About Charlie Helps Associates

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About UsCharlie Helps FRSA

The endless procession of corporate disasters, value-destruction, and floundering business models is inescapable in global news headlines. Worryingly, many if not most corporations that are in challenging times, have “good” governance track records and ‘GRC’ ratings. No amount of reported compliance with governance codes or the endless espousing (and reporting) of sustainable, equitable, ethical values will prevent these disasters and travesties.

What we find repeatedly is that despite “great” governance, risk, and compliance, what clients need most is professional support in a combination of leadership, corporate behaviour [governance], decision-making, culture, value-creation, and long-term sustainability. This did not surprise us as we have developed and perfected a powerful set of solutions and services to help our clients address these fundamentals.

So how and why are corporations and other structured organisations finding their plotted courses practically impossible to steer?

We shed some light on this question and other hot topics in the Charlie Helps FRSA blog.

Charlie Helps FRSA

Charlie Helps FRSA

Founder and Principal Consultant

Charlie is an internationally recognised authority and commentator on corporate leadership and governance. He is a consultant, coach, and adviser to boards, directors, C-Suites, teams, and individual clients.

With Professor Judge Mervyn King SC, and members of the Fulcrum Group

With Professor Judge Mervyn King SC, author of the KING Codes of Governance (KING I, II, III, and IV) with other members of the Fulcrum Group Thinktank.

Charlie’s clients come from across sectors and industries, spanning private and public sector, healthcare, local and regional government, Academia, private and family business, charities, and others such as the construction industry.

In a recent article titled “Corporate Governance in Troubled Waters,” Charlie explored the fact that with corporate failures prominent in the headlines, the words “corporate governance” have entered the mainstream media, and that the expression “failure of corporate governance” has become commonplace. The names of culprit companies, chairs, and CEOs have become all too familiar. He suggests that traditional, mechanistic, and compliance-based approaches to corporate governance have left many in troubled waters; that trust in corporations has been eroded and company performance has suffered.

Charlie and his associates believe that governance begins with people, their choices, their decisions, actions, and values. He goes on to explain that systems and processes of corporate governance alone do not ensure the creation of value, or the preservation of precious resources or any other form of sustainability. In their current form, they are inadequate as a means of regulating the corporate, public, and third sectors.

Charlie’s executive coaching practice focuses on tangible ways in which business leaders and consumers alike can lead the way towards a more sustainable, equitable future, particularly through people-oriented governance in the Boardroom.

Charlie’s clients rely on him interchangeably as consultant, adviser, critical friend, or coach, depending on their own needs and preferences.

Clients quickly discover that Charlie has a highly-developed ability to understand them, their needs, and circumstances, and to translate that understanding into effective strategies for enhanced performance.

Charlie uses a unique combination of Gallup’s Clifton Strengths Coaching with Nancy Kline’s Time to Think™ methodology (the Thinking Environment™). This rare combination gives clients deep insights into their own talents, and allows them to think clearly and freely about how best to turn these talents into powerful personal strengths.

Charlie Helps FRSA, GALLUP Certified Strengths Coach

Charlie Helps FRSA, GALLUP Certified Strengths Coach

This allows his clients to accelerate the achievement of their aims, objectives, personal and corporate performance, quality, and value by maximising their strengths, leadership, and personal mastery.

In addition to his own coaching and consultancy business, Charlie is an original member of the Finegreen Group Board Capability Division, a member of the Tutu Foundation Health Advisory Board, and he recently completed a stay as PhD tutor for the Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) course at the University of Northampton Business School.

His voluntary and pro bono work includes acting as a member of the Advisory Council of Women in Marketing, a charity established to further the career and life aspirations of women and minority groups in the marketing industry, and serving on the Advisory Board of the UK Social Value Portal.

Charlie is a founding member of the Cambridgeshire Innovation Trust. This newly forming trust of schools in Cambridgeshire which aims to work collaboratively, recognising the unique talents and skills of schools, to secure successful educational actions which improve outcomes and opportunities for young people in Cambridgeshire.

Foundations of Good Governance: A Compendium of Best Practice

Charlie Helps: Co-author Published by NHS Providers, October 2015

A widely adopted compendium of governance best practice. The compendium is intended to provide good and best practice examples of a wide range of documents needed to provide an infrastructure for good governance. It also includes guidance and advice on a range of governance issues.

Core Values for 21st Century Business Success

Charlie Helps: Guest Author The Corporate Report Vol 5, Issue 3, Juta, RSA, December 2015

This article, commissioned for The Corporate Report by Professor Judge Mervyn E King, SC, speaks about the threats to business survival in the 21st Century, not only from the megatrends we are all familiar with, but also from the unsustainable business models still being perpetuated by big and small corporations globally.

Social Value and Intangibles Review

Charlie Helps: Managing Editor Published by the Centre for Citizenship, Enterprise, and Governance – University of Northampton, April 5, 2016 100 pages in multiple languages ISSN 2398-3957 Click the icon to read the journal online.

Guardians of Governance

Charlie Helps: Panel Member Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators – ICSA, September 1, 2014

The role of the company secretary is being refocused, recalibrated and it is gaining greater prominence. At a roundtable hosted by Governance + Compliance magazine in July, seven of the UK’s foremost governance professionals met to discuss the pivotal role of the company secretary.

NHS: Mervyn King on the Challenges Faced by NHS Boards

Charlie Helps: Author The Governance Advisory Practice – DAC Beachcroft LLP, August 5, 2014.

We highly recommend this video to anybody interested in governance, quality and risk in the NHS. Judge Mervyn King, a long-time friend of the late Nelson Mandela, speaks with deep commitment about the responsibilities of directors in the NHS, and the courage required to take difficult decisions in times of budgetary constraint.

Social Value in Birmingham 2014

Charlie Helps: Co-author The Birmingham Social Value Hub, September 1, 2014

In the past 6 years there has been a seismic shift in the social innovation industry stemming from the financial crisis of 2008. Before the crisis things were best described as adequate with the Private Sector enjoying a burgeoning period with company stock market listings at an all-time high.

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