Callum Taylor Email & Phone Number

Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom

It all started with a conversation at CrossFit, thank you once again CrossFit Aberdeen. I was fresh into the continuous improvement, Lean, Agile and coaching role, and I was loving it. I just happened to mention this or one for the member, who I still didn’t really know that well but from there myself and Tim Wigham stuck up a conversation and it turned out he was head of performance coaching at Exceed.From there our relationship developed, I got to know Tim and Exceed and Tim got to know me. At this point I was very green behind the ears, and this was certainly not the time to step into the breach with a company like Exceed. So, I went and working in a few different companies and a few different industries in addition to a little bit of consulting. Then suitably battle scared and with a bunch more experience the stars aligned, and I joined Exceed.It is very much in the early day of this role; however, I feel this is one for me. I feel like everywhere I have been, everything I have done and everything I have learned has brought me here. Over the next few months, I am updating this section with my learning and thought about what I am doing at Exceed. Watch this space!

Fittie

Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom

For years, Rugby was central to my life. Rugby has given me so much, success, friends, experiences and a lot of life lessons. But away trips every other week, getting smashed to bits on cold wet winter nights and hangovers every Sunday was starting to lose its appeal. Like most other people at the time, I watch the documentary and the CrossFit Games on Netflix and thought I’ll give that a go and joined CrossFit Aberdeen. From moment one I loved it, I had always been interested in fitness, during my time playing rugby and this translated beautifully into CrossFit as I found I was pretty good at it.Unfortunately, shortly after this it was time for me to leave Aberdeen and I moved to Newcastle and joined Reebok CrossFit Tyneside. These guys were fit, for 18 month I did nothing but train. They were also competitive and me being me this posed me on even more. However, work brought me back to Aberdeen and back to CFA and it was at the time that I decided I wanted to do a bit of coaching. So, I went off to do my Level 1 in Manchester and started coaching at CFA. It wasn’t till I had seen how other gyms operate that I knew how good CFA is. There single most important goal is to make you fit for your life and keep you out of a nursing home. The concentration of high-level coaching is incredible, at one point we had 3 Seminar staff, a level 3 Trainer, 3 level 2s and me the most junior level 1. Its amazing that this little box in the northeast of Scotland has this absolute gem. CrossFit has taught me so much, in terms of exercise it has taught me how to move, my body is healthier than it has ever been. In terms of nutrition, it has taught me simple easy way to fuel my body that at healthy and sustainable. Most importantly community, its importance to your health and wellbeing and how fundamental it is to mood and mindset. I am a better person for it, a better coach, friend, Partner and Dad!Do the right things, for the right people, for the right reasons.

Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom

I have always been a fan of cars, not in a big was but always appreciated them. With an uncle that worked as a salesman for Audi I naturally had a few of these as I got some great deal. Then one day one of my friends and now business partners rolled up with a beautiful Land Rover Defender. Immediately I was in love, this thing was handsome, a real head turner and most of all had bags of character. So, I kept an eye out on Auto Trader and then one day I say her, Pearl! A white 2.2 letter 2015 model with 115k miles. She was a beauty, and before long she was on a lorry and on her way up the road. It was shortly after this that me and a couple of mates, who also hard their own Defender, were sitting having a drink and thought Land Rover Defenders would make fantastic wedding cars, and just like that The Wedding Defenders were born. Doing weddings are fun, but even running a small business, even a side hustle is a lot of work. Social media, company account, fielding email and giving up your Saturday is onerous when you have a full-time job, a family and other commitments. However, providing a novelty like this for couples on one of the biggest days of there lives is a massive privilege and a pleasure. The wedding industry is also a great one to work in, although I have only dipped my toe in, from what I have experienced it is a group of people to are warm, more than happy to help and passionate about give clients and guests a day to remember. Prefect carriage for a marriage.

Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom

There were a few things that made me want to go to work for Oceaneering. One of the main things being that the actually offered me a job in the middle of a pandemic where government were having to paid companies to keep people on work! But seriously, Oceaneering are really putting their money where their mouth is when it comes to transformation. They have hired real professionals; I am one of a team of fifteen operational excellence personnel who are really pushing to make a difference within this business. I have fallen fowl in the past of being the CI person on the org chart that makes the company ISO 9001 compliant, that certainly is not the case there. Oceaneering want to transform. At Oceaneering I feel like I have come into my own. A wise man said to me that having a bit of imposter syndrome is just growth, and I think that is true. I definitely felt a bit of that here, but in the same breath I feel that I have genuine credibility, know what I am talking about and I am a true coach and advisor to senior leaders. I am leading global projects, pushing myself to work on areas that are not in my usual sphere of influence such as finance, HR and supply chain management rather than the usual engineering, operations and service. Ultimately however, I have had a taste for the consultancy world pre pandemic, and when an opportunity to enter it again came along I just couldn't turn it down. As much as I was involved in some challenging and interesting projects in a company that I truly believed was going places its just not the same as playing this game as a 3rd party. Fork in the road?

Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom

When Covid 19 hit a lot of contracts were lost but we kept enough to keep us treading water. PBI are a small consultancy specialising in Lean and Agile ways of working. A family run business full of great people who challenge the status quo, we went toe to toe with some much largest consultancies in the world and blow them out of the water. PBI went from a one-man band to employing over 20 people in only 2 years, we were flying by the seat of our pants, but our clients loved what we did. When this volume fell of the edge of a cliff we were forced to create the infrastructure and systems that we had not had the chance to do before, legitimising the business and allowing us to thrive. We also had to pivot. For years we had been steadfast in saying that things needed to be done physically, with post-its, in-person, seeing the whites of people’s eyes. Then, suddenly, none of this was possible, we had to change the way we did everything. We put in a massive amount of work to move all our processes online. We transformed the way we operated to be able to facilitate in an interactive, collaborative and virtual manner. Allowing all our tools and coaching to be performed remotely. It’s was hard find, and to get in front of, potential clients with our limited credibility. Not knowing where the next paycheck is coming from is a horrible feeling. I learned to work in a start-up, bringing structure, rigour and science into a start-up and helped build it from the ground up. Over the last year, I have had a few different hats on. I learned parts of the business that I never knew about before. Sales, business development, and digital marketing to name but a few. I found routes to market that I never knew were available. Ultimately, I left because of family. Cash is king and there is only so long you can run at a loss for. With an infant in the house and my salary supporting our family I needed something more stable. Nothing ventured nothing gained.

Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom

I joined BP because it would be the biggest and most prestigious company that I had worked for to date. This was also a consultancy position, something that I had wanted to do eventually, I just did not think it would happen so soon. I was part of a team of coaches working at North Sea HQ, I implement huddle, ran campaign rooms, and executed kaizen events. BP loved what our team did, and projects saved hundreds of millions. You could feel the cultural change, groups of senior leaders took tours of the North Sea site to see what was happening. I spent time overseas running a deployment. I lead a team of coaches working in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. We brought a rigour that the region had never seen before when implementing Agile ways of working.That not to say there weren't challenges. We were the only lean constancy in the company, BP had hundreds of coaches in the organisation teaching Scrum, Agile, Kanban and other techniques that had come from the software industry. These techniques are great for a situation of high uncertainty, where you don't even know the problem let alone the solution. Large parts of had been trained in these principles and believed that this was the only way to solve run of the mill problems and make improvements that just needed the right people around the table. We tried to use the right tool for the right problem.We kept fighting the good fight, doing what we knew was right for the business. We educated ourselves on Agile, I am now a scrum master and product owner. Being a consultant is tough in an environment like this, I felt like I constantly had to prove that I was doing the right thing. I had to keep delivering, couldn't rest on my loreals, make things happen, I keep challenging the status quo. I left because of Covid, the team survived 3 months during the pandemic. But with an oil price that briefly went negative, the cost had to be cut, and we were on the wrong side of that. Fight the good fight

Aberdeen, United Kingdom

Initially, I had seen this job come up in NOV in Newcastle, they mentioned that they were recruiting for the same position in Aberdeen and would I be interested in taking this position. I was also keen to get back into the oil and gas industry now it was in a much better state, and get back into a large company and build a career. For reasons I will go into I was not at NOV for very long, about 6 months, but I had some good wins whilst I was there. I meet some really great people, ran some fun training sessions and made some surprising improvement. This included helping a struggling department take there on time in full from the low 60% to the high 90% and introducing a piece of machining software that would drop machining time by half. What I would say about NOV is that was up to me and the teams to get things done, the role of a lead within making improvements and its importance was not well known. This slowed down implementation and, in some cases, stopped it altogether. I always say that strong sponsorship and servant leadership is the single most important thing in the fast and effective implementation of any change, here I truly learned that. I made it my mission to educate the leadership team in their role as sponsors and servant leaders, you don't know what you don't know. This was one of my reason for leaving, the second was that I was headhunted for a new position at a consultancy based in Aberdeen, I was pretty flattered to be asked and jumped at the chance.When the world give you lemons

Consett

I went to Northern Aerospace because they were the only company that was willing to take me on with my level of experience, they had seen a bit of potential in me. This job was also based in Newcastle Upon Tyne and was outside the oil and gas industry, both things that I was looking for. I became a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, I'm not sure I will ever use these skill directly again but I indirectly use the skills I learned all the time. I also became a Practical Problem Solving Practitioner in A3 Thinking. At Aker Solutions I was facilitating improvements, here I was both facilitated and running my own projects. This gave me a real understanding of how hard running an improvement project can be. This was a different culture than I had experienced in the oil and gas world, this was a manufacturing plant in the North of England where union culture was strong, a far cry from the fancy offices and clean workshops of Aberdeen. I had to learn to work within this, you better get on these people good side as you will not get a second chance. Before coming here, I was sometimes frustrated that I couldn’t make people change things, or make changes myself. I thought this would make improvement easy and achieve the outcomes that projects were looking for. I had the capability to do this here, if I wanted something done differently, I just changed that Standard Operating Procedure. How wrong I was, this line of work is all about people, people need to see the benefit and make the change for themselves. Culture eats process for breakfast every time. Ultimately, I left because the company was bought over by a French giant, I thought they would at least centralise continuous improvement efforts and at worse shut the plant. I went looking for something new and got it. In the end, they did shut the plant. I also missed Scotland, although Newcastle is about the most Scottish town there is in England there is no place like home. You can only lead a horse to water

Aberdeen, United Kingdom

Initially, this job was about self-preservation. Companywide there were roles posted to be a Lean Coaches in Lean Deployment and Quality and anyone could apply. I was coming to the end of my graduate training program and getting a job once this was finished did not seem likely. I had a couple of meeting and an interview with the hiring manager and I got the job. I was over the moon but had no idea what the job was or what I would be doing. Like many that get themselves in Continuous Improvement, Six Sigma, Lean or Agile jobs, fell into it. Luckily, I seemed to take to it like a duck to water.I learned load from a technical point of view, coaching, facilitation, being a training provider, running Value Stream Maps, facilitating Kaizen Events, Huddles, Campaign Rooms and much more. One of the biggest lessons I learned is to proofread your work. With this job, I had to create a lot of visual management and I put a run chart on the wall that talked about the deficit between target hour and hours earned. Unfortunately undenounced to me I had written defecate on the board instead. I also learned some softer stuff, people find change really hard even if they want to, people don’t like being told what to do, leaders don’t always walk the talk, go where you are going to be accepted, snotogram email doesn’t work etc. I ran some great project during this period, and I felt like I was getting somewhere in my career. I started doing some international travel and sat down for dinner with some Senior Vice Presidents. I was also identified as a high potential talent and put and the future leader program at Aker Solutions. There was a couple of reason why I left. Firstly I felt I wasn’t getting paid enough, I had not had any salary progression for 4 years and I was getting paid 40% less the salary band of the job. Secondly, I had spent my entire career in an industry and city that was in the doldrums, I needed something different. Chalk it up to experience.

Aberdeen, United Kingdom

I knew that I wanted to get on an IMechE accredited graduate training program, and I was pretty keen to get into the oil and gas industry as the salaries seemed pretty good. So, I started applying for graduate training programs. Every application for seemed to be the same, 300 words on this, 300 words on that. For someone who is dyslexic, this was really challenging. I got rejected from most of these due top spelling or grammatical errors and for those that I managed to get through there was a verbal and numerical reasoning test, I have a zero per cent success rate. Then Aker Solutions came along, CV, cover letter and assessment centre, done. They offered me the job and the rest is history. Unfortunately, the week I started in was the week that the price of oil plummeted in 2014. What started with so much promise didn’t really deliver, courses got cancelled, training never happened and I was constantly worried about my job. Before we were told we were the future of the company, pretty soon it was clear we would be lucky yo get out of this with a job.I tried to use this as an opportunity, instead of putting my head below the parapet I made a name for myself, I volunteered for the hard project, spoke up at meetings and to challenged the status quo. It seemed to work, a lot of people knew who I was, I spoke at some events and I got chosen to do some pretty cool stuff. I found that cash is king, at does not matter what was promised. At the end of the day if the shareholders are not going to get there dividend costs must be cut, and if you are in the wrong place on that org chart you might be that cost. In a community of oil and gas working used to a cushty life, inflated salaries and great benefits, I have never had this. From day one I have always been scrapping for my job. In the end, I left because I was offered something better but more on that to come. You make your own luck

Glasgow, United Kingdom

After some pretty casual jobs and a couple of great summers, it was time to get serious. I did a bit of asking around the rugby club and someone offered me a summer internship at a world-leading engineering consultancy. I was pretty keen to get myself on a decent graduate training program so I thought a little bit of relevant experience would do me some good. I wanted to see how the academic skills I was learning at university would be translated into the working environment. I worked on a couple of great projects when I was there, including an electrical and lighting circuit for a hospital and Qatar. This gave me a good understanding of how engineering design takes place and the codes and standards governing this. I also learned about the high-level commercial set up of projects works how they are commissioned, designed, build and paid for. I found it was hard to get help in an environment like this, I was set off with a task and told to get on with it. Everyone was really busy and if I didn’t know where to find something I was going to be waiting a while.Here I learned that if I wanted to really get the most out of the first couple of year of my career I needed to get onto a proper graduate training program if I was going to progress fast. Onwards and upwards

Moultonborough New Hampshire

So, when summer camp finished, I had a few choices, I could go home, I could go take a trip round America or stay and volunteer at something called Camp Angelfish. This is a week-long camp run for children who live with severe disabilities this could be Downs Syndrome, Autism, MS and more. This is not only for these particular children but also for the parent who can gain some well earner rest, and their siblings to experience something a bit different as so often their life revolved around the challenges within their family. I decided to stick around for an extra week before spending some time visiting all those I had met over the summer. So much of this week was the same as normal camp but yet so different. During the rest of the summer, the kids I was looking after had been going to camp for a year. Don’t get me wrong, they loved it, but the camp was pretty normal to them and they expected to go and for it to be fun. For these kids and their families, this was often the one week of the year that they could escape the reality of normal life and do something truly different and exciting that usually, they don’t get that chance to get anywhere near. Just getting through the day is often a success to them. To watch this was amazing, helping these kids and their families experience the exhilaration of a ski boat, catching a fish or singing songs by a campfire this was truly special. For me this was also hard, I know that suffering and pain is relative, but it made me think about when I complain about work, studying or family life. Do I have anything to complain about? Do I really have the right to moan? Once again, I left because I had to join the real world. I have thought going back a couple of time but sometimes these things are just be looked at in the past through rose-tinted glasses. Quit whilst you are ahead

Noultonborough, New Hampshire

If you have ever seen “My White Hot American Summer” you will know exactly how much fun this was. I spent 2 summers working in a summer camp just outside Moultonborough, New Hampshire the USA teaching white water kayaking and other water sports. I also had to look after a bunk full of 15, eight to nine-year-old boys who were constantly over-stimulated, disorganised and jacked up on sugar. This job was all one big win, I lived on the side of a beautiful lake in a log cabin, the sun shone every day and I got to teach kids water sports day in day out. We could go out wakeboarding whenever we liked, take the kids out on day trips across the lake to buy ice-cream and maybe hit a bar in the evening and have a one or two councillors’ sodas. The biggest challenge at camp was the parent! They were so worried about their kids, they would phone daily, checking on this, insisting on that. Meanwhile, the boys were absolutely fine, totally oblivious to all the fuss being made in the background. The only time the parents really became a problem was during parents day. Once a summer the parents could come and visit their kids, it was crazy, the dads would turn into big kids, be super alpha and really competitive when they joined the kids playing sports. Meanwhile, the mums would be fussing over there boys, grilling me and my co councillors about why there were marks on their clothes, why they have some grazes on the knees, have they been brushing their teeth 4 times a day. It was hard enough getting them to put their t-shit on the right way round let alone anything actual hard. Here I learned trying to be the biggest and the loudest does not really get you very far, if I was honest and treated the kids with respect, they would show me respect themselves and we should all be happier for it. After two great summer in the alternate reality I had to think about doing something a little more serious and get a proper job, it was sad to say goodbye. Do unto others

Edinburgh, United Kingdom

In my later teenage years working for free turn out not to be quite as good as I thought. Like many teenagers I want to do stuff with my mates that my parent were not willing to fund, this included drinking beer, chasing girls and buying some clothes if there was anything left. So, I went to work for Marks and Sparks in one of there outlet shops in the furniture department. I chose M&S because they paid well, offered double time on a Sunday and gave you a discount card. My mum was really pleased about this because not only did I get a discount card but so did she. This was a great job, I usually did the early shift and worked with two old boys in the back moving around sofas and shooting the breeze. There were challenges in this job, I was at the bottom of the food chain, and I was pretty confident I had more skills and could do a much better job than those higher up. It was also my first experience of being a very small cog in a very big machine, and the frustration that can bring. I got my very first promotion at this job, they made me duty manager. I have to say I was pretty chuffed to have a set of keys of the shop and all that responsibility at such a young age. When I do something, I always want to do it to the best of my ability, find ways to do it better, push myself and encourage others to do the same. But not everyone is like that, a lot of people just want to do their job and go home. I learned that here, and in many other businesses, that you have to work within these limitations, and there is no shame in that. It’s a broad church

Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom

My parents are both nurses by trade, and when I was 10 years of age, they decided that they wanted to do something a bit different and be at home for me and my sister a bit more. So, they bought a bed and breakfast in Edinburgh. Naturally, I was a fantastic source of free labour and seeing as both my parents are Aberdonian and their firsts are as tight as a squirrels nostril was put to work. My role included setting table, washing up, showing guests to their rooms, ironing, changing beds, frying eggs, answering phones and much more. Basically, all the skill I to keep a clean and well-ordered household, so my partner can’t understand why am so messy. I learned a lot about the best and worst people, customer service and how taxing it can be, how to fix almost anything in a house and how to make a cracking cooked breakfast. Apart from that I have seen all sorts of people and have a few good stories. Like the time my dad went to help some guest who had broken their key in the door of the wee small hour of Hogmanay. He was to drink to remember this and it was only in the morning that he was told he had done the whole thing naked. I think one of my biggest lessons was that everything changes. In 2000 when they bought the guest house, they would receive a letter from Australia from people who wanted to book at the room, 15 years later it was a race to the bottom on prices to be as high as possible on and Airbnb and franticly answering the odd bad review on trip advisor.I saw that owning your own business is not always sunshine and roses. People that you work when you want when you have your own business, that’s not true, its more that you never stop working. In the end, I left home and went off to university. However, every holiday and time that I was home I was put straight back to work. They only certainty is change

Master Of Engineering (Meng), Mechanical Engineering, Distinction

Masters Group Project: Design, build and test an unmanned ariel vehicle - Investigation into energy store in phase change materials •.

Education record

Activities and Societies: Rugby 1st XV• Highers: English-A, Maths-A, Geography-A Physical Education-A, Physics-A • Voted Head Boy by staff.