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Shields Russell
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Shields Russell

 Founder and Managing Director

Shields founded Rapid Innovation Group with the intention of building a specialist firm focused exclusively on the practice of entrepreneurial management. Over more than a decade, RIG has developed a distinctive set of critical capabilities that when taken together represent the corpus of the firm’s method and know how.

Before RIG, Shields was a management consultant at Charter Consulting working across multiple sectors for both large organisations and fast growth SMEs. He founded and was CEO of Greychip, an e-learning company based on the principles of self-managed learning.

In his early career, Shields spent two years running a landscape design company on Shelter Island, New York and three years as an English teacher at Maru a Pula, an independent, co- educational secondary school located in Gaborone, Botswana.
Shields is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin and holds a Masters from Lancaster University.

Don't try harder, iterate faster

Trying harder while generally doing the same thing is not the recipe for finding product market fit or finding early traction. It is a recipe for running out of runway. It is also a very human reaction. 

 

Reflections on entry level hiring

Since January 1 st, I no longer lead the process of recruiting and selecting entry level hires. Entry-level hiring is a serious responsibility. We are who we hire. And who we hire is formative in terms of what we can become. In a knowledge firm, talent acquisition and development  is  the business strategy. Making this move is a generational shift that will bring those driving the process closer in age to the talent they are assessing. That is a very good thing.  The younger cohort of managers that have chosen to develop and ‘make’ themselves at RIG are our best advert. They are also invariably much tougher and more demanding than I have ever been.

 

A conversation with RIG’s founder

RIG Engagement Manager, Ffion Rolph, sat down and interviewed Founder and Managing Partner, Shields Russell, over a series of face-to-face meetings. Here, Shields shares his thoughts on RIG’s history, its evolution, and its future.

 

How to develop a business and yourself

Developing a business and developing yourself have a lot in common. Fundamentally they both involve learning.