“I was burnt out,” Peter says, surprisingly, when asked how he became Managing Director. “I didn’t know what to do next.”
Peter is a familiar face at MDHUB events: an active and warm presence, involved in multiple workgroups across AI and Tech, and ROCC - a specialist technology firm developed for the housing sector - is a sponsor of the annual Hubbub Awards. He joined MDHUB just before he became a first-time Managing Director, so we took it back to the start of his leadership journey.
ROCC’s owner, Luke Aldrich, had asked Peter to join an MDHUB workgroup as part of his development. In his first session, Peter suggested he wasn’t sure whether he would be a member for long, as he was struggling to understand where his career was headed. The room turned the conversation toward him - why?
Over the afternoon, they helped him realise he wasn’t struggling to determine his next steps; he had unrealised goals and needed to focus on them.
His new peers pushed him to explore the ideas he’d been sitting on - about where ROCC was heading, the products and services it could deliver and the type of company it needed to meet future challenges. He took that pitch straight back to Luke. The response? “Let’s go for it”.
This trust in employees’ vision appears to be a hallmark of both ROCC and Peter’s leadership style. He joined ROCC as a rookie on the customer service desk. His first interview was foundational: his hiring manager offered him better terms than he’d expected, thanks to his clear statement of ambition. “I was just about to turn 22,” he says. “I was blown away by that. How can someone have that much faith in me?”
In the eight years since taking on a leadership role, he’s paid that forward, giving ambitious people the chance to succeed and building roles around people’s strengths rather than slotting them into a job description written before anyone met them. “All of our roles - certainly our senior ones - are created because of the people,” he says. “We find good people and then work out how this company can run with those good people.”
He’s certainly a passionate advocate for a relationship-first culture, and it’s integral to ROCC’s client work, as well. One of the first things Peter did as MD was to rethink the sales function. “I want our customers to be looked after with a plan for the long term,” he says, “not a plan for how much short-term commission we can rinse out of this client.”
It’s a bet that’s paid off: client relationships span decades, and ROCC’s average staff tenure is nearly 12 years. He calls the test for a good client relationship the ‘phone a friend’ test - someone whom you could ring and say “I’ve got a problem and need a favour”, knowing they’d say yes?
A key part of how these relationships are formed is through the R-SAB (ROCC Strategic Advisory Board), which brings together leading customers to discuss innovation and the future of the industry.
MDHUB’s Helen Bailey, who facilitates the board, joined early on and has remained fiercely independent. “She’ll literally point fingers across the room and challenge ROCC as much as she’ll challenge the customer,” Peter says. “But everyone’s hugging Helen. It’s wonderful to see.” Running it, he admits, is relentless - a major annual event on top of weekly contact all year round - but he’s unequivocal about the return. “It’s worth it financially. It’s worth it reputationally. The friendships being created between supplier and customer are just worth a million bucks.”
We turn to the upcoming Hubbub Awards, which ROCC sponsors. Peter’s track record is impressive - having notched up previous wins for the Alchemist and Disruptor Awards - but he is far more animated when discussing his former colleague Tash Wilson, winner of Best Supporting Act in 2025. “Those awards are given because of what’s been talked about [by the leaders across MDHUB] over the previous year. I was overjoyed.”
What the wins mean to him has less to do with the trophies than the team who are selecting them. “These are people that know how to run businesses, and they thought you were worthy of getting an award,” he says. “Whenever I’m having a bit of self-doubt, it’s a great reminder.”
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