Do work that matters / Keep the life you've built.
Over/Under is the practice of Joseph Doran Williams: coaching, programmes and consultancy built on one idea, tested over twenty-five years. There are capable people out there who want to have a positive impact, but don't know how. I help individuals, groups and organisations identify that impact and make it happen.
01
The Programme
Ten weeks. Real experiments. A cohort that holds you to it. For mid-career professionals stuck between staying and leaving. Learn how impact actually works, run one real piece of it from inside the life you already have, and let the evidence decide what's next. Founding cohort: twelve places, £495, starts 29 September.
02
1:1 Coaching
For founders and senior professionals working through identity, direction, and the gap between intending and doing. ICF accredited. Starts with a free 30-minute conversation.
03
For organisations
Programme design, facilitation and strategy work: the rooms where change actually happens. Twenty-five years of doing it, from the Carbon Trust to PwC to Xynteo.
Why does this exist? /
Our culture sells one story about meaningful work, the great escape. Quit, retrain, reinvent. The research says real change doesn't work like that, and neither does real life. There's a third option, and it's the only one I've ever lived: create the impact from where you are.
Who is behind this? /
Joe Doran Williams. Twenty-five years across the Carbon Trust, WRAP, UKGBC, PwC, Xynteo and On Purpose, all spent helping people and organisations create real change from the positions they already held.
Our culture sells one story about meaningful work: the great escape. Quit, retrain, reinvent, "answer these 10 questions" and on the other side your real life is waiting. It's a seductive story, and a big part of our narrative is built on it.
I've worked alongside that industry. I've spent twenty-five years in impact and sustainability work, and the last five running leadership and career transition programmes. I've also transitioned into new careers myself. I've moved from marketing to sustainability, from sustainability to big four consulting and then into systems and impact. So I'll tell you what the research says, what my experience has shown me and what the escape story leaves out: real career transitions take years, not weeks, and they don't happen through grand plans with guaranteed destinations. They happen through small steps, conversations: experiments, run from where you already stand, which slowly build the evidence of what fits. The dramatic exit isn't the brave shortcut, because it skips the part that works.
I also want to say something else that the research tells us and something I suspect you already know. If you always focus on the destination and you neglect to enjoy the now then life will pass you by in a flash. This programme flips that narrative. Find a way to enjoy the now and your future will unfold.
There are fantastic opportunities out there: full-immersion programmes like On Purpose, where I delivered the Associate Programme, are genuinely superb,and this demonstrates the try before you buy model in full swing. But not all people can't take a year out, and most courses short of that produce something gentler: reflection, clarity, a plan OR tinkering with your CV. Thinking about change, rather than doing the change.
Which leaves you with the choice you've actually been offered: stay and suffocate, or bet everything on the escape. It's a false choice. There's a third option, and it's the one I've practised my whole career. It is also a way to get moving, to feel a sense that you are in control and to start enjoying now, with impact.
Create the impact from where you are, and let the evidence decide where you go.
Over ten weeks, with a small cohort of people like you, you'll scope, design and start a real piece of impact work, inside your current role or alongside it . A thing that exists in the world by the end, that didn't exist before. you'll learn how impact actually works, then test your way toward it: small real moves that build evidence, leading to one bigger experiment where you try the future on for size. Not a plan. Not a vision board. Motion, a new start.
We will run lots of smaller experiments to help you design your life and we will take time to do the hard work: Understand the market, look inwards at what you enjoy, map your strengths to what is out there, update your CV, sign up for a training course, reach out and make new contacts... but all of this is alongside something real that you will leave with.
Some people use it to remake their current job from the inside and discover they never needed to leave. Some are at the start of a longer move, and this is the first honest step of it. Both get the same thing: meaning that starts now, not after some future arrival. Because if a transition takes three years, those are three years of your life. They should be worth living, not endured.
The programme /
"Create the impact from where you are, and let the evidence decide where you go."
1:1 Coaching /
Some questions don't belong in a group. My coaching focuses on the balance between life, work, family and identity. I often meet people in transition: searching for clarity, reassurance, or simply a place to talk through hopes and concerns. We step back, understand what's really happening and where you want to be, then find the leverage in the space between: the small shifts towards something more meaningful and more balanced.
I coach founders and senior professionals through exactly this territory: identity, direction, and the mechanics of actually following through.
What it's like: direct, warm, and structured. I'm an ICF accredited coach (ACC), trained in the Barefoot tradition, and I bring twenty-five years of working inside organisations, which means I understand the systems you're operating in, not just the feelings you're having about them. Expect to be listened to properly, challenged honestly, and to leave every session with something specific to do.
Who it's for: founders, senior and mid-career professionals working through direction, transition, or the itch that their work should add up to more. If that's you but a cohort suits you better, the programme exists for exactly that reason, at a fraction of 1:1 rates.
How it works: we start with a free 30-minute conversation to see whether we're a fit, no obligation and no pitch. Ongoing work is typically six sessions over three to four months. I'll tell you the price in that first conversation, once, plainly.
For organisations /
For organisations in the sustainability and impact space, and for mainstream organisations trying to get there, I design and deliver the moments where change actually happens: programmes, workshops, and strategy processes built to get real decisions out of rooms full of competing interests.
What I do: programme design and delivery (leadership and development programmes, cohort learning, action learning); facilitation of high-stakes collaboration (multi-stakeholder workshops, strategy offsites, partnership design); and upstream strategy work on purpose and impact, done before the communications, so there's something real to communicate.
The track record, briefly: behaviour change programmes at the Carbon Trust, collaboration design at PwC (including NHS Wales and £14m-scale bids), and six-month leadership programmes at Xynteo for executives from companies like Shell and EDP. Full background on the [About page].
How it works: day rate or fixed fee, scoped in a conversation. If you're wondering whether your thing is the kind of thing I do, it probably is. Ask.