Adam Poole - Employer Blog

The Truffle Hound Who Became an Unlikely Innovator in Engineering

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When Adam describes his former job title — Head of Special Projects at a global engineering consultancy — you might picture something sleek, technical, perhaps a little mysterious. What you probably wouldn’t imagine is a historian whose career involved persuading engineers to test new ideas, advising parliamentarians, organising adhoc conferences, wargaming government policy, and once attempting to take Cornwall off the national grid.

But then again, nothing about Adam’s career followed a script.

By the time he retired at the end of 2020, he had neatly sidestepped three major workplace shifts: the postCOVID reimagining of work, the rise of culturewar debates in organisations, and the arrival of AI as a practical everyday tool. “So yes,” he laughs, “there’s a slightly antediluvian quality to talking about a typical day.”

Even so, his reflections feel strikingly current — particularly for students trying to understand how a degree might translate into a future that doesn’t come with a clear roadmap.

A Typical Day (If Such a Thing Existed)

Adam’s last role sat at an unusual intersection. He was a history graduate working in a multinational builtenvironment engineering consultancy, often clientfacing and occasionally feeearning. Why would an engineering firm employ someone who deliberately didn’t think like an engineer?

Adam’s answer has always been simple: that was precisely the point.

He once tried to explain his job to a German architect. After listening for a moment, the architect said, “Ah — you are a Trüffelhund.” A truffle hound.

Adam liked the metaphor. It captured a role focused on sniffing out new ideas and introducing unfamiliar ways of thinking — something perhaps not that unusual in Germany. From then on, he used the term to describe his role.

Meeting Gorbachev at a water conference

There were no typical days in the sense of routine, but there was a clear pattern to the work. A significant portion sat within public affairs: working with parliamentarians and, occasionally, ministers; liaising with embassies; sitting on government and industry task groups; attending conferences; responding to consultations; and collaborating with other firms across the sector.

There was also a large amount of research. This usually meant producing reports in response to internal questions — connecting policy, history, industry trends, and longterm thinking to support project teams.

Through a cross industry built environment think tank that brought architects and engineers together, Adam also ran numerous quick-fire conferences, to explore issues as they arose.

The “special projects” element of the role covered a wide and sometimes unexpected range of work: exploring whether Cornwall could be taken off the national grid; wargaming aspects of government policy; investigating modular construction; and thinking more broadly about the role of buildings in society.

That last point mattered deeply to him. As Churchill observed, “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.” Buildings are not neutral. They influence how we function as individuals and communities — affecting productivity, mental health, social cohesion, and even how people vote.

Alongside all of this, Adam was part of a small group responsible for tutoring and nurturing future leaders within the firm, helping them develop judgement, perspective, and confidence rather than simply technical expertise.

Three Kinds of Day

Broadly speaking, his working life fell into three kinds of day:

Days in the office
Days working from home
Days in the field

Each served a distinct purpose.

Office days were about persuasion and collaboration. Working from home meant deep, deskbased research and thinking. Days in the field were about acquiring new ideas, testing them, and seeing how they performed in the real world.

Adam operated in an environment where he had high influence and low authority.

He sat within the formal hierarchy of the firm and worked closely with a succession of CEOs. He had a clear sense of direction from the head of the business, but he could not — and did not — rely on executive authority to make things happen.

Everything depended on persuasion.

Rather than imposing change from the top down, he embedded himself within teams operating under their own leaders. The aim was not classic change management, but almost its opposite: encouraging teams to explore new approaches using their own resources and to take calculated risks voluntarily.

As Adam puts it, you cannot walk into a hierarchical engineering environment and simply tell people what to do — particularly when mistakes have realworld consequences. You have to bring people with you.

Job Title vs Reality

What’s the biggest difference between what people thought your job was and what it actually involved?

The biggest gap, he explains, wasn’t between the title and the work, but between how people understood the role and what it truly required.

Most colleagues had only a hazy idea of what someone in a Trüffelhund role was there to do. When Adam approached teams with an idea, nothing happened unless they chose to engage with it. And once they did, something crucial shifted: the idea stopped being his. It was reshaped by other perspectives, priorities, and constraints — becoming a shared endeavour rather than a personal initiative.

This transition — from originator to catalyst — sat at the heart of the role and was also the least visible part of it. He wasn’t there to lead projects or claim ownership, but to initiate movement: to connect people and possibilities, introduce new ways of thinking, and then step back while others carried the work forward. As Truman remarked ‘You can achieve a lot if you don’t take credit for it’.

That way of working resisted easy definition. It sat outside familiar job categories and authority structures, which is precisely why it was often misunderstood.

His career illustrates that impact doesn’t always come from authority or technical mastery, but from the ability to move between worlds — between policy and practice, ideas and people.

The Best Part: What was the most rewarding aspect of the work?

Deep in the firm’s ethos, he explains, was a belief that engineering should make the world a better place. The most rewarding moments were when that belief surfaced in practice — when people aligned around an idea and recognised that, together, they might do something that genuinely mattered.

Those moments of shared purpose — when commercial realities and wider impact briefly aligned — were what made the job exciting. Not because success was guaranteed, but because the intention felt right and the commitment was collective.

“They were the best days,” he reflects.

The Biggest Challenge:

The hardest part was leading without authority inside a necessarily hierarchical environment. Engineering is structured that way for good reason: mistakes can be costly and, at times, tragic.

Working without formal power required constant judgement, patience, and credibility — and the willingness to accept that not every good idea would take root.

Essential Skills

Beyond technical knowledge, what soft skill mattered most?

Adam doesn’t hesitate.
Not a technical capability.
Not subjectmatter expertise.

Empathy.

Not in a vague or sentimental sense, but in a practical one — understanding what people were worried about, what motivated them, and what pressures they were under. Empathy wasn’t an optional extra. It was the foundation that made everything else possible.

The Skill He Never Expected to Use

One unexpected skill came not from engineering, policy, or consultancy — but from wargaming.

Originally developed in military contexts, wargaming stresstests ideas by asking a simple but uncomfortable question: what would the other side do next? As the saying goes, “the enemy gets a vote.”

For Adam, the discipline was invaluable. Any proposal for change affects multiple stakeholders, each of whom will respond in some way. Playing those responses out in advance often revealed blind spots or unintended consequences before they became real problems.

Used well, wargaming wasn’t about prediction. It was about preparation.

See “Why Wargaming Works” by Peter P. Perla and ED McGrady

From History Degree to Engineering Consulatancy

He studied history at the University of Stirling, specialising in African history under two leading scholars in the field. At the time, African history felt new and underexplored, and there was a strong sense of being close to the centre of something emerging.

After Stirling came a period of doing a little of everything — casual work in the United States, a short stint teaching at his old school, and then a Master’s degree in African History at SOAS. When he finally stepped into the job market, convinced he was well prepared, reality came as a shock.

A history degree, he discovered, equips you for nothing — or everything. Learning which of those is true is not immediate. It’s the work of a lifetime.

Early career guidance suggested one path. Life took him in another. His first job was in computer programming for a market research company — unexpected, but not entirely illogical at a time when word processors and early programming languages were just becoming accessible.

From there, a chance connection led him into African political and economic consultancy work, including a brief, intense period advising on Nigeria’s return to civilian rule. It gave an opportunity to meet the grandchildren of people he had written history essays about. When the political climate deteriorated, he chose to walk away. Shortly afterwards, with a young family and a mortgage, he needed stability — fast.

He found it in what he initially thought would be a temporary role at an engineering institution. Instead, it marked a turning point. Surrounded by engineers, he became fascinated by the mindset of engineers and the full scope of their talents. What began as a stopgap became a vocation.

Over time, he adapted his skills to fit the sector — working across public affairs, communications, policy, bids, and conferences — before going on to run an ideas consultancy and, later, returning to fulltime work in the engineering firm described earlier.

The path was anything but linear. But each step built on the last, often in ways that only made sense in hindsight.

The One Piece of Advice He'd Give his Student Self

Chance favours a wellprepared mind.

At university, he hadn’t fully appreciated that some careers follow clear professional pathways, while others are formed by making it up as you go along. Early on, he wished he had committed to the former rather than drifting in the latter.

If a subject like history is your passion, he says, curiosity matters. Deep interests help you engage with people — and those encounters are often where perspective is gained.

The path may not be obvious. But preparation, curiosity, and openness turn chance into opportunity.

A Surprising Truth About Engineering

Mindmapping example

One observation has stayed with him over the years, even if he might phrase it more gently himself.

John HarveyJones, a captain of industry in the 1970s, once claimed that the world only really needs three kinds of people: engineers who make things, doctors who keep engineers healthy, and teachers who produce engineers— everyone else is a parasite. While he wouldn’t choose such provocative language, the sentiment points to something important.

Inside an engineering firm, he says, there is an extraordinary concentration of talent. The scale of expertise, problemsolving ability, and practical intelligence. Far from narrow or purely technical, the profession draws together people capable of shaping how the world functions at its most fundamental level.

The Tool He Couldn’t Work Without

Mind map software. Maybe this has been partially superseded by AI but maybe not. The argument for mind maps is that, without them, one struggles more than one needs to produce a list of ideas as one side of the brain engages in the ideas and the other in ordering them in a hierarchy. A mind map dispenses with the immediate need for the hierarchy so that left and right parts of the brain better work together. I have no idea how valid this argument is but, having discovered mind maps, and particularly computer-based mind maps, I have never looked back.

Looking Ahead: The Future of the Industry

If there is one area he believes will grow in importance over the next decade, it’s the relationship between buildings and society.

The built environment touches almost everything — how people live, work, connect, and thrive. Understanding that relationship more deeply will be essential as pressures around sustainability, wellbeing, productivity, and social cohesion continue to grow.

For him, this isn’t a niche concern or a side topic. It’s central. How we design, use, and think about buildings is key to how society functions — and will increasingly shape future roles across the industry.

Busting a Common Myth

One misconception he would challenge is the idea that engineering is only for engineers.

Technical expertise matters, of course. But engineering is ultimately about how society works — and how it might work better. That requires more than equations. It requires context, precedent, and perspective.

Engineering firms benefit enormously from people who think differently. Everyone, he suggests, could use a few historians in the room.

What Skills are you Developing

Adam’s journey highlights how careers don’t always follow a clear path—and how transferable skills like curiosity, empathy and critical thinking can open unexpected opportunities across industries.

His role shows that impact doesn’t always come from authority or technical expertise, but from the ability to connect ideas, influence others, and bring people together to explore new ways of thinking.

These are not just skills for engineering or consultancy—you are likely already developing them through your studies, discussions, and wider experiences.

Reflect on your Experience

When have you influenced or persuaded others without having formal authority?
How have you approached situations where there was no clear structure or career path?
When have you used curiosity to explore a new idea, subject, or opportunity?
How have you adapted your thinking when working with people from different perspectives or disciplines?
When have you needed to understand others’ motivations or viewpoints to move something forward?
Which of these skills do you feel most confident in—and which would you like to develop further?

Want to build & evidence these skills further?

Explore the Professional Skills Academy