Quirk was founded by former military leaders recognised that commercial organisations face many of the same challenges they encountered in complex operational environments. This insight sparked Quirk's creation, initially focused on strategy and planning before evolving to address the cultural foundations that enable execution.
WHO ARE WE?
Our Beliefs
That no organisation should struggle to be successful. They should be free of the friction and gridlocks which hold them back - and be a place for people to thrive. That every workplace issue, no matter how complex, is solvable. Why we believe this
Because many of our team are veterans, and we believe in service. Because going above and beyond is part of who we are. Because we are ingrained to put others first and ourselves second. Because we get a kick from seeing people happy in their work, exceeding targets, relieved the 'old ways' are no longer weighing them down. What difference can we make
We have an enviable track record with clients across all sectors, scales and sizes, of increased productivity, higher profitability, lower absenteeism, better M&A, more successful change. We measure the impact of our leadership courses with quantitative metrics. We can prove culture change. We are happy to be held to account - as that's our background and clients should expect nothing less.
Our Values
Our own culture and Company values underpin everything that we do at Quirk.
How can we help you?
We partner with organisations to resolve the gridlock that emerges when Strategy, Culture, and Leadership misalign during growth. While many consultancies focus on just one of these critical elements, our approach ensures all three work in harmony rather than creating friction.
Leadership Development that lacks Alignment
Strategy - Leadership - Culture:
Aligning these intentionally is a game-changer.
Unclear strategic direction
Organisations unsure of their future identity, purpose, or direction
A disconnect between strategy and execution
Gridlock
Your strategy cannot keep up with execution.
The result: stalled execution, slow decisions, and leadership fatigue.
Are these challenges you recognise within your organisation?
Growth ≠ Progress
Information becomes siloed. Decision-making slows to a crawl. Collaboration turns into competition.
Rapid Growth but stalled Execution
Decision bottlenecks that stall momentum
Growth brings legacy cliques and resistance to new ways of working
Fragmented micro-cultures
Generational, national, and functional differences create silos and disconnects that stall momentum
Micro-cultures matter: Teams often have distinct cultural norms that aren't reflected in top-level data
Scaling but losing identity
Growth brings legacy cliques and resistance to new ways of working
Quirk
DEFINING THE PROBLEM CLEARLY
The Momentum Gap: The disconnect between an organisation's growth aspirations and its operational reality, characterised by slowed decision-making, diluted strategy execution, and cultural fragmentation.
Rapid Growth: You're scaling successfully, but hitting unexpected internal friction. Decisions are slowing, silos are forming, and your once-cohesive culture is fragmenting.
Stagnation: You've established market position but struggle to evolve.
Despite sound strategy, execution falls short, with initiatives that start strong but rarely deliver results
Our Approach
Diagnose: Reveal the gap between your current state and desired performance
Diagnose: Reveal the gap between your current state and desired performance
Advise: Design targeted interventions tailored to your specific challenges
Implementation Support: Change integration, Progress measurement, Sustainable practice embedding
Expected Outcomes
Strategy Execution Excellence
Clear translation of strategic direction into operational activity
Measurable progress on strategic initiatives
Organisational Adaptability
Improved response to market changes and disruptions Enhanced innovation through increased psychological safety
Leadership Bench Strength
Capable middle management layer that truly leads rather than just manages Reduced senior leadership burnout and increased retention
Core Problem
Client Situations
QUIRK METHODS
Quirk has delivered tailored solutions for organisations across all sectors and globally. Our work ranges from one-off interventions to multi-year transformation programmes, typically following a structured three-step engagement process.
Diagnose
Reveal the gap between your current state and desired performance
Change and Transformation
Quirk empowers teams to achieve desired outcomes through facilitation, strategy workshops, and gaming techniques. We specialise in working with teams across the organisation to ensure engagement that leads to a successful transformation.
Mergers and Acquisitions
Many M&A projects underperform, or even fail, due to a lack of cultural alignment. Quirk has pioneered a unique approach to due diligence, helping boards and leaders accelerate acquisition success by understanding cultural challenges and identifying mitigating factors, before and after closing.
Culture Diagnostics
We help organisations understand and enhance their unique culture to create productive and highly engaged work environments, utilising our market leading assessments, interviews, and workshops. Our diagnostic tool provides measurable and actionable insights.
Leadership & Teams
We believe that authentic leaders are the key to ensuring employers are productive and genuinely empowered. At Quirk, we deliver a range of programmes that develop stronger leaders and better-performing teams within your organisation
Advise
Design targeted interventions tailored to your specific challenges
Deliver
Implement solutions that create sustainable performance improvement
We provide...
• Culture Diagnosis & Development
• Leadership Development & Coaching
• Strategic Planning & Alignment
• Change Management & Implementation
• People Due Diligence for M&A
WHAT GOOD LOOKS LIKE
•
Strong mid-management leadership capability
• Everyone has a voice and shows up authentically
• Decision-making is fast, high-quality and adaptable
• Information is delegated and disclosed
• Teams areable to operationalise strategy and make decisions
• Teams feel ownership, leaders are freed from routine decisions
OUR CULTURE & LEADERSHIP DIAGNOSTIC
Over 12 years, Quirk has built one of the most powerful culture& leadership diagnostics available to modern organisations. It combines leading tools into a single platform, capturing insights from employees and leaders to reveal perception gaps and cultural misalignment.
Quantitative data shows what’s happening, follow-up interviews explain why. The result is a clear, actionable view of your current culture, desired future state, and leadership impact - giving you the insight needed to drive meaningful, strategic change. This enables us advise on how to make the journey from one point to another, and to help you implement the recommendations to make impactful change.
CULTURE IN NUMBERS
A positive and strong culture leads to:
Achieving what ‘right’ looks like for your organisational culture, gives you a major competitive advantageit’s the one element of your organisation that is virtually impossible for anyone else to ‘copy’.
OUR LEADERSHIP PROGRAMMES
Leadership starts with self-awareness.
We believe great leadership begins with understanding yourself. Using tools like Insights Discovery, our programmes foster deep self-awareness and reflection to strengthen personal and interpersonal effectiveness.
From growth mindset to authentic leadership. We help leaders develop strong habits, clear purpose, and a personal style that inspires others. Our approach builds resilient teams through confident delegation, better decision-making, and inclusive, purpose-led leadership.
Flexible, modular and tailored to you.
• Build-your-own Courses: Choose relevant modules with support from our expert consultants.
• Popular Workshops: e.g. Knowing, Going, Showing – a two-day deep dive.
• Quirk Academy Bites: One-hour interactive online sessions – perfect for developing emerging talent.
Our goal: Empower your team to grow, perform, and enjoy the journey – while delivering outstanding results.
“Effective leadership starts with you. Learning how to develop and exploit a growth mindset by adjusting your approach to learning will have a far-reaching impact on your team. In our courses, you will learn how to develop the habits of good leadership, how to lead with purpose and how to utilise your personal leadership style to help guide others.
Your organisation is only as good as the decisions you make. You will discover how to create the ideal environment for authentic leadership, which will empower your team through effective delegation and decision making; increased resilience and mental wellbeing; and enhanced problem-solving and situational awareness.
After all, authentic leadership creates leaders, not followers.” Institute
Accredited by the Institute of Leadership. Our Leadership and Development Programme is officially accredited by the Institute of Leadership. Completion qualifies participants for full Member (MIoL) status – a mark of professional excellence.
YOU’RE IN GOOD COMPANY
We created and provided an interactive online learning simulation for Google Directors as part of the 'Perform Today and Transform Tomorrow' program at the Google Leadership School. The Directors were tasked with exploring methods to collaborate and make decisions within a matrixed organisation. Placing the learners at the core of the learning process, they were able to practice new skills and contemplate how to apply them within their teams, both presently and in the future.
Delivering a series of leadership offsites in Morocco for the Unilever Europe & North Africa team, as they grappled with an extremely sensitive and complex issue elsewhere in North Africa. Providing the facilitated space and leadership guidance that they needed to explore challenging decisions which had high implications for them, materially and reputationally. Resolving and managing conflicting views and strongly held paradigms among the leadership and in-country teams.
Quirk does not just work with enterprise and corporate clients, we have also worked with over 30 different SME businesses in the last 3 years alone. Scales have ranged from 50 employees to over 500, including delivering a leadership training day for 200+ delegates for Logicor in Rotterdam. We have also delivered over 4 years of support to Babble Cloud, a Tech company that has grown dramatically in that period, helping to develop their leaders and integrate over 20 acquisitions.
excellent facilitation and education today. I can’t tell you how much we appreciate your partnership in this program. Thank you again! Amazing work !
Krista Drury, Senior Engagement Manager, Google Program
WHAT OUR CLIENTS SAY
I was very happy with the quality of the training provided.
With a very operations-focussed team with a wide spread of previous leadership training, they were a cynical audience before the course started. Nevertheless, they all enjoyed the training, both the longer course that we gave to the senior grades and the 3-day course provided to the operational leaders. As well as a good refresher on leadership principles, it was really useful for the different teams to share some of their challenges and I have noted an increase in engagement between the three teams.
James Stride- Chief Harbour Master, PLA
We were constantly trying to implement a shift in behaviours that just weren't landingwasting valuable time. Your diagnostic showed us exactly where the problems lay and explained why they existed, helping to put our finger on precisely what we needed to do next and how to make it work. Your work confirmed several of my suspicions, but helped explain why they existed.
Kenny McCrae, Group CEO and Chair
Working with Quirk has already had a clear and positive impact on our department’s culture. The initial diagnostic helped uncover key behavioural patterns and different working styles within the team, which sparked meaningful conversations and early changes in how we collaborate. The recent offsite workshop was superbly facilitated with great energy, which encouraged open and engaging interactions across all levels of the team. The insights from the session have directly influenced how we structure our work and communicate, leading to more empowered and effective ways of working. We’re excited to continue our journey with Quirk over the coming years as we build a stronger, more collaborative culture.
Elliot Dyer, WPA
We’ve worked with clients across:
• Finance (Zurich, Lloyd’s)
• Tech (Google, Babble Cloud)
• Energy (Drax)
• Retail (Waitrose)
• Transport (Mercedes, GTR)
• Public Sector & NGOs
• 30+ SMEs globally
Why Quirk
The Dubai Expo issued a competitive tender to procure their operational readiness profile. Quirk was chosen as the supplier through this process, beating Deloitte and many other notable consultancies.
We were chosen because of our substantial knowledge and credibility in gaming in a commercial setting with other blue-chip clients, including Shell, Mercedes Benz, and the UK Cabinet Office. Secondly, our team's military experience was vital, with military processes being very similar to what the Expo was required to do. Finally, the Expo valued our credentials in leadership development as they viewed enhancing leadership capabilities as vital for lasting and effective business continuity and crisis management.
Their Challenge
Over the course of 3 months, the Dubai World Expo had to build their events operations team of over 100 people to the point where they were prepared for the final event which saw over 24 million visitors. The Expo knew they had to be ready to respond to a variety of scenarios including protest, injury as well as the standard day-to-day running of a large event.
Thank you for the hard efforts of your team over the last 6 months. Cultural fit wise, tenacity to drive plans to a readiness state, and the approach of the team to immerse themselves into what can be a tricky wider Expo team, was admirable, and I would have no hesitation supporting working with you and the team in the future again.
Matt Brown, Operations Director, Dubai Expo
Our Approach
We provided 10 high-quality Quirk colleagues, who integrated with the Expo Operations structure, acting as an extension of their team rather than as consultants. We began by assessing their current capability, which we then used to design and deliver a series of desktop workshops before growing into full-scale simulations. This allowed us to progressively build their capabilities and bring together several different teams and external organisations, including police, security, military, and political entities, including the Dubai Royal Family. These exercises helped their Operations team to create, test, and refine their processes, but also supported and trained team members. This ensured that all personnel were clear on their responsibilities, empowered to make decisions at the right level, and operating as one cohesive team.
This all led to a full simulation of an Expo day, with 50,000 visitors attending in person, and that included a variety of problems and incidents for the team to respond to. We were responsible for setting up all the necessary infrastructure, including information feeds, role-playing key external actors such as the government and media, and simulated accidents. This approach tested all of their processes and skill sets to ensure they were ready and prepared for day 1.
Delivery of this initial 3 month contract led to Quirk being regarded as an essential part of the Expo operations system and being awarded a 3 months contract extension to help Expo manage day-to-day operations as part of their operations team. This included supporting them to plan and deliver further major events including a Giro cycling race and the UAE National Day.
IREP - CULTURE, STRATEGY & LEADERSHIP SUPPORT
Why Quirk
IREP's two founders approached Quirk, through a mutual connection, with what they perceived to be a lack of empowerment across their 1,500-strong global business, headquartered in Dubai. They were faced with an environment where employees were consistently coming back to them for decisions across every aspect of the business, slowing the tempo of the organisation and ultimately negatively impacting performance.
The founders were frustrated with this, as they had told everybody in their business, and particularly the leadership groups, that they were empowered and that the founders didn’t need to make every decision, but ultimately this wasn’t moving the needle.
Our Approach
We conducted a culture and leadership diagnostic to identify the current and preferred culture and leadership styles across different areas of IREP.
We found that although the senior leaders of the organisation said they wanted an empowered workforce, we identified leadership approaches that were not conducive to making that change stick. This was being compounded by some very different cultural norms in the different geographical areas they were operating across.
Based on these diagnostic findings, we delivered a 2-day leadership programme that was designed to help them create a psychologically safe space, that would allow employees to feel able and confident to start making decisions. This programme started to take IREP forward in a much more accelerated way and enabled an increase in performance.
Following this success, they were able to rapidly grow headcount and expand into new areas like 3D building printing. The complexity this created led to Quirk being contracted to provide strategy support, which involved facilitating workshops to shape their strategic vision, identifying areas they needed to focus on and helping to prevent them from overreaching and spreading themselves too thin.
Following 2 years of Quirk support, IREP had a strong platform that created higher value in the business and made it of considerable interest to a number of investors & acquirers.
We were constantly trying to implement a shift in behaviours that just weren't landing- wasting valuable time.Your diagnostic showed us exactly where the problems lay and explained why they existed , helping to put our finger on precisely what we needed to do next and how to make it work. Your work confirmed several of my suspicions, but helped explain why they existed.
Kenny McCrae, Group CEO and Chair
GAMI- LEADERSHIP DECISION-MAKING
Why Quirk
GAMI came to Quirk at a time of rapid change within the Saudi Arabian Defence industry. As a Saudi government-level entity, GAMI was tasked to increase the localization of Saudi Defence manufacturing and productivity. The objective is to grow indigenous Defence production from where it currently sits at c.10%, up to a growth target of 50%, as part of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030.
They were looking for an organisationthat would improve the way they think about this challenge and encourage them to view it from different perspectives, alongside some specific tools and techniques that could help take them forward.
Quirk was chosen due to our strong track record of gamification and strategy sessions with other large corporate clients, and our demonstrated expertise and knowledge of leadership development, which marked us out versus our competitors.
Our Approach
We delivered 2x 1-day workshop where we introduced them to three decision-making techniques, Red Team Blue Team, 6 Thinking Hats, and Pre Mortem.
We taught delegates how to use each of those techniques to best effect, and the best practice for running and participating in each of the different games. As part of the day, we also facilitated live sessions on each technique around the topic of localization. This meant that the GAMI senior leadership team left the workshop with not only an understanding of how they could use gamification to improve localization, but how to use it to lead their teams and enhance performance. We also provided them with digital outputs of these exercises, which they used to help take forward certain initiatives identified as a result of our workshop.
GAMI have booked Quirk for further support with localization and leadership development in September following the success of the training delivered to date.
Great course today which is engaging with a great coach and delivery team.
One of the best training sessions ,I loved it! SeniorLeader,GAMI
This programme was the best training/educational day I have experienced in myextensive career.
Lecturer, Riyadh University & GAMI leade
CASE STUDY - DRAX POWERSTATION
Their Challenge
Due to changes in government grants, Drax had to pivot to a more efficient business model that required a seismic shift in the whole organisation to ensure fast decision-making and collaboration across the plant.
Legacy and outdated working practices and cultures across the entire organisation needed to be challenged head-on, with buy-in required from all areas and levels of the organisation. Drax had to turn deeply embedded ways of working, inculcated over generations, into an entirely new approach.
OUR APPROACH
Early on Quirk and Drax’s senior leadership jointly identified that an employee buy-in approach would be vital build and maintain momentum to give the transformation the best chance for success. We utilised our proprietary ‘learn and solve’ decision-making framework developed by us to produce various problem-solving strategies and processes. Our framework consists of:
Leadership Strategy Sessions
Identify where the senior leadership team want to get to, why and outline how to get there.
Gaming Workshops
Outlined what is needed to deliver the strategy, what might go wrong and business areas to be addressed.
Problem Solving
Cross-functional change teams develop plans to tackle specific problems/issues and feed back to senior leaders.
Problem Solving
Cross-functional change teams develop plans to tackle specific problems/issues and feed back to senior leaders.
Leadership Development
Leaders and managers were trained to help accelerate the transformation, helping with culture change and implementing supporting behaviours.
Plan Finalised
A single plan was co-created to deliver the transformation, this took input from each stage of our process. A final gaming workshop was facilitated to pressure test the plan for gaps, problems and weaknesses before it was implemented.
OUTCOMES
Following our Q-Suito model, Drax successfully implemented its co-created plan, thanks to the buy-in and training the teams had received through each step of our process.
Drax can now make complex decisions autonomously at all levels of the business due to the thinking, structures and processes that were put in place with Quirk’s support. This has been enabled through enhanced leadership skills. The full programme of work has enabled Drax to become a fresher, agile, more forward-facing organisation that can now do things in two days that used to take a week.
After 3 years of operating with the new approach Bruce Heppenstall, plant director, reported superb results across their key metrics of safety, production, finance and the look & feel of the plant as well as increased engagement through providing them with the tools and skills to take control of their work areas.
DRAX SELBY POWERPLANT
Through Quirk’s unique style and approach to leadership learning and development we were able to unlock a significant culture change within our business, crucially providing a positive change in behaviours which have now become an embedded part of our business, improving cross functional collaboration and drive true empowerment to improve accountability and decision making at the right layer within the business.
Craig Whiteley, Head of Operations
Drax Power Station
Our leadership programme with Drax has received consistently positive feedback with an astonishing 100% of delegates stating they would recommend the training to a colleague.
BABBLE - M&A CULTURAL INTEGRATION,
STRATEGY & LEADERSHIP SUPPORT
Their Challenge
Babble Cloud is a leading UK-based cloud solutions provider specialising in business-critical communications and technology services. By utilising a highly acquisitive strategy to grow across the UK, Babble quickly expanded from 35 to over 600 employees.
While integrating the acquisitions, cultural fragmentation emerged between acquired companies and the core team, leading to organizational gridlock and a disconnect between strategy and execution resulting in:
▪ Acquisitions underperforming due to cultural misalignment
▪ Decision bottlenecks at senior leadership level
▪ Inadequate knowledge sharing and collaboration
▪ Poorer customer service
Babble’s leadership recgonised that when integration stalled, cultural factors were invariably responsible despite having a solid financial and legal due-diligence process in place.
Key outcomes:
• Accelerated integration timeline by 40%
• Reduced cultural friction and improved
• performance Enhanced cross-departmental
• communication Improved retention of key
• talent Development of internal integration capabilities
Results
Between November 2022 and July 2023 Quirk delivered 8 pre-acquisition cultural analyses, 9 post-acquisition integration processes and a further 3 retrospective sessions for earlier acquisitions.
Our Approach
In October 2022, Babble engaged Quirk Solutions to implement a dual-phase cultural integration service as a standard piece of their due-diligence process: Pre-Acquisition:
▪ Assessed HR policies, compensation structures, and people factors
▪ Identified potential misalignments and integration risks Provided
▪ insights to inform acquisition negotiations
Post-Acquisition:
▪ Conducted focus groups and cultural diagnostics with acquired teams
▪ Identified quick-win opportunities to "win hearts and minds"
▪ Leveraged the change curve to map and address resistance Support Framework:
▪ Created a Babble cultural benchmark to guide integration
▪ Delivered targeted leadership development workshops
▪ Established regular review processes with executive leadership
Key Learnings
1.Culture is non-negotiable - Financial and legal due diligence alone cannot ensure successful acquisitions
2.Structured change management works - Understanding where teams sit on the change curve enables targeted interventions
5.Psychological safety enables growth - Supporting teams through change prevents theparadox where expansion creates stagnation
For mid-market organizations experiencing the shift from "fast-forward culture" to "stuck culture," targeted cultural integration support breaks through decision gridlock and unlocks the full potential of growth strategies.
WE INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY, PROFITABILITY AND RETENTION BY MAPPING YOUR PEOPLE, CULTURE AND LEADERSHIP CHALLENGES AND HELP FIND SOLUTIONS TOGETHER
