October 06, 2025
Transforming Business Culture – Lessons from Ian Fishwick
Lessons on resilience, culture, and customer experience
In a candid conversation on the CX Lore podcast, serial entrepreneur and business leader Ian Fishwick shared the highs and lows of his remarkable career — from building networks in the UK’s telecoms boom, to enduring sudden redundancies, to creating and scaling Adept into a hundred-million-pound success story. Along the way, his reflections reveal powerful lessons for CX and business leaders about resilience, culture, and the central role of customer experience in growth.
See the full episode here – https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/5Cyv3rZQS9sCrU61BKfivc?utm_source=generator
Resilience in the Face of Uncertainty
Fishwick’s story is one of resilience. Twice, he led companies through extraordinary success — only to find himself made redundant at the peak of achievement. “Life is not a straight line,” he reflects, recalling how these setbacks forced him to rethink his path and eventually founded Adept at the age of 42.
The takeaway for leaders? Careers and companies are defined less by smooth trajectories and more by how we respond to sudden turns.
Culture as the True Differentiator
One of Fishwick’s defining moments came when he faced a failing regional cable business ranked near the bottom of national KPIs. Instead of hiding the numbers, he gathered the entire workforce and laid the truth bare.
The honesty shocked employees, but his rallying cry — “we don’t like being like this, so let’s change it” — sparked a cultural turnaround. Within a year, the business went from the bottom to near the top of industry rankings.
Fishwick attributes this shift to employee motivation and cultural alignment, rather than to technology or processes. For CX and EX leaders, it’s a reminder that transformation begins with people — creating shared purpose and pride.
Scaling Through M&A Without Losing the Customer
Fishwick is one of the UK’s most prolific acquirers. At Adept, he oversaw an astonishing 29 acquisitions alone. Yet he insists the key wasn’t just deal-making; it was integrating employees and customers into a consistent culture.
His mission statement to employees was simple: “One day we’ll be widely acknowledged as the most professional managed service provider in the UK.”
Professionalism, in Fishwick’s playbook, often meant small, customer-centric details that don’t need to cost the earth:
- Providing full names in call centres helps humanise interactions and facilitates consistent communication.
- Providing direct lines so customers never have to worry about restarting the conversation with someone new.
- Encouraging “faces not numbers” in all communications, including headshots on emails so there is a familiarity to customer interactions.
These gestures may seem minor, but they built trust and loyalty. “If in doubt, do the most professional thing,” he says.
Lessons from Billion-Pound Scale-Ups
Fishwick’s most recent endeavour – Billionaire Business Podcast – explores what it takes to build billion-pound businesses in the UK. From interviews with leaders at Gamma, Skyscanner, and Absolute Collagen, recurring themes emerge:
- Mythical customers drive decisions. Gamma built decisions around “Tracy,” an imagined customer. This ensured every decision was made with the customer top of mind.
- Simplicity is strategy. Gamma resisted the urge to build siloed systems for each new product, opting instead for one unified platform. The simplicity reinforced cultural unity.
- Customer frequency accelerates growth. Skyscanner’s Shane Corstorphine introduced the concept of “customer frequency” — the more often you touch customers, the faster you grow. Businesses need to think creatively about maintaining contact beyond one-off interactions.
- Employees must share in success. Skyscanner gave share options to every employee, but also made sure people could realise value over time. Without tangible rewards, equity schemes fall flat.
Reinvention and Looking Ahead
A consistent theme in Fishwick’s career — and advice to other leaders — is the need to regularly step back and assess whether your company is aligned with the fastest-growing part of the market. At Adept, this meant moving from small businesses to larger enterprises, and later into managed services. Reinvention is not optional; it’s survival.
As for making work fun, Fishwick shares a memorable piece of advice from a mentor: “Always keep a Snickers in your sock.” In other words, save small wins to celebrate on hard days — because regular victories, however modest, fuel morale.
Takeaway for CX Leaders
Fishwick’s journey underscores that while technology, deals, and strategy matter, it’s culture, customer focus, and resilience that truly create billion-pound businesses. Leaders who build organisations around these principles will not only deliver exceptional customer experience — they’ll also inspire employees and create long-term growth.
