Thirty years of running, fixing and growing businesses.
Now alongside you.
Creating Better is a strategic business advisory for owners, boards and investors who want a clear head in the room. Someone who has sat in the chair, made the calls and lived with the results. Alongside it sits a specialist care technology practice for health, social care and housing.
What you get in the room. The same four things, whichever arm.
Alongside you.
In the team, not above it. No juniors, no hand-offs, no deck.
Straight talking.
What we actually think, said plainly. Argue back, we expect it.
Sharp thinking.
To the point, then on with it. Problems solved rather than admired.
Quiet strength.
Calm, warm and unshaken when it matters. Humour underneath, not on top.
One company. Two ways we help.
Named associates are brought in where their expertise fits. We are still building Creating Better, and that is deliberate.
Strategic leadership
Running it, fixing it, growing it.
For owners, boards and investors who need a leader alongside them for a season. Advisory, fractional or interim, from someone who has sat in the chair and lived with the results.
Services
Strategy and direction
Growth and commercial improvement
Turnaround and recovery
Ownership and succession, including family business
Fractional and interim leadership
Board and investor advisory
Care technology
Honest advice on technology in care.
For providers and commissioners in health, social care and housing who want technology that earns its place. Vendor-independent, evidence-led and in plain English, delivered through Creating Better with UK Telehealthcare.
Services
People and place
Platforms
Sensors and devices
Data and evidence
Evaluation and business case
Procurement and vendor selection
Adoption and change
Care technology
Built on experience,
as well as theory.
Harry MacLean has spent thirty years inside businesses rather than beside them. He has been a buyer for a national retailer, chief executive of a football club, managing director of a Dutch industrial group and chairman of a family manufacturer, and he co-founded and sold out of a technology company.
The lesson from each was the same. Understand the business properly, decide with the information you have, and stay long enough to find out whether it worked.
Creating Better is where that experience goes to work for other people. It is kept deliberately small, with named associates brought in where their knowledge fits, so the person you speak to at the start is the person in the room throughout.
Work we are proud of, told plainly.
Dundee FC
Chief executive of a professional football club through tumultuous change and recovery. Success was measured in survival, and in the club once again being a vibrant part of its community. Leadership in public, under pressure.
Hendrik Veder Group
Seven years with the leading manufacturer of lifting slings, first in the UK, then as the only non-Dutch board director and finally as Group Managing Director in the Netherlands. Running a business well in someone else's culture and language.
Alexander Sturrock
Five years with a family-owned manufacturer, ending as Chairman, and immensely proud of the team, the family and the progress at the finest maker of timber windows and doors in the UK. Succession done without a fallout.
Rainbow Sensors
Co-founder of a sensor technology business in 2020, taken from an idea to a trading company with real customers, and exited in 2026. What it takes to build something from nothing, and when to let it go.
UK Telehealthcare
Head of Consulting Services, delivered through Creating Better, helping members across health, social care and housing make technology decisions they will not regret. The care technology arm, in practice.
Active Capital Company
Strategic advisor to a Dutch investor on its UK portfolio company, working from the boardroom to the sales floor on brand, growth and commercial proposals. An investor's questions answered by someone who has run the answer.