After 35 years in charge of Taylor Clarke I’ve decided to hand over the management of the business to Bonnie Clarke.
I’m delighted that Bonnie has agreed to take on the mantle as Chief Executive. She brings a wealth of experience as the former Chief Executive of Remarkable (IiP in Scotland). Although not related to me, she already feels like family and I’m sure she will make you feel as cared for as before.
35 years is a very long time and we’ve seen Taylor Clarke morph from The Taylor Clarke Partnership to The Taylor Clarke Partnership Ltd to Taylor Clarke and to an employee owned company. We’ve weathered the storms of recessions (several!), various oil crises (we were too dependent on oil for many years), the financial crisis, bullets flying through the accommodation block in Yemen and last and by no means least, the Covid Pandemic. Whilst it is wonderful to get through all these things, it takes its toll and now I’d like to concentrate on coaching and some delivery. I will stay on as Chair and look forward to catching up as I have more time.
We’ve had some wonderful moments over the past 35 years. Here are a few of them:
Building a long term, close partnership with Mobil Oil that had us at one point helping them negotiate successfully with the Indonesian Government Oil Company Pertamina, their Joint venture PT Arun and Mobil to reduce their contribution to Indonesia’s gross domestic product from 12% to 8%. Quite a tall order!
Helping DWP deliver a 2 day Leadership Development programme to 10,000 managers in cohorts of 100 with 10 syndicates each
Winning and delivering the Scottish Government Leading to Deliver Programme for Social Work Managers – 5 cohorts of 100 managers over 2.5 years with a 95% success rate in participants getting their post graduate certificate in Social Services Leadership from Robert Gordons University
Running around 50 cohorts of leadership development for The Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Developing a strong presence in the Higher Education Sector with the likes of Glasgow, Strathclyde and Edinburgh Universities
Developing a relationship with Denison Culture surveys that led us to working with many mid range retailers such as Dreams and helping us create our Culture Change offering
Helping Total in Yemen blend together 60 different nationalities for their massive LNG project
A 10 year relationship (until the oil price fell dramatically) with Wood plc that resulted in us delivering 195 cohorts of the senior managers programme and 165 cohorts of their Emerging Leaders programmes. Not to mention nearly 100 facilitations of groups from Joint Ventures, Partnerships, project teams and leadership teams. We also delivered 10s of cohorts of the Safety Leadership and Positioning to Win programmes jointly delivered with their inhouse teams.
Pulling together our various coaching and counselling activity into a coherent Coaching Practice
Building our ILM Level 7 Coach training programme and establishing the AoEC franchise to deliver their Practitioner Diploma in Executive Coaching in Ireland leading to the establishment of our Ireland business
Helping Alasdair Ireland establish his Hoolr coaching platform
The development of on-line versions of our courses during the pandemic and beyond
And there have been numerous smaller organisations that have been with us during development phases for them and over the long term such as Swagelok
I’ve worked with amazing colleagues in the backroom of Taylor Clarke who keep things running smoothly and really talented consultants, many of whom you will know better than you know me. Together we have released potential in countless organisations and individual leaders around the world.
We’ve enjoyed great long term relationships with our clients and hope that our values of Care, Principled, Impact and Partnership will continue to shine through in our future relationships with you.
Many many thanks for your support over the years and your friendship.
Take care
Laurence
