About Les Murray
At the heart of every successful business is a senior team that works with clarity, confidence, and purpose. That’s where Les Murray comes in.
Les is an executive coach, consultant, and leadership team facilitator with over 30 years’ experience helping organisations achieve clarity, momentum, and growth. He partners with CEOs, MDs, and founders to sharpen vision and strategy, streamline operations, and build leadership teams that thrive together.
Les operates at three interconnected levels – organisation, team, and individual – bringing a rare blend of strategic thinking, systems design, and deep human insight to:
- Design strategy and execution as one integrated process
- Build senior teams which love what they do and really work together
- Inspire leaders who elevate, innovate, and lead with purpose
Les applies strategic, restructuring, and business growth skills to deliver results, having partnered with more than 30 clients at FTSE 250 board level over three decades. His track record includes helping multinational and family-owned businesses alike to scale with confidence, strengthen governance, and accelerate growth. He is the creator of two programmes: Strategy for Execution and Implementing with OKRs where he distils best practices from in-depth research and his first hand work experience.
Using expertise forged through years of working as a business consultant and coach, Les brings his unique blend of empathetic yet direct, to-the-point methods to deliver results that hit the mark, every time.
His career spans retail and consumer goods working with Boots, Sainsbury’s, and Marks & Spencer, through to large-scale restructuring projects with FTSE 100 firms such as AstraZeneca, Caterpillar, and Rolls-Royce. Today, his work increasingly focuses on working with leaders of ambitious, fast-growing businesses who are determined to unlock their full potential.
Les is the author of Lighting the Blue Touch Paper (2025), A Handbook for Igniting Energy, Clarity, and Performance in the Senior Leadership Team.
When not working with clients, Les can be found in the Scottish hills, steadily climbing all 282 Munros which is an adventure that mirrors his belief in long-term goals, resilience, and the power of steady progress.
If you’d like to explore how Les can support you or your leadership team, get in touch to start the conversation.
Case Studies
Facilitation
Marketing Services
From Fluffy Strategy to Hard Results
A “growth team” of aspiring leaders had bold ambitions but struggled to turn the firm’s strategy into tangible results. Too often, plans felt aspirational: high on ideas but low on delivery.
Facilitation introduced a simple but disciplined process that sharpened accountability, clarified ownership, and ensured follow-through. Actions were tracked, deadlines held, and progress measured against quality and budget expectations. As confidence in the process grew, so did momentum: meetings shifted from talk to traction, and projects once seen as “fluffy strategy” began landing as concrete outcomes with a re-invigorated value proposition, simpler controls, and savings finally realised.
The team not only made visible progress but also built belief in their ability to deliver growth at pace.
Facilitation
Joint Venture
From Deadlock to Dialogue
A joint venture was paralysed by mistrust between partners, leaving decision-making stuck and progress stalled. Meetings were tense, entrenched positions blocked collaboration, and the venture risked collapse.
Through a series of facilitated sessions, creative problem-solving techniques were introduced that encouraged partners to unfreeze rigid thinking, challenge assumptions, and explore alternatives with curiosity rather than suspicion. Structured exercises helped refresh mindsets, while deliberate space for human connection rebuilt a measure of trust.
As partners engaged with a more open mind, decisions began to flow, creating momentum and restoring confidence in the venture’s ability to move forward together and provide leadership to operations.
Facilitation
Pharmaceutical
Designing a Sales Engine for Growth
A strategic selling workshop shifted the commercial team from chasing deals ad hoc to running a disciplined, scalable sales engine. Using creative problem-solving, they mapped and stress-tested a single end-to-end process for identifying, qualifying, and advancing opportunities.
The team agreed a common client engagement approach, clear reporting, and criteria for prioritising opportunities. Resourcing was aligned so effort matched potential value, ensuring focus on the right deals.
The outcome was a unified sales framework which provided one way of working, a common language, and sharper visibility and accountability leading to stronger conversion rates and an exceptional return on a two-day workshop.
Facilitation
Textiles
Growth Strategy and Road Map
A growth strategy workshop gave a B2B business the reset it needed. The leadership team stepped back to re-examine priorities, gaining renewed focus on the product ranges with the greatest potential. Together, they agreed to sharpen their approach to new product development bringing greater rigour, clearer decision criteria, and faster cycles.
The process produced not just ideas but a practical plan and roadmap for execution, ensuring momentum carried forward beyond the 1-day workshop.
The result was a highly engaged team with renewed confidence, improved collaboration, and tangible improvements in the quality and impact of outcomes that lay strong foundations for sustained growth.
SLT development
Charity
From Alignment to Expansion
A newly formed team needed more than alignment. They needed a strategy that bound them together with shared purpose and clear direction.
Coaching and facilitation helped the senior team focus on building capabilities, designing a roadmap for execution, and shifting attention to the categories with greatest growth potential. The breakthrough came when the team agreed on a bold pivot in category focus, unlocking a new revenue stream so significant that it required the creation of an entirely new division requiring its own dedicated staff.
This case shows how clarity of strategy, disciplined execution, and capability development can transform a team from living in a seemingly endless “forming phase” to become a high-impact growth engine.
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Testimonials
“Les is fantastic and impeccably organised. He is a really wise coach who shares his experience, and points of view, in ways which are extremely helpful to how my business and personal life are developing”
Victoria Sylvester - Managing Director
“Les’s pace, listening skills, clarity of communications, and attention to detail are all impressive and come dressed in high quality dry humour. Les demonstrated high integrity, empathetic style, great insights and gravitas. His work with our team to manage a challenging programme was excellent and exceeded expectations”
Todd Navin - General Manager Finance & Administration
“Les has been a source of wisdom for me as we work our way forward building a new team, restructuring operations, and build for the future. He has an assured manner which combines support and challenge as a good critical friend should. In my 1-2-1s with Les I have been struck by his knowledge and insight, sharp and perceptive questioning, as well as his appetite for holding my feet to the fire!”
Stephen Nickson - Owner & Managing Director
“Les worked with us during a very difficult and challenging time for the dentistry profession. He provided an invaluable sounding board as a strategic advisor “thinking ahead” across a number of different projects.
I value his advice on major decisions. An indispensable member of the team.”
Prof Paul Tipton
“Les gave us a fun filled day and it was only obvious he had worked us hard when we stood back and looked at all the output we had achieved as a team. He got the best from every person in the room with his direct and engaging style that blends sharp wit with very serious subject matter. Absolutely brilliant. An exceptional day”
Nick Taylor - Chief Executive
“A 1-2-1 with Les is the equivalent of an excellent non-executive director who, with an understanding of the business, can “stand back” and give informed, impartial, and very practical advice”
Michael Jefferies - Managing Director
“Les works at pace, professionally, and with minimum fuss to quickly deliver results. He exudes a natural authority and earns respect from those he comes into contact with his sharp mind and warm heart”
Mark Papworth - Group CEO
“Les exhibits a willingness to lead teams on a “new adventure” with good humour, clear thinking, and that all important ingredient – humility. Pure magic”
Lyn Rees - Group CEO
“Les runs a fantastic workshop. Engaging, fun, great stories, practical insights and all delivered in a way which drives engagement and gets the creative juices flowing. Les is the go to guy for making the complex simple, the difficult easy, and putting a smile on people’s faces – exceptional”
Kelvin Coyle - Managing Director
“Our engagement with Les was incredibly fruitful. He engaged with the team, exploring and challenging patterns of work to identify improvement opportunities which we are now implementing that will result in a significantly more effective organisation in future”
Gavin Huxtable - Steam Business Development Director
“The 1-2-1s with Les are very open as well as being very detailed. Les always follows through on each point and goes the extra mile to assist and help. His experience in business and life really resonate with me and have helped me in many areas in business as well as personally”
Dale Heathcote - Managing Director
“The growth workshop with senior management was excellent. Les provided thought provoking challenges with good humour in a well structured day. Highly guaranteed to provide the spark for a breakthrough and fresh thinking“
Anthony Attard - Group CEO
Work Experience
