Meet the CQI leadership trainers

Adrian Cook, associate, Oakland Consulting

Adrian is an expert in business design and operations excellence with over 20 years’ experience of leading step change programmes in the US, UK, Europe and the Middle East.

Adrian spent 18 years with PA Consulting Group, including five years in its Washington DC office where he led the US business design and operational excellence team. He has worked in both the public and private sectors.

Prior to joining PA, Adrian was with the Yorkshire Electricity Group where he held a number of roles including M&A manager, data manager, managing director of Yorkshire Total Gas (the company’s first retail gas business) and group business change manager.

Richard Corderoy, partner, Oakland Consulting

Richard has a strong background in quality strategy development and implementation. His recent focus has been on developing quality approaches within the capital projects sector and he is currently assuring one of the largest infrastructure programmes in the UK.

Richard’s early career was spent as an engineering officer in the Royal Navy. Serving as combat systems officer in the submarine service, he was deployed on both frontline operations and leading elements of a significant technical upgrade programme for the UK. He was also responsible for the stakeholder engagement activity during the merger of two navy divisions.

After the Navy he joined PA Consulting’s business transformation group, specialising in the delivery of large organisational change programmes for a number of clients. More recently he has developed his experience with utilities and infrastructure organisations.

After a period in financial services focusing on customer service strategy and the transformation of enterprise level risk organisations, he joined Oakland Consulting. He has a first-class Master's degree from the University of Cambridge in Manufacturing Engineering and is a Chartered Quality Professional.

Dr Robert Oakland, partner, Oakland Consulting

Robert has worked across the globe, helping large, complex organisations improve the quality, cost and delivery of their products and services. His particular skills include the design and implementation of fully integrated performance measurement frameworks in highly variable businesses and understanding the root causes of serious persistent quality issues, inefficiencies and operational risk across an organisation’s value chain.

Robert has worked and lived in Australia, US, China, India, Brazil and Central Europe, gaining the reputation of a trusted quality and operations advisor through his passion for working with people to enhance performance.

His early career spanned academia and the fast-moving consumer goods industry, working with organisations such as Diageo, Unilever, P&G and Reckitt Benckiser using advances in technology to enhance product innovation and reduce operating costs. Robert is currently a leader in residence at the University of Leeds Business School, supporting students with commercial awareness, leadership, management and personal development.

Rod Scott, partner, Oakland Consulting

Rod helps companies improve the quality, cost and delivery of their products and services. He does this mainly through projects that introduce Lean thinking: building the right performance management information to enable operational improvement; better managing risk through second, third and fourth tier suppliers; and developing the capability of management and operational teams.

Rod works with a wide range of clients from global multinationals to family-owned businesses, and with public and third sector organisations. He joined Oakland from PA Consulting Group where he led their operational excellence and lean transformation services.

His early career was with a global automotive and aerospace company in a number of multinational and line management roles, and he has 20 years’ experience of delivering change effectively.

Andy Crossley, management consultant, Oakland Consulting

Andy has worked in the management consultancy and technology industry for over 10 years. His focus has been around identifying how technology can be optimised to bring about positive business change. He has delivered projects in public and private sector organisations across the UK, Canada and Dubai and worked across many sectors, including government, financial services, aviation, utilities and rail.

In delivering technology change projects, Andy works closely with the customer to build very clear requirements that will deliver demonstrable business improvement. This includes optimising current technologies through better processes and working practices, as well as introducing new technologies that prompt new ways of working. These projects are always designed against a backdrop of transformational change and Andy focuses on bridging the gap between strategic intent, operational efficiency and technology capability.

Prior to joining Oakland, Andy worked for Rockshore, a real-time software development company. He led the Consulting and Professional Services team, managing various projects. These included scoping and designing an operational real-time business analytics platform for an international airport, training people in a telco organisation to use technology to enhance their work, and building a strategy for a rail freight company. Andy also worked for BT Global Services Consulting.

Mike Turner, managing partner, Oakland Consulting

Mike has extensive experience of working at senior levels within large and complex multinational organisations, designing and successfully delivering business improvement and transformation programmes. He is an acknowledged expert in Quality and Operations Management, evidenced by long-term assignments in a range of large, global manufacturing, service and public sector organisations, such as ABB, Airbus EADS, Shell, BNFL, Standard Chartered Bank, EDF Energy, United Utilities, Unilever and the BBC.

His career started in operations management roles, including direct responsibility for quality management activities and experience of transforming operations performance using techniques such as Lean and Six Sigma. He followed this with over 16 years’ experience as a consultant with Oakland, the last seven years of which have been as the lead partner.

Mike has a first degree in engineering and a postgraduate MBA from a leading business school, with the addition of a prize for the outstanding final-year dissertation. He has authored a number of publications, including the first two publications to support the CQI’s professional development programme, as well as articles in Quality World magazine. In authoring these publications Mike has researched leadership in quality, speaking to a number of leading professionals.