Mark Arnold, our founder, had worked for over 20 years in marketing, line management and education. The inspiration behind Big Difference Consulting was his experience of leading a large aid agency in Pakistan’s North West Frontier. Working with Afghan refugees and war-ravaged people in Afghanistan, Mark’s mission was to develop Afghan leaders to take control of a wide range of medical, vocational training, agricultural and small business programmes.

 Mark found that by encouraging people to take responsibility and providing the support they needed, something amazing happened – the leadership team became a high performance engine. People used their initiative and grew in confidence and creativity. Projects blossomed and the results produced were celebrated by all the stakeholders.

 On his return to the UK, Mark found that he was able to apply the principles proved so successfully in Pakistan and Afghanistan to developing people in a wide range of public and private sector organisations. Over the next few years, he carefully built a team of like-minded people to work with him under the Big Difference Consulting banner.

Although Big Difference Consulting now works in a wide variety of settings, both in the UK and abroad, we hold to the same core principles of:

• encouraging people to take responsibility, and
• providing the support they need.
  

This may not sound particularly clever but people who come to us – including organisations like CCLRC, Balfour Beatty, Wales Millennium Centre, MHS Homes Group, Southern Railway and the BBC – find that this approach consistently produces outstanding results for their management and teams – and that’s why they come back for more.