Elizabeth Miles is co-founder and Chief Executive of Iken Business Ltd, which delivers Iken case management software and services to lawyers and other professionals.
As a successful business leader, she turned Iken Business Ltd from an entrepreneurial start-up into a mature company. Iken Business Ltd is now the market leading supplier of software to UK in house legal teams in local government, police and corporate entities!
For DCC, she answered the following questions:
1: What is your most favourite part of the day?
That depends on the day of the week.
On Mondays to Thursdays, I love the mornings. I tend to wake up first, make a cup of tea, and take it back to bed. I can see the sun rising from there and in summer there are seagulls circling, and sometimes hot air balloons going by. I use this time to reflect on the challenges ahead.
On Fridays, I love the evenings, when my husband Andrew and I tend to shed the week by going out to a restaurant for a meal, often on the harbour side.
On Saturdays, I love a lazy afternoon after a glass of bubbly at lunchtime!
On Sundays, I enjoy lunchtime because it’s usually spent with family around my table.
2: What is the worst kind of person you ever sat next to on a flight?
The person concerned can’t help this, but I hate it when I am sitting near coughs and sneezes. It’s also difficult to sit next to a large person who spills into my limited space.
3: Were you ever in a situation where you came up short with a good come back? You can give it now!
The best one was my ex-husband’s omission, not mine. When I got my degree in Math, somebody behind him said “Fancy a lady getting a first in Mathematics“. He wanted to say “That’s no lady, that’s my wife” but didn’t.
4: Which trial/case still haunts you till today?
As I am not a lawyer, I don’t have much experience to draw on here. We were once involved in litigation to extract a large share value from my husband’s former colleagues. It took three years and was very scary, although it came out well in the end and provided us with the means to set up our business.
This I have learned as a consumer:
a) Mediation is a good idea
b) Litigation is a “War of Reasonableness”
c) War (and litigation) is the unfolding of miscalculations (to quote Barbara Tuchman)
d) Keep well organized document trails and be 100% on top of their content
5: If you have a blog, how did you get started? Who or what inspired you to blog?
I have a blog but don’t blog nearly as much as I would like to, or ought to. Wrongly, I have tended to see it as a bit of a self indulgence. Where I am quite active is on LinkedIn groups: I like the two-way interaction of raising questions or responding to those raised by others.
I started using social media uncertainly because I was advised by my web team that I should and tentatively groped my way into Twitter, LinkedIn and blogging. I quickly learned that it was no good doing any of these things as “Iken Business” because companies do not have senses of the ridiculous or quirky, nor are they opinionated. People are all these things and I am certainly one of those. I wanted to enjoy it too. For this reason, my social networking is now done by me as a person, but associated with the business.
I am still finding my style in my blog. Many of the subjects I would want to address have nothing to do with my business, and I don’t want my blog to be “sales-y” so I am still working out what are the appropriate boundaries on a business web site. Any advice is gratefully received.
6: Did you end up in the profession of your childhood dreams?
No, I didn’t. When I was a child in the 50’s and 60’s, I’m not sure that I knew what a computer was. When I did “A” level math I used log tables and a slide rule. I must have been about 25 before I had a calculator. I trained as a mathematician and became a teacher and lecturer, where I used computers for the first time to do statistical analysis. I left in 1988 to join Oracle and the rest is history.
One of my favourite poems is “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost, which says it all really. I am delighted with the surprise of life’s journey. I see it as a series of rooms with many doors. From each room, I have chosen to move on through an attractive looking door into a new room. There are many doors that remained unopened (medicine and medical statistics might have been two), but all the rooms have been interesting.
The constant strand through all this has been my family, my children and (now) my grandchildren.They are a blessing.
7: Something you always wanted to learn but never did?
I wish I could play a musical instrument, probably the piano. I love music and have sung with Bristol Choral Society, though not in recent years because of lack of time. Making music together is hugely liberating and spiritually uplifting, I find.
I have had wonderful opportunities as a mere amateur, including singing in the Royal Albert Hall and being in a concert conducted by Sir David Wilcocks. I must rejoin again, because I can’t imagine never singing the Brahms Requiem or Bach’s Mass in B Minor again (to mention just 2 favourites).