Business podcast discussing middle management returns
A successful business podcast that invites senior managers from a broad range of leading companies to share their insights has returned for its third series.

A successful business podcast that invites senior managers from a broad range of leading companies to share their insights has returned for its third series.
Tony Taylor is the managing director of Gibbs and Dandy, a unit of Saint-Gobain, the French multi-national building materials organisation.
He joins Stephen Willson to explore the issues of working on two fronts in a distribution business. The first being making multiple small internal operational improvements to prove their worth to their parent organisation. Secondly to access resources and manage boundaries with parallel distribution businesses and internal material manufacturing units.
Stephen Willson brings together contributions from 20 executive interviews that support a three stage process that underpins the evolving role of middle managers.
He then investigates the challenges for individuals making the transition between stages and how bosses can support the process.
Stephen is an associate professor at Birmingham City University Business School.
On the hunt for some informal insight to help you and your business? We’ve compiled ten of the best podcasts for small businesses to give you some inspiration.
Asha Devi is associate director at Ove Arup the company most famous for being the architect of the Sydney Opera House.
She joins Stephen Willson to explore the issues of designing customers’ office space for collaboration and the satisfaction of multiple stakeholders in a changing world. This has particular significance in enabling middle managers to work effectively across their organisations. The same spotlight is then shone on the design of Arup’s own professional services offices.
Gavin Card is the Director of Global Operational Excellence at SHV Energy, the parent company of Calor in the UK. He joins Stephen Willson to explore the middle management challenges of aligning supply with demand that is regional and weather dependant.
The topics include improving UK-wide performance by abandoning regional P & L accountability and refining KPI’s for operational improvement. Gavin draws powerful parallels with his previous experience within GE and the Royal Air Force.
Jason Smith is the Managing Director of Artex, a leading distributor of construction products. He joins Stephen Willson to explore the development challenges faced by middle managers in different phases of their career progression.
Nigel Riglar is the Director of Environment & Community Services at South Gloucestershire Council. He joins Stephen Willson to explore the challenges for middle management precipitated by the Covid crisis. These include the shift to facilitating local communities rather than cities and the dynamics of work when many staff are only infrequently in the office.
Anthony Tattum is the Chief Executive of Big Cat Creative Agency. He joins Stephen Willson and discusses how Big Cat works with organisations to align their customer-facing and delivery-focused middle management tiers in an environment where customer needs are changing rapidly.