Alan is currently Chairman of Retail People. He is also a Non-executive Director of Berkeley Group Holdings plc, Marshalls plc, Capital & Regional plc and a Non Executive Director of the Royal Air Force.

His previous roles have included: Chief Executive Officer of Historic Royal Palaces and Wembley plc; a Member of the Executive Board of Compass plc; a Non-Executive Honorary Chairman of INCLUDE (charity), Chairman of the NW London Training and Enterprise Council and Chairman of The Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment; a Member of the Advisory Forum of Saïd Business School, Oxford University; Chairman of Redstone plc and a Non-executive Director of Carillion plc; Metroline plc; and a senior consultant at KPMG.

Alan wrote Great Britons on Success (Kingsham Press) in 2009, all his royalties are donated to the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund. He is also co-author of Timeless Management (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) and a Companion of the Chartered Management Institute (elected 1997). He also served as a member of the Greening Management steering group set up by the Chartered Institute of Management and he chaired a prototype peer review of Museums Libraries and Archives for the DCMS. He has lectured at universities and spoken on leadership, organisational structure, culture and change.

Alan has been a Patron of the Windsor Leadership Trust since 2003 and supports the Trust because of its unique approach to leadership development through peer learning with a cross-public/private sector cadre in a historic setting, which facilitates thinking. He has spoken at and chaired Trust courses and has seen for himself the power of the programme. Alan has raised funds for a number of charities including the Rainbow Trust and three charities in Ingwavuma, a remote and AIDS afflicted area of South Africa.