An Interview with: Chris Singleton | Thor Companies
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In our weekly blog series, we sit down each week with a different Thorite to get to know the people behind the scenes at Thor. From their career journeys to personal stories, this series will give you an inside look at the individuals who make our team so unique. This week, we have Chris Singleton, Co-Founder and COO.

1. What do you do at Thor?

As COO, my role is to work closely with the Thor Board and SLT across the Front and Back Office to define the roadmap and ensure we are set up to achieve our Strategic Objectives. 

Over the last 18 months, my focus has largely been centred around optimising our revenue generating divisions. This has included helping to integrate the Back Office Sales Enablement functions to enhance capabilities, ensuring we all are speaking the same recruitment language, and standardising sales processes to be uniform, impactful, and measurable from top to bottom. 

Crucially, we achieve this with people who embody Thor’s values - a factor that cannot be underestimated.
 

2. What’s a project you’ve worked on that you’re particularly proud of?

Working with the SLT to navigate a market crash, the global pandemic, and the latest prolonged economic downturn have been some good feathers in the cap. A lot of that is reactive though.

In terms of internal proactive projects, I’m particularly proud of globalising Thor’s Sales Cycle and Sales Workflows in tandem with driving the business to become data-led. This has taken about 18 months to achieve, and we are all but there now.

The goal was to unify our global offices and brands under a consistent Thor standard, creating impactful data-led workflows that everyone could follow and subsequently getting that rich data into the hands of the right people so they can make informed strategic decisions. This is now prevalent through onboarding new team members, right the way through to setting expectations at the top level.

Now, there’s a clear structure in place, everyone knows the process from start to finish, the internal recruitment language is consistent across all teams, brands and offices. Each Back Office function plays a significant role in feeding into that philosophy, and everyone now has full clarity around their purpose, the impact they can have and, most importantly, how to achieve it.

We have matured significantly as a business through the latest downturn, and whilst that came with some tough decisions that were not always popular, we are now starting to see the benefits of this. We are considerably stronger today, have a greater identity today and have a more meaningful collective purpose today than we have ever had. Results per head are trending strongly compared to historic performances (discounting the 'Wild West' post-pandemic boom, which wasn’t indicative of the reality) and when the time comes to scale, we will be ready.

A massive team effort to get to this point through some turbulent and very testing times.

3. What three skills are essential for success in your role?

Growth Mindset – Without it, you’d remain in your comfort zone. For me, it’s about keeping your head up, always being open to opportunities, working backwards from desired outcomes, and identifying where we can calculatedly stretch and what solutions will get us there. Being able to then drive those solutions, either directly or indirectly, through the organisation is key.

Perspective – is equally important. Elements of my role are very data-led, stepping back and understanding what drives performance from team to team, inputs, outputs, and dissecting the key financial and sales metrics. This allows strategy to be tweaked accordingly and solutions provided with enough time to mitigate oncoming headwinds in the market. Without knowing this, you leave everything to chance.

Leadership – We are lucky to have a variety of excellent leaders at Thor, all with differing capabilities that excel in myriad situations. Traits that have served me well thus far would be: forward-thinking, positive, energetic, solution-oriented, process-minded, evidence-based and experience led. 


4. What’s the most valuable piece of advice you've received, in your career so far?

Growth should be intentional. I am a growth-driven individual by nature, but it must make commercial sense and work in sync with your financial plan. Growing in markets just because there is demand might not necessarily yield enough ROI to get you to where you want to be. 


5. When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I wanted to be a drummer in a pop band.


6. What’s one thing on your bucket list?

Space Travel!
 

7. If you could have dinner with any person, past or present, who would it be and why?

That would have to be my mother's mum. The only Grandparent I never had the chance to meet. 


8. If you could instantly master one skill, what would it be?

The ability to converse in every language. 


9. What’s a surprising fact about you?

In my earlier years I was absolutely terrified of public speaking. 

I have managed to overcome that fear through immersion. A valuable life lesson I now take with me in all things I want to achieve outside my comfort zone

 

 

We hope you enjoyed this glimpse into Chris's journey as much as we did!

If you’re interested in being part of our team, head over to our 'Work for Us' page and take a look at our open roles.

Join us next week for the latest instalment of our series.

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