Since 1987, my time has been totally my own. In your terms, I’ve created a new hub for each new venture–I suppose I’m at the middle of the hub, then there are a few people I work or cooperate with, then the clients. I’ve just done what I’ve wanted to do, but if I hadn’t been able to get happy clients, then I would have stopped. I’ve had a huge party, but the guests have enjoyed it too!
So should we all just ‘trust the universe’, like Stephen and Mary? Not entirely. Our interviewees were not hot on career planning, but they did offer some guidelines. They agreed that the most important steps up in life generally come with a move to a new work hub. Unless the first hub we happen to join fits us perfectly and allows for personal growth, this must be so. There’s almost certainly a hub out there somewhere that we could join in which we would have a better experience than we are having now. But how do we find it?
People talk about the value and ambience of organisations. So, if you are thinking of joining a new company, ask yourself if its values are similar to your own. Will you feel at home there?
Our interviewees strike a note of caution about dog-eat-dog organisations or very large ones. ‘I decided not to join Shell,’ says Paul Judge, ‘when the secretary taking me between interviews got lost in the corridor.’ Jim Lawrence contrasts the friendly atmosphere of branded consumer goods companies with the ‘brutal’ culture he encountered in another industry, where margins were thin, demand was unpredictable, and losses were a constant danger: ‘The consumer products culture is much more friendly, partly perhaps because it’s more stable and profitable, and partly because consumer product leaders take a long-term view and treat employees and customers well. If you can’t decide between two jobs in the private sector, go for the one with nicer people.’
The accomplished people we asked suggested two main criteria for joining a hub–how much you think you can learn there, and how much you can contribute. Securities services professional Alex Johnstone says:
Early in your career, I’d say you should select hubs on the basis of learning; but later on, by how much you can contribute
and
how much you learn. In my early career, I learned much more than I contributed. Now I am contributing a lot but learning very little. I’m not talking about technical skills. I think it’s personal. You can learn only from the people around you. If you don’t respect their superior knowledge or techniques then you can’t learn. If you’re not learning, it’s time to move to another hub. So that’s what I’m going to do.
Another important realisation our interviewees made was that their careers had not taken off until they’d first experienced a hub that had profoundly changed their outlook and capabilities. They came out different from how they’d gone in. Typically when they were in their twenties, they experienced two or three hubs that transformed them.
For Chris Outram, the first life-changing hub was an extraordinary sixth-form college, and the second was INSEAD, the top business school near Paris, which he attended from the age of twenty-seven:
I met people I didn’t know existed–polyglot people who were ambitious, intellectually curious, and also attractive personalities. It provided a mirror for me, allowing me to hone many of my skills, and it also led to very firm relationships. There are sixteen people who were in my year and we now meet every year for a long weekend. It has a 90 per cent turnout. It’s a very diverse group comprising a dozen different nationalities.
For another of our interviewees, the intense experience came when he joined EY Consulting Group (formerly Ernst and Young):
My career took off there. I was only twenty-eight, but they gave me a lot of freedom. I was able to do my own thing and also meet and learn from the senior people. I worked in the corporate finance unit and thrived. I learned to link together people and ideas and create totally new business opportunities. The people were fantastic and it all came together. Really it was the time of my life. It changed me for ever.
Alex Johnstone accelerated his career when, at twenty-two, he joined Goldman Sachs:
It was a huge springboard for me…a fantastic learning experience. Suddenly the idea of global, international business dawned on me. What transformed me was not so much specific knowledge as the people. I learned how important attitude was and I worked with the brightest people I have ever met–not just bright but totally driven, almost to the detriment of everything else in life. I never knew people like that existed. It really changed me–before I was a provincial lad, now I felt keyed into the whole world.
I eventually realised, however, that I didn’t want to let my life be taken over by any organisation, even if it would make me rich. There are more important things in life. But seeing how people in a top investment bank thought–seeing the big picture–has been invaluable to me ever since. Now I only work forty hours a week but I am able to do everything that I think is important, and stay relaxed.
For many of our flourishing interviewees, the transformation came by dipping their toes into entrepreneurial waters. Two of them had ‘dummy runs’ by opening a new business within the protection of their existing employer. Jim Lawrence flexed his entrepreneurial muscles by starting Bain’s London and Munich offices, while Antony Ball started a new strategic consulting business within Deloittes. The real transformation came when Jim and Antony set up their own operations from scratch.
‘LEK was different,’ says Jim, ‘because we operated successfully without the backing of a parent, with our own money, and initially outside my home country.’ Nevertheless, Jim reckons his first transformations came at Yale–‘a complete educational transformation, a gain in social status, and I acquired a world view’–and at Harvard Business School–‘a knowledge transformation’.
Antony’s big break came when he set up a new private equity business, Capital Partners, in South Africa: ‘I had had a practice run in setting up the Strategy Group, but that was within a big firm. Capital Partners was totally our own thing and it was an unusual thing to do at the time in South Africa. We felt we were pioneers. It changed my life in every way.’
Typically, these people’s careers have not been marathons. Rather, success has come as the result of a series of infrequent sprints–sudden staccato leaps from one hub to the next. After thirteen years working for Cadbury Schweppes, including a stint as chief executive of its food division, in 1985 Paul Judge was a successful career manager, but no more so than most of his business school peers. Then Cadbury decided that the food division was no longer a ‘core’ business. Paul surprised his boss by asking permission to try to put together a buyout. He arranged the finance using almost exclusively other people’s money, but, unusually, without any venture capitalists to share the potential upside. Soon, Paul was back as chief executive of the division, separate from Cadbury and renamed Premier Brands. Within four years, Premier had been sold to Hillsdown Holdings and Paul had many million pounds in the bank.
Yet, he says that a much earlier job, as managing director of Cadbury’s subsidiary in Kenya, was more of a step-up than running Premier Brands:
Kenya was my first line-management job. I was four thousand miles from head office, and in those days there were no emails or faxes, and a phone call was an unusual event. It was a baptism of fire, because the local sales tax was 50 per cent and some of the local companies cheated by under-recording their sales, but Cadbury reported accurately. Kenya really made me tough and decisive. Contrast that with Premier Brands. By the time of the buyout, I had already been managing director of that unit and it was the same people and the same company. For sure, we were now on our own and we focused on cash and new products, but the really challenging part of Premier Brands was the months arranging the deal before we started.