Spreadsheets, Mayhem, and a Plan
The Problem We Couldn't Ignore
We didn't stumble into this. We didn't wake up one morning and decide to become consultants. And we certainly didn't set out to add to the noise of transformation theatre that's already cluttering up LinkedIn.
No, we meant to build Yopla. Not to chase strategy gigs or offer advice from the sidelines, but to solve something that was driving us all quietly mad.
Between us, we'd led global operations, scaled companies, rebuilt broken systems, and even worked at the edges of elite sport. Across pharmaceuticals, cybersecurity, finance, logistics, contact centres, and translation services, we kept bumping into the same maddening pattern: brilliant teams, trapped in chaos.
The symptoms were always the same. Knowledge scattered across folders, spreadsheets, and someone's memory. Tools that promised the world but delivered confusion. Plans that looked impressive in PowerPoint but fell apart the moment someone tried to actually do them. People spending more time fighting their systems than serving their customers.
So we stopped and asked the question that would change everything: what's really going wrong here?
The Great Tool Obsession
Here's the thing that baffles us: no one walks into a bakery and interrogates the oven specifications. No one shops for a jacket and demands to know which brand of sewing machine was used. But in business? It's all about the kit.
CRM this. Platform that. Endless product demos where everyone nods sagely at features they'll never use. We're constantly told that the tool is the solution. But here's what we learned from years of watching transformations fizzle out: tools don't make the magic. People do.
And the gap between buying a good tool and actually using it well? That's where £millions disappear into the digital equivalent of expensive gym memberships - paid for with enthusiasm, abandoned with embarrassment.
The real kicker is that everyone knows this. Deep down, we all understand that buying software doesn't automatically make you more efficient, just like buying running shoes doesn't make you Mo Farah. But somehow, when it comes to business transformation, we keep falling for the same trick.
So we flipped it. We started with the human layer - the habits, the rituals, the real shape of how work actually gets done. Then we built the technology around that.
What We Built Instead
We took everything we'd learned from the trenches and made it practical. The messy questions became our starting point:
- How do you really work? (Not how the org chart says you should)
- Where exactly are you getting stuck? (And why does it happen every Tuesday?)
- What's getting in your way that you've stopped noticing?
- Who actually makes the decisions around here?
From there, we built our method. We call it the Eight-Step Roadmap, and at its heart is something we're rather proud of: the Digital MOT.
Just like your car's MOT, it's a proper diagnostic - but instead of checking your brake pads, we're examining 110 points across your systems, confidence, clarity, culture, and credibility. It's not a quick survey that tells you what you already know. It's a proper look under the bonnet.
Next comes Mapping - and this is where things get interesting. We expose the shadow hierarchies, the undocumented workarounds, and all the real-but-unwritten parts of how your organisation actually functions. The stuff that would never appear in a consultant's slide deck but absolutely determines whether change will stick or slide off.
Then there's Forecasting - measuring everything from behaviours and skills to (yes, really) team typing speeds. Because understanding where change will stick and where it'll bounce off isn't guesswork. It's data.
Only then do we get to strategy and tools. Because, as we've learned the hard way, a hammer's useless if no one knows what they're building.
And once we know what's needed? We write real plans. Proper plans. With task lists, dashboards, prompts, and follow-through. Not transformation theatre - transformation you can actually do, with your existing team, starting Monday morning.
