If I Knew Then: Mike Beech

Tribal is an education-focused company that delivers Student Information Systems, complemented by specialist service divisions: education services, offering a broad range of quality assurance and improvement services; and i-graduate, providing the leading global benchmarks for student experience.  Tribal serves customers in over 50 countries, with over 1,000 staff and offices in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, US, Middle East, Philippines and Malaysia, and is headquartered in Bristol.

Mike Beech joined the company in March 2016 as group marketing director, where as a member of the executive team, he oversees global marketing, focusing on the strategic development of Tribal’s marketing initiatives. Mike was previously the marketing director at an ERP software provider, responsible for strategic product leadership, market analysis, branding and demand generation. Prior to that, Mike has led marketing, product marketing and product management functions in variety of IT and telecom companies, including Hewlett-Packard where he started his career in software research at HP Labs.

How did you start out? 

In education – like most of us, which we often forget about in terms of shaping our interests and careers. Following my own interest in all things high-tech at school, I studied computer science and started my career in Hewlett-Packard in research. However, it was the application of technology that interested me, so I quickly moved on to product management and then marketing. 

If you knew then what you know now, what mistakes might you have avoided? 

Too many to recall, but I believe in learning from mistakes so wouldn’t want to avoid them. Fortunately, I’ve not repeated too many.

What advice would you have given yourself when starting out? 

Trust your team. I certainly started with a belief that it was down to me individually to deliver, and would probably worry too much and work too hard, to ensure I was busy. Now I know that results are achieved as a team, with peers, people you lead, or people you follow. I’d advise myself to spend more time looking after team dynamics and performance.

If you knew then what you know now, would you still be sitting there?

I’ve enjoyed my career and wouldn’t want to change much so yes, I’d still be sitting here.

What do you know now that you didn’t know then? 

A huge amount! The world has changed so much from a working practices and technology perspective so there is no surprise in that. Perhaps I now know that change is constant as is the need for continuous learning.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received so far? 

Do what you enjoy so that you enjoy what you do. Your working life takes up a large percentage of your time so you should look to enjoy it and not see it as a chore. If I’m not enjoying my work I look to make changes to ensure that I do.

What is your business highlight? 

The most recent is the first video case study we’ve completed at Tribal for a while. It features a London adult learning and skills service and highlights the importance and value of education, and how Tribal works to empower this.

What is your business lowpoint? 

Fortunately nothing in my time with Tribal but I still remember a customer visit in New Zealand with a previous company. I was new to the senior management team and it was in my first few months I visited a very unhappy customer. In the meeting room, they screamed at me about the poor deliveries and the impact it was having, before bursting into tears and walking out. I made sure we worked hard over many months to turn that around but it did help me realise that even in the B2B world, not keeping your commitments has real, personal impact – businesses are run by real people, who suffer like us all when things don’t go well.

What keeps you awake?

Much to the annoyance of my wife, nothing. I sleep well and tend not to fret about anything.

What’s changed from when you started out? 

Everything and nothing. Massive changes in the way we communicate and interact with the world.

Having said that, the essence of marketing has not changed at all – you need to clearly communicate the value of your propositions to your target customers. The need to know your markets, your propositions and what you are delivering in terms of benefits, is as essential now as it was when I started.

What’s still on your to-do list?

Tribal is going through an exciting period of change, with clear focus on the education market. The marketing team are working hard to make sure we have an exciting story of what we can do, that we can articulate clearly to our customers and the general market. Re-energising our messages and brand is the next big to-do.

What’s next for Tribal? 

We have started developing a new framework for delivering some quite pioneering functionality. This is a major investment and a different approach for Tribal, so an exciting time.

Read more: Sector spotlight: marketing