Man, 64, seeks chaos. Thirty years of getting difficult things done, mostly through people who didn't report to me; now Oxford-based, reading English forty years late and writing on Elizabeth Bowen. Researcher, project manager, chef de cabinet — and the rare part, finisher. Give me a day and I'll tell you where your project is stuck and how to unstick it. By the hour, the day, the month or the year.
Kevin Ball · [email protected]
What this actually looks like
Your book is late. The manuscript is three-quarters there, the deadline has moved twice, and what's missing isn't words but a plan and someone to hold it.
The archive is in boxes. A life's papers, an estate, a collection — and no system, no catalogue, and no one whose job it is to impose order.
You need a chief of staff two days a month. A founder or a small organisation that needs someone senior to run the things that fall between everyone's desks.
You need a researcher with judgement. A project that needs work done carefully and read intelligently, not merely gathered.
Who I am
For thirty years I ran things inside large organisations — latterly as a senior people and talent leader for global businesses in technology, financial services and telecoms, and as a non-executive director.
I have an MBA, I'm a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD, an EMCC-accredited coach and mentor, a qualified mediator, and a graduate of the Financial Times' Non-Executive Director programme.
Now I'm reading for an English degree, forty years late, and writing on fear and suspicion in Elizabeth Bowen's wartime fiction. The short version: three decades of getting complicated things finished, mostly through people who didn't report to me, now pointed at other people's complicated things that need finishing.
How it works
Start with a day. Give me a day and I'll tell you where the thing is actually stuck and what to do about it — that's usually the hard part.
After that we work in whatever shape suits: by the hour, the day, the month, or on a retainer for whatever period suits you. Rates on asking; terms kept simple until there's something worth agreeing.
Get in touch
If you're not sure whether this is a thing I do, get in touch anyway — it probably is.