Tim Rose celebrating 30 years as an IoD member!
IoD Fellow and Essex branch ambassador Tim Rose is deputy managing director of agricultural seed and grain trading company Wherry and Sons, and managing director of Growbridge Advisors, an SME corporate advisory consultancy he founded in 2008.
Growbridge focuses on corporate finance, governance and advisory services. The company has raised more than £100m in finance for SMEs and has trained and accredited 27 business advisory firms to deliver high growth business coaching to SMEs.
An experienced chair, non-executive director and board advisor with a proven track record in driving business success, Tim has more than 20 years’ expertise in financial services, corporate governance, and business advisory services to SMEs.
However, when he began his career as a wholesale financial markets broker within a £200m turnover business, he had only a small instruction book on ‘The Role of the Director‘.
Despite the business’ size, there was little in the way of formal training in the skills and role of a director. Although he had a broad theoretical knowledge gained through his MBA in finance, as a young and relatively inexperienced director Tim felt more knowledge in pragmatic business skills required would stand him in good stead and he sought out the IoD’s Certificate in Company Direction.
Tim said: “When I gained my first board position, I wanted to understand how to fulfil the role of a director effectively. The IoD Certificate in Company Direction provided a solid foundation in business, equipping me with knowledge, analytical tools, and a framework for managing across various industries.”
“I went on to complete the Chartered Director qualification, embedding the learning from the certificate and demonstrating my practical knowledge of a framework for business management and best practice for running a business.
“I wholeheartedly recommend the qualification. It is ‘the best’ business learning programme that I have been on and one of the best investments that I have made in myself. It is very practical so that you can take learnings from it and put them into practice straightaway.”
A member and Fellow of the IoD for nearly 30 years, Tim is a Chartered Director professional peer review interviewer, assessing candidates’ practical experience across five key areas including organisation direction and governance. He says that he is still learning from the way others run businesses.
In his role as Essex branch ambassador, Tim acts as an experienced ‘sounding board’ for IoD members planning to grow their business or seeking practical expert advice. He has worked with more than 100 SMEs on their growth strategy, acquisitions, equipping and resourcing vision, best management practice (informed by his IoD qualifications), problem-solving, avoiding pitfalls and how to raise the right finance for the business’ circumstances.
Now Tim is helping to relaunch the popular IoD Mastermind round table events in Essex – the first post the covid pandemic. A series of round tables of like-minded businesses, the event enables participants to share ideas and discuss topics of interest to SMEs, together with practical solutions from those with lived experiences.
These exclusive sessions offer a combination of brainstorming, education, peer accountability and a supportive space to discuss issues that confront directors on a daily basis.
Tim said: “This is peer to peer mentoring at its best with an experienced chair guiding the conversation of a range of businesses who’ve been there and done that. It offers real value to members, and I am delighted to chair the inaugural event on 9th April.”
Outside his business interests, Tim chairs several charities, including those that help resettling refugees, provide affordable counselling, and support orphans and schoolchildren in Kenya.
He had the opportunity to make full use of his IoD learning to create a framework to apply to Nigerian businesses. He designed a national framework for the accreditation and certification of business development service providers to MSMEs and led a team of judges in the World’s Largest Business Plan Competition, facilitating the creation of more than 30,000 jobs on behalf of the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (DAI: Policy Development Facility) and the World Bank.
