Why It Went Quiet Here

This blog went quiet in July. There is a good reason.

On 1 July I started as Chief Operating Officer of the Retail Motor Industry Organisation. The first weeks of a role like this take everything you have. Writing had to wait. The work came first, and it should.

So what happens to this blog now? The honest answer is I am not sure yet. For now I will share thoughts as I go. What I am learning, what I am noticing and what stays true about leadership and execution no matter where you sit. The RMI and its constituent associations cover a vast stretch of this industry, each with its own technical world, its own regulations and its own way of working. I am still learning those technical aspects and I will not pretend otherwise.

What I will say, three weeks in, is this.

I am honoured to be here. I have spent more than two decades in and around this industry, on the retail side, the finance side and the platform side. I always knew the RMI from the outside, the way most people in the trade know it. A logo on a wall. A body you phone when there is trouble. Being inside it is different.

What strikes you first is the people. The same thing keeps showing up in every part of the organisation. People who have served members for years and still care about getting a single dispute resolved properly. Specialists who know their corner of the industry better than anyone I have met in far bigger companies. There is real passion here, the quiet kind, the kind you see in how someone prepares rather than how they talk.

Then there is the culture. It is not loud and it does not advertise itself. It shows in the tenure. People stay here for years, some for decades, and long tenure like this tells you something about how a place treats its people. It shows in how colleagues speak about members, not as accounts or numbers but as businesses they know by name and by story. And it shows in the pride. When someone here fixes a problem for a member, they talk about it the way a craftsman talks about work done properly. You cannot install a culture like this. You inherit it, and then you look after it.

The other thing is how much of the work is invisible. A member in a labour dispute gets an expert in their corner. A workshop owner facing a new regulation gets someone who has already read it twice. None of it trends. All of it matters. Thousands of businesses run a little steadier because this organisation shows up for them every day.

My job is to make an organisation full of good people work even better for the members and associations it serves. I am in listening mode. The regional visits are coming over the next while, and I am looking forward to sitting with the associations and the teams on the ground, asking more questions than I answer. The opinions are forming. They will keep until I have earned the right to hold them.

Thank you for reading, for the messages since the announcement, the calls and all the well wishes.

Related operating context: What I Learned from The Life-Changing Art of Self-Brain Surgery – Why I Started This Page – Standards Without Support Become Noise.