Lightning Oak
Services
Whichever service a client starts with, James has seen the decision it supports from more than one seat. He is a Chartered Internal Auditor and a Fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, has led internal audit teams in global banking, and sits on boards as a chair and non-executive director.
An engagement can start anywhere. The work takes its shape from the need, and when the need changes, the next piece builds on what is already known instead of starting again.
He describes his approach as triangulating a problem from every side. For a client, that means advice with fewer blind spots, and a view of what an audit committee, an investor or a board will ask before they ask it. A founder raising investment or building a first board hears those questions early enough to have the answers ready.
Overview
What each service covers
People come to James with different needs. For an audit committee chair, it may be someone to lead internal audit, and for an investor or founder, an outside view of a business on either side of a deal. For a board, it may be a new chair or non-executive director, and for a leader, someone to test a decision with.
Risk, Governance and Internal Audit
Audit committee chairs find a fractional or interim head of internal audit, and heads of audit a senior advisor. For executives, James can review, build or lead risk and governance.
Due Diligence (Pre-Investment and Post-Deal)
Investors get a clear view of how a business is led, run and controlled, before and after a deal. A company looking to be backed can see itself through their eyes first.
Non-Executive Director and Board Chair
Boards, funds and families, and the search firms who advise them, find an independent non-executive director or chair with audit and risk committee experience.
Board Advisory
Boards and senior leaders bring James in to review how well they work. Chairs, founders, chief executives and leaders new to a senior role come to him for advice, mentoring and coaching.
Introductions
For advisors and their clients
Lawyers, accountants and corporate finance advisors can introduce James knowing that the client relationship stays with them. He adds a piece of work that sits beside theirs, and keeps them in the loop while he does it.
Working with the deal team
On a transaction he works next to the financial, legal and other advisors. He takes on the governance and controls work, and keeps to the deal timetable.
Board seats for your clients
Where a client needs an independent non-executive director or chair, their advisor can introduce James directly, and he will say honestly whether the seat is the right fit.
Specialists he brings in
Some work needs a specialist alongside James. Where the client already has an advisor for that part of the work, James works with them. Where the client has none, he says so when the work is scoped and brings in someone he has worked with, on their own terms and their own engagement.
Approach
Why the services sit together
Each service draws on the others. In diligence, James looks ahead to what the new board will need to see, and in audit work he starts from knowing what a committee does with a report. When he advises a leader, he does it as a sitting chair.
Over time, one piece of work can lead to another, and each stands on its own. Where a review finds a gap, the client decides who closes it, and if James does that work, at least a year passes before he reviews it. Each new piece is agreed on its own terms, starting from what the organisation needs next. James scopes each piece of work himself and leads it from start to finish.
Conflicts
Independence
“Independence is handled at scoping in order to proactively manage conflicts of interest.”
James Walker, Founder, Lightning Oak
From the first conversation, you know where James stands. At any one organisation, he keeps his audit work apart from anything he has built or run there. Where advice or diligence leads to a board seat, he tells that board about the earlier work before it agrees to the appointment. James is paid only by the client who engages him. He has no financial interest in the businesses he reviews.
Terms
How each piece of work is agreed
Every piece of work starts with a written scope and a fee agreed in advance, whether it is a single review or an interim role leading internal audit. For an interim or fractional head of internal audit, the audit committee approves the appointment, the scope and the fee, whoever signs the contract. For other work, whoever commissions it, whether a board, a head of internal audit, a finance director, a fund or a family, can see what they are approving before James starts.
A scope everyone can see
Each scope sets out what the work covers and what it deliberately leaves out, who James reports to, and what the organisation will have at the end. How much time the work takes is agreed with the scope.
A fee basis that fits
Fees are agreed on the basis that suits the work, whether that is a fixed fee, a day rate or a salaried interim arrangement. The first conversation carries no fee and no obligation.
Who the contract is with
Board seats are personal appointments; all other work is contracted with Lightning Oak Limited.
Work out where to start with James
If you sit on a board, invest in businesses or lead an organisation, the first step is a short conversation about what you need. If you advise a client who might need one of these services, or you are not sure which one fits, James will work it out with you first. That includes whether he is the right person for it at all.