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Matthew Alston is a business analyst and a presentation speaker

As the project engineer, we built two phases of electrical power generation plants of 10MW each, in modules in California.  We then loaded the modules on barges for transport to Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, where they were installed and commissioned to be the pumping station power for the pipeline.

As the Heavy Lift engineer, I spent 12 months on contract in Saudi Arabia where my experience with loading and unloading heavy modules on ships really paid off.  I used a hand-held programmable calculator to model the deck movement of the ship carrying an 800-ton cracking column and proved we could unload it floating at the dock.  This took only 5 days instead of grounding the ship, and building a causeway to it.  It saved $555,000 in demurrage charges, and the cost of building the causeway. 

engineer. I conducted live rocket engine firings to complete the qualification test program required for the orbital maneuvering engines to be certified for 'manned flight' on the space shuttle.  I then processed engines 103 and 104 through acceptance testing and they were shipped to the Kennedy Space Center to be installed on the space shuttle Challenger.

Scantronic, a public UK manufacturing company's acquisition was the third M&A action of my career.  I built a new international distribution network into 34 countries and was promoted to vice president of marketing worldwide, generating personal sales in excess of $50M in revenue.  During this time, I proposed a reorganization of the company’s global marketing operations to the board of directors.  They approved it and we then deployed this new marketing structure throughout our international business.  This consolidation repaired the branding in the distribution network.  During the eight years that I worked with this team, we experienced three additional acquisitions.  

I was solicited to manage the acquisition of a business unit, for a board of directors in the role of CEO in a technology turnaround.  We then completed the development, launched the product into the international market, as a hardware and software product.  

My computer skills came in handy again and I used a mini computer technology, programming and installing a full featured accounting system for all the administrative functions, and fully automating the business office.  I then managed the team through the acquisition into Honeywell and this was the first of what would be a long list of organizational transformation projects driven by M&A (mergers and acquisitions).

In 1987, I transitioned from the service side to the manufacturing side of the security industry and accepted a new position of reliability engineer and compliance officer for the equipment manufacturer we were using.  At this point I became a part of my second M&A action when the company was acquired by a UK holding company.  I was promoted to the business manager of the automation division because of my engineering expertise and my central station experience.

That opportunity provided face to face contact and hands on experience in teaching the existing text book business strategies.  My academic experience included experience of the rigors of teaching in academia, on-line teaching, open-source cloud-based student management software, and working in funded systems as opposed to profit-based systems.  I was able to make a presentation at an academic and state development annual summit that year.

The next pivot point came when I relocated to New York.  My work in new business models connected me with the state business development programs, and State University of NY. These contacts put me in a position where I was working with the best opportunity in the State, to research further into the mechanisms of motivation, what makes teams synergize, online training, funding of business growth, and my personal focus on how mindset and business results are related.

effectively find the root causes in systems analysis, business analysis, and project management.

The real estate banking crisis triggered the next pivot point and the start of the second phase of my small business consulting.  This is from 2008 to 2012 and took my focus on helping the small business segment through a massive shock as I ended up helping six of my clients downsize, shutdown, or radically redefine themselves.  This added significant depth to my crisis management experience as I worked through it with multiple client companies.  However, it added four more major change management cycles to my career.  

I decided to bring my expertise to helping companies that didn’t have a support team or access to resources and a pivot point arrived.  From 2002 to 2008 was the first phase of the entrepreneurial consulting period of my career.  My focus shifted to mentoring and training companies in product development, process and systems improvement, using a relationship-based approach to marketing and sales.