Having started my role as Managing Director at Mearns & Company in January 2018, now seems like a good opportunity to reflect back over the last year and a half to share some personal highlights. Although this is my nineteenth year working with Mearns & Company, starting a new role is always an interesting experience even within the same company, and there have certainly been some challenging moments, as well as some fantastic air punching ones too!

The first half of 2018 was spent getting to grips with my new responsibilities and spending time working out what I really wanted to focus on. The main priorities for me were people – both our own team and our clients, and our profile. I gathered input from everyone in the company on where they thought improvements could be made, and we have made progress on all suggestions. We have also worked very hard on our external profile. We have had some considerable success in this area, with some of the following key highlights for Mearns & Company:

• Achieved Investors in People Platinum accreditation
• Awarded the Gold Standard Award 2018 at the House of Commons (for the ninth time)
• Won the Scottish Herald Family Business Award for Customer Service Excellence 2018

Winning the Customer Service Excellence award meant a lot to us, as Making a Difference is one of our three company values, and we continually work hard to give our clients a fantastic level of service. We don’t always get it right of course, but we always try our best, and our current Net Promotor Score of +81 is something that we are incredibly proud of.

I have also personally achieved some award success of my own, which was very unexpected! In May this year I was named as the winner of the Vistage Members Awards 2019 Impact Award. I was nominated by peers for this award, which makes it very special for me. Having won this award I was then invited to take part in an award winners panel interview at the Vistage Scotland Executive Summit, also in May. This was a fantastic experience, and my first foray into panellist speaking.

I was also invited to take part in a Scottish Edge panel assessment this year for their Social Enterprise category. This was my first experience of judging business funding applications, and it was a really interesting insight into the innovative entrepreneurial talent that exists in Scotland.

I am thoroughly enjoying my role as Managing Director, and the new challenges and experiences that it brings. I am looking forward to a bright future, working alongside my fantastic team, clients and contacts.

More about Vistage and the Awards

Vistage is a global organisation, which has a 22,000 strong community of business leaders. It runs regional private advisory groups, where non-competing peers meet monthly to learn about leadership and other business initiatives and to discuss and share ideas about their own organisation’s priorities.

The member awards in May were the first held in the UK. There were three award categories, Impact, Leadership and Lifetime Achievement. Members were nominated by their peer groups, and the Scotland group Chairs collaborated to select the regional winners in each category.  

New members of Vistage (one to three years) were eligible for the Impact Award. This award recognises the pace of business growth and leadership development of these members. . The award outline states that the strongest members reach significant turning points within their first years with Vistage and make a lasting impact on their companies and communities.

Catherine Bell Assoc CIPD CertPFS