Then and now: Bill Scott

In the latest article of a new feature for Bdaily, Bill Scott, chief executive of Wilton Group, reflects on his career, from his first role to the present day, highlighting the lessons he has learned from his personal and professional evolution. 

You’re chief executive at Wilton Group. What does your role entail?

From the beginning, my aim was to set the pulse and strategy for the business, and act as the glue that held the organisation together.

More recently, I have become the voice of the business - and, in some cases, the industry and our region at events - through the media and meeting with current and potential customers and professional contacts.

I also have a number of ambassadorial roles, support The Teesside Charity and a plethora of other charities, mentor several companies and sit on a number of external boards.

Did you always want to work in engineering? Or did you have other ambitions when you were growing up?

My first passion was cooking, and I considered becoming a chef. 

At school, we were shoved into either woodwork or metalwork.

As an engineer, you’d think I’d have taken to metalwork, but I hated it and swapped it for what used to be called home economics. I loved it.

I also looked at joining either the army or navy until a sliding doors moment. 

I was playing basketball for my local team, and my coach chopped me in the neck. I went down like a sack of potatoes, but got straight back up and carried on playing.

That night, the coach, who owned a fabrication company, phoned my dad and said he had an apprenticeship for me, as the reaction I gave on the basketball court showed him I was the sort of person he’d want working for him! 

When I was 18, he told me I had what it took to be managing director of the company. 

What was your first job – and did you enjoy it?

I was a paperboy.  I remember walking into the newsagent on many occasions asking for a job, and there was nothing available. 

When I didn’t ask, the chap said he had one available – the longest and hardest round he had. 

I got 7½ p a day, and that was morning and night.

After doing it for a while, I went to the newsagent and asked if there was any chance of a raise. He asked what I wanted. I said, ‘£1 a day, plus a Mars bar and a can of Coke’.

He was shocked, but agreed.

He leaned over, looked me in the eye and said, ‘You tell anyone and I’ll kill you’. 

That was my first successful negotiation!

Were there any mentors or individuals that helped shape your career? And are you still applying lessons you learned then to your workforce of today? 

I was headhunted when I was 23, and three times after that, before I set up Wilton. 

In every one of those jobs I delivered growth, dealt with managing directors and financial directors, and saw some good things that were prerequisite to success.

I also saw a lot of bad things.

While I didn’t have mentors, there were a lot of people I learned from, so when it came to starting my own business, I took the best practices and left the bad behind.

What attracted you to the engineering sector?

It was the opportunity my basketball coach gave me that really sparked my interest. 

Careers advice at school was awful; they basically pointed you towards the two main employers on Teesside – British Steel and ICI. 

I chose ICI and got selected for an interview and when I got there, they asked where my dad worked. I said British Steel, to which they replied, ‘Well, go work with your dad’.

British Steel wasn’t for me, though. The beam mill was loud, dirty, dingy and incredibly hot.

It all changed when I got my fabrication apprenticeship. 

They gave me loads to do from day one, and I loved it. 

How do you feel you’ve changed as a person over the years? Have career roles brought new dimensions to your personality?

Being headhunted several times was the pebble in the pond that created the ripples for my career.

That helped mould me as a person.

My friends from childhood say I was quite aggressive when I was younger, but I think that was because you had to fight where I grew up. 

But I’m quite a calm person, and I’ve learnt that’s the best way to be with people. You’ll never see me ranting and raving or throwing things round the office.

In my early 20s, I worked offshore and then for a company working on blast furnaces, running teams of people. These guys were aged anything from mid-20s to their 50s, and I learned never to tell them to do a task, but to ask them instead.  

It's how you would like to be spoken to.

Yes, I’ve had to take tough decisions, but I aim to be the calming influence on people, and that has always been a successful approach.

You’ve seen many changes to the employment world across your career – how do you see the workplace evolving in years to come?

I have never understood why businesses, in whatever sector, haven’t made the most of women or why they’ve not been paid the same as men. 

Things are changing, but it’s been a long time coming. 

It’s also really important to keep pushing the skills agenda. 

We have to remain competitive, and we can only do that by remaining innovative with highly talented people. 

I used to believe in more rigid working patterns, but COVID-19 taught me different. 

Why can’t a mother or father drop their kids off at school and then get to work a bit later? Of course they can!

This flexibility is so important.

If you want to be successful, you have to be true to the people that work for the business.

• If you would like to take part in this feature - or Bdaily's other profile platforms - email editor Steven Hugill at steven@bdaily.co.uk

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