Inventronics: a chat with Marshall Miles

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One of the things that I love about the work that I’m doing now is the opportunity it brings to meet interesting people and convince them that what they really need to do to make their lives complete is a podcast with me for The Light Review. Step forward Marshall Miles, (outgoing) CEO of Inventronics.

My career got started as a trainee engineer with the Midlands Electricity Board ( of blessed memory); a five-year term of travelling around all of the Black Country offices (Dudley – Tipton – Walsall – West Bromwich – Wolverhampton), spending time with all of the technical departments, coming out the other end as a relatively competent engineer in a suit.

The thing that took me a long time to work out was why so many of the offices smelled of fresh paint – surely they hadn’t re-decorated the reception area just for me? Well, of course not. It turned out that my peripatetic training schedule often overlapped with a visit from the Board chairman. And when the Chairman of the Board rocks up, the reception WILL look bright and sparkling. It occurred to me that this guy was spending most of his working life with the smell of paint following him around; and maybe he wondered why his own office, in Halesowen, always smelled a bit – well – musty.

But – and more importantly – the Chairman of the Board – in fact all of the chairmen (all men, naturellement) of all the Boards were engineers. Clearly, if I kept my nose clean I might eventually use it to breathe in the heady scents of all those district offices. And I liked the idea of a boss who knew how to wire a plug top; I don’t think I’d trust any CEO of our current electricity utility companies to do the same . . . .

All of which preamble brings me to this podcast; a conversation with then CEO of Inventronics, Marshall Miles, who I was lucky enough to have lunch with a few months ago when he visited Dorset. Marshall was being chauffeured around the country by my good friend Richard Bushnell, so this was an opportunity not to miss.. I noted that there was no mention of freshly-painted reception areas. Clearly, being the CEO of what may well be the biggest LED controls company on the planet doesn’t cut so much mustard these days.

Marshall retired from his position as CEO a few weeks back, though he’s still engaged with the company and has probably just moved a few places round the room from the top of the table. And I would certainly trust him to wire a plug top; he has an engineering background and knows where the wires go. And if there was one reason that I wanted to chat with him it was this: when the tyro engineer finally reaches the top oft the slippery pole . . .what does that feel like; how was the journey to get there; and how are the tractors?

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