I kicked off my career as a junior consultant in Price Waterhouse in 1997. During later years I have been employed as an outsourced expert by a number of professional services firms: East West Consulting, ECORYS, Ernst & Young, IBF, KPMG, Nomisma SpA, ROI International, SAFEGE and SIPU International. Therefore I have good overview of consulting approaches and quality control measures used by different international advisory firms.
My consulting assistance has been requested in the following instances:
- Need for practical experience – having been a practicing executive in multinational environment – I have crunched the daily questions on creating new strategies, on managing people in cross-cultural contexts, or on handling difficult turnaround situations;
- Need for theoretical knowledge – experience from doctoral seminars of top universities (St.Gallen, INSEAD, IESE) has given me confidence in using theory-based approach. I have the experience in using tools and methods for data collection and analysis or crunching through piles of research articles for background information – which might be necessary for situations where in-depth studies are required;
- Need for outside view – sometimes managers simply need a view of a coach – to have somebody to discuss the thoughts and seek for second opinion.
Strategy Consulting experience
I have helped some regional firms to establish their strategy. Some of my latest large references include:
- Full strategic management training programme to ca 70 middle managers of Swedbank Baltics (2008-2009)
- Strategy and business modelling consulting to Estonian Telecom (2008-10)
- Facilitation of management strategy discussions at Tele2 – www.tele2.com (2007-08).
Governmental experience
Due to radical change that was carried out during years of transition in Estonian public sector I was headhunted to establish governmental agency that managed annual budget of 60-80 million EUR. During 1998-2001 I was Director of the Phare Central Finance and Contracting Unit where 6 individuals were reporting directly to me, but via various projects across the whole range of governmental agencies we employed more than 140 technical assistance consultants to achieve successful changes in reforming the entire public sector of the country.
As my experience was considered valuable by other countries in Eastern Europe then I have been subsequently invited to either provide strategic advice or to directly manage several international consultancy projects in Latvia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo and Romania.
- One of the most interesting projects from that period was assisting the Croatian Government in 2004-05 to come up with generic strategy for European Union accession and assistance management. To achieve this I lead a team of 12 international experts and we worked in close co-operation with more than 30 Croatian Ministries and Governmental Agencies for 8 months.
- In 2011-12 in Kosovo I was the 4th consecutive Team Leader in 2,95 Mio EUR project that was seriously behind schedule. I led a team of 9 long-term, 15 short-term experts (1676 of total 3854 working days) and 2 local back-office staff and ensured timely delivery of their inputs with only minor outputs outstanding.
