Biography
Finn Jackson is an interdependent business writer and coach/facilitator/consultant. He specialises in helping business leaders to find simple, lasting solutions to the key issues they face.
Finn was educated at Trinity College Oxford, where he studied physics and learned to row.
After working first in industry and then in strategy consulting, in 1990 Finn took an MBA at Imperial College. He passed with Distinction and was awarded the prizes for marketing and for best all-round performance.
Rather than return to consulting he then joined EDS, the global provider of IT services. Starting as an analyst in pan-European new business development, he was rapidly promoted to serve on the European leadership teams of two of the company’s top three global accounts, where he was responsible for business planning and for process improvement.
Over nine years Finn created lasting strategic change in almost every functional area of the business. From finance and HR, to sales, marketing and operations he aligned practical execution with the strategic needs of the business in more than a dozen countries worldwide. In 1997 he was part of the team that redesigned the organisation structure of the business unit supporting General Motors worldwide. While the consultants moved on to their next assignment, Finn spent the next two years implementing part of the plan across Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America. In his final position he returned to a pan-European focus and helped to turn around a struggling pan-European account, focusing again on business development and enabling the account to beat its sales targets by 65%.
The common theme between all these different assignments is a focus on top to bottom business strategy and operations — converting strategy into action, making operations strategic. Finn has learned how the different components of a business work together to create a successful business system. In 2004 he published his insights as his first book, The Escher Cycle — a book that has been called both “a unified theory of business” and “a blueprint for winning any game your business chooses to play.”
A third reviewer said the book “describes business as a living system”. A living system is one that adapts, evolves, and offers the potential to be sustainable, resilient. Finn is now combining the lessons of The Escher Cycle with the need to address peak oil and climate change plus the principles of permaculture to produce permabusiness — the why, what and how of a way of doing business that is simpler, more profitable and sustainable/resilient.
Finn is the founder of Transition Town Farnham, keeps chickens, and grows much of his own food. He enjoys the great outdoors, playing jazz trumpet, and spending time with his three teenage children.