FACILITATOR PROFILE
Facilitator ID: OWH-F1030
Jay Naidoo
Turn strategic conversations into clear decisions.
Strategic Facilitator · Organizational Consultant · Executive Leadership Experience
Corporate Strategy
Operating Models
Change Management
Strategy to Execution
South Africa · SAST (UTC+2) · English · Online delivery preferred
The request form adds OWH-F1030 as your first preference. Suitability, acceptance, and scheduling are confirmed individually.
20+ years
Applied financial-services experience
15+ years
Professional facilitation experience
5,000+
Distribution network led at Divisional Director level
Strategy · Operating models · Change · Business planning · Practical implementation
About Jay
Jay Naidoo is a strategic facilitator and organizational consultant with more than 20 years of applied financial-services experience, more than 15 years of facilitation practice, and approximately four years of independent strategic consulting. Jay combines executive-level leadership with a practical, highly customized approach to organizational decisions and implementation.
At Divisional Director level, Jay led a distribution network of more than 5,000 financial advisers, distribution heads, branch managers, and support teams. Their career spans distribution-model transformation, operating-model development and implementation, restructuring, culture change, regulatory compliance and governance, sales leadership, and training and development.
Jay’s core areas of expertise are organizational strategy, operating models, and change management. They also facilitate productivity and performance management, business planning, and personal execution, with facilitative group coaching and one-to-one coaching available on request.
Education & Professional Preparation
Master of Philosophy in Corporate Strategy — University of Pretoria, Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS), 2022.
B.Proc. (Law) — University of Durban-Westville, 1988.
Additional professional preparation includes an ILPA certification in financial services. This academic and sector background informs Jay’s approach to strategy, governance, operating structures, and organizational choices.
Facilitated Workshops & Strategic Services
Five core services are available for executive teams, management teams, entrepreneurs, and founders across organizations of different sizes. Each engagement starts with a pre-engagement consultation with the organizational sponsor. Purpose, scope, participants, format, and expected outputs are agreed before delivery.
Annual & Quarterly Business Planning
Planning cycles · Leadership alignment · Accountable action
Help executive and management teams examine current performance, agree priorities, and connect annual or quarterly ambitions with practical plans.
Facilitated discussion can clarify decisions, responsibilities, performance measures, and follow-through, with the depth and outputs agreed during scoping.
Strategic Priorities & Growth Opportunities
Strategic choices · Growth · New markets
Examine the organization’s strategic position, challenge assumptions, and consider growth opportunities or new markets in the context of its resources and operating realities.
The focus is on meaningful alternatives and choices that leaders can assess and take forward, rather than an unprioritized list of ideas.
SWOT Analysis That Leads to Decisions
SWOT/TOWS · Interpretation · Decision support
Use strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats as a starting point for strategic discussion rather than treating completion of the matrix as the result.
Jay helps participants examine implications, test assumptions, and translate analysis into strategic options, decisions, and next steps.
Strategy-to-Execution Planning
Implementation · Performance · Accountability
Connect a strategic direction with the work needed to implement it, including operating priorities, ownership, and review routines.
Engagements may include accountability check-ins, implementation support, or follow-up facilitation to help teams keep decisions connected to action.
Business Model & Growth Strategy Reviews
Business models · Distribution · Competitive positioning
Review how the organization creates and delivers value, including distribution approaches, product positioning, and the relationship between its model and growth ambitions.
Draws on Jay’s work in distribution transformation, digital distribution business models, sales remuneration proposals, and product competitiveness strategies.
Depending on scope, preparation may include stakeholder interviews, diagnostic assessments, and document review. Follow-up can include implementation support, accountability check-ins, further facilitation, and an ongoing advisory relationship. Group and one-to-one coaching can complement the agreed work.
Executive Experience & Applied Consulting
Jay has served as Head of Compliance Implementation for Distribution and Head of Training and Development within a major financial-services organization. That experience connects strategic choices with the practical demands of regulatory compliance, people development, sales leadership, and implementation across a large distribution environment.
Their independent consulting portfolio includes sales-team remuneration structure proposals, business models for digital distribution projects, and product competitiveness and positioning strategies. They work beyond process facilitation by diagnosing issues in real time, challenging assumptions, reframing problems, developing alternatives, and providing strategic analysis and decision support.
In one provider-reported business-planning engagement with branch sales managers, the discussion surfaced a need for more active KPI management. Jay developed a bespoke KPI-tracking tool that is currently being implemented. This example illustrates the link between workshop discussion and a practical response; completed implementation outcomes are not claimed.
Methods & Original Tools
Jay’s applied strategic toolkit includes SWOT/TOWS, PESTLE, Business Model Canvas, Scenario Planning, McKinsey 7S, Porter’s Five Forces, the BCG Matrix, and Customer Genius, Peter Fisk’s customer-centricity framework. Systems Thinking, Pareto Analysis, and Five Whys support problem clarification; Kotter’s 8-Step Model, McKinsey 7S, and Covey’s Speed of Trust inform change-management work.
They also use original productivity and sales-management frameworks, diagnostic and activity-tracking tools, scorecards, canvases, structured discussion exercises, sales-remuneration planning models, and research-based models for integrating women into senior leadership roles. Tools are chosen and customized to serve the organizational question rather than used as a fixed curriculum.
Organizational Fit, Delivery & Availability
Jay primarily serves financial services, insurance, banking, legal, and consulting settings, while remaining open to strategy-focused work in other sectors where their experience fits the client’s objectives. Strong matches include transformation, growth, new markets, leadership development, operating-model transitions, and sales-driven organizations.
Facilitation is delivered exclusively in English. Jay is based in South Africa Standard Time (SAST, UTC+2), prefers online delivery, and can consider in-person or hybrid work depending on client location. For effective participation, a maximum group size of approximately 15–20 participants is recommended.
Jay is available most days, with a preference for afternoons and evenings, and is open to weekend and international time-zone scheduling. Approximately one week’s advance notice is preferred, depending on project scope. Stated capacity is around 12–15 engagement days per month, with a preference for recurring organizational relationships.
Their online toolkit includes Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Miro, Mural, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, PowerPoint, and Canva. Platforms, preparation needs, current openings, and delivery arrangements are confirmed during scoping.
Facilitation Philosophy
Productive tension. Clear decisions. Meaningful follow-through.
Jay values probing questions, balanced participation, and constructive disagreement that helps people examine assumptions without feeling judged. They see workshop success in the quality of decisions and behavior afterward, supported by a dedicated client sponsor and a practical partnership that can grow through trust.
Keep every voice in the room
Manage dominant voices, draw out quieter participants, and sustain useful discussion through conflict or resistance.
Examine the real need
Clarify the desired outcome, explore the assumptions behind a request, and discuss alternative approaches with the sponsor.
Carry decisions forward
Distill patterns and choices, identify accountable owners, and agree meaningful follow-through.
Read Jay’s full facilitation philosophy
An effective workshop facilitator manages dominant voices, resistance, conflict, and disengagement without losing momentum, ensuring that discussions result in clear decisions, accountable owners, and meaningful follow-through.
They ask open, probing questions that reveal assumptions and create new perspectives without steering participants toward a preferred answer.
They create enough constructive tension for people to question their thinking without feeling judged or defensive, draw out quieter participants, keep disagreement productive, and distill complex discussions into meaningful patterns, implications, and choices.
Success is measured not by whether participants enjoyed the workshop, but by whether they make better decisions or change their behavior afterward.
When a client’s request does not appear to address its underlying need — for example, requesting a team-building session when the real issue may be a leadership problem — a good facilitator examines the reasoning behind the request, clarifies the desired end goal, presents alternative approaches, and if the client still wishes to proceed with their original plan, commits to fulfilling that as well as possible.
A good workshop hub practices strategic matchmaking, actively connecting the right facilitators with the right organizational clients based on precise needs rather than generic pairings.
It provides effective logistical support, maintains rigorous vetting of workshop standards and delivery both as a condition of joining the hub and as an ongoing quality process, and fosters a culture of co-creation in which the hub and facilitator work together continuously to shape and improve workshops over time.
A good organizational client has a dedicated sponsor who actively participates in shaping the workshop, provides clear guidelines on desired outcomes, ensures communication flows freely, maintains respect for the expertise being provided, keeps timelines clear, and remains open to new and different thinking.
When goals are unclear or resistance is present, a productive partnership can still develop by first focusing on delivering what the client wants, building trust over time, and then gently steering the relationship toward something more productive, focused, and impactful — recognizing that ideal conditions are not a prerequisite for a valuable and evolving collaboration.
Connect Strategic Discussion with Practical Action
Book a free 30-minute consultation to discuss your organization’s needs and a potential match with Jay. Fit, scope, acceptance, and scheduling are confirmed before an engagement.
Mention OWH-F1030 during your consultation.