PEOPLE COUNT / 3

FOUNDED
IN 2001

2001

Demanding better
from day one

Everybody likes to say they’re different.
Newton was created to be different; to demand better for clients.

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The founders

FROM July 2001
Tom WEDGWOOD
KEVIN JONES
ANDY HAWES
2002

Finding our feet
– and laying strong foundations

In our early days, energy was everything. Tenacity and youthful enthusiasm pushed us through the first projects. Today, the lessons we learned cutting our teeth, along with a similar spark and drive that’s present in all our people, underpin everything we do.

“Well, it was clear when we first met you knew nothing about submarines. But you had so much energy and passion that I wanted some of it and we’re still taking advantage of it today.”
DML (now Babcock) on Newton, 2002
2002

Work 1500 days.
Get paid for 500?

Our goal is always to deliver a result. We keep ourselves and each other accountable; and we stick around until we’ve made change happen. On one early project, we quoted for 500 days of work, but in the end spent closer to 1500. We didn’t charge the client any extra; instead, we learnt the lessons, and have always kept this spirit of entrepreneurialism, endeavour and integrity at the heart of what we do.

THEN | NOW
2003
STEVE KNIGHT
Newton’s first graduate
“We’ve gone from one production line in a factory, and a single theatre in a hospital, to huge and incredibly complex nationwide projects – covering everything from defending the nation to improving its health. But what hasn’t changed is the culture: everyone still has the same energy, optimism and desire to make things better.”

Fun, friendship and
high performance

Less than 1% of those who apply to join Newton are successful. Because we’re very particular about the people we hire. Our team is filled with not just the sharpest, but also the nicest people in the industry; the kind who relentlessly pursue brave ideas, and believe everything can be better. And they’re rare.

Every aspect of our business is designed around delivering results for our clients. It’s infectious. So much so, that this mindset transfers to every organisation we work with. Those qualities are so important to us that Tom Wedgwood still leads the induction of each new member of the team; and the principles of ‘fun, friendship and high performance’ continue to shape our culture.

2004
Our first Activity Day
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2008

One team -
from Head Office to the coalface

“In 2008, with the company growing and our people working up and down the country, the three founders recognised that our consultants were best placed in the field delivering value to clients. We needed a team of business specialists who shared in the values of Newton who could focus on helping us grow. We didn’t want the stereotypical glass office in central London; we wanted a place that would enrich the wellbeing of our team, so we chose a setting in rural Oxfordshire.”

James Frost - CFO

XXXXX
2011

Social Impact

Steve Phillips has been leading Health and Social Care since 2011

“Our work across health and social care is founded on a passionate belief that it is possible to improve services for the people that use them, while supporting the systems to meet their budgetary challenges.”

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2014
AWARDS

The only non-NHS winner of an HSJ award that year

2014

The toughest challenges:
our first £100m projects

Our founders would hardly have dreamed it back in 2001, but today, we regularly tackle some of the country’s largest and most complex challenges.

2014

Engineering engagement

There’s no prouder feeling than standing on the deck of one of the nation’s flagship carriers, knowing that you have helped deliver it six months earlier than expected – and saved £100m in doing so.

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2016

Supermarket sweep

400 stores, 100,000+ employees – we helped one of the UK’s largest supermarket chains to unlock around £100m of opportunity, every year.

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I loved working with the internal improvement team to re-think how they delivered those projects for the future. At the end of the year they said, “That was really cool – you guys used lots of data, it was really rigorous, you took the emotion out of our decision-making, and that enabled us to get real results… and you really took the whole organisation on the journey."
The final piece was to take their team on a mini-version of that journey, via a six-week training course. We took them from assessment through design, planning and preparing, implementing and delivering, realising the benefits and sustainability. They were then able to say, “We will approach our future projects in the same way that this project has been approached: by using data to get to root causes, by using facts and taking emotions out of decisions, and by engaging people and taking them along the journey.”

Business Manager

AWARDS

2016 - National Business Awards, Small to Medium Business of the Year

2018

Review Days

From four people sat around a kitchen table to 300 people packing out hotels around the country, the whole company has always gathered in one place every fortnight. This allows us to bring our collective experience and energies to bear on our clients’ current challenges – and to help the business feel like the single, close-knit team we’ve always aimed to be.

THE
FUTURE

Cracking the nation’s
toughest challenges

We’ve set ourselves a ‘1 billion’ challenge: continue to have a positive impact on people's lives, alongside saving a total of £1bn for our clients. That’s ambitious (excitingly so). To do it, we know we need to be facing up against bigger and more complex issues at a national level. Issues like UK productivity, the future of the NHS, and modernising the defence industry.

We’ll never shy away from taking on new challenges, new clients, and new industries – in fact, the bigger the challenge, the better.

1000 people strong. 1 strong culture.

How do you keep growing, without distorting the culture that got you this far? By refusing to settle. Some things will evolve but we’ll never compromise on bringing the brightest and most curious minds into the Newton fold. And we’re utterly committed to preserving our founding principles of fun, friendship, and high performance – and relentlessly, unapologetically demanding better for our clients.

NEWTON FOUNDATION

We’re driven to use our collective intelligence, our capacity for analysis and our warm empathy to solve the toughest problems not just for our clients, but for everybody.

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Leadership board

Andy Hawes

An engineer with half his brain devoted to adding value to every client interaction, and the other half to developing our people. Andy constantly works on Improving our own business - keeping the fun, friendship and high performance, but making the changes that springboard us to do bigger and better things.

Tom Wedgwood

As well as governance, Tom is responsible for our work with clients - what we do and how we do it, from the success of single programmes to our whole methodology and approach.

Tom leads the induction of every new consultant who joins Newton, teaching them the methodology, culture, and values of the business first hand.

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Chairman
Andy Clarke
Deputy Chair
James Frost
Chief People Officer
Kate Mills
Senior Partner
Steve Phillips
Public Sector
Senior Partner
Phil Sunley
Defence
Senior Partner
Steve Wilson
Consumer
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Our commitment to gender diversity

The leadership at Newton want to create the right environment for gender diversity to thrive. To turn our intent into action, we’re making a clear commitment:

of our entire staff will be women
(Currently 38%)
of our leadership will be women by 2023
(Currently 16%)
of our leadership will be women by 2028