With over 25 years of hospitality management from individual venue to multi-site management looking after fifteen food-led pubs across London, James Carman has experienced just about every people challenge from the daily – culture change, people development, grievances and disciplinaries – to the extremely challenging – robbery at gun point, venue fire, and cash theft by staff. James has managed City wine bars, award winning pubs, themed restaurants, iconic bars, and City wine bars and restaurants. Sizes have ranged from small teams of ten to large teams of up to 140 in a single venue. His experience and success also took him to Australia for five years to manage some large and iconic venues.
A large portion of the individual venues were appointments with a brief to arrest decline and turn around their performance. This gave James in-depth working knowledge and understanding of change-management and culture change as any turnaround could only successfully be achieved using these skills. These are only achieved with the support of the team ensuring they buy in to the journey and are on board.
The recent pandemic provided James with the opportunity to, using a now well over-used term, pivot his career to focus on those parts he loved – people, people development, coaching and supporting a wide range of businesses (rather than just one) to develop and grow through their people.
