Meet our founders
Matt Wilden – Helping Leadership Teams Step Up in Employee Ownership
Still We Grow was founded with a mission to fill a critical gap in the employee ownership landscape. While the employee ownership business model is growing rapidly in the UK, many businesses transitioning to Employee Ownership Trusts (usually known as EOTs)) lack ongoing advisory support beyond the legal and financial transaction. At Still We Grow, we believe there is a better way: combining multidisciplinary consulting with data-driven insights to help employee-owned companies thrive long after the transition is complete.
As Co-founder and Leadership Director at Still We Grow, Matt Wilden brings over 15 years of experience in impacting organisational performance, executive coaching, succession design, leadership and cultural development. His work centres on enabling leadership teams to make key business decisions and execute more effectively, step up with confidence and clarity to engaged teams and lead businneses through phases of transition and growth.
A career focused on performance and people
Matt’s career has evolved from focusing on individual performance to supporting teams and entire organisations. Over the last decade, he has specialised in helping SMEs scale sustainably by designing growth strategies, developing operational efficiency and developing leadership capability.
I’ve always been passionate about enabling performance,” he explains. “That started with individuals, but it inevitably evolved to working with leadership teams and across the whole organisation. The data we captured through our work with SMEs shows those leadership teams, and the performance culture they nurture, disproportionately shape the culture and success of their businesses.
That insight is particularly relevant in the employee ownership space, where the newly formed leadership structure plus the added complexity of the employee-trust ownership puts high pressure on the emerging leaders.
Why employee ownership?
For Matt, employee ownership represents an opportunity to combine his passion for elevating leadership performance, with his commitment to long-term strategic thinking.
“With private equity or VC-backed firms, there’s often a shorter-term focus, with need to reduce costs and increase profits before the secondary sale. Investing in changing the performance culture within the business takes time, so it’s often lower down on the change agenda, if at all.”
“What excites me about employee ownership is the long-term mindset. Leaders and employees are making decisions with five-year plus horizons, not just chasing short-term results. That creates a foundation for more sustainable growth.”
The challenges of EO leadership
Matt points out that employee ownership transitions create unique leadership challenges:
- New leaders often didn’t seek ownership roles but now need to “reinvent themselves” as both colleagues and decision-makers. They must work to be seen differently by their colleagues, balancing trust with authority.
- The expectation – when there’s a change in senior leadership in any business – that the change in leadership will deliver meaningful change and improvement for the employees’ benefit. This expectation adds even more pressure on emerging EO leaders.
- The need to embrace risk as leaders: Unlike founders, emerging EO leaders may lack the high-risk appetite that drives bold decision-making.
- Outgoing founders may struggle to step back, making it harder for new leaders to step up.
Data-driven leadership support for employee owned businesses
Still We Grow’s commitment to data-informed support helps new employee owners grow into their new roles, with increased accountability to deliver meaningful change. The proprietary platform tracks 30 key business metrics across strategy, customer experience, finance, operations, systems, and people to help employee-owned businesses understand where they stand and what needs to change. Matt’s unique approach combines these powerful datasets with strategic and leadership coaching, enabling new EO leaders to succeed in their new roles.
“What’s different in employee ownership is that leaders are usually more committed to long-term success,”
“That means we can lean more heavily on the data that enables growth, for example: operational efficiency, goal execution, process optimisation and employee engagement, to build initiatives that deliver sustainable progress.”
Partnering with EOs for their long term success
Like his co-founders Fran Spence and Martin Chadwick, Matt emphasises that Still We Grow’s role goes well beyond the transaction.
“Our focus is on being a long-term partner, not a short-term consultant. Ideally, we want to come in before the transaction to help succession plan and get the business off to the best possible start as an employee-owned entity. Beyond that, we want to support leadership teams and wider employee owners until they feel confident, capable, and independent enough to drive growth themselves.”
Ready to start your journey into employee ownership? Already proudly EO and interested in accelerating your growth through data-driven insights, multidisciplinary consulting and deep EO expertise? Contact us today.