Month: October 2022

Working For the Boss Every Night and Day*

Getting pinned up against the end of a run of shelving in a half-fitted out store might not be everyone’s idea of good management training but it provided a lesson that came in handy over the next thirty years.  It wasn’t even my line manager doing the pinning.  But if it takes a village to raise a child it takes more than one senior manager to teach you about company culture and personal discipline.

Over four decades, I started a new job 12 times in nine different companies (three of them invited me back for reasons that are hard to fathom).  With 21 direct bosses over that time, I’ve had nine leave or be replaced and nine where I left for greener grass or personal reasons.  Maybe I’ve been fortunate but all the social media posts about people leaving bad bosses (rather than companies) has always felt strange in the context of my own curiosity, ambition and occasional arrogance about chasing the next opportunity.

Beauty in the Beasts

There have been two bosses that I would think of as being directly responsible for me leaving a company.  There was also one organization where I couldn’t stay but my boss had my sympathy for being totally outgunned, outmanoeuvred and possibly even bullied into submission.  These examples account for three of the five occasions I’ve jumped ship without a lifeboat (or a job to go to).     

The dismal duo of bosses were poor in very different ways.  One was very competent and went on to be a successful CEO but was always away, made no effort to help me settle into the company and, as it turned out, had inflated the importance of the role and opportunity when I was being interviewed.  The other was of limited ability in their own specialist field and a micro-manager who didn’t understand marketing and communications but was happy to take the glory when things went well while wielding the stick when things were less than perfect.

If those types of bosses are the beasts of a career, they also lend a certain beauty to management development in learning from them how not to behave.  It’s not very comfortable at the time but taking the lessons can help you avoid making the same mistakes.  There is also something to be said for working out if what looks like an inadequate boss is doing their best to protect in impossible circumstances.          

In fairness, I doubt that I matched up to their expectations either and would have to accept that from time to time I have been a less than perfect subordinate.  Hard working certainly but not always the best at accepting authority and, particularly in my younger days, a little too likely to burn the candle at both ends.  The only defence was that the early days were at a time when you were forgiven most things as long as you turned up on time and got the job done.

Beginnings and Belonging

My very first boss, Tony Dobbin at Tesco, was immensely hard working and benevolent.  When the company opened the UK’s largest superstore at Weston Favell he would lead the photography sessions, get home at 4am and still be at his desk in Cheshunt by 8.30am.  He also very gently taught me the nuances of word selection when writing promotional material where the word “aroma” was definitely an improvement on my draft about the “smell of freshly baked bread.”

Despite a year on a journalism course my judgement of text was rough round the edges and I had an upbringing which meant I briefed a leaflet for a celebratory leaving event as a dinner when it was at lunchtime**.  It was a good job that I was keen to take on any task, enjoyed driving long distances and had no real sense of my own limitations or naivety.  Long hours, weekend working and full commitment were expected but usually rewarded.  

It was the broader retail management of the company who gave me a real sense of purpose and belonging.  They ensured I got my first company car – a 950cc Ford Fiesta with a foot-pump operated windscreen washer.  The price was weekends photographing charity cricket matches with suppliers, evenings shepherding councillors around new stores and always being available for late night discussions about the latest food crisis.

One certainty is that in the best companies, senior management outside the direct line manager pay attention to newcomers.  There is nothing better or more reassuring than having your existence and your work recognized by someone from elsewhere in the business.  It eliminates silos, encourages collaboration and creates the best sense of company culture.   

Create Your Own Pressure   

But the defining lesson in my first job was much more personal and came a few days before the opening of a new store.  I was with a senior regional director who was a company legend for his business success and who had been very supportive. He was well over 6’and it is fair to say that I am somewhat less lofty.

It was total mayhem as painters, electricians, merchandisers, tilers and chippies raced to complete the fitting out in a breathtakingly short timescale.  At the time Tesco was opening two or three stores a month and every occasion was a race against the clock with most of the new store team living out of suitcases as they moved from town to town.  Only after I left retailing would I realise that not every business worked at this type of pace.

As we walked along the bank of half-built checkouts with their trailing wires he turned to me and said, “Do you feel the pressure, Al?”***  As a 23-year-old who got on well with him I felt this was a good moment to try and be smart.  My response was calculated to try and be sophisticated, “Pressure.  What’s that?”

In a moment he had turned and physically pushed me up against the racks at the end of an aisle of shelving.  My recollection is that he had my lapels and I was on my tiptoes as he loomed over me but he was calm and urgent.  He just growled, “If you don’t feel the pressure, you’ve got to make your own pressure.”

I’ve told the story a number of times since and am usually asked why I didn’t report it to someone.  My response is that this was someone I respected giving me forceful advice about humility, self-discipline and respect for the work.  It was over as quickly as it began and my overwhelming sensation was that it had been done for my own good.     

I wouldn’t recommend the physical element but when the book Radical Candor came out, I recognized that at an early stage in my career I had been shown the value of a manager caring enough personally, to challenge behaviour immediately and directly.  The underlying message was even more important.  Your boss is not responsible for motivating you – you are.

NOTES

* A lyric from Happy by the Rolling Stones.  One of those joyous moments when Keith gets to sing. Not sure he’s had too many bosses in his life.

** This is one of the classic differences between U and non-U English.

*** He was one of only three people that called me Al (and even then only occasionally).  I am mildly fixated on calling people by their full names unless they ask me not to.

Image by Miro Alt from Pixabay 

FRANKS FOR THE MEMORY

There was a shuffling to my far left and a quick glance revealed only the back of public relations legend Lynne Franks as she rooted in a bag under the table.  The black clad presentation team in the centre of the room was looking apprehensive as she emerged with a handful of tabloid newspapers.  Her voice rang out, ‘Stop Jane, this isn’t us, this is so formal and corporate.  We are not like that.  We know people, we are connected – let’s throw that (the presentation) away and I’ll tell you about what you need to do”

Recovery and Renewal

The story had begun back in July 1992 when I suggested to Allan Leighton that ASDA could half its PR expenditure on agency support.  My view was that the extant agency did not meet the urgent demands of a business that was fighting for recovery after recently staving off bankruptcy.  Saving more than half a million pounds in annual cost (about a million pounds at 2022 rates) was not an insignificant sum.

I had joined ASDA three months earlier as the share price fell to its lowest and only six months after an emergency rights issue had helped stave off bankruptcy.  Archie Norman had been parachuted in by the October to lead a turnaround that would become a Harvard Business School Case Study.  The military metaphor reflects his later comment about crisis situations that when you’re the leader and you’ve landed in the jungle your team expect you to know which way to march.

I shortlisted three agencies after initial discussions around a brief which could have been distilled into two simple lines.  Get one piece of positive national media coverage every week at half the current expenditure.  It was audacious because we were only third in terms of market share, no other retailer was close to achieving coverage that regularly and we wanted focus on the tabloids and TV that reached most of our customers, at a time when competitors were schmoozing the broadsheets.     

Pitch Imperfect

Fast forward to 11 November 1992 as a panel of Archie, Allan, Paul Dowling (Corporate Affairs Director) and I were receiving presentations from the three agencies.  The incumbent had declined to participate but had fought a bloody rearguard action accusing the entire in-house PR team of incompetence.  And the presentations had not started well.

First up was a major PR name of the era who had FMCG and retail experience aplenty and a smooth pitch which featured, for reasons that escape me now, new technology that allowed shoppers to track their expenditure as they went round the store.  It was really just a calculator connected to the trolley and it needed recharging every three hours, but it seemed heady stuff at the time.  It was a terrific presentation up to the point where Archie asked the classic question, “How much?”

The answer of £1.1m went down like the proverbial bucket of sick.  Archie looked to his right which was, unfortunately, my direction with an intensity that spelt real danger for wasting his time.  I was totally gobsmacked that the agency, who had been given a very clear steer on fee and expenses expectations, had been quite so brazen.

Ninja Attack

It was fortunate that the presentations were strictly one hour in duration and there was no time to debate what we had seen before I was shooing them out and scuttling down the corridor to collect Lynne Franks PR.  It was like entering a ninja convention with so many people dressed head to toe in black and grey.  Lynne’s pink coat, plastic shopping bags and bohemian look provided a colourful counterpoint to her colleagues.

The presentation began with the ninjas – led by Jane Boardman the putative account director  – using enormous boards with very few words on them to present.  Big ideas, simple ideas, presented with conviction and style.  It was compelling and controlled until the rustling in the corner started.

Emerging from under the desk Lynne threw a pile of newspapers on the desk and opened The Sun before ripping out a page and throwing it towards the bemused corporate team sitting in judgement on her agency.  “That’s one of ours…,” another rip and the Daily Mirror page was despatched towards the bemused panel judging the presentation.  “And so is that…,” the tearing frenzy continued. 

In the centre of the room two presenters were frozen beside the gigantic boards.  The strategic big picture was wilting under the intensity of a founder who had decided that the way to deal with sceptical suits was to show results here and now.  I learnt later that Lynne had not been directly involved in preparing the pitch and had chosen to embark on a freelance mission of shock and awe with papers picked up at the airport that day.

It was clear that the dramatic intervention had captured Archie’s attention.  Imagine the scene in Heat where De Niro and Pacino, as criminal and detective, discuss their ideologies while trying to psychoanalyze each other.  Their biographies had Archie as Charterhouse, Cambridge, Harvard, McKinsey and FTSE100 while Lynne was Minchenden Grammar, shorthand/typing at Pitman’s College, a regular dancer on Ready Steady Go, journalist and PR company founder. 

But the differences that existed in education, upbringing, gender, and career choices faded under the weight of a principal-to-principal moment and when the frenzied ripping paused Archie moved swiftly to the point. “Why would we believe you’re any different to every other PR agency?”  It seemed obvious enough but Archie had a way of suckering mediocre people into obvious or rehearsed responses which were then flayed for lacking insight or interest.  Being provocative, challenging, unexpected or even slightly crazy was always the better way to go.

Some key words in the response included “leverage”, “Lenny Henry”, “ASDA”.  Lynne turned the world of public relations into a trading proposition where her agency had showbiz collateral and we could benefit.  It was right in the sweet spot of a retail business mindset and bridged the gap to explain why an agency known for fashion and celebrity clients had something unique to offer a grocery store.

Eventually Lynne’s explanation dried up and she looked to the team as if a little shocked at her own intervention.  Without comment, Jane picked up as if nothing had happened. It was a characteristic unflappability and focus on delivery which marked the following years of leading the team that worked with ASDA.

Although attention moved back to the big boards it was like moving from heavy metal to soothing sonatas.  All of the strategies, plans and processes made sense but we were still absorbing the Sturm und Drang.  The good news for me was that the proposed budget came in smack on the nose at half the price of the incumbent.

Aries Rising

After the drama the third agency were competent but not even close.  We discussed the balance between cost, experience, track record and potential and whether Lynne was key or we would even get any of her time.  As it happened, she departed the business shortly after leaving a company where Samantha Royston in her late 20s was Managing Director and Julian Henry, still in his early thirties, was probably the elder amongst the management team.        

The agreement was that Allan should visit their offices to see the operation.  He arrived at least half an hour ahead of the scheduled time but the office desks were filled, as I later found out with many friends and relatives, even further in advance.  It was set on Harrow Road W9 and far away from the bright lights and high costs of the West End – another tick in the box for a client whose operating principles included “we hate waste”.

It was only as Allan was leaving that he passed Lynne sitting with her office door open.  They said hello and she told him that she had been kept out of the way.  When he confirmed he had seen enough to tell her that we would be signing up Lynne told him that she was an Aries and her horoscope had said it would be a good day.  It is unclear if she knew that he was also born under the sign of the ram.   

Outcomes Count

I never met Lynne Franks in person again and can only pay tribute to her extraordinary career as well as her influence as a spokesperson for women’s rights and sustainability.  I am told that she liked to have all her media teams to have had some cold calling or other sales experience in their lives.  It’s always seemed like good advice to me. 

Following the appointment of LFPR, monthly measurement showed that ASDA’s national PR coverage consistently trounced the sector competitors.  The company’s recovery and renewal saw it eventually being sold to WalMart for £6.7bn in 1999. The LFPR and in-house PR team deserve recognition for their part in building a reputation that supported this outcome. 

NOTES

It’s impossible to remember everyone but a few thanks.  

Jane Boardman (now CEO at M&C Saatchi Talk) who led the team and Graham Goodkind (Chairman of Frank PR). The PR powerhouse that is Sue Finnegan (founder of proof PR), who I later recruited to join the in-house team, and other colleagues including Tanya Hughes, Frankie, Lambert, Dorcas Jamieson and Francesca Lee.  LFPR was overseen during the time by Samantha Royston Wainstein (now Chair of the Mark Milsome Foundation), as MD then as CEO and Chair.  Julian Henry went on to found Henry’s House and is now Global Head of Communications for XIX Entertainment.    

LFPR worked with the in-house team including Julie Eaton (later of Hill and Knowlton and recognized in the prestigious World Press Photo Awards 2014), Kathryn Williamson (later head of global PR for British Airways and now Director of Communications for English Rugby),  Jeni Cropper and Victoria Wick, who all helped make the difference.  It’s fair to say it was a talented team.

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay 

Let’s Do the Time Warp…Again*

Back in September 2021, pre-pandemic and five Tory Education ministers** ago, a blog shortly after the restoration of post-study work visas reflected how this might be a factor in the party’s continuing tensions around immigration .  Suella Braverman’s speech to the party conference this week highlighted that the issue still exists and suggest a fault line through which university hopes for international student recruitment could fall.  It is not surprising that vested interests in higher education, who have been licking their lips at enrollment growth, have responded so vigorously.

With a bit of a mind flip, You’re into the time slip

Among the first in line for the defence was ApplyBoard Advisory Board Chairman, Jo Johnson, who also leads the company’s UK Advisory Board and its worthies in helping build the company’s business in the UK.   He was interestingly narrow in his choice of words and vaunted the importance of international students “..if we want to be a science superpower.”  It’s an echo of the original announcement from Priti Patel, in September 2019, which said the new Graduate Route ‘will mean talented international students, whether in science and maths or technology and engineering, can study in the UK…’

The suspicious might think that this continues to lay the groundwork for a downgrading of the humanities or some form of quota system that favours the sciences above humanities when it comes to dishing out visas.  Almost inevitably that would play to the interests of the established hierarchy of universities with their lion’s share of science funding and students.  Those who don’t think these hierarchies have any place in Government policy, or that Ministers won’t allow league tables to distort thinking, would do well to remember that the High Potential Individual visa is currently restricted to graduates of 37 universities who have successfully navigated, manipulated or, for some, misrepresented their way into two of three nominated global rankings.

It’s just a jump to the left, And then a step to the right

Back in May 2022 when the High Potential Individual visa was launched, then Chancellor Rishi Sunak (remember him) was proud it helped “to create one of the world’s most attractive visa regimes for entrepreneurs and highly skilled people.”  This seems to have been a little too much of an open door for some and there are reports of the Home Office beginning a review of the number of dependants accompanying international students studying in the UK.  The numbers tell their own story with study visas up 71% from 2019 to 2022 while dependants have gone up over five times.

Perhaps helpfully, if they are looking for beneficial treatment in the future, the Russell Group institutions may be able to argue that it is universities outside their club that are driving the change.  As noted in a February 2022 blog the RG universities were growing numbers from China while other universities were taking the opportunities afforded by growth from India and Nigeria as source markets.  This may be important in formulating Home Office thinking because the Telegraph reported that “34,000 Nigerian students accounted for 31,898 dependants while the 93,100 Indian students accounted for 24,916.”

 The siren voices on the right are unlikely to let the issue rest.  Alp Mehmet, chairman of Migration Watch UK, said: “It has been clear for years that a significant number of those coming to study and their dependants use it as a route into work and settlement.  It is yet another mode of uncontrolled and uncapped migration, often, feeding the demand for low-skilled and low-paid workers.”  It is a level of angst that seems likely to note that the top non-EU nationalities granted British citizenship in the latest year were Indian (16,720), Pakistani (15,624), and Nigerian (9,445) nationals and that these nationalities accounted for almost a third (31%) of all grants to non-EU nationals in the year ending June 2022.

Not for very much longer, I’ve got to keep control

The clues are all there in Braverman’s conference speech but the key word is control which appears six times in 18 sentences and particularly in terms the mission “to control our borders.”  The economy is to be developed by “..encouraging business to invest in capital and domestic labour. Not relying wholly on low-skilled foreign workers.”  The echo of Mehmet’s words above are probably no accident.

But then we are taken back to Theresa May’s statement of March 2011 where she said, “We had too many people coming here to work and not to study. We had too many foreign graduates staying on in the UK to work in unskilled jobs. And we had too many institutions selling immigration, not education.”  It was the precursor to removal of post study work visas and a moment when international student growth in the UK began to fall rapidly behind that of Australia and Canada.

By January 2013, Prime Minister David Cameron was telling the House of Commons, ‘Frankly, there are lots of people in our country desperate for jobs. We don’t need the brightest and best of students to come here and then do menial jobs.’  The real point was that PSW visas had been introduced in the UK in 2002 when unemployment was around 5% but it then rose rapidly due to the global economic recession.  A big question facing UK higher education now will be what happens in summer 2023 if the UK unemployment rate, particularly among graduates, looks to be going the wrong way at a point when a General Election is no more than 18 months away.   

It is perhaps as well for universities that the traditional measure of graduate employment is aimed at the undergraduate market but it may not be long before attention focuses on the fate of postgraduates entering a tricky job market.  The shift in balance to having India as a major driver of international enrollments has altered the dynamics and it is slightly odd, but hardly unexpected given their record, that the OsF has not caught up with the situation.  With increasing numbers of international student likely to stay and take advantage of post-study work the likelihood of competition in the postgraduate market seems obvious.   

It may seem far-fetched to consider this as a potential problem at a point when the unemployment rate fell to its lowest rate since 1974 just three months ago but the headline hides a more complex picture.  Craig Erlam, a senior market analyst at Oanda, commented, “It’s not often that you see the unemployment rate fall to the lowest in almost 50 years and aren’t overjoyed, but that will certainly be the feeling at the Bank of England right now.”  Unemployment rising to 8% looks unlikely but it is also difficult to find anyone who predicting in December 2021 that average two-year fixed mortgage rates would have moved from 2.43% to 6% in less than a year with every likelihood of going higher.

But it’s the pelvic thrust, That really drives you insane

The sub-heading offers a slightly crude metaphor for the way that competitors in the international student market, particularly Australia, might take the opportunity to build on the UK’s uncertainties, tensions and failure to take advantage of its early opening of borders.  The announcement of new post-study work rights has already swamped the claims of Sunak’s claims of an attractive visa regime and it comes with AUS$36 million to improve visa processing for international students.  It’s the type of coordinated decision making and rhetoric that becomes it much easier to point out the potential problems in the UK.

Canada, which is not without its own problems, has also announced plans to increase the number of international students and foreign workers with extensive work experience for permanent residency in areas where there is a persistent labour shortage. A sub-text is that provinces and territories will have the freedom to modify their immigration streams to suit their own requirements.  That’s just a little more steam in the Canadian engine that has become an international student recruiting freight train.

While hoping for the best and that sense will prevail, it is difficult not to think that the current Government is disjointed, capable of extreme views and likely to pander to populist thinking as an election nears.  It has shown little regard for the concerns of universities or the predicament they might face if international students decline and the institutions have willingly driven recruitment at a pace which has brought new stresses on the system.  None of it bodes well for the future and particularly not if the predictions of a long and deep recession come true.   

NOTES

* Headline and sub-headings from Time Warp by Richard O’Brien/Richard Hartley, which featured in the 1973 rock musical The Rocky Horror Show, its 1975 film adaptation The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and a 2016 TV production.  If you haven’t done it you really should.

**Gavin Williamson (to 15 September 2021), Nadhimm Zahawi (to 5 July, 2022), Michelle Donelan (to 7 July, 2022), James Cleverly (to 6 September, 2022), Kit Malthouse (current but the record might suggest not by the time you read this…)

Image by annca from Pixabay