John Acey

I joined the ABM at the end of last year via the Help To Grow Scheme, having completed the Foundation and ILM level three training.

I work with clients to improve their operational efficiency, frequently creating teams to deliver change.  Often this includes training, coaching and mentoring client staff; so formal training in mentoring was a natural progression.

I began my career in the TSB branch network before taking roles to design processes and systems.  I joined the bank as financial services were entering a period of massive change.  I was privileged to deliver leading-edge projects including customer service centres and telephone banking.

In the late 1990s, I left the safety of the bank moving into consultancy via my own company, Revelation Projects, delivering strategic assignments in the finance, customer service, utilities and legal sectors.

The disruption caused by the pandemic interrupted my consultancy work.  Then I had a 'light bulb' moment. There were some 'good' business services specialists.  The types of professionals I had been interacting with at my clients.  In April 2021 I invited 5 such people to join me for an exploratory Zoom call.  I had no agenda except for everyone to introduce themselves and a ‘let's see where this goes’ approach.  At the end of that first hour-long call, I asked if we should meet again in a month's time.  To my surprise and extreme delight, the unanimous response was "No! We want to do this again next week".  And so we did.  Eventually meeting face to face in London in November 2021.  That was very, very exciting.

The Bloom Consortium was born.  We built a team by carefully selecting people based on their professional skills and knowledge plus their fit with the group ethos.  We aim to serve SMEs and the simplest way to describe Bloom is 'the board you think you can't afford'.  We have one member per business services function - IT, marketing, sales, risk, HR, projects/operational effectiveness, and creative design.

I am professionally qualified in banking, a Prince 2 Practitioner project manager, lean six sigma black belt and systems thinker.

I look forward to meeting and working with you.