Q5 celebrates 15 years of growth
UK headquartered consultancy Q5 is celebrating its 15th anniversary. As well as gathering employees for events to reflect on the milestone, the firm’s leaders have also been looking forward to its future plans.
Founded in 2009, Q5 is a consulting firm which partners with leaders of hundreds of organisations around the world. The consultancy provides support with organisational strategy, design, leadership and team development, culture, technology, change, and transformation.
Q5 works with a wide range of blue-chip clients including British Airways, BT and Channel 4.
In May, the firm has celebrated its 15th year in business, and to celebrate, gathering up some of its most significant milestones to share with its staff. Since its inception, the company has been engaged by some of the biggest brands and organisations across the globe and serves 150 corporate clients each year.
Over the last decade and a half, Q5 has increased from 5 founders working in a converted basement in London, to a team of over 300 people, based throughout the UK and overseas.
This period of exponential growth has seen Q5 build out their operations to include eight offices across the UK, Australia, North America and the Middle East. Now with two offices in North America, in New York and Houston, as well as two in the Middle East and Australia, the firm is also looking to expand further in the Middle East and Asia over the next two years.
Looking back on the achievements, Olly Purnell, co-founder and Managing Partner commented, “15 is nothing really, when you consider McKinsey & Company is in its 90s and Boston Consulting Group in its 60s. But there is an infectious energy here, a spirit of determination that marks every Q5er out. I’m very proud of the phenomenal team effort that has taken an unknown brand to market, successfully over quite a period of time, while remaining resolutely independent.”
Q5 has not only thrived in the commercial sector, though. The firm has also invested in social impact, through the work of the Q5 Foundation, and Pop Up Consulting. The latter was set up in 2020, to serve not-for-profits and small community-based businesses that were profoundly impacted by the pandemic. Since then, the initiative has supported over 150 organisations pro bono, and Q5's consultants continue to volunteer their professional expertise to those who cannot otherwise access consulting services – for which the firm has won multiple awards.
While celebrating these achievements, however, Q5 is also determined to look to the future. To that end, Q5 has recently invested in a specialist Analytics Hub, based in Smith Square, London, which interrogates clients’ organisational data (with their permission, of course) to provide insights on how to be more effective and efficient. The firm has also developed an AI-assisted platform called Org Maps, which assesses the performance of a company’s roles, work locations and structures/spans and layers.
Purnell added, “Those business leaders who know us well, routinely use us, time and again, as they know what they get from us: excellent organisation design and the foundation stones for a high-performing leadership team. The secret ingredient to our team's success isn’t much of a secret – since day one, we have been relentless in focusing on the power of “We” over “Me”. I would like to thank our clients and, of course, our team of Q5ers who work so hard for them every single day.”
Q5 was recently named in Consultancy.uk’s 2024 Top Consulting Firms in the UK ranking. The firm achieved a diamond rating in change management and platinum in the human resources and management categories, among others.
