Denis Cummings


I began my working life with Barclays Bank in Northumberland, and then in Pall Mall District in the late sixties, responsible for all accounting staff in their Brook Street Branch. I was closely involved in the computerisation of branch banking as well as the decimalisation project, and was seconded several times to Barclays Staff Training Centre in London as a lecturer in banking practice & procedures. I am now old enough to remember with fondness: hand-written ledgers, pre-decimal coinage and Saturday banking. My second career was in publishing, as Head of Development with Reed Business Publishing, now part of Reed Elsevier.

During my time with Reed, I was responsible for the strategic development and progression of around 3,500 staff, and I also chaired the joint management/ union committee for job evaluation with HAY/MSL.

I joined Coverdale as a consultant in 1988 and since then have worked with most Industry Sectors as well as with Universities & learned societies , and with NGOs world-wide. In Coverdale I have contributed through several roles, and am currently a principal consultant having acted earlier as Board Director with responsibilities for Business Development.

My overarching interests are the successful implementation of change at individual, team and organisational levels. My particular interests and skills lie in the areas of board work, project management and organisational change. I am particularly energised around the achievement of tangible results.

I am currently a non-executive director of Kent Messenger Group.

Some recent assignments
  • Working with the Chairman and the CEO of a large privately owned Newspaper & Media Group to re-define their roles, and to prepare their Associate Directors for transition to a main board role.
  • Working with the Brand Building team of Diageo in developing and rolling out a series of brand building events for over 8,000 Brand Marketeers & Managers world-wide.
  • Working with the board of an international publishing company in defining and clarifying their board working values; subsequently building and sharing this work with their top 150 managers.
  • Leading a major project for an International Hotel Group that was aimed at raising the level of their project management competence across the company internationally.
  • As a core team member working to develop the in-house capability which will shape the company culture, values and methods of working together for a large start-up, Chinese/European Joint Venture petrochemical plant in Guangdong Province, China. This is currently the largest joint venture operation in China, representing over 3.4 billion $US
  • Helping a start-up publishing company in the Internet and associated Sectors to define, agree and live a set of core values
  • Working with the Chairman of a learned society in Biochemistry to re-think their governance and structure, and to join their panel selection of a new CEO.
  • Working in India on a series of DIFD funded watershed management and agricultural extension projects, and building a cadre of Coverdale coaches from their academic staff.
  • Support consultant within a word-wide culture change and leadership programme for the Inchcape Group.
  • Designed and ran a communications workshop for the global finance team of a major drinks company.
  • Directed, coached and helped design a series of business critical leadership programmes in Germany for the leadership team of one of the world's largest car manufacturers specialising in luxury cars, commercial vehicle and truck manufacturing (US $142.1 billion turnover world-wide)
  • Working with the Board of Mercedes Benz High Performance Engines (Formula One) regarding the focus and alignment of their 1st line managers with their business strategy.
Interests
Passions in my life are my wife and our two children, music - mainly jazz and classical, enjoying the Sussex landscape, the company of good friends, good food and wine, getting fit and literature. 		Denis Cummings
Denis Cummings
Coverdale UK