Reclaim Perspective
Inside complex and fast-moving organisations, it is dangerously easy for talented professionals to lose their autonomy, burn out, or hit a creative plateau. We redefine professional growth as a radical, practical act: giving leaders and teams the tools to regulate operational noise, cultivate deep structural resilience, and actively imagine radical future career possibilities.
We don’t train people to adapt to broken systems. We give them the agency to navigate them and change them. My interventions are not about doing more with less, but doing less to achieve more through focus, prioritisation, and purpose. Drawing on 20 years of experience navigating the complex machinery of higher education as a professor, research leader and senior manager, I provide the psychological and strategic toolkit required to protect your cognitive capacity, beat institutional cynicism, and reclaim your professional path.
The Foundry
A future leaders programmes to cultivate imagination and collective agency to design new futures.
This intensive programme supports future leaders to step back from day-to-day responsibilities and cultivate creative problem-solving as a core leadership capability. Here we treat uncertainty and constraints not as a threat, but as the raw material for innovation.
Who it’s for: Emerging leaders, middle management, and high-potential staff.
The Focus: Moving beyond defensive, survival-mode management, we give your rising leaders the frameworks to co-design collective agency, engage with futures thinking, build adaptive confidence, and lead through organisational ambiguity.
The Outcome: A new tier of management equipped to handle complex systemic challenges with radical imagination, reducing operational drag and re-energising team cultures.
The Kiln
Re-imagining collaboration through shared purpose, connection, and tactile play.
An interactive and experiential workshop that utilises imaginative approaches to help teams move from isolated working to shared connection and collaborative energy.
Who it’s for: Large organisations, multi-agency partnerships, and interdisciplinary and cross-sector teams needing to build deep trust, shared purpose, or complex systems.
The Tactile Method: We banish standard slide decks and work across a curated, physical toolkit to map relational friction and discover hidden “golden threads” across their work.
The Outcome: Teams move from extractive project checklists to relational maps. They learn to translate technical expertise into a shared language external partners trust.
Salt & Steel
Reclaim your personal agency and map your next direction.
Inspired by the industrial grit of Stoke-on-Trent’s bottle kilns and the weathered toughness of the Teesside steel coast, Salt & Steel is our premium, deep-dive development experience. This is a dedicated space for established professionals who are ready to radically redefine their relationship with their career.
Who it’s for: Senior researchers, public sector directors, directors, and mid-career renegades who feel trapped by institutional inertia.
The Focus: Imagining future career possibilities. Whether you want to climb to the next tier of leadership with your sanity completely intact, or build a bulletproof exit strategy to step into consultancy and industry.
The Outcome: Total clarity on your next professional pivot, a renewed sense of personal power, and a concrete strategic roadmap for your career’s next chapter.
The Leadership Residency
Protecting capacity requires supportive structures. Through a sustained residency, I act as a critical friend to your emerging leaders or leadership teams. We create a permanent, protected space to continuously defuse operational noise, foster radical imagination, and build deeply resilient leadership cultures.
About One Little Spark Training and Consultancy
With two decades of experience of research and leadership, I understand the complex architecture of large organisations. I’ve partnered with universities and public bodies across the UK (including University of Hull, Teesside University, and the NCCPE) to deliver imaginative interventions that cut through the red tape and drive real alignment.
Ready to restore purpose to your leadership or your team?
Let’s talk about building an intervention that unlocks true creative agency and protects your team’s capacity to innovate.
