The NED Privilege

October 2026

Working with Ruby Melling is a brilliant end to a jam-packed week. It's a privilege of being a NED or company advisor to spend time with founders like Ruby, Jamie Gray Goncalves and Max Williamson.

I've been with each this week - plus a quick trip to London for the Contracting Awards on Wednesday - and it's great to get properly under the bonnet of their businesses.

Each is special and individual but the headaches and the ambitions they feel are not unique.

We went through the same growing pains at Sellick Partnership and we benefited from the advice of advisors we brought in - we leant on the APSCo trusted advisors team.
We made mistakes of course - it's impossible not to - and some good decisions, with hindsight, could have been better ones.

But it's the long game that matters and having both distance and intimacy with a business can help me help a Board or a CEO.

The other business I've been spending time with is Hike and in particular Gavin Traylor.

He's trying to rectify some of the wrongs that AI has handed to candidates and recruiters. It's very real issue - candidates being lost in a sea of AI-flattened CV sameness and employers drowning in a tsunami of identikit resumes.

Gav's on to something and the Hike platform is starting to get real traction. Check out his posts about the value of a PV - the Personality Vitae which tells your story - not the CV.

I'm looking forward to seeing how Hike marches on - one to watch for sure.