By using his skill to help others, Craig Coldicott hopes to leave the world a better place.
What’s your story?
30+ years career, spanning corporate sales and management, marketing, programme management, a series of entrepreneurial ventures including an upmarket sales and letting agency, more latterly moving into fractional sales, board advisory roles and consultancy work, specialising in growth and optimisation of sales channels, ensuring that values, strategy, tactics and operations are aligned, standardised and derisked. I have a strong desire to help businesses grow, ethically.
What excites you most about your industry?
I like to build things, I don’t mean literally (really not my forte) but metaphorically, work within a company, align Strategy to Values, tactics to Strategy and operations to tactics or to put it another way: Work out how I can improve a business, standardise, de-risk, ensure that the fundamentals are in place and grow from there.
What drives you in your career to push beyond what other people consider normal?
I have strong values and a strong work ethic, couple this with a desire to leave the world a little better than I found it and that drives me on.
What have been the most useful skills you have learnt and applied in your journey?
Perspiration tends to beat inspiration, but combining them both is life/business changing.
Always start with the stakeholder’s perspective: Does this solve their need, and is the value proposition compelling enough to justify action? If not, then I haven’t done my job yet.
What’s the best piece of advice you ever received?
Trust doesn’t need to be earned, you start with trust…but through poor behaviour you can lose it and it takes a long time (if ever) to regain that trust.
Who inspires you?
People who don’t accept the status quo and question.
Such as Tim Harford, mostly for his Cautionary Tales podcast which seeks to learn from corporate mistakes and try to prevent history repeating itself.
Douglas Adams of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy has had a lasting effect on my life…it’s the funniest radio play/book series I’ve ever read and is a great primer to look at the dangers of unthinking bureaucracy and institutional stupidity, not to mention its themes of humans overestimating their importance in the universe (I’ve met a few of them) and the importance of asking questions.
What have you learnt recently that blew you away?
Still learning: the power and pitfalls of AI and I’ve been reminded recently of the huge importance of paying it forwards.
If you had your time again, what would you do differently?
Almost everything. I have learned so much the hard way, making mistakes…but the one thing would be to have started a side of desk business much sooner…I took far too long to setup my first company.
How do you unwind?
I read, pretty much anything that crosses my path and I play euro boardgames (efficiency puzzles, ideally with lots of feel good combos!)…for those that are interested ‘Ark Nova’ is my favourite game, a competitive board game about running a zoo and undertaking conservation projects more efficiently than the other players.
The sort of board games I play emulate the best bits of my life…building something up in as efficient a manner as possible.
What is a major mindset change, belief shift or ‘ah ha’ moment that you’ve experienced in relation to your career?
That most competent people have ‘Imposter syndrome’…I’m not alone and like any fear, I should look at what makes me feel that way and be objective, work on my weaknesses, but don’t underestimate my strengths.
And if at all possible, try to surround myself with generous people who are more knowledgeable than me, that way I always learn and improve.
Everyone in business should read this book:
I genuinely do think ‘The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’ it really does tackle a lot of business adjacent ideas in a memorable way.
Blue Ocean Strategy by Renee Bourgne and W Chan Kim asks
“How do we create something so different and valuable that competition matters less?”
Shameless plug for your business or career:
I’m a fractional Sales Director whose role is to help you grow your business profitably, for the long term I am passionate about helping organisations turn strategic vision into sustainable growth by embedding strong fundamentals, customer focus and commercial discipline. I believe that integrity, accountability and long-term thinking are the cornerstones of effective leadership and successful companies.
How can people connect with you?
Craig.Coldicott@Finchgroup.uk
www.linkedin.com/in/craig-coldicott-328935100
+44 7496 591990
Social Media Links?
www.linkedin.com/in/craig-coldicott-328935100
This interview is part of the CallumConnects series.