Sean Price & Alex Tatham

This week podcast hosted by Sean Price is with Alex Tatham, Managing Director at Westcoast Limited.

“Be the leader you would want to follow”

Today we hear about the Alex’s journey and how it lead him to be the Managing Director at the UK largest IT company Westcoast Limited. Starting off working his way up to a senior management level in accountancy at Ernst & Young. The main objective that was given to Alex at Westcoast, was to grow the business to £4 billion pound, starting at £600 million. Such an extraordinary task required tremendous amounts of effort, wisdom and determination. In the episode you will hear exactly how he took on that challenge and how he and the staff at Westcoast have been operating to achieve it. (There has roughly been an 800% grown over the 12 years Alex Tatham has been Managing Director!).

“what are your opinions on a 4 day working week… well I want a 6 day week!”

Alex mentions one of his regrets is not getting into sales sooner, since he was in accountancy before. Whilst he admits his days at Ernest and Young were great Alex reveals his true career path in life was always working in sales. Sean and Alex also discuss the current affairs surrounding Covid-19 and “Freedom Day”, now everybody is faced with something new to fear, being “pinged” by NHS Track and Trace. We also speak on the inequalities there are within the IT service industry and how Westcoast Limited are removing those stigmas and changing the norms in the industry, especially in regard to the woman- man ratio within the “The Channel”.

From servicing 5 machines a day to 5,000. We take a look at Westcoasts exponential growth and how being a privately owned business with good finance has helped expand the business massively. In today’s episode we see find out about Alex’s views on working from home, hearing that he would rather people be in office to create the energy for high levels of productivity as well as interacting and enjoying speaking to staff. Mentioning bell ringing after any big success has been temporarily stopped because of Covid-19. Alex goes on to give us an inside view on what life is like at Westcoast, discovering there isn’t a “open door policy” because there aren’t any doors or secluded offices where senior staff work, all the sales team including Alex and Joe sit at their desks in the office with everyone else. Giving employees the opportunity to ask questions and seek support.

(Fun Fact Alex and his wife Sue, are the first ever married couple to come out of the show “Blind Dates”!)