Lorna Stellakis

What I do at Q2Q:

My role is to provide the overall direction and ‘eye on the compass’ as to where we – as a team – are heading, setting the overarching business strategy and financial budgeting.

My primary driver is trust – which I believe is achieved by being honest, consistent, and delivering against promises. The team at Q2Q have all been recruited based on these values – with ability being secondary – however, between them they have over 100 years’ experience in the IT game, so there is no shortage of technical talent!

I work closely with the team to ensure there is continuous organisational performance improvement that is always customer focused – ensuring they are working collaboratively and efficiently. Plus, I coach them individually and as a collective, to bring out their best abilities in supporting our clients.

While I’ve always been involved with systems implementation throughout my career, I have an operational background and no specific IT experience. However, if anything, I believe this makes me more qualified to ensure the team delivers great service. Having been on the wrong side of poor IT support in the past, I relate to how crippling this can be to a business, and therefore make it paramount that we ensure IT issues are as invisible as possible – leaving customers to get on with running their companies smoothly and hassle-free.

Background and Achievements

Most of my career has been in the mad world of fashion – on the planning and operational side. In my previous role as operations director for a heritage menswear brand, I was responsible for the end-to-end journey of the product, from range planning and sourcing, through to production, quality control, logistics, warehousing and customer service.

Some of my key achievements in this role were improving on all delivery and service KPIs, increasing quality performance from 10% rejects to 1%, and delivering a significant number of process advances across the team, while also delivering a 10% cost saving on overheads.

As this role spanned so many disciplines, it enabled me to focus on my true passions – process improvement and people development.

My proudest achievement was introducing a ‘continuous improvement project team’ to the wider business, bringing a positive culture change – based on ‘appreciative inquiry’ and ‘solution focus’ ideas. The workshops we developed empowered people to solve problems cross functionally, and they considerably improved communication, collaboration and efficiency – while making savings to the bottom line too. These workshops have formed the basis of the tools I now incorporate into Q2Q, and also offer as an additional consultancy service to our customers.

Hobbies and Interests

Walking with my dog, and eating out with family