Business

In Conversation With...

Issue 104

Colin Seller - Director and principal consultant at Seller HR and Business Solutions

Can you tell us about Seller HR and Business Solutions and your role as a consultant?

Seller HR and Business Solutions Limited was founded over 10 years ago by my wife who recognised the need for businesses in the North East and particularly SME’s, to have access to HR/recruitment and business expertise from people who had “been there and done it” to help provide practical and pragmatic support to solve problems they knew (or didn’t know) they had.

I joined in 2020 to offer businesses my experience in driving transformational change in manufacturing operations. I have led local and global businesses through major changes such as divestiture, merger and acquisition, performance turnarounds and fundamental redesigns of the business processes. This ranged from single site experience to a whole global supply organisation with a network of 68 sites, and my role as a consultant is to use this experience to support companies needing to address the performance challenges that we all face.

What is your background?

I have over 30 years’ experience as a senior leader in manufacturing operations, leading change at sites and across a large global network. Most of my career has been about helping people do things differently to deliver significantly increased value to the business.

This has included defining and implementing specific manufacturing process improvements, to leading large groups of people through incredibly challenging times and implementing transformational strategic change. My roles in businesses has been to define and implement step changes in people engagement and operational performance, which have delivered site turnarounds, enhanced profitability, improved capacity, site and business reliability, customer performance and supply chain optimisation.

I also have over 20 years of UK Board Level responsibilities.

Why should an organisation invest in a consultant?

It is impossible for anyone in any single business to have an insight into everything that is possible to achieve their business outcomes. We all know “what we know” and use this to help us navigate our way through the challenges and opportunities we face every day. We all know what we believe works well for us, and we often have seen things in other businesses that we look to copy, since they seem to work well for them. These can be valuable sources of competitive advantage or improvement for any business. Some of the biggest opportunities or even “game changers” come, however, from things outside of our experience and are things we are not even aware of, which I refer to as “the things we don’t know, we don’t know” and so have never been considered!

My approach to consultancy is extremely pragmatic and I prefer the term ‘business partner’ as I can diagnose, advise, mentor and coach, and if necessary, take a leadership role in implementing solutions. I have lived and breathed many of the problems businesses face and I know how tough it can be. I also know, what levers and drivers to look at quickly to generate results and help to practically navigate challenges. The learning, scars, or euphoria that comes from a lived experience where you are the owner or individual responsible for the change and the business outcomes, is different to the typical view of an “external consultant.”

How do you measure success?

With my background of leading businesses, I am 100% focussed on delivering improved “outcomes.” This could be profit, lead time, capacity, customer delivery or satisfaction. True success only comes when these key business metrics achieve or surpass the level required by the organisation. However, my other passion is how these “outcomes” are achieved. Enabling the development of highly engaged teams, who know what’s needed and look for improvements in what they do every day, is when the power of the organisation is unleashed. Success is then when the business “feels different” because everyone is pulling in the same direction.

Is there a mantra you always aspire to do business by?

If you can truly lead and support people to align them with the purpose (why) and what’s important (what), they will find the best way to get it done (how) unleashing the potential of your organisation and making the impossible, possible!

linkedin.com/in/colinseller

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