Teamshaper is one year old!

It’s hard to believe, a year ago today Teamshaper was first revealed to the world.

Since then, I’ve rarely stopped for a second to reflect on the journey. It’s been a wild ride, but this milestone surely deserves a moment of reflection.

Overall, it’s been a thrill! When you run your own business, the highs are much higher. The lows are lower too. I’ve learned that no matter how confident you are in your ideas, and no matter how much experience and knowledge you have in the industry you serve, every new business comes with a learning curve. You still need to build trust, build a reputation, build a brand and help the market understand what makes you different. Then you have to build all the infrastructure, processes and policies that make everything tick – some of it quite technical. That road is rarely smooth.

One of the biggest highlights was the creation process itself. After spending decades operating within other people’s businesses, often working within constraints that sometimes felt like compromises, building something from scratch felt hugely liberating.

Putting impact and customer satisfaction first, then working backwards from that using everything I’ve learned over the years, rather than starting with margin targets and growth projections, produced something that felt pure and right. I couldn’t wait to bring it to market.

Working with a team of associates and advisors who genuinely are some of the best people I’ve worked with in my career has felt like a real privilege. Almost like some rock band putting together a “best of” collection after decades in the industry – not a single dud in that album! I’m hugely grateful for their support, belief and encouragement, especially through the tougher moments. Sometimes the most helpful support is challenge, and other times it’s unwavering encouragement, and I’m lucky to be surrounded by people that understand that nuance.

Another major milestone came when we were accepted onto the CCS (now GCA) RM6219 DPS. It happened remarkably quickly, by mid-July, and at the time it felt like a real vote of confidence. Despite the company itself being new, it recognised that Teamshaper was built on decades of meaningful work supporting public sector organisations and a genuine passion for continuing to do so.

Delivering our first two programmes, on two consecutive days for two different clients, is something I’ll never forget. I’ve delivered thousands of programmes over the years, but these felt different, not simply because they were delivered under a company I founded, but because they validated the principles Teamshaper was built around: impact, impact and more impact.

They were engaging, energetic and galvanising sessions, but what made them truly valuable was the process behind them. The discovery work gave us a much richer understanding of the client context, the pressures people were operating under and the different perspectives across the team, not just the commissioning brief itself.

That, in many ways, is the heart of Teamshaper. Creating programmes that are genuinely shaped around the reality of the people in the room, and being format-agnostic enough to build the right intervention to achieve the outcome within the available budget, not simply defaulting to a one-day training course because that is what is easiest to sell.

Although we technically went live in May 2025, we only launched properly in September, so it still feels like very early days. Things have started moving faster in recent months, with more clients, more programmes and our first tender win, which we announced this week.

We’re proud of the impact we’ve already made and excited about bringing the Teamshaper approach to more teams and groups of professionals across the UK public sector and beyond.

Thank you to everyone who has supported, encouraged, advised, challenged and contributed so far, it genuinely means a lot. Most importantly, thank you to the clients that have trusted us with their professional development needs, we’re excited to continue building those partnerships in the years ahead.

Yoav