JGA is taking an important step forwards to a new future. We will be more closely aligning with Telos Partners from 31 January 2024 – ahead of a full merger from January 2025.

Our initial focus will be on two key areas: providing our clients with access to a wider range of support and services to transition and accelerate their employee ownership while merging our back-office functions.

We will maintain the co-existence of both brands and organisations and look to merge these more fully over time.

During the last four years, JGA and Telos have been collaborating to provide support to the Employee Ownership Association (EOA) and its members – specifically through the EO Learn programme and, more recently, on an EOA project designed to benefit the sector as a whole.

In that time, we’ve increasingly found ourselves working successfully together to explore, develop and create the outcomes our clients want. We’ve enjoyed the experience – and learned from it too.

This has encouraged us to deepen our relationship, making the most of opportunities where we know that, together, we can deliver more value and impact.

With JGA approaching our 10th birthday (January 2024) and both businesses’ positive experience of working even more closely together, it became clear that the time was right to merge.

We are excited about the opportunity to more effectively provide real commercial value for our clients now and in the years ahead.

Our businesses share similar values and are equally driven by a sense of purpose and a commitment to work together for the benefit of our clients. We enable them to find their own answers and create their own sustainable success.

We both actively work with employee-owned (EO) businesses. For Telos this represents a smaller proportion of its overall client base which is formed of a wider range of larger, multinational businesses.

By merging, we see an opportunity to leverage JGA’s unrivalled experience of EO transitions alongside Telos’ deeper experience of larger organisations to better support clients to transition to, embed and realise the fuller, longer-term potential of EO.

In both businesses, our people are our strength. The knowledge, skills and (just as importantly) the personality they bring to their work are integral to what we achieve.

By combining their diverse experience and capabilities, we can better support the needs of employee-owned organisations from succession planning to transition and beyond.

Telos Partners is an employee-owned consultancy that was founded in 2000. It puts relationships at the centre of its business to help its clients to solve their most difficult problems, execute their strategy and, ultimately, realise the potential of their team and organisation.

In doing so, Telos challenges short-term thinking and embeds key principles that will help to establish a better type of organisation – one that creates optimal and sustainable stakeholder outcomes and wealth in its broadest and truest sense.

With more than 23 years’ experience of working with Executive Leaders in organisations from across a wide range of sectors, Telos has a deep understanding of The CEO's Journey and what is required to shape and deliver sustainable transformation and change.

Find out more about Telos at https://www.telospartners.com

Our current plan is for J Gadd Associates (JGA) and Telos to continue to co-exist as separate organisations and brands for the first 12 months.

We will make a final decision on the branding before our full merger and share this in due course.

Our founder Jeremy Gadd will remain MD of JGA for the foreseeable future, while joining Telos Partners as a Partner from 1 February 2024.

In this capacity, he will play a key leadership role in helping to strengthen our combined support to clients in the employee-owned sector and shape the future of the merged businesses.

At a headline level, access to a broader range of services, expertise and experience, supported by a wider group of people focused on delivering the best client-led solutions.

The decision to merge will enable us to provide greater support for businesses looking to embed and leverage the advantages of EO, allowing them to accelerate their growth and succession plans. Telos clients will benefit from easier access to succession alternatives via JGA’s enhanced in-house expertise.

At a more immediate practical level, existing clients of either Telos or JGA have already been reassured that any current or planned support we are providing will continue without change.

We will be using the first 12 months to explore with them how the combined experience we offer could be relevant to their business. They will be informed in good time before any changes to our systems that could affect them are made

All client-focused relationships with our existing Trusted Partners will remain unchanged but (similarly to clients) we will explore the potential of our combined business with them during the first 12 months.

There will be no initial change to any existing client work or contractual relationship that any Employee, Associate, Associate Consultant or Partner has with either JGA or Telos.

Over the first 12 months, our teams will work even more closely together, sharing experiences, supporting clients and each other.

Adam Campbell, Managing Partner, Telos, and JGA’s MD Jeremy Gadd will focus on the sustainable, profitable growth of our combined business, securing our legacy and providing opportunity for those involved to create and deliver purposeful work.

We strongly believe there will be ongoing opportunities for all beyond the initial transition period, if this is what people want. The exact form will take shape over the first 12 months and each person will play an important role in exploring and shaping these opportunities.