Vaughan Evans

VAUGHAN EVANS is an independent strategy consultant, prolific writer and dynamic speaker (www.vaughanevansandpartners.com). He has specialised in strategy and business planning for business clients, small and large, and strategic due diligence for private equity clients, over four decades.

He is the author of the best-selling THE FINANCIAL TIMES ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO WRITING A BUSINESS PLAN: HOW TO WIN BACKING TO START UP OR GROW YOUR BUSINESS (FT Publishing, 3rd edition, 2022), a book that views business planning distinctively from the perspective of the backer. It guides the entrepreneur or manager on how to address each of the key concerns of the backer, whether banker, investor or board member. Its North American version, THE STANDOUT BUSINESS PLAN: MAKE IT IRRESISTIBLE - AND GET THE FUNDS YOU NEED FOR YOUR STARTUP OR GROWING BUSINESS (AMACOM, 2014), was co-authored with success guru Brian Tracy.

THE FINANCIAL TIMES ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO DEVELOPING A BUSINESS STRATEGY: HOW TO USE STRATEGIC PLANNING TO START UP OR GROW YOUR BUSINESS (FT Publishing, 2013) is a companion to the above guide on business planning. It has been exceptionally well reviewed by peers, who view it as a succinct, practical and highly readable guide to drawing up a business strategy - ideal for busy managers and entrepreneurs, intent on lifting their business to the next level.

STRATEGY PLAIN AND SIMPLE: 3 STEPS TO BUILDING A SUCCESSFUL STRATEGY FOR YOUR STARTUP OR GROWING BUSINESS (FT Publishing, 2018) cuts to the quick of strategy. In just 120 pages, with vivid examples, practical solutions and a jargon-free approach, he guides the reader plainly and simply towards creating a successful business strategy. "Entrepreneurs lack one precious commodity: time. This book - short, sharp, clear, lively, engaging - breaks that deadlock."

KEY STRATEGY TOOLS: 88 TOOLS FOR EVERY MANAGER TO BUILD A WINNING STRATEGY (Pearson, 2nd edition, 2020) is weightier. Its selection of strategy tools, rated as either useful or essential and slotted uniquely into a no-nonsense strategy development process, is innovative, instructive and practically applicable. The 1st edition was one of the top three selling business books in the UK in the first quarter of 2013. This 2nd edition brings it up to date with the inclusion of leading contemporary strategy thinkers such as Martin, Markides and McGrath to join established strategists such as Porter, Hamel & Prahalad and Kim & Mauborgne.

A more succinct version of this book, 25 NEED-TO-KNOW STRATEGY TOOLS (Pearson, 2014), pulls out the 25 most important tools and attaches an insightful case study to each.

LET THE SUN SHINE! HOW STRATEGIC DUE DILIGENCE IS KEY TO ACQUISITION SUCCESS (2015), could well have been Vaughan's first book - he has been highly active in this field since the terms LBOs, MBOs and MBIs first materialised in the mid-1980s. This book "pours sunlight onto the complex challenges of getting strategic due diligence right".

KISSTRATEGY: A KEEP-IT-SIMPLE GUIDE ON HOW TO BUILD A WINNING STRATEGY FOR YOUR STARTUP OR SMALL BUSINESS (2016), is short, punchy and unashamedly for the small businessperson. Readable on a one-hour plane or train journey, it shows how, with some simple analysis, you can take your small business to the next level. "At last, a book on strategy I can read!", opined one small businessperson.

He has also written on career development, on how thinking of yourself as a one-person business can advance or transform your career. He deploys the very tools he has developed in business strategy for the analysis of an individual's career prospects. Hence his BACKING U! range of books (Business & Careers Press), regarded by peers as innovative, insightful and win-win.

Vaughan Evans is a charismatic, humorous and inspirational speaker (see www.vaughanevansandpartners.com/speaking). His lively keynote speech KISSTRATEGY urges the audience to keep strategy simple, focusing on its three key components of Market, Advantage and Risk. He is the author of the instructive yet highly entertaining STAND, SPEAK, DELIVER! HOW TO SURVIVE - AND THRIVE- IN PUBLIC SPEAKING AND PRESENTING (Little Brown, 2015).

Finally, Vaughan is a keen amateur actor, with roles ranging from Tuppy in Lady Windermere's Fan, General Haig in Oh! What a Lovely War, Judge Balance in The Recruiting Officer and the Rev. Eli Jenkins in Under Milk Wood to Caiaphas in Jesus Christ Superstar. He has recently taken to playwriting and took his first play, INTEGRITY, up to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2018, later producing it at the OSO Theatre in Barnes, southwest London. INTEGRATION and FU, EU! came next and the three plays were published as INTERESTING TIMES: A TRILOGY OF PLAYS ON THE 2010s (Krimson Kestrel Press, 2020).

An economics graduate of the University of Cambridge and an Alfred P. Sloan fellow with distinction of London Business School, he worked for many years at management consultants Arthur D. Little and investment bankers Bankers Trust. A former resident of exotic lands such as the British Virgin Islands, Borneo, Fiji, Java and Thailand, he hails from West Wales and lives alongside Richmond Park in southwest London.