In this episode, John is joined by Chris Allinson, Managing Partner at Yonder Consulting, a firm that helps organisations rethink how they grow and where they compete as markets evolve.

Chris has spent his career working at the intersection of strategy, innovation and insight. He describes his approach with a simple phrase: being “first of the next, not best of the last.” It captures one of the hardest challenges for any consulting firm – how to keep evolving your thinking and your offer while the demands of existing clients keep you focused on today.

Chris introduces the idea of silent drift: not the sudden disruption leaders tend to worry about, but something quieter and harder to notice. The kind of gradual shift where revenue is holding, the team is busy and nothing looks obviously wrong – yet the role your firm plays in clients’ organisations is slowly becoming less central.

They discuss:

• What silent drift is, why firms performing reasonably well are often the most exposed to it, and how leaders can spot the early signs before the shift becomes too hard to reverse
• Chris’s idea of “first of the next, not best of the last” and what it means for consulting leaders trying to stay ahead of their market
• How looking beyond your immediate sector into what Chris calls frontiers can help firms see emerging opportunities earlier
• Why the most effective strategic thinking combines rigorous, data-led insight with the kind of imagination many professional services firms have trained themselves out of
• How consulting firms can challenge their own assumptions early, rather than waiting for a client or competitor to force the change

If you lead a consulting or professional services firm and feel your market shifting in ways you cannot yet fully explain, this conversation offers a useful way to think about what might be happening – and what to do next.

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Host: John Howard, Partner at Garwood Growth
Guest: Chris Allinson, Managing Partner at Yonder Consulting