Net Promoter Score of 98.9% and a 4.9 average Sentiment score, which I understand sits well above the “world class” standard.

Individual Award:

• Senior Operational Excellence Manager: Darren White