I'm Nigel Williams, founder of EMCS. I'm 61, and I've spent thirty years in complex, demanding change delivery, management and leadership situations — as Client Partner with global change leadership and stakeholder management accountability for major transformation programmes at BP and Shell with IBM and BearingPoint; as an Associate Director in large-scale change at PwC; and since 2016 as an independent working alongside PE-backed leadership teams. The problems that show up here are the ones worth solving. That's not something I expect to feel differently about.
I'm not the detached, measured Big 4 partner type. I engage with commitment and, frankly, passion. I think and act as part of the leadership team I'm supporting — not as an external resource maintaining professional distance. The problems matter to me. The people matter to me.
I won't tell someone what they want to hear to win work. I've walked away from engagements where the fit wasn't right. I'd do it again without hesitation.
What thirty years of this work in change also teaches you — if you're honest about it — is that no single person covers all the ground well — people have sweet spots. Early in my career the standard 360-degree exercise focused on weaknesses and what to do about them. A stint as European VP at Inforte Corp — a small but NASDAQ-listed business with Michael Porter and Philip Kotler on its board — reframed that instinct for good. The principle that stuck: play to your strengths, find people whose strengths sit where yours don't, and work together mutually — not to paper over gaps, but because the combination creates something neither of you would reach alone. I know my shape. I know where I'm strong and where I'm not. The EMCS model exists because I'd rather build around that honestly than pretend otherwise.
Which means the people I work with matter as much as I do. They represent the trusted inner core of EMCS — not just colleagues on engagements, but the kind of people I'd want on my side of the table, or pick up the phone to when I needed an honest view. Two examples — named and introduced here once they've confirmed they're happy with how they're described.
The EMCS inner core have worked together long enough that we don't waste time finding our feet. We don't fight for intellectual turf. What you get is thinking tested from multiple angles before it reaches you — and a model that is materially stronger than any one of us operating alone. The core is always expanding — currently eight active executive change leadership practitioners, each with their own distinctive sweet spot.
That's not a statement about what we can offer. It's a description of how we work — and why we chose to.
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