I’ve worked across very different sectors and technologies, from global retail and pharmaceuticals to sound and theatre, and from D365 and Blue Yonder to building bespoke systems. I know context matters. In one organisation the pressure might be customer experience, margin, stock or service levels. In another it might be regulation, risk appetite assurance or control. Somewhere else it might be safety, timing, reputation, capacity, cost, or the terrifying reality that the show still has to go on at 7:30 whether the all the mics are working or not.

But while the context changes, the way I work is highly transferable. I’m used to getting up to speed quickly, learning the language, understanding the pressures that matter, and separating the important nuance from the background noise. I don’t need to have spent years inside your sector to become useful. I need to understand what matters here and how things really work.

And sometimes the outside view is the point. When people have spent years inside the same sector, system or way of working, it can be hard to tell what genuinely has to be done and what is done because it’s always been that way. Fresh eyes can be uncomfortable, but they can also be exactly what’s needed to see the problem clearly enough to do something useful about it.