Paul Meyers — Managing Director Stock in the Channel — Conversation with a mindful leader
By: Jonathan Sandoval Sjuls Thoresen
Tags: It, Productivity, Mindfulness, Management And Leadership, B2B

The warm-up

How’s your weather (how are you doing)?

Right now, it’s not sweltering hot. A few showers are to be expected, but there are loads and loads of sunshine.

Are you comfortable?

When meeting with people (especially online) it is good to ensure that the other person has taken care of their needs (like grabbing a drink or visited the toilet) so they can relax for the duration of the meeting.

Yes.

What have you been doing lately?

We’re in lockdown here in London. Thankfully I’m sharing a flat with another entrepreneur, so this keeps me motivated. I try to cycle as much as I can, and I am looking forward to our company’s socially distanced Xmas party.

We like your values and wondered what else you had to say around those?

We are defending the small guys against the likes of Amazon. People use Amazon because of convenience. If you need to buy 10 laptops you don’t want to speak to people, you want to buy them directly. If you want to talk to an account manager, it’s for strategic reasons rather than buying something.

Our platform empowers our customers, the resellers. They know their clients and with our product Modern Selling we help our customers engage better and provide tailored experiences for their clients.

This allows our customers to compete with Amazon.

The exercise

Trust is a key pillar in your business, how important is trust to you?

Our customers entrust us with their data. We know how much they sell for, what they sell, and to whom. This information is potentially useful to competitors, but we are agnostic, completely neutral. Our customers can be sure nobody has access to that data; we are the glue linking it all together.

You can trust us, without trust our business can’t operate.

“We want to help you compete, not compete with you, so Stock in the Channel is a 100% IT trade-only organisation. After 11 years, and with over 60,000 registered users, we feel this makes us the most trusted IT sales and procurement automation company around.”

What do you think leaders need to think extra about these days?

The current challenge is how to keep the business culture the way you want it when people are sat at home. Working purely digital has its advances, but you lose the human connection and that is difficult to reproduce online. The challenge is ensuring that people still feel like they are part of something.

What do you do to help this?

We do weekly meetings with the entire team where we talk about our projects, strategy, and vision. We are also working on transforming our office into a company HQ. It will be filled with comfy sofas, sound systems, a free bar, and the employees will get their own key to use the space 24–7. They can use the HQ as an alternate space to work or they can invite their friends to hang out after hours and on weekends. We have one rule: The team is responsible for their own guests and they need to leave the space the way they found it, that’s it.

Comment: Stock in the Channel’s HQ is based just off Piccadilly Circus, in the heart of London’s West End, a very prime location if you ask us.

What is your relationship with plants?

I have never been able to grow plants due to laziness, but this year I’ve developed a great love for them. The Covid pandemic has allowed me to spend time to get to know the plants and to water them. Before I was always on the go, so they got neglected. Now I’ve gotten really into plants. There is a real sense of achievement cultivating plants and flowers.

“There is a real sense of achievement cultivating plants and flowers” — Paul Meyers

What is your work philosophy?

I like to be fulfilled. If you do something you are good at, you should pursue that talent. It’s a way to provide happiness in your life.

I grew up in London and I’ve always been nonconventional. I never really fitted in nor did I want to. Taking orders was not my cup of tea so the longest full-time job I’ve had was six weeks.

This is part of the reason why I started my own company. I wanted to create the kind of company that I would work for. As an IT specialist, you can make good money working in the city, but the price you have to pay is your freedom. It’s not easy, I’ve almost been bankrupted twice and had periods without any money and only porridge on the menu.

Business publications like Harvard Business Review and Forbes are writing a lot about Mindful Leadership these days, what are your thoughts?

It’s a very fashionable term. The concept of business has changed in the last few years. The old world of rigid hierarchy company’s where people tell others what to do is gone. The reason to start my own business was to avoid this. A long time ago I did a contract at Marks and Spencer’s during a 35 degrees heatwave. We received a message from the management saying we were allowed to undo the top button of our shirt. I thought to myself “You don’t tell me what to do”.

A lot of people who are good in the tech industry are not people you can tell what to do. They challenge you, are Mavericks. This creates a structure where people are empowered. As a leader, you need to create a vision, have a plan, show your team the promised land. Help them define the road, how each individual fits in, and how they benefit from buying into the plan.

People want a leader with a vision. You are the conductor of an orchestra. You can’t tell people how to play, but you can help them come together to create your vision.

There are three things to make an employee happy:

Autonomy — People need to feel they are making their own decisions. That they can work any time they want (within reason) and that they can organise their own time. Complexity — The work needs to be challenging enough for them to feel a win after the task is completed, but not harder than what they can deliver. A link between reward and effort: If you work hard you get something out of it, like salary and benefits.

The stretching

Almost one in five adults (19.2%) were likely to be experiencing some form of depression during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in June 2020 — What can leaders and employers do to combat this?

Corona has been difficult, but we have been lucky and are actually one of the winners. Our clients need the technology we have developed. We have, however not been able to get people to the office, and working from home is tiring for people. We have regular calls with our team, to have some social interaction. At least that way they get a taste of the “real world”.

You got to cut people some extra slack. Some people deal better with the current situation. This way of living is not natural, we are social animals.

Any final words you want to share?

There is no guarantee for success, but if you don’t try doing what you are good at and what you enjoy, you are likely to regret it. Just go for it. Just do it.