Mick Gill – Trustee – Champions taking a partnership approach to supporting projects

Mick Gill (on the right of the photograph above) is proud of his various roles for Anglian Community Enterprise over the years, which covered a number of different areas, such as project management support and providing life coaching sessions to improve the well-being of staff. 

He also used to run his own business before he worked at ACE and believes this combined experience of helping people and knowing how to make an organisation become financially stable long-term puts him in a strong position to support local groups in North East Essex through ACT funding. 

Strong business background 

However, Mick did not originally start off his career in the health sector. Instead, he initially worked on Post Office Phones for the General Post Office, which eventually became the company now known as the BT Group.  

He is also a Chartered Research Engineer and spent some time in the 80s working as a manager, applying his expertise in a number of laboratories based near Ipswich. Later in the 90s, he moved on to become a Senior Tutor as part of a new technology-based training role. 

After working in this position for a while, he moved into providing total quality management support for the BT Group, which the company needed at the time to improve the quality of its overall service for customers.  

Following his work with BT, he set-up his own management consultancy business and built on everything he learnt from these experiences to enhance his work in this area. At the same time, he also formed a retail business in Ipswich, which involved selling second hand office furniture.  

“My colleague actually ran the day-to-day operations of the business, and I carried on with my consulting role, as well as driving the strategy for this company. This experience helped me to learn how to run a business and operate as an executive. My consultancy role also covered a wide range of different areas focused on technology, people and leadership-based training.  

Varied roles for ACE 

“I carried on with this work until about 2008, after 15 years. That’s when I started work at ACE as the Lead on People and Organisational Development Training, before becoming their Patient Experience Facilitator. I was also involved with project and programme management for ACE, and I delivered personal life coaching for the staff. 

“The last six years of working at ACE gave me a strong insight into how the health sector works and the challenges it faces. There are many things I learnt during that period that I want to bring back to ACT through my overall experiences.” 

Mick now wants to support the projects funded by ACT with their processes and project management plans, to help them become successful long-term. 

Experience of Amateur Dramatics 

In addition to having all of this experience, Mick was also involved with Amateur Dramatics for Suffolk District Council up until he was 50, appearing in plays staged at a number of different places, such as Brighton, London, Hastings, Ipswich and Woodbridge.  

He said this experience enabled him to feel comfortable working with people from all walks of life, to help them develop personally and professionally.  

“As a result, I am very empathetic about how the staff feel, at any grade, and understand the challenges they face. That’s the great thing about organisations like ACE and ACT – you can bring unique expertise to the people you help.”  

Challenging and knocking down the barriers 

This overall experience has helped him to see things slightly differently.  “I’ve also worked with many senior managers too, including people from the Great Western Railway Board, the Southern Railway Board and one of the divisional boards of HMRC, which helps when it comes to mentoring the community organisations we support.  

“Our work at ACT is stimulating because there is an opportunity to innovate, you know, and actually challenge current thinking in the health sector.  From my experience, the large organisations are quite bounded by what I would call restrictive thinking. A lot of the new start-ups and the innovators have actually got a different mindset. They want to do something and make a change, but they are not restricted by what’s gone before. 

“I would love to help promote this approach and tell the projects we’re considering they don’t have to do it like it’s always been done.” 

Mick added there has to be a way to help the project leaders who approach ACT to navigate safely around the obstacles and barriers they often face. 

Mentoring support 

“I want to support great ideas and people with passion, who have the drive to make things work. But this drive has to be backed by sensible processes, such as having solid health and safety procedures in place; well thought out long-term plans for financial security and all those things that make a business work successfully. 

“We want to underpin what they do and support them. I’m actually passionate about supporting somebody to achieve their dreams and that’s where I come from. I get my kicks from seeing somebody else really get it done and do it right, you know. 

“I love the grassroot ideas and seeing how they link up with other projects. I want to help with the coaching side of things too, to give them a chance to think it through and reflect. I certainly would like to have a hands-on approach where I can.” 

Mick concluded that ACT wants to support projects that will have a strong social impact on society and help people who are not receiving the assistance they need from elsewhere.