FEATURE
So what happens after Halfords? How do you come to take the next step?
I was at Halfords for about five years doing various retail assistant manager roles, etc. There wasn’t a clear kind of career pathway for me there. I was doing a lot of the training at the time, and it wasn’t being given the credit I think it deserved.
I decided to go back and do my Master’s degree at the University of the West of Scotland (UWS). Once I finished, I went and worked for BT Openreach for five years, doing business consultancy. During this time, I also took project management qualifications like Green Belt Six Sigma and Lean Practitioner Certification. I never thought about it in a bike environment, but all these skills - I’m seeing them in the workshop, reducing waste, trying to think of ways to make it better as a daily working experience for staff, a better customer experience, and as a financially better-performing business.
You’ve just casually mentioned a master’s degree and a well-known project management methodology and qualification. What was your undergraduate degree?
Business as well. So I did business as an undergraduate, and then I did a business MBA. It was 2015 when I graduated. I got straight onto BT’s graduate program. It was really good for me at the time, for that development. Over time, the role
changed, and as it did, I was in a position where I could afford to take the leap into cycling again. And here we are, 10 years later, running my own cycle shop.
Can you share some insights into how you’ve been able to use your project management skills in the bike shop? To be honest, that’s where I find this side of the work difficult - project management theory in practice. My specialty was change management, and I say that, ironically, the hardest thing about getting anything to change is the human factor in it.
46 | April 2025
www.bikebiz.com
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