Knowledge Base
Sharpen the axe first: view on mobilisation from infrastructure leaders
By Stuart Maister, Joint MD Mutual Value Ltd “Give me six hours to chop down the tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” Abraham Lincoln. So you’ve got the green light for that major infrastructure project. It’s probably taken years to develop,...
Mobilisation: how to get major projects right, right from the start
An interview with Jeremy Beeton, who previously led the London 2012 Government Olympic Executive and multiple major projects around the world. “90% of the project’s cost is committed in the first 10% of the programme, and so if it’s not set up properly, and we...
Can the infrastructure sector really change to make Project 13 work in practice? An interview with Martin Perks of Highways England
Stuart Maister, Joint MD, Mutual Value Martin Perks is highly passionate about Highways England’s £9bn Regional Delivery Partnership (RDP) framework. His energy comes from excitement at the potential to transform highways...
The hidden cost of redundancy – lost relationships
Lost Relationship Capital: The real impact of making large scale redundancies. Corporate restructuring has been a long-standing business practice. Simply, it drives short term cost reduction to meet quarterly or annual financial goals that are dictated by...
Is this the moment we change the way we do infrastructure in the UK?
By Stuart Maister & Kevin Vaughan-Smith, Mutual Value “We’ve lied to ourselves. We fooled ourselves by having a sense of certainty about the future to create analyses…Actually the future is very much more uncertain than we really think it is.” Is this some radical...
Leadership in the New Normal. A web seminar.
Leadership is a role not a right. One of the key ideas which helped frame our 45 minute discussion that pulled together some of the big themes from this series of web seminars. So how do you best live that role - and of course, what has changed with COVID? We were...

How often have you heard from Clients that you were brilliant, but in a close fought contest you just came second and you lost on price?
In this video Kevin explores the reality behind Clients selection criteria, and why this should make us think differently about how we choose to behave.
They are buying my expertise aren’t they? In a world where technical ability and expertise can be found so easily on the web and from software, the thing that will be most valuable to a Client is our ability to build broad understanding of their business and the value they are trying to create. Our focus has to switch to building these kind of relationships.
Transformation is the wrong word to use to drive change. We believe the focus should be on PEP – Permanent Evolution at Pace. Here’s 2 minutes on why that’s the case and how it impacts commercial relationships.
Many Clients have a budget, but this may or may not be rooted in a well articulated business case. In this video Kevin talks about the Mutual Value approach to discussing the topic with a Client. By both parties understanding the business case they have clarity about how they can contribute to it, or indeed whether they agree with it.
Do we know what the Client actually means when they say what they want?
This briefing looks at how to be really inquisitive in such situations. Kevin provides a brilliant and simple way to get to the truth, and help the Client consider more carefully what they really want, while ensuring both sides share the same definition of what this actually means.
We bid to achieve a certain margin – why are we so often disappointed by what we achieve?
Kevin explores how operating within a transactional world, but wanting to do great work and please Clients, can often lead to us delivering lower margins than we should, and we deserve, and points to an alternative approach.
Traditional sales techniques don’t work in a modern world – perhaps its time to move on.
In this video Kevin talks about how the old paradigm is dying. People will no longer put up with being sold at and demand much more from their long term suppliers. Ultimately they wish to move to a relationship build on trust and Mutual Value.

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