BLAXLAND CONSULTING LIMITED

𝗛𝗲𝗹𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗰𝗼𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗱𝗲𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗩𝗖𝗣 – 𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗹𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗺𝗶𝗱-𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗺 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗽𝗿𝗲-𝗲𝘅𝗶𝘁 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 

Diane is a senior adviser to private equity portfolio companies.  She helps investors and portcos to deliver robust growth against value creation plans - including via post-merger integration.  She has a sweet spot in Tech-enabled B2B Services including Professional Services in the UK and EMEA.

Her experience includes:

- pre-deal MDD and post-deal operating reviews of portcos - eg for Blackstone, Mercia, Silverfleet, LDC, Rockpool, Foresight
- rapid recovery of post-merger integration and transformation, ahead of an IPO (backed by TPG)
- commercial risk analysis for a PE portco, triggering an exit via secondary buyout (backed by ICG)
- recovery of an off-shore proposition, re-positioning for growth ahead of a merger
- design and global rollout of a post-merger data integration model.

Her skills include P&L management, business strategy, sales, operations, business transformation, and change management – drawing on her experience in startups, scaleups and global business.

Founder

Career Coaching by Diane Blaxland

🚩 How will you know if my Career Coaching is right for you? Five quick signs: 

•	there is a gap emerging between your career and your satisfaction level 
•	addressing the gap is increasingly important to you 
•	there are risks if you do something, and risks if you do nothing 
•	you have some advice, but you want to take a wider, longer term view 
•	talking it through with an experienced executive feels like a good place to start 

#ExpertLeaders #Careers #PersonalDevelopment

Catalysis Advisory Ltd

𝗥𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗣𝗘 𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗰𝗼 𝗕𝗼𝗮𝗿𝗱𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺𝘀 𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗹𝘂𝗱𝗲𝘀:
🔺 𝗽𝗿𝗲-𝗲𝘅𝗶𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 - 𝗕𝟮𝗕𝟮𝗖 𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵 (𝗘𝘂𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲)
🔺 𝗽𝗼𝘀𝘁-𝗱𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗺𝗶𝗱-𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗺 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 - 𝗕𝟮𝗕 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗘𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲𝘀
🔺 𝗽𝗿𝗲-𝗱𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗕𝟮𝗕 𝗥𝗲𝗴𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵, 𝗕𝟮𝗚𝟮𝗖 𝗛𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵, 𝗕𝟮𝗕𝟮𝗖 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵, 𝗕𝟮𝗕𝟮𝗖 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝘂𝗳𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴, 𝗕𝟮𝗚 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗰 𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵

Business Advisor

Johnson Controls Inc

$5b EMEA region of $20b Business Services division of $40b Fortune100 listed company

Director Change Management, EMEA

Blaxland Consulting

Advising clients on operational and commercial change.

CPA Global

£100m global Business Services company, backed by Private Equity

Director Strategy

Williams Lea

£20m Division of this £1b global Business Services company, part of DAX30 company DeutschePost

Managing Director 

Clifford Chance LLP

£100m+ M&A practice of this £1bn global Professional Services firm

Head Business Development Operations

Blake Dawson Waldron

A$350m international Professional Services firm (now part of £1b Ashurst LLP)

Business Development, Sales & Marketing management

CEO & Founder Expert Leaders™ | Career Direction & CV Coaching | £1B PSF | $40B Fortune100 | PE scaleups | London Business School

I help professionals step into clarity, confidence, and growth - especially when navigating complex career transitions in challenging or unfamiliar markets.

My clients are technically brilliant, ambitious … and many are internationally experienced. They’re often MBAs, engineers, M&A/finance experts, consultants, lawyers, or technology & data/AI specialists. 

They're ready to step into senior leadership, but something isn’t landing. Their pitch isn’t quite resonating. The growth opportunities they seek feel just out of reach.

That’s where I come in.

With more than 10 years in senior leadership - including as Managing Director responsible for 550 people - I’ve led growth, transformation, and turnaround across organisations from under £10m to over $5Bn. 

I’ve advised private equity investors and portfolio companies on operations, building robust solutions to complex problems. 

And I bring that same level of focus, clarity, and strategic thinking into my coaching practice.

My sweet spot lies in tech-enabled B2B services - including engineering, data/AI, finance, legal, and consulting. 

Highlights of my work include: 

▪️Steering post-merger integration for a $6Bn PE-backed global professional services firm, resolving operational failures, client complaints, and transformation across 15 countries.
▪️Leading the recovery of a £1bn NHS Trust’s lab project post-dispute, bringing together investors, clinicians, scientists, suppliers, and engineers to co-create a viable solution.
▪️Delivering commercial risk analysis that identified a -70% risk to a target exit valuation for a PE-backed £100m B2B services firm, unlocking a £1Bn exit in under three months.
▪️Repositioning a struggling new BPO offshore (India) proposition for profitable growth, delivering 50% savings to the client in a new £3m contract while also tripling profit margins.
▪️Rolling out a post-merger Sales/Marketing/Finance integration model for a £1Bn global professional services firm across 30 offices in 20 countries, deployed to 4,000+ staff.

All of that senior experience now feeds directly into my career coaching.

Many of my clients are mid-career or post-MBA, and sense a need to reframe their narrative, sharpen their presence, and navigate a system that may not easily understand their value. 

We don’t just talk. We rehearse. We edit. We test. We build influence from the inside out.

Whether you're preparing for interview, pitching for promotion, or making a full pivot, I’ll help you to tailor your story, build trust, and move forward with strategic clarity.

🎯 Diane Blaxland

Fractional CTO • Cofounder of Tech Leaders • Dad👨‍👧Drummer 🥁MTBer 🚲

Most AI advice is noise. After helping hundreds of individuals and organizations navigate AI adoption as a fractional CTO and founding engineer of Digit (acquired by Oportun), I've seen what actually works (and what's just hype).

Your biggest risk in 2026 isn't AI. It's getting distracted by shiny objects while your competitors ship more value to customers, faster. Evolution wired us to fear missing out, but that same instinct makes us chase every new tool instead of building what matters.

We help technical leaders and their teams build custom AI workflows that deliver real ROI, without the fear, uncertainty, and doubt. No complex SaaS. No messy "vibe coding." Just proven playbooks for AI transformation.

Whenever you're ready, here's 3 ways we can help you with AI:

Watch some of our best trainings for free on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/@aitechleaders
​
We've helped 200+ indie consultants, SMBs, and leaders from organizations like Amazon, EPA.gov, Vercel, and LegitScript grow with AI. Book an AI Strategy Session to see if we can help you with a customized AI workshop, training program, or speaking event: https://www.technical-leaders.com/ai-call​
​
We’re about to open up limited spots in our AI SOS™ program. Go here to be notified first: https://www.technical-leaders.com/ai-waitlist

P.S. Send me a direct message, I love hearing about what you’re up to with AI

Todd Larsen

An exec told me last month their team wasn't adopting AI much.

But lots of discussion about "AI Readiness"

So I asked him just one question:

"What have you actually tried?"

No clear answer...

Organizations treat AI adoption like a big infrastructure project.

Months of evaluation. Endless stakeholder alignment. Pilot programs that never launch.

They think they should be optimizing for certainty in a space that rewards speed.

Here's the shift that actually works:

→ Cap your readiness phase at two weeks max

Pick a single workflow. Choose one AI tool. Run it on real work, not a sandbox.

→ Measure learning, not perfection

Your first implementation will be messy. That's the point. You're building muscle memory, not a showcase.

→ Let small wins create momentum

One team I advised started with AI-assisted code reviews. Three weeks later, they expanded to documentation. By month two, AI was embedded in four workflows.

The difference between AI-ready teams and AI-leading teams?

The leading teams stopped talking about readiness after week one.

They started DOING.

Ex-Digit Founding Engineer → Helping Non-Technical Leaders Build AI Workflows Without the Hype • CTO @ AcreHedge

"We're still working on AI Readiness."

...well the team has been in "readiness mode" for four months already. What gives?

Lately I've been seeing a lot of this:

→ Four months of frameworks.

→ Four months of assessments.

→ Four months of planning sessions.

Which leaves you with this:

→ Zero AI implementations.

Meanwhile, a competitor with half the resources launched three AI-powered workflows in the same window.

Here's what most leaders miss:

AI Readiness is step zero.

It should take days, not quarters.

The companies pulling ahead got their hands dirty in week two.

→ They picked one small workflow

→ They tested an AI tool on real work

→ They learned more in 48 hours than months of planning would teach

Every week you spend planning is a week your competitors spend learning.

AI-First thinking doesn't come from readiness workshops.

It comes from practical reps.

In 2025, the Tech Leaders team built 23 custom GPTs over about eight months

And we thought we had cracked the code on AI productivity... but we were wrong

Because then Anthropic dropped Agent Skills.

Within a month, we had migrated everything to Claude and canceled ChatGPT entirely.

Here's why:

Custom GPTs are static. You build them, you use them, they stay frozen in time.

Agent Skills evolve with your work. They connect to your files, remember your context, and actually integrate into how you operate instead of sitting in a separate chat window.

The gap wasn't small. It was the difference between a tool and a system.

I've watched this pattern play out before in tech:

→ On-premise to cloud

→ Monoliths to microservices

→ Now: isolated AI tools to integrated AI workflows

The consultants and founders still optimizing their GPT prompts are solving last year's problem.

The ones building with Skills are creating leverage that compounds.

What's a tool or approach you were certain about six months ago that you've completely abandoned?

Your team is running AI experiments.

But you haven't actually built anything with these tools yourself.

That's the gap that's costing you.

→ You can't evaluate what's realistic vs. overhyped

→ You can't ask the right questions in technical reviews

→ You can't translate capabilities into strategic priorities

The fix isn't complicated. It's just uncomfortable.

Block two hours this week.

Pick one tool your team is already using.

Build something small and real, even if it's rough.

Not to become a practitioner.

To become fluent enough to lead.

The CTOs I work with who made this shift stopped delegating AI strategy entirely.

They started shaping it.

Their teams executed faster because leadership finally understood the constraints and possibilities firsthand.

AI fluency isn't about coding.

It's about closing the gap between what you're approving and what you actually understand.

What would change in your organization if every senior leader spent two hours a week inside the tools?

taplio

The Battle

🎯 Diane Blaxland

Todd Larsen

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The Battle

🎯 Diane Blaxland

Todd Larsen

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Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Todd Larsen's LinkedIn Performance

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