Our Shared Agenda

Late one evening at the height of WW2 when the word on many lips was "Stalingrad", I burst on to the scene in a military hospital in Hampshire. I couldn't wait to make my entrance onto the world stage and did so several weeks prematurely.

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My early childhood was spent in Ceylon as it shrugged off its mantle as a British colony and became independent Sri Lanka. Later I lived in an energetic Germany as it rebuilt itself in the '50s and in a post-war Britain struggling to find its place in a new world order. If I have one abiding sense of those formative years, it was that it was a time of opportunity. All around me people were striving, and often succeeding, to create a better world for themselves, their families and communities.

 

I entered that world of endeavour in 1961 with a modest clutch of GCEs and set out on what was to prove an exciting journey - my working life. Beckoning was the possibility of a commission in the Hussars and a place at university to read law. If these opportunities seem too good to be true, there were more. Three banks offered me a career, one in the UK, one in South America and the other throughout Asia. In 1965, the Company Secretary of a small brewery in the Home Counties even suggested that the firm would pay for my studies with a view to my taking over from him in due course. As he was also a Master of Wine and the firm’s wine buyer, you’ll understand how tempting I found this.

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No – I wasn’t born with a 'silver spoon in my mouth'. In truth, most of us leaving school at that time believed – as Del Boy would have said - that 'the world was our lobster'. In the event, I did work for the brewery I mentioned (and another) and two of the banks – one in the UK and the other throughout Asia and Africa. I also became a soldier, college lecturer, and even a fireman, all as a part-timer. And university? That had to wait nearly thirty years when, aged 46, I went to Cranfield to study for an MBA and later when I studied for a BSc in Wildlife Management.

 

Add my time in the '80s as an entrepreneur and later in magazine publishing, contemporary art, toy manufacturing, festival and theatre management and six years directing two NHS hospitals and now as chair of a recycling/waste management company and you may form the opinion that here is a 'jack-of-all-trades and master-of-none'. That may be true. I would counter that my experience of the public, private and voluntary sectors has given me an incredible insight into management, especially the challenges of leading and managing complex, multi-functional enterprises.

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I have also had the good fortune to work for or be taught by some world-class leaders and exceptional minds. Many helped me to make sense of a number of management theories and practices. Some also encouraged me to develop my own ideas and to challenge received wisdom and the 'status quo' - something I relish doing.

 

Throughout this website, I plan to share many of the management ideas and practical tools that I have found most useful, to explain why and to illustrate their use with anecdotes drawn from my and others’ experiences.

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Where shall we begin? Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. I feel a song coming on..."when you read, you begin with ABC, when you sing, you begin with Do Ray Me".....when you lead you begin with........?

         

If you are lucky enough to get hold of a copy, a useful starting point is the Harvard Business Review (HBR) publication entitled Business Classics: Fifteen Key Concepts for Managerial Success. It contains many of the definitive texts that have shaped the thinking of countless business leaders for well over forty years. There are articles by Herzberg, Drucker, Tannenbaum and Schmidt, Blake and Mouton, to name just a few. Interestingly, not one of the concepts is dated later than 1975 and none is written by a woman. I would even suggest that as there were very few women in management at that time, few were written with a woman reader in mind. 

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My thinking and actions have been shaped by many of these gurus. To this list I add other giants - Charles Handy, Robert Townsend, Anthony Jay, Alvin Toffler, John Adair, Andrew Kakabadse, Meredith Belbin, John Garnett. Abraham Maslow and Douglas McGregor. Here's a list of some of their books that I have read over the years:

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• The Age of Unreason by Charles Handy

• Up the Organisation by Robert Townsend

• Management and Machiavelli by Antony Jay

• Future Shock by Alvin Toffler

• Action Centred Leadership by John Adair

• Working in Organisations by Andrew Kakabadse and others

• Team Roles at Work by Meredith R. Belbin

• The Work Challenge by John Garnett

• A Theory of Human Motivation by Abraham Maslow

• The Human Side of Enterprise by Douglas McGregor

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I have also started to read The Thirty-Six Stratagems - a modern-day interpretation by Peter Taylor of a strategy classic. It's a fascinating read and has prompted me to ask myself if some of today's political and business leaders are being guided by one of the stratagems in particular - feign madness but keep your balance (hide behind the mask of a fool, a drunk, or a madman to create confusion about your intentions and motivations). You won't need me to tell you who I have in my crosshairs......you'll see them regularly on TV and in the Press. But it seems t'was ever so, for was it not the Bard who wrote of such characters in Henry IV (Part 1), Twelfth Night and King Lear. So, although I don't recommend this particular stratagem (and have serious doubts about some of the individuals holding court today), it does add weight to the notion that leaders come in all shapes and sizes and that there's rarely only one way to get things done. 

 

 

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