Michael James is a specialist in driving business success through cultivating strategy and culture and optimising supply chains. He is focused on achieving clarity and alignment to strategy through strategic advisory, executive leadership coaching and mentoring, culture evolution, and expert guidance for executives and boards.

Since completing his Engineering degree and Master of Business Administration (MBA), he has helped various businesses across several industries such as Mining, Mining Services, Transport, Engineering, Construction, Hospitality, and Professional Services & Consulting clarify strategy and achieve higher performing cultures.

As a long-serving member of the inner sanctum of many executive teams and board rooms, Michael James understands the need for a trusted, independent perspective to achieve success. He provides dependable integrity with an experienced, pragmatic and practical voice.

His professional involvement has given him a unique perspective of how a thriving corporate and SME works. He understands the mechanics of a business, the people who make it work, and the tools required to foster healthy growth and successful performance.

Using carefully researched data and planning, Michael James identifies and delivers precise, clear roadmaps to positive goal realisation and evolutionary development on both personal and corporate levels. He ensures clear, identifiable objectives and key result areas so you can be confident that his impact has a lasting, measurable effect in business. 

01.

NED Board Chair INFINITUM PARTNERS

(Appointed 2022), contemporary, innovative, town planning and advisory firm, regional & SE QLD.

02.

Advisor to RACV Leisure Group

(Appointed 2019), member based, national hospitality business.

03.

Advisory Board Chair to Firerite Services

(Appointed 2023), fire protection installations, products & services advisory firm to the construction industry.

04.

Advisory Board Chair to Turner Piling Systems

(Appointed 2023), specialists in design, fabrication, & installation of screw piling systems for construction industry, NSW & QLD.

05.

Advisory Board Chair to POWE Architects

(Appointed 2014), architectural advisory and project management organisation.

06.

Advisory Board Chair to O2 Landscape Architects

(Appointed 2019), contemporary, innovative landscape architect firm, regional & SE QLD.

07.

Advisor to a Lithium Mining Company

(Appointed 2022), emerging lithium miner in WA.

08.

Board Director, Private Investment Fund

(Appointed 2023), investor in unlisted, SME growth businesses throughout Australia & New Zealand.

  • Board Advisor, NATIONWIDE (2019 – 2022), national towing & transport organisation.
  • Board Director, Tennis QLD (2016 – 2022), member-based sporting organisation.
  • Non-Executive Chair, GEOIMAGE (2015-2019), geospatial consulting & satellite imagery organisation.
  • Non-Executive Chair, JENSEN BOWERS (2010-2019), property advisory, surveying and town planning organisation.
  • Non-Executive Chair, GREEN GROUP (2016 – 2018), Property Investment and Management group, regional shopping centres and retirement villages.
  • Advisory Board Chair, Corporate Body Systems (2014 – 2016), property body corporate organisation.
  •  Board Advisor, BADGE Constructions (2010 – 2016), commercial & industrial design & construction, national organisation.
  • Corporate Advisor to AGPAL and QIP (2012 – 2015), national health services accreditation organisation.
  • Non-Executive Chair, CORE Architects (2009 – 2011), architecture organisation.
  • Corporate Advisor to PLACE Design Group (2008 – 2011), urban development, design & planning organisation.
  • CEO of Napier & Blakeley – national professional services firm, quantity surveyors & tax depreciation specialists.
  • Senior Executive Cardno (ASX listed): 2007 – 2008.
  • Senior Executive QR (QLD Rail – GOC): 2001 – 2004.
  • Senior Executive Orica (ASX listed): 1996 – 2000.

Evolve is specifically focused on delivering small to medium businesses coaching and mentoring advice.

It was founded in 2004 by Michael James, with established alliances with several other complimentary firms, to help small to medium businesses to corporatise and reach new heights by achieving clarity, purpose, and effecting real behavioural change in executives and business owners.

It was founded on the belief that sudden transformation is not the way to make lasting change in a business: although it can deliver change quickly, Michael’s experience is that the results are not lasting. That is why your business cannot just transform overnight. It needs to grow, mature, and evolve into its next stage.

Since its inception, Evolve has enabled various business owners of small to medium businesses to commercialise their business and create exit strategies for themselves to go onto to realising their ambitions.

To us, evolution means change that is constant and permanent, rather than quick and temporary. It is strategic, it’s time-consuming, and it takes hard work, but it also delivers lasting results that can revolutionise the way SME businesses operate.

Evolve HAS WORKED ALONGSIDE

This is coaching within a group workshop environment where participants learn from each other and critical peer conversations are conducted. It is often complimented with individual coaching to accelerate how participants can further improve the way they work with their peers.

Team based coaching focuses on building higher levels of trust amongst team members, mastering dissent and having difficult conversations, and committing to a joint vision and strategy, clear accountability and shared ownership, and attention to joint results.

Group workshops are highly engaging, designed to build on the experience of participants and what’s required in an organisational strategy.

A thorough diagnostic assessment can often uncover what is enabling and what is hindering performance of both individual leaders and leadership teams.

Various tools are used to assess the current and desired behaviours of individuals and leadership teams as well as the context in which these leaders are performing. Our experienced consultants use the following to provide unique insights to assess leadership and cultural gaps in addition to interviews and observations of regular team meetings:

  • Leadership Circle ProfileTM
  • Collective Leadership AssessmentTM
  • Clifton Strengths Finder
  • DISC profiling
  • Lifestyles inventory
  • Leadership Impact
  • Organisational Culture Inventory
  • Organisational Effectiveness Inventory

Our leadership and cultural assessments enable us to provide a highly effective, tailored leadership development programs for individual leaders and leadership teams.

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