OUR COMPANY

Our chief executive

William Montgomery is a performance consultant with first class credentials.  A former naval officer and business executive, he now heads up TEN, where his focus is on delivering excellent results through excellent people.

He has earned an enviable reputation as a powerful catalyst for performance, helping release potential to maximise profit through the creation of a success culture for start-up entrepreneurs to FTSE 100 companies.

He has chaired and addressed conferences across the UK in the private and public sectors.  William’s messages are practical, and presented with electrifying effect.  He shakes up and inspires his audiences, showing them what lies within their grasp.

Your questions:

Who is or was your mentor?

All people I have worked for gave me opportunity, freedom and guidance on the journey.  My first commanding officer in the Royal Navy, colleagues along the way in Lloyds TSB and latterly the President of TEN.

Which business or woman do you most admire?

Those who deliver sustained performance over the long term and for whom the organisation is more important than their own ego. It’s why Lord Browne and Sir Terry Leahy always emerge at the top of British business lists, and I would go along with that.

Do you read books on management?  If so, which has influenced you most?

I don’t personally read management books.  If you have been in leadership roles for over twenty years, you don’t really need to know which academics are in fashion.  I don’t subscribe to any particular guru’s theory on management.  But exposing yourself and other people to different ideas over the years is always productive.

Which is more important what you know or who you know, and why?

What you know and how you use it is all that matters.  Who you know follows.

What does leadership mean to you?

It is about engaging the organisation.  It is about having a sense of purpose commercially and ensuring that the organisation comes with you to deliver it.

What is the most important business event, good or bad to occur in you working life?

The best experiences have been merging new businesses into the company.  It is the thrill of putting together a new organisation and getting everything working together.  The worst events have been around people when I‘ve allowed people who were not right in their positions to remain for too long.  You have the sense of ‘if only I had acted more quickly’.  But it’s not easy, you have got to get people to realise that where they are is not necessarily where they should be.

Does money motivate you?

Financial security is a privilege, but it’s not why I work.  To have had the opportunities I have and the jobs I have done is also, frankly, a privilege and money is totally secondary.

What gadget can you not do without?

How did we ever manage without the mobile phone?

How do you relax?  What are your hobbies?

The call of the sea, the theatre and reading about history.

ps... They don't make them like that anymore:

It’s not bad going to start working, aged 13, as a farm labourer in what is now Middlesbrough and end up discovering Australia, but Captain James Cook was more that a great explorer.  Despite a fracas in Hawaii in 1799 that ended his life; he advocated discourse with locals, and by issuing his crew with fresh fruit, was a pioneer in combating scurvy.  Cook’s charts from New Zealand to Newfoundland are works of beauty, and testament to his astonishing navigational skills.