Octagon boss polished his skills at M&S

WHILE I was doing my A-levels, I had a job filling shelves at Marks & Spencer in Pontefract, starting at 7am every morning before school and on Saturdays.

I was the one at school who always had money in my pocket.

The biggest thing I learned was teamwork. As a result, I was not as nervous with girls as some of the lads at school.

I was considering going to university but had no idea whatsoever what to do for a career. The personnel manager at M&S asked me if I had thought about a career in management. In my own time I shadowed the personnel manager and a management trainee to find out more and decided to go for it. I applied to become a young commercial management trainee. I was 18.

That year there were 7,000 applications for about 200 jobs. At the same time I was still applying for university and colleges to hedge my bets.

At interview I spent most of my time talking about the two subjects that were close to my heart - I was working towards a Duke of Edinburgh Gold and a Queen's Scout Award.

I did not appreciate at the time that they taught me the skills that are needed in a management career.

Two interviews and a medical later I was offered a conditional place subject to a placement interview to see where I would best fit into the organisation.

Two weeks before I sat my first A-levels, I got an unconditional offer to start at M&S in Barnsley.

I had three years as a management trainee at stores in Barnsley, Harrogate, Chesterfield and Sheffield, where I had responsibility for looking after the food section.

I was learning the technical skills to do the job - that was the easy thing to learn. The key skills were learning what management style was all about and how my personal management interacted with people to make things happen.

At the time, all the systems at M&S were extremely manual and knowing how to deal with people at head office from Yorkshire was quite difficult.

I had responsibility for turnover, staffing costs, shrinkage and a team of probably about 80 staff. I was 21 then but still called a trainee.

Then I was offered the opportunity of an appointment as assistant manager for Brighton, starting in ten days. All I knew about Brighton was that it had one and a half piers, a bomb had gone off in one of the hotels and there was a nudist beach and I had to look on a map to find out exactly where it was.

A manager once said to me: "As a trainee manager you make your own decisions, you dig your own holes but the manager will stop you falling in them. When you take away the title of trainee you have to stop yourself falling in them".

It was very good advice. I had to learn to stand on my own two feet and back my own decisions.

From there I went on to become assistant manager at Camberley, the second largest M&S in the country.

It was very, very long hours. It was Christmas week and I was working from 5am to 11pm every day. I had a team who was working 24 hours and I felt I needed to be there.

Today I am more confident with my team's ability and I am happy to leave them to complete the day-to-day functions. The mobile phone helps as well.

I learned to manage narrow and deep because I was managing a smaller part of the store, mainly the food section, with a huge structure of people and resources.

My next appointment was as commercial manager at Hammersmith, a smaller store but with wider responsibilities, looking after the whole store to broaden my management skills. I was about 24 or 25 by then.

I learned multi-tasking, but having more accountability. I developed skills on how to influence people in my team. I really enjoyed my time there.

From there I moved to Hackney, where I stayed for two and a half years and then on to Romford, where I learned all about Investors in People.

I then applied for a job as an operations manager. There were three of us in London looking after 58 stores with responsibility for logistics, equipment, health and safety and development of the warehouse team at each store.

In the 12 months I was there, I had driven 30,000 miles within the M25 area.

Then M &S made 250 store management staff redundant and the 22 operations managers in the UK went down to 14. Thirteen years in M&S turned out to be unlucky for me. I was 30 and redundant.

I was upset at the time but very quickly realised it would be a positive opportunity rather than a negative one.

The exit sessions at M&S gave me the opportunity to look at what I really wanted to do rather than jumping back into something familiar.

By chance I was introduced to a head-hunter for shopping centres who was recruiting a centre manager for the Octagon. I started here in September 1999.

The biggest change to my work is actually having true accountability. I am responsible for my own budgets and answerable to the tenants and their head office for spending their money. It is all about hands-on management.

I enjoy the job and am now half way through a diploma course in shopping centre management.

I live seven miles from my work, have a lot of flexibility and a very good team around me. It was the best decision I never had to take.