Our Purpose
We equip leaders and investors to grow exceptional companies where people love to work.
Now more than ever, work life matters. Employee experience shapes the customer experience, and in a scaling business, a neglected culture and organisation can undermine all other endeavours.
Our founders have advised hundreds of organisations working to reach their potential. Those who succeed create and sustain healthy cultures with strong, diverse leadership and strategic organisation design. The message: scale well, or fail to scale.
We’re here to work with you to design and develop ways of making your company outperform with leaders and teams that are happy, healthy and fulfilled.
We’re here to help you Scalewell.
Thanks for another excellent workshop! It was clearly extremely effective at giving [our Board] a safe space to raise some very important issues, and align on them. The energy for the rest of the day definitely showed how effective it had been.
— Ivan Mazour, CEO, Ometria
Our Values
Recognition
We appreciate the value people bring
Simplicity
We are not afraid to go deep and tackle the complex, but we strive to simplify
Openness
We ensure everybody speaks up
Diversity
We believe anyone with the right mindset can lead, and we share our knowledge freely to make this a reality
Visionary development
We constantly push the boundaries
of learning and development
Commercial outperformance
We create lasting value for our clients
The Team
Nick Watling, Co-Founder and CEO
Having read Law at Oxford University and qualifying as a solicitor, Nick quickly realised his heart didn’t lie in corporate finance law, and that his real passion was developing leaders and businesses. He worked for leading organisational consultancies including Oliver Wyman Delta and Heidrick & Struggles on many projects, including cultural development at NASA following the Columbia disaster.
In 2012 Nick struck out on his own, and has since worked in house at businesses such as Drugdev, as well as consulting for hundreds of leaders and scaling companies across Europe and the US. Nick’s focus is helping entrepreneurs to unlock their full potential and become exceptional leaders of unique and healthy companies.
Nick likes to think he can surf (despite once almost meeting his maker in a wipe out) and is slowly becoming a half decent chef. He is also trying to get to grips with non-dualism and quantum mechanics and as a result is an infrequent guest at dinner parties.
Phil Makinson, Co-Founder and COO
With an MA in Industrial Economics and Management from Cambridge University, Phil began his career creating digital products and services for global leaders and challenger brands. As well as working on five continents for consultancies now part of Deloitte and EY, he was part of the launch team at 3, worked for Robbie Williams (on his website, not as a backing singer) and co-founded a pre-Spotify mobile music service.
Since 2011 Phil has focused on scale ups, initially as co-founder of Kabbee (until Uber spoiled the party) and then, after a stint launching Facebook’s first incubator, as CCO and Board Member for the UK’s favourite car sharing service, hiyacar.
Working with Nick and focusing on the people side of purposeful businesses were long held ambitions, which were finally realised when Scalewell was born.
Phil is also a retired DJ, Jurgen Klopp fanboy, and dreams one day of a life by the sea - ideally in the Caribbean, but more likely in North Wales.