Mike Smith is an experienced career coach and business mentor of senior executives and business leaders, having advised over three hundred clients since 2006, using his senior international executive career as base experience. In mentoring assignments Mike focuses on how to help clients improve their business results through the actions they take.
Mike also provides business advice to entrepreneurs and has worked with over 50 start-up and early revenue businesses. He worked as a mentor at the London Business School Summer Entrepreneurship programme and an advisor to a blockchain based company in personalised medicine. His is a non-executive director of GSA Global and an advisor to Wavemode UK, which uses proprietary technology to identify valuable underground assets.
Mike has a wide range of strategic, change management and operational skills and experience over a wide range of sectors, company sizes and multi cultural contexts. He has strong
commercial skills, substantial team development experience and has worked through start ups and business transformation through to divestment. He is a good communicator and listener but
is results oriented.
In his executive career he has worked as Chairman, CEO, NED of listed and private equity held companies in the UK, France, New Zealand and Australia. His early career was spent in Indonesia,
culminating with work for the World Bank, followed by an MBA at Manchester Business School. He worked as Strategic Planning Manager for THORN EMI Plc, a diversified industrial conglomerate,
developed a mid career focus on change management and then worked for seven years work as years as a successful company doctor where three companies were rescued from near insolvency
situations.
During his focus on change management Mike was a main board director of Scottish Power Plc during the period immediately prior to privatisation and the onset of competition in the utility
industry. He played a key role n the transformation of the distribution and supply business from a government owned utility to a competitive customer service driven business, reducing costs by
£13M p.a. and manpower reductions of over 1000 while beginning to win prizes for the excellence of customer service. He went on to work for Fletcher Challenge Plc to develop independent power producing projects in New Zealand, Australia and Canada.
Mike is married with four grown up children and has interests in architecture (having built his own house in New Zealand and Scotland), photography and work and well-being, on which subject he
is a TEDx speaker (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMD02R0rMCc). He is a published author “Your Work, Your Well-being: how to get a job you will be good at and Enjoy,” Goldcrest Books 2023.