Asif Ahmed

‘People’ are the heart of everything we do.

That's why I am delighted to welcome Uuna to Cooper Parry Digital

I have long admired what Charlotte Talmage and the team have built. 

An award-winning fellow B Lab UK B Corp that’s earned a reputation for delivering complex, large-scale change management, transformation programmes.

The gap between “strategy” and successful adoption is where most transformation initiatives fail:

>> 9 times out of 10, it is because people, culture and processes get totally ignored by those delivering the plan.

With Charlotte and team, 

We’ve added that vital ‘missing layer’ across systems, people and processes.

That is the real definition of value creation.

From today, 

We will embed change management expertise across all our existing consulting and technology practices.

Supporting owners, investors, Board’s & CFO’s with:

> AI strategy 
> ERP/CRM/Digital Transformation Programmes
> Cybersecurity

As Cooper Parry becomes the UK’s digital transformation partner of choice.

📚 Read the full story 👉 https://lnkd.in/ecKHcBjF
🎥 Video below to hear more from Charlotte

#Acquisition #BCorp #ChangeManagement #CooperParry

Stop waiting for the perfect plan.

Start executing the one you have.

Mark Zuckerberg said it best:

"Ideas don't come out fully formed. They only become clear as you work on them. You just have to get started."

After working with 500+ venture-backed companies, I've seen this play out over and over.

Founders that are always waiting for "more clarity"?

Whist their competitors use that time to ship and learn.

Here's what the fast movers do differently:

1️⃣ They ship at 70% ready.

↳ Launch to 10% of users first, not 100%
↳ Hire the VP of Sales before the playbook is written
↳ Expand into new markets with incomplete data
↳ Start fundraising conversations early, not desperate

2️⃣ They build adaptive forecasts.

↳ Reforecast monthly based on what actually happened
↳ Plan for 3 scenarios, not 1 "perfect" model
↳ Budget for experiments that might fail
↳ Build cash buffers for surprises

3️⃣ They make fast, reversible decisions.

↳ 30-day trials instead of 12-month contracts
↳ Fractional hires before full-time executives
↳ Pilot in one region before going national
↳ Test ad spend, don't bet the farm

The truth is:

Your business model doesn't get clearer in meeting rooms.

It gets clearer in the market.

Iteration beats ideation every single time.

💡 Do you agree?
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✒️ Specifically for: Fast Scaling venture-backed founders & CFOs

The best leaders reframe mistakes into opportunities.

That's exactly how you promote innovation.

Here's what I notice in the companies that actually scale:

When something goes wrong,

the CEO asks: "What did we learn?"
Not: "Who approved this disaster?"

When a forecast misses by 30%,
the CFO says: "Walk me through your assumptions."
Not: "How could you be so far off?"

When a sales strategy fails,
leadership asks: "What would you try next?"
Not: "This approach was clearly wrong from the start."

The difference?

→ Fast-growing companies fail faster and iterate without fear
→ They treat mistakes as data with which to grow
→ Their teams experiment because they know safety nets exist

- - -

Your people already know when something went wrong.

What they need from you is what comes next.

They grow where they feel safe to be wrong.

Be the leader who makes that possible.

🖊️ What methods do you use when things do go as planned?
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✒️ Specifically for: Fast Scaling venture-backed founders & CFOs

10 Things CFOs Are Expected to Know

BUT ARE NEVER TAUGHT

75% of CFO's claim that digital transformation is accelerating across their organisations.

BUT, business schools still focus on accounting principles and financial analysis, completely.

Skipping the 10 critical capabilities every scaling CFO actually needs:

1/ Master Financial Storytelling 📊
↳ Translate complex financial data into clear narratives that connect strategy to outcomes
↳ Frame numbers around business impact: "This investment increases customer lifetime value by 40%" vs "ROI is 1.4x"

2/ Manage CEO Psychology 🧠
↳ Balance supporting the CEO's vision whilst establishing financial boundaries and realistic constraints
↳ Learn when to challenge decisions privately and when to align publicly

3/ Build High-Trust Finance Teams 🤝
↳ Create clarity through transparent expectations, consistent feedback, and visible decision-making processes
↳ Hiring for adaptability and strategic thinking

4/ Respectful Cost Control ⚖️
↳ Position budget constraints as guardrails for sustainable growth, not arbitrary restrictions
↳ Involve department heads in trade-off decisions early

5/ Quietly Lead Enterprise Risk 🛡️
↳ Build frameworks that identify risks across markets, operations, regulation, strategy, people, and technology before they materialise
↳ With 42% of CFOs now prioritising enterprise risk management, integrate risk reviews into strategic planning - not as separate compliance exercises

6/ Drive Strategy, Don't Follow 🎯
↳ Use financial insights to surface trade-offs and challenge assumptions before strategies are set
↳ Ask "What would need to be true?" to pressure-test strategic decisions and expose hidden risks or unrealistic expectations

7/ Lead Finance Tech Evolution ⚡
↳ Assess technology needs based on business outcomes; scalability, decision speed, data quality.
↳ With 75% of finance leaders accelerating digital transformation, prioritise systems that eliminate manual processes and improve real-time visibility

8/ Navigate Leadership Power 🏛️
↳ Prepare board materials that anticipate questions, provide context, and offer clear recommendations
↳ Understand board members' backgrounds to frame discussions in terms they value and connect with

9/ Predict Behaviour Behind Numbers 🔮
↳ Analyse how incentive structures, team dynamics influence actual behaviour vs forecasted outcomes
↳ Factor in loss aversion and anchoring when evaluating projections from department heads and sales teams

10/ Adopt an Operator Mindset ⚙️
↳ Spend time understanding customer pain points & competitive positioning
↳ Move beyond financial metrics to grasp how products create value and what drives customer decisions

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➕ Specifically for: Fast Scaling investor-backed founders & CFOs

Lots of founders love the 0-1 journey.

That's because scaling beyond that is really quite hard.

78% of companies that achieve product-market fit still fail to scale (McKinsey).

The problem isn't lack of opportunities.

It's prioritising which ones to focus on.

Here are 10 hard truths About scaling that no one tells founders:

1/ What Got You Here Won't Get You There

> The systems that worked at 10 people will usually break at 30 and entirely fall apart at 100.

2/ Your Best Early Employees May Not Scale

> Some early stars struggle as complexity rises, and you'll face painful decisions about people you care about.

3/ Growth Creates More Problems, Not Fewer

> Scaling doesn't remove problems, it often multiplies them.
> More customers bring more edge cases & more decisions

4/ Leading People Overtakes Building Product

> Eventually, your job becomes (almost exclusively) hiring, alignment, and communication

5/ Misalignment Becomes The Most Expensive Problem

> Teams drift, priorities diverge, and execution stalls long before you notice it in the numbers.

6/ Processes Become Essential Almost Overnight

> Early on, processes feel like obstacles, but without them, everything else starts to slow down.

7/ Speed Can Kill Just as Fast as Slowness

> Growing too fast leads to cultural cracks, execution debt, and expensive mistakes that take years to unwind.

8/ Customers Don't Care That You're Scaling

> They expect the same responsiveness, quality, and attention, even when you're juggling 10x more complexity.

9/ You'll Need to Outgrow Your Own Identity

> You have to shift from being a hands-on builder to becoming a leader who operates with strategy and systems.

10/ Scaling Requires Letting Go - Repeatedly

> Letting go of tasks, decisions, control, old strategies, even people.

Every stage demands a new version of the whole organisation.

- - -

💡 Which of these truths are you navigating right now?

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➕ Specifically for: Fast Scaling investor-backed founders & CFOs

The technology almost always gets delivered.

The transformation almost never does.

From what I have seen, most organisations cannot wait to announce a 'go-live'.

But then spend months figuring out why they aren't seeing the benefits that they thought they had paid for.

In almost every one of these situations, this could have been avoided.

Here's how:

01. The outcome is defined before the work begins
↳ Agree what success looks like before selecting technology or vendors. Every trade-off should be measured against it.

02. Leadership stays engaged through difficulty, not just launch
↳ Sponsor attention fades when hard decisions arrive. Structure governance to require it, not assume it.

03. Priorities are protected, not multiplied
↳ Too many concurrent initiatives dilute delivery. Concentrate investment on what matters most and hold that focus.

04. Processes are redesigned, not just digitised
↳ Technology layered onto broken processes produces faster versions of the wrong outcome. Redesign first.

05. People are involved before the decisions are made
↳ Employees who encounter change after the fact resist it. Frontline input early builds ownership that sustains adoption.

06. Adoption is measured, not assumed
↳ Go-live is a milestone, not an outcome. Track usage, behavioural change, and business impact from day one.

07. Decision rights are clear from the outset
↳ Unclear accountability creates delays and competing priorities. Define who owns what before the pressure arrives.

08. Value is visible throughout the journey
↳ Benefits that arrive only at the end weaken confidence and momentum. Design for early wins, not just final outcomes.

09. Capability is built alongside the system
↳ New technology without trained people underdelivers. Skills, coaching and knowledge transfer start at inception.

10. The new way of working outlasts the programme team
↳ Embed ownership and continuous improvement into daily operations before the programme closes. Otherwise old habits return.

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💡 Sound familiar?

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➕ Accounting, AI, Digital Transformation, Salesforce, NetSuite & Cyber
➕ Specifically for: Fast Scaling investor-backed founders & CFOs

Your finance team doesn't lack data.

They lack connected knowledge.

The business may have the answer somewhere.

But no one can reliably find it, trust it, or connect it quickly enough to support better decisions.

This is the hidden operational problem in scaling businesses.

Here's where finance knowledge lives:

1. Email threads

Approvals, exceptions and decisions buried in inboxes.
↳ The answer exists, but only if you know which inbox to check and what to search for.

2. Slack and Teams

Real-time discussions happen every day but rarely get documented.
↳ After two weeks, the context is gone. What's left is a vague memory and conflicting versions.

3. Spreadsheets

Budgets, forecasts and models contain critical assumptions.
↳ When the person who built it leaves, the logic leaves with them. You inherit the work but none of the thinking.

4. Shared drives

Reports, plans and updates stored in folders no one consistently checks.
↳ By the time you find the document, you're not sure if it reflects the latest decision or the one before it.

5. People

Experience, intuition and tribal knowledge sit inside people's heads.
↳ This works until they're unavailable, leave, or are unable to recall why certain decisions were taken.

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The impact when knowledge is disconnected:

> Decisions slow down because the context has to be rebuilt every time.

> Forecasts weaken because assumptions aren't captured or challenged properly.

> Risk increases because the business is repeating mistakes it technically already learnt from.

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A finance team surrounded by data but starved of connected knowledge can't move fast enough to support the business when it matters.

♻️ Repost if this would help someone scaling a business.

💡 Where does the critical knowledge live in your finance function?

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➕ Accounting, AI, Digital Transformation, Salesforce, NetSuite & Cyber
➕ Specifically for: Fast Scaling investor-backed founders & CFOs