Leadership

The new man from the Pru

September 11, 2009 11:57 am by Ravi Mattu

If you haven’t read it already, take a look at today’s fascinating interview with Tidjane Thiam, the CEO-elect of Prudential. If you have the time, it is well worth reading the full transcript of the interview.

There are all sorts of reason why the 46-year-old’s ascent to the top of the one of the world’s biggest life assurers is so interesting, not least the fact that he is the first black person to head a FTSE 100 company.

But Mr Thiam’s professional experience is also a bit unconventional for a chief executive for a City of London company. After an early career as a consultant for McKinsey in Paris, he became an independent adviser to the government of the Ivory Coast and, later, minister for development. Following a coup, he was briefly detained and then offered the position of chief of staff to the military government. He chose instead to return to McKinsey – don’t know of many consultants who have had to make such a choice – and n 2002, he was headhunted by Aviva to become its strategy director before heading the company’s continental European operations. He became finance director of Prudential in March last year and was appointed chief executive in March of this year.

From a management point of view, he offers some very revealing insights about how his time in Africa impacted (i.e. didn’t) his career in Europe:

Continue reading: “The new man from the Pru”

Posted in Career/skills, Leadership, Management | Permalink

Steve Jobs is back but Apple has work to do

September 10, 2009 10:04 am by Ravi Mattu

Apple held its “It’s only rock-n-roll” event yesterday and Steve Jobs the leader of the Apple tribe (which I wrote about in Why Community Matters a few weeks ago) was back in front of the camera and his community. In the video after the jump, Richard Waters explains why this was the most dramatic news from the company and why there remain some major unresolved questions in terms of the company’s future prospects.

Meanwhile, Chris Nuttall reviewed the video iPod nano, the “technology star of the event” and live-blogged the event over on the Tech Blog.

Continue reading: “Steve Jobs is back but Apple has work to do”

Posted in Community, Creativity, Innovation/tech, Leadership, Technology | Permalink

A ‘shocking disparity’ in women’s pay

September 7, 2009 10:50 pm by Ravi Mattu

I’m coming a bit late to this but just as our debate on women in the boardroom generated a fair bit of heated discussion a few weeks ago, today’s report that women in the the UK’s financial industry suffer from a “shocking disparity” in performance related pay (many receive 80 per cent less than male colleagues) has rightly been getting a lot of attention.

If the report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission is accurate, the results are difficult to swallow. Not only is the pay gap is one of the widest in the UK economy and could be being entrenched by recruitment patterns, an issue we take to task in an editorial in today’s paper.

Posted in Career/skills, Corporate culture, Finance, Leadership, Management | Permalink

Picks of the week

September 4, 2009 11:56 am by Ravi Mattu

A few interesting stories I have seen in the past few days.

John Moulton resigns from Alchemy Partners, the private equity group – many in the industry may not have liked that he was so outspoken but I actually think his ability to communicate openly did the industry a great service. Private equity has often been poorly understood for such and many in the wider public had little idea what it did. By having someone speak publicly about it, he humanised a big industry. But then, as a journalist, I suppose I would say that. NB: Do read his remarkably candid letter to investors.
Ikea Beijing – more as theme park than store – My three-year old nephew loves Ikea. It’s his favourite place to hang out and eat (he loves the meatballs). Apparently, he’s not alone. At the company’s Beijing store, “thousands” go there for “fun” and, on occasion, even to catch a nap in one of the beds on display. (Hat tip: First Drafts, the blog for Prospect magazine)
How Merkel’s attempt to save Opel went awry – interesting essay on the machinations behind Angela Merkel’s efforts to steer the sale of Opel. A tale of how domestic and international politics and business mix in troubled times – and why things don’t always go according to plan.
Pedigree, the dog food maker, promotes dog adoption through a children’s book – Ad agency TBWA/London publishes a children’s book encouraging kids to be dog lovers. Aren’t there rules about marketing to children? And surely cute dogs do a better job of wanting kids to have them then a children’s book.
The Washington Redskins sue a fan who goes bankrupt- Thought the headline was a bit sensationalist, but it is true that loyal sports fans always see themselves as more than mere consumers; they are part of a community which means they see their investment as more than financial (a topic I discussed in ‘Why Communities Matter’ a few weeks ago). In the era when sports is big business, is this a position that can be reconciled with reality? Or is it an illusion clubs are willing to encourage in order to keep fans on side?

Posted in Brand management, Career/skills, Community, Hard times, Leadership, Management, Marketing/sales | Permalink

Life in a downturn

September 3, 2009 5:20 pm by Ravi Mattu

A couple of stories on FT.com highlight some of the more difficult aspects of life in a downturn.

Our ongoing series “Trading places: Migration in a crisis” is a fascinating, if slightly depressing look, at how the downturn is affecting migrant workers for a number of different communities across the world: Japenese-Brazilians who are returning to Brazil after years in Japan; Mexican labourers who have lost their jobs in the US and are unable to remit money to their families; migrants in China’s Pearl River Delta who are being offered school places to stay; and for Nigeria, a “brain gain” as emigrants are coming home.

Another story that has been getting a lot of recent attention has been the decision by BT to rethink its graduate recruitment policies by no longer particpating in the annual “milk round” of UK university job fairs (see Stefan’s column in the post below). My colleague Andrew Hill offers the latest take on the debate by assessing the value of trainees (and, as he declares, he too is a former trainee, so he knows what he’s talking about).

Posted in Career/skills, Hard times, Leadership, Management | Permalink

Are women a help or a hindrance in the boardroom?

August 6, 2009 7:41 pm by Ravi Mattu

I can’t claim to know the answer – is it really knowable? – but there certainly seem to be divergent views on the issue.

New research suggests more women on the board can improve governance but has a negative effect on profitability. In the words of Daniel Ferreira of the London School of Economics, one of the report’s authors: “This is a complicated picture.”

That may well qualify for understatement of the day but a few of recent pieces highlight just how complicated – and current – the issue is.

In today’s Lombard column, Andrew Hill points out that the authors are not coming out against female directors but do “warn that about forcing the issue with quotas, Norwegian-style, and then expecting automatic improvements in performance”.

A few weeks ago, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, a consultant and co-author of a book called Why Women Mean Business, wrote: “There is a convincing business case for designing organisations that attract and retain women to the top.” Further, she argued, “having a greater proportion of women in decision-making roles improves business performance and profitability”.

A few weeks later, our own Lucy Kellaway, who also happens to be a non-executive director, took a different view, describing the so-called “asset-to-oestrogen” ratio as “total twaddle”.

Who’s right? Comments welcome.

Posted in Career/skills, Corporate culture, Leadership, Management, Strategy/ops | Permalink

The rules of engagement

August 4, 2009 1:29 am by Stefan Stern

When it comes to battling with the competition, where do you draw the line? Is all fair in love, war and business?

The key text for believers in ruthless competition is probably Hardball: Are you playing to play or playing to win?written five years ago by Boston Consulting Group’s George Stalk and his ex-BCG colleague Rob Lachenauer.

For these two, a hardball approach means “creating discomfort for others and tolerating it in yourself”. Not that you should consider doing anything illegal – of course not. But there is a moral and legal grey area (a “caution zone”) which, the authors argue, is “rich in possibility”. A smart leader will recognise where to draw a “bright line” in this zone. He or she “lets everybody know when they’re getting close to it, and takes corrective action as soon as anyone steps over it”.

The remainder of the article can be read here. Please post comments below.

Posted in Leadership, Management, Managing others, Strategy/ops | Permalink

Why communities matter in business leadership

August 2, 2009 11:18 pm by Ravi Mattu

Two weeks ago, in a small church hall in north London, my three-year-old son picked up his Transformers lunchbox, said goodbye to a few of his friends and gave an end-of-term cuddle to the women who work at the nursery he attends four mornings a week. It was the end of term and summer holidays beckoned.

Our nursery isn’t especially fancy. The hall is a little worse for wear. The toys are not particularly new. Unlike some of the other nurseries in the neighbourhood, it doesn’t do organic food, it doesn’t have guinea pigs for the children to take care of or a vegetable patch where they can grow carrots. Come to think of it, it doesn’t have much outdoor space at all. Occasionally, the children go to the playground in a rather grim council estate nearby and I have persuaded myself that the bratty kids who once pelted me with water-filled balloons from the same playground have moved to another town.

The remainder of the article can be read here. Please post comments below.

Posted in Corporate culture, Creativity, Leadership, Management | Permalink

The military goes back to school

July 13, 2009 11:55 am by Ravi Mattu

As we continue our strand of military strategy coming back into the boardroom (it wasn’t intentional but we obviously tapped into something in the management air). Our colleagues on the business education beat have picked up on a reverse trend – how retiring military officers are getting commercial business nous from an executive programmes at Manchester Business School.

Posted in B-schools, Career/skills, Leadership, Management | Permalink

Robert McNamara

July 9, 2009 6:47 pm by Ravi Mattu

Love him or loathe him, there is no disputing that Robert McNamara, who died yesterday at the age of 93, had an extraordinary career and an amazingly brilliant mind. He is most famous (or infamous) for his role as secretary of defence during the Vietnam War but he was also president of Ford (only for a month before being tapped by JFK to be secretary of defence) and, after leaving government, president of the World Bank for 13 years.

In 2003, McNamara returned to public prominence with the release of The Fog of War, a brilliant Errol Morris documentary in which he had a series of conversations with Morris about his rise from humble origins to some of the most prominent positions in business and government. Follow the link and you can see some clips.

Continue reading: “Robert McNamara”

Posted in Leadership, Management | Permalink