Ben Grinnell
North Highland
Excellence in Influence
North Highland's Ben Grinnell left a Big 4 to found a small London consultancy in 2004, with a dream of changing the way the world thought about consulting. "I'd been very successful, but frustrated by that lack of real emphasis on building client capability above consulting dependency and the silos which stopped big consulting firms from collaborating across solutions and borders to serve clients."
After three years, the firm joined Cordence Worldwide before ultimately becoming part of North Highland in 2012.
Throughout his career, Grinnell's passion has been about connecting global expertise, replacing reinvention at clients with continuous improvement of client service. "We had to transform the firm to achieve these ideals over the course of several years. We are focused on bringing together our global pools of experts to build client solutions as our geographic silos are removed," he says.
For more than 15 years Grinnell has advised North Highland's C-suite on technology operating and sourcing models, including how to transform their technology functions. He's leveraged his reputation as a thought leader in the DevOps space to improve the lives of millions of IT professionals globally and help businesses win through technology delivery.
He counts building North Highland UK's business from a startup to a thriving 400 person business and integrating it with all of the North Highland team to create a truly global firm among his greatest professional achievements.
When it comes to being recognized as a 2021 Global Leader in Consulting, Grinnell says he looks at it as recognition of a decade of effort to break down geographical and cultural barriers, and the operating models that create them in the first place.
"One of our oil and gas clients made this vision become a reality for me. We seamlessly served them as one team all over the word, without any barriers – no internal arguments over people, revenue, solutions, IP. It's incredibly difficult to build a global firm that can achieve this level of cross-functional and global collaboration without accidentally creating barriers, and I'm so proud that we've achieved it at North Highland," he says.
Q&A: What has been the biggest key to your success so far?
"There have been 3 major factors to my success. First, it's keeping the focus that my team and I had as a startup no matter how big we get. Second, you must build client capability above consulting dependency. Finally, you need to continuously develop people, with a relentless focus on career-long learning."
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