Before I was CEO of Coryton, I was Commercial Director at HCS Group, a PE-backed specialty chemicals business formed from the merger of Petrochem Carless and Haltermann.
It was a UK company acquired by a German parent that already had a C-suite and board in place. If I am honest, the writing was probably on the wall for most of the UK leadership team from the start. When a German company buys a UK competitor with its own management structure already intact, the arithmetic is not complicated.
But here is the thing. Knowing that made it more important to establish authority quickly and clearly, not less. I didn't.
The answer
In a board meeting, the CEO asked if I was committing to my plan numbers. I said yes. Then added it was a P80. An engineering probability term. Eighty percent confidence of hitting or exceeding target.
On the trading floors where I had spent my career, that is how professionals talk about risk. In that room, in front of those PE investors, it landed differently.
On the way out, a colleague pulled me aside. "You made a serious mistake in there."
I pushed back. I hadn't disagreed with anyone. I had been honest about probability.
"That's not how it was heard, Nick."
She was right. I was asked to leave three months later.
What it actually cost
The P80 comment did not cost me the role. It accelerated a decision that was already forming, because I had not built the authority to make removing me feel like a risk.
Coming from an engineering and trading background, that felt like the precise, honest answer. Technically it was. What it revealed was the problem: I hadn't built enough authority for ambiguity to work in my favour.
I thought I understood that lesson. I didn't. Not fully. Because then it happened again, at Coryton, with every metric green. That story is here.
First published on LinkedIn, 23 June 2026. Adapted for this site.