My blog

Category: Opinion

  • Opinion: Why human resource management deserves to be seen as a desirable profession

    Dr. Liz Houldsworth

     

    In the opening episode of the new drama Slow Horses, a wrongly disgraced Mi5 officer takes some comfort when he visits his nemesis and, on finding him in a room full of filing cabinets, realises that he is no longer a practicing spy and has been ‘relegated to Human Resources’.

     

    Such depictions in film, TV and written word are not uncommon. A well-known piece by Hammonds in 2005 heralded ‘Why we hate HR’; parodying the function for its technical jargon such as ‘internal action learning’ and arguing that it was not a role for the brightest and best, typically populated by those who were not the ‘sharpest tacks’.  More recently Douglas Murray in the Telegraph was indignant at discovering the role of HR manager to be one of the most desirable and highest paid.

     

    Having worked and researched in Human Resource related fields for over 20 years I recognise this as a continuing, and key, debate. With the Masters students I teach at Henley Business School, I make the point that for most organisations people are both the largest single element of operating (variable) costs and the single resource that can generate value from the organisation’s other resources. Managing any organisation cost-effectively therefore requires knowledgeable, careful and skilful human resource management.

    Put simply, for the majority of businesses it really is all about the people.  The news that HR managers might now be one of the better paid jobs perhaps suggests that organisations are finally putting cash behind the hyperbole that ‘People are our Most Important Asset.’

    For the specialists we teach, who choose to go into HRM as a profession, it is important for them to understand the kind of ignorant assumptions that they may face, but it is also important to understand the motivation of these bright and enthusiastic individuals who have chosen to invest their time and money to qualify to work in the HR profession.

    A common misbelief is that HRM Is for individuals who like working with people. As many other commentators have pointed out, HRM is not about being nice to people.  A former colleague once said to me: ‘I used to think HRM was easy, all about people, but these ‘soft’ things are really hard.’ Done well, HRM is carried out by business-focused individuals who make difficult decisions and lead effective change programmes in ways which don’t attract negative media attention. To take one recent example, a US mortgage company recently sacked 900 staff by Zoom, attracting massive negative publicity and harming the business.

    One of the reasons my students cite as a driver for selecting a career in HRM is that they want to make a difference to people’s working lives. This impact might be through the shaping and maintenance of the organisation’s culture, or by responding in a timely fashion to fast-changing needs. Such a fleet-of-foot response is not synonymous with the self-important bureaucrats seen through Murray’s distorting lens. Had HRM generally been populated by such individuals we might still be waiting for the health and well-being programmes that supported so many millions during the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent implementation of hybrid working.

    Of course, as with all the other functions of any effective business, production, finance, IT or marketing, HRM has a normal range of individuals from those who are naturally brilliant at it and are heavily relied upon members of the top management team, to those who are incompetent drudges.

    But for the most part serious organisations, and commentators, recognise HRM as more strategic and deserving of its seat at the table.  In the more sophisticated organisations, there is a clear understanding of the transition of HRM away from being a largely administrative function to becoming a more strategic function. Of course, there is still a bureaucracy around hiring, payroll, pensions administration, etc.  It is important that these things are handled competently and consistently (if you are not sure about that, think what would happen if people didn’t get paid the right salary at the right time).

    But there is much more to the role. To take a crucial example, recruitment is one of the core skill areas within HRM. Get the right people in and many other management problems become much easier to resolve; get the wrong ones and the organisation is building up near and long-term future problems for itself. In organisations of any significant size, recruitment is a holistic resourcing strategy and HRM specialists are expected to manage the flow of resources (people) into, through and eventually out of the organisation.

    Human resource planning may be an area which has less of a trendy image than other areas of management – and will be unknown to many casual commentators on HRM. It requires detailed data collection, analysis of changing external circumstances (most recently Covid, of course), understanding the likely availability of internal and external labour markets (think Brexit) and the organisation’s likely future demand for labour. Without effective thinking – consider the travel industry at present – businesses will swerve within weeks from being expensively over-staffed, to being desperately short of appropriately trained employees.  Anyone thinking this is a low-value activity should try telling that to the people struggling to get away for their Easter break because of a lack of baggage handlers, or to farmers unable to get their produce picked or hoteliers without chefs or waiting staff.

    Depicting the individuals who specialise in order to do this work as presumptuous dullards is perhaps what got us into these situations in the first place.  A country should indeed encourage young people to excel and be great at things that are important, and roles in human resource management are high on that list.

    The writer is the Programme Director of Henley’s MSc International Human Resource Management.

     

  • Angelina Giovani’s Letter from Greece

    ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that every single man or woman in possession of a good fortune or no fortune at all, must at some point be in want of visiting Greece…’
    The lure is eternal, as is the sun, the sea, the good food and the wine. In the past decade it has been more important than ever to focus on the positive and keep our eyes towards better days in the near future.

    Sadly, the positive near future that we thought would follow the initial shock of the economic downfall, was plagued by nearly all possible disasters one can think of, from natural disasters to social upheavals, to the highest unemployment rate in Europe and the devastating pressure of a global pandemic. And now, we have the terrifying global uncertainty of witnessing the devastating war in Ukraine.

    At the current state of the world, it is difficult to get one’s self motivated to write anything too positive or upbeat. But what we might have learned over the past couple of years, is that we can live with bad news day in and day out, and adapt. We went from counting the daily Covid-19 infections to counting airstrikes and tanks seemingly overnight. A mysterious disease followed by all these accounts of unnecessary evil all happening on a planet that seems to be on its last breath, might just be what we all needed to shed our old skins and re-adapt.

    Greek life is very different today than it was a decade ago, going through changes both good and bad. While the tourist sector is primed to make a full recovery this year, it remains to be seen if this will be enough to carry the country through. It is a fact that tourism income can lead to economic growth – especially in a country where tourism and agriculture wonderfully blend together and offer unparalleled agritouristic experiences. Even so, Greek agriculture now faces a manpower problem. The age of the average farmer is close to 50 and it is very challenging to recruit new blood at a time when larger cities and the life they promise hold a greater appeal. The pandemic changed this for the better but only to some extent and it’s not clear how long those changes will last.

    The two first years of the pandemic saw the starkest drop in yearly visitors since World War II. It was detrimental for the islands, the smaller ones in particular, who eagerly await for the summer to generate enough income to last them for the rest of the year. The smaller islands of the Aegean are the ones which feel the greatest strain and who are not as privy to investment and help as mainland Greece and a handful of heavily frequented island destinations.

     

    The Attica region in Athens saw over 40 hotels pop up in 2021 alone with another seven set to open this year in central Athens. These are providing fresh opportunities for local contemporary artists, by offering up the hotel walls for murals, exhibitions and installations. They are destined to become hubs of the local art scene. During the pandemic many of the galleries turned their eyes towards to the intentional art scene, hoping to reach the international audience themselves rather them waiting for them to visit locally. But now, things seem to have take a home-bound turn. A lot of effort has gone into bringing the contemporary and emerging Greek art scene to the forefront. Athens is an old city, with world-famous buildings and ruins, and simultaneously a cradle of incredibly talented new artists. They need to co-exist while not overshadowing each other. This is not the easiest task.

    At the same time, the startup scene has flourished compared to previous years. All start ups require an entrepreneurial spirit, and Greece offers that in abundance. Even during the height of the economic crisis and the skyrocketing unemployment rate, Greece had the largest number of self employed people in Europe. This being said, only 36 per cent of Greek startups appear to be receiving international funding, mostly below €50,000. This remains problematic, since it means many young businesses miss the opportunity to expand. The average number of new hires in Greece remains five, which is low compared to other countries. It is expected that over the next years the Greek startup ecosystem will be injected with up to €400 million, but for that to happen the focus needs to be in identifying promising young talent and well oiling the underdeveloped collaborative networks. This will also help attract international recruits and employees.

    One can draw up a very long list as to why someone should visit Greece, but people should also think of moving there. You can be very successful, and still live a slower-paced life. You can afford yourself certain everyday luxuries at a relatively affordable price. You can rent a flat with a magnificent view for a fraction of what it would cost in London or Paris. Lastly, and most importantly: you can live out the rest of your days, in the satisfying knowledge that you will never have to settle for average food or a mediocre cup of coffee. In Greece, we know no such thing.

     

    Angelina Giovani is the co-founder of Flynn Giovani Art Provenance Research. Go to flynngiovani.com.

  • Lord Martin Rees: Astronomy brings ‘a special perspective’ on work and life

    Lord Martin Rees

    As the Astronomer-Royal, I would argue that it’s a great luxury to look at the stars – but then the cosmos is part of our environment. It is the unique part of it which has been observed and wondered at by all human beings everywhere in the world’s large history. They’ve all gazed up at the same vault of heaven.

    To be more technical, every atom in our bodies was made in a star which lived and died some 5,000 years ago. I think the public is fascinated by this, just as they are about dinosaurs – which I suppose some people might say are irrelevant now. So I’m not apologetic for trying to understand space.

    Besides, space technology is used for practical purposes. By observing things in the cosmos we can study the laws of nature under far more extreme conditions than you could ever simulate on earth: more intense radiation, and longer gravity and so forth, so that one can understand more deeply the laws of nature.

    If people ask if there any other special perspectives which astronomy allows me to bring to everyday affairs, it is perhaps the awareness of a long future. Most people who accept Darwinian evolution, they’re aware that we’re the outcome of nearly four billion years of evolution, but I think many think that we humans are the culmination of all that and the top of the tree. No astronomer can believe that, because earth is less than halfway through its life – the sun has six billion years to go until it dies. And the universe may have an infinite future head of it. I might quote Woody Allen who said: “Infinity is very long, especially towards the end.” We are perhaps nearer the beginning than the end of more and more wonderful complexity, and although that’s a vastly longer time scale than one can easily imagine, it gives a different perspective.

    We should share the mystery and wonder of the universe, but we should accept that our brains may not understand the depths of it, just as a monkey can’t understand quantum theory.

    Astronomy also engenders humility. Most students find it pretty hard to understand even a single atom. Therefore I’m very sceptical of anyone who claims to have more than a very incomplete and metaphorical understanding of any deep aspect of reality. It’s why I’m suspicious of doctrinal religion, though I do support the social function of religion as a way of bringing people together.

    Religion is part of our culture. I was brought up traditionally in the Anglican church, and hugely value the accretions of architecture and musicianship. But if I were born in Iran, I’d feel the same way about Islam, and in the same spirit.

    As a writer, I’m very much on a computer. I have friends who write books, who start with a sheet of paper, begin at the beginning and go on. I’m not like that – I write bits and it gradually comes into focus. The books I’ve written have all grown out of having written articles and lecture notes. I would never sit down with a fresh topic and write a book out of the blue. 

    Most jobs involve some aspect of mathematics and some sort of skill with computers. Science should be regarded as part of our culture. Small kids are fascinated by space and dinosaurs. The tragedy is that as they get older they lose interest in that rather than broadening it to embrace the rest of science and this is partly due to the lack of inspirational teachers in secondary schools.

    Everyone needs to have some feel for science. We need to know how the world works and where our food comes from. It’s sad that there are young people who’ve never seen a dark sky or a birds’ nest or never been on a farm – or couldn’t say where their liver is in relation to their stomach. One feels everyone ought to know a bit about basic numeracy too, so they can’t be bamboozled by statistics. It’s also important for responsible citizens, due to the implications in relation to climate and environment. If you want the debate to rise above the level of Daily Mail slogans, everyone needs a basic understanding of science. For science to be optimised, we need to have a public who understands it well enough to be part of democratic discussion.

    Lord Rees is the Astronomer-Royal and the author of numerous books, most recently On the Future (Princeton University Press)

  • Nimco Ali: “A young campaigner should educate themselves as broadly as possible”

    Nimco Ali

    I’m proud to say I’m the granddaughter of a freedom fighter – a man who defended his country against Somalian dictatorship. I grew up with a passionate understanding of the rule of law. I was the victim of female genital mutilation (FGM) and this background has given me valuable context for my fight.

    The fact is that there are 200 million people with experiences similar to mine. Some happen to be incredible writers and mentors such as Nawal El Saadawi who wrote about her experiences of FGM in The Hidden Face of Eve (1977). This book showed me that FGM was not to do with my race or my faith: it was about my gender. There are similar cultural narratives in the UK around domestic abuse. It was this realisation which helped me find my voice.  

    That book changed me. Being able to have the space to educate myself meant I could understand FGM as part of a broader conversation around FGM: it then became about taking the whole topic out of a cultural cul-de-sac.

    What advice would I give to a young campaigner? I’d say you can talk to anyone, regardless of political affiliation. Sadly, because of our first-past-the-post system we have two political parties, and you should always be open to talking to both. I’d also say you have to make an emotional appeal built around hope and not around sadness.

    I’ve found that it’s not just women who are able to hear such an appeal. My message appeals to anybody who has had a traumatic childhood experience – that, in turn, has allowed me to avoid being tribal. That’s a legacy also of my understanding of the civil war in Somalia, where tribalism was the problem. I try to find commonality with those in power.

    My legal education – I studied law at Bristol – has helped me too. But I think a young campaigner should educate themselves as broadly as possible. The humanity subjects are very important too: history, drama and literature are the foundation of where things came from and where they’re going. These things can make you a better activist.

    Of the 200 million women affected globally by FGM, most are on the African continent. Another 70 million are at risk between now and 2030. My message to people is that we can save those girls, but to do so we need to invest in women. That means focusing on their education and their employment opportunities; we need to create economic independence in them.

    We’ve sometimes lapsed into an aid mentality which makes Africa unable to go through the Industrial Revolution. Africa mustn’t be seen as a poverty-hit continent but as a strategic partner which can elevate itself. That’s never been the attitude of the US and the UK. This has created a gap and enabled China and Russia to rob Africa of its natural resources.

    As things stand, girls are being raped and murdered instead of being given the power to make choices for their communities. People often don’t see the climate change link here. Of all the places where FGM is rife, 40 per cent is hit by drought or some other global warming impact. Furthermore, if you want to save the elephant or the other big five animals, you have to slow down the population growth in Africa.

    China’s wealth is built on the manufacture of things its gets from Africa. You won’t hear an African leader ever asking for aid: what they’re asking for is to change the relationship. Really, they’re asking to be a capitalist country and to work for a living and not receive handouts. The trouble is that aid makes people dependent, and that only two per cent of aid actually gets to grass roots women.

    In addition to that, our foreign aid giving arm is too scared of being seen as wasting money which means they can sometimes give in a too restricted manner. Likewise, Save the Children and Oxfam have both been in positions where they hold the power in African countries, and they end up abusing that power, and stymie the people they’re meant to be helping.

    So there’s a lot that needs to change. But most of all we need to not define women by their trauma. The first step is to find a new way to talk about the problem – and perhaps that alone would change more than we think.

  • Nick Wheeler: “It’s a perfectly acceptable thing to be an entrepreneur today”

    Nick Wheeler

    I was born in Ludlow in 1965, and my mother died when I was five. So my little brother was five years younger than me. I also had a brother who was five years older than me, and a sister seven years older than me. Though I was one of four, it was almost like being an only child.

    My father threw himself into his work when my mother died so I was pretty independent. From an early age, I’d do what I wanted. My father would drop me at school in the morning, and then I’d get the bus back. I think there’s a high correlation between people who lost a parent early on and those who become entrepreneurs: it’s self-reliance and self-belief. You just have to get on with it.

    I always hated being told what to do which wasn’t great at school. One of my claims to fame is that I managed to get through the whole of Eton without calling anyone sir – that was a pretty good effort in the 1970s. In those days, you had to be subservient. That probably made me quite obnoxious but it did make me independent.

    I always knew I wanted to have my own business. My father was a bit of a closet entrepreneur. He did engineering at university and then went to work for a consultancy group called TI Consulting. He moved to Shropshire because his grandmother died and left him a house. He was about 32. Ludlow is a lovely place but not the place where you’re going to forge a great career or an entrepreneurial opportunity.

    He got a job there working in an agricultural machinery business called FW McConnell. It must have been 1963, and about six months after he got the job the man who owned the business got gored by a bull and killed, so my father was made managing director. He grew the business and did a management buyout of another division of the company that owned that business. He owned most of the shares and off he went. He reversed it into a shell company. After the stock market crisis in 1987 the share price never recovered.

    I used to go to the business every Saturday morning and open the post with him. I’d also pack stuff on the factory floor and do funny little jobs. Every so often there’d be a cheque in the post and he’d get so excited and we’d do a little dance together around the desk. It was like magic: they’d bring in cheap steel and turn it into hedge cutters. You got paid more for the hedge-cutter than you did for the steel.

    There’s a similar alchemy with shirts. I like doing things I understand: I’d not be a good Bill Gates or a Larry Page, dealing in algorithms. It isn’t tangible enough for me. It had to be physical – like a piece of agricultural machinery or a shirt.

    The world is so well set up; there is such a networking of funding opportunities and support. It’s a perfectly normal and acceptable thing to be an entrepreneur today. When my father was growing up nobody started their own businesses.

    I started Charles Tyrwhitt in 1986 and before that I had other businesses. I did a photography business, a Christmas tree business and a shoe business. I was trying to make money doing something I loved. 36 years on and that ethos is still very important. It’s making people feel good, and producing clothes which are great quality, and which people enjoy buying and wearing.

    A business is a living entity. For me, I want the customers, the workers and the suppliers to love the business.

    Fashion remains in the family. My daughter bought herself a sewing machine, and she taught herself pattern-cutting and sells them on Depop. In the early days of Charles Tyrwhitt, my wife, Chrissie Rucker, who founded The White Company, used to offer advice. It was great being in the same sort of industry but a different market.

    I’m a non-exec of the White Company – she doesn’t really have time to take a similar role with Charles Tyrwhitt. She gives me a hard time and says our clothing is too formal – and she’s probably right. Actually, we’ve begun to make our clothing less formal in the last few years.

    Nick Wheeler is the founder of Charles Tyrwhitt

  • Opinion: War and the Dignity of Work

    by Finito World

    When Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin invaded Ukraine he was certainly not trying to reinforce values opposite to his, but this is precisely what war-mongerers tend to do. Whenever war commences, we witness both the collapse of the society of the country invaded, but also the eerie continuation of our own lives.

    The juxtaposition between a warzone and our seemingly robust lives in the West is very unfair. It is not uncommon to experience guilt at the chasm between what’s on the news and the comparatively quiet nature of our own lives.

    Of course, we must always be careful that awareness of that disparity doesn’t shade into a sort of accidental smugness, even a sense of superiority over those less fortunate. George Orwell deliberately set 1984 in England as a warning that Stalinism too could happen here. But if the spectacle of war doesn’t give us some form of knowledge about the fortunate nature of our own lives then we will probably lack the courage to defend them.

    But in the midst of a job search it is all too easy to be overwhelmed by the stress of the process. It can help to remind oneself that it is a privilege to make your way in a peaceable economy. As Jonathan Cathey observer in our Letter from Bucharest in this issue, the tragedy of war is that it disrupts the economic activity which had defined a country beforehand: one of the casualties of an invaded people, he writes, is “all the things they were doing and all the progress they were making before they were invaded.”

    Geopolitical conflict also makes us think about the real purpose behind so many industries – especially those which crop up in discussions over sanctions and strategy. The green industry, as important as it undoubtedly is, has been exploited by Putin. Our inability to frack or create nuclear power stations makes those industries look far more urgent today than they did at the start of the year.

    Similarly the banking sector now seems to contain too much Russian money, and one might now think twice before becoming, say, a relationship manager at a top bank if the relationship one might end up managing is an oligarch whose money comes from questionable sources. Likewise, the numerous buying and selling agents in London’s Mayfair may now be wondering if the excellent hand-holding client service which they offered Russian clients was really a decent use of their talents. A young person starting out in life has the opportunity to ask themselves these questions and also perhaps avoid a lifetime of their talents being placed in service to the wrong people.

    War is a terrible thing but it has the tendency to make us ask who we are and what we really want to do. It was the former chief of staff to President Barack Obama Rahm Emanuel who coined the phrase which is likely to be his most lasting legacy: ‘Never let a crisis go to waste’. His words seem truer with every passing year.

  • Opinion: Gina Miller on a new beginning for schools

    Gina Miller

    We have 167,000 charities in the United Kingdom – that’s a phenomenal number. But we have only one or two parenting charities. That’s a pity because the days of learning parenting from your own parents have gone: the family network isn’t there as it once was. You can’t leave the welfare of children only up to the schools. When they’ve had initiatives in the past such as SureStart it got commandeered by middle class parents even though it wasn’t particularly aimed at them. These initiatives have failed to bring in the parents who really need the support.

    Our schools could be used more as a hub to provide for the people who need assistance. Too many people are stuck in the idea of what a school is for. A school is actually to serve our community – it’s not just about educating people. If you think of it that way, you can utilise schools as a way of teaching in a wider sense. We don’t need to be so narrowly focussed.

    Education, a bit like the NHS, has been used as a political football and political parties tend to guard their territory jealously. This is why I propose a fourth summer term. The weather can create a sense of summer school, and volunteering could enter the picture. One charity I know works with ex-service people and they go in and teach sports. They understand that kids can get into mischief. They do phenomenal work – even the most difficult teenager will pull their socks up.

    We also have a retiring population who have so much knowledge and experience and who are actually physically fitter than they were in the past. We need to think more broadly about what happens to them and use the wisdom they’ve accumulated in their lives to better our own children.

    That also means we need to broaden and rethink the curriculum. At the moment, the conversation is all around history and how we teach it, but this approach is nowhere near bold enough.

    When I speak to the educators and they’re very frustrated. As a result, we’re losing good people in our education system because of the politicisation of our schools. It’s so interesting to me that whenever I speak to a politician about education it always starts from a position of defensiveness. I always say: “What are you defensive about?” I don’t mind which political party they come from. The facts are clear: we can’t deny that we are failing in our educational standards, that we have a low take-up when it comes to further education, or that we made a mistake when we got rid of training colleges. When we got rid of training colleges, and qualifications in plumbing, hospitality, or food and drink, we devalued those professions. Before, when you had the qualifications, you gave those careers standing.

    My daughter is 14 and her school is offering coding for GCSE. Only two girls out of 90 took up the task. We have to think about what we’re teaching for. That will go in hand-in-hand with the need to put more resources into life learning as people will change professions at least twice during their lives now.

    We used to laugh at Nordic countries, and the fact that children go to school at six and not four. But look at the statistics: they are much more confident at six. Sending children to school at four is to rip them from their mothers and fathers. If you’re really retiring at 70, what’s the rush? You’re teaching them to: “Don’t cry, be tough.”

    Resilience for me isn’t about being tough, it’s about being empathetic and being able to turn yourself to anything and not being rigid.

    In a similar spirit, I would also get rid of the 11+ as that’s far too early to be pigeon-holing people. I’d also get rid of the 7+. The narrowness of choice at GCSE level also needs to be looked at. If you don’t do sciences it narrows you, and if you don’t do languages it narrows you – and again we’re locking people into the consequences of premature decisions. I would also argue that projects are much better than exams: the inventiveness required for a history project is a world away from what you get when students just regurgitate facts from memory for an examination. If we could look at all of the above, then we might begin to address the problems of education in our society.

    Gina Miller is the founder of the True and Fair Party

  • Opinion: Independent thinking is the only basis for a fulfilling career

    by Finito World

    The conservative thinker Peter Hitchens begins his book The Cameron Delusion with these words: “Conventional wisdom is almost always wrong. By the time it has become conventional, it has ceased to be wisdom and become cant.’

    Hitchens’ brand of conservativism is unfashionable to say the least and he probably wouldn’t have it any other way. The things he’d have to say to be fashionable would be anathema to him.

    But what marks Hitchens out from numerous commentators today is the habit of independent thinking: on any subject from the railways to grammar schools and to the Russia-Ukraine war it is always difficult to predict what he will have to say.

    That was true also of the last generation of polemicists which included Gore Vidal or Clive James: the pleasure of reading them was in not knowing what they were going to say. The experience must be contrasted with those numerous columnists on both the right and the left where one can easily guess in advance what is to be said. This melancholy truth is also the case with many politicians, as left and right become harder to distinguish from each other, and as each party’s acceptable ideological band narrows.

    At time of writing it isn’t clear how Vladimir Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine will transpire; perhaps it will take decades before we really know. What is clear is that we are witnessing repeated crises and that these seem to represent a failure of independent thinking. It is enough to make one wonder whether we have lost that art altogether.

    Why is this? It is partly due to the busyness of our lives. Who nowadays has the time to acquire the skills to really look at a problem – to assess the available information, to delve into it, to decide which information is worth trusting and which isn’t? They are few. And once those skills have been acquired, who then has the time to be up to speed on the controversies of the day – at time of writing, climate change, Russia and Ukraine, inflation and a myriad others.

    The answer is that only a select number of intellectuals and semi-retired entrepreneurs have the bandwidth. One might add that students also have time, and it’s this which makes education such an unmissable opportunity. Many people reach middle or old age and wish they’d worked harder at university – enough to call it a cliché. But there are also those who wish, all too belatedly, that they’d acquired a different mode of thinking in their youth.

    Of course, this has always been the basic idea behind a university education – that the young are shaped, as it were, while the clay is still moist. But in this era of partisan media, and of received wisdom, it becomes more and more necessary to always ask oneself whether a writer of an article has sufficient information for what they proclaim, and whether they have an agenda. It is also helpful to know – as students of history are taught – what primary sources really say about a topic.

    That means that it’s increasingly important to seek out those who hold an opposite opinion to oneself on a topic – and to be suspicious if one can find no dissenters regarding a particular point of view. Above all, one should always be willing to pivot if a powerful argument presents itself to the contrary of something which had seemed certain: there is nothing more retrospectively pleasant than to realise you had the flexibility to let a previous false position upended.

    The great economist John Maynard Keynes, presented with an apparent inconsistency in his stated positions on an economic question famously said: “When the facts change, I change my mind.”

    If such skills can be learned – and they may have to be forged in opposition to the intellectual climate of today’s universities – then the rewards are enormous. The independent thinker is better able to contribute in an original way in the workplace, and to adapt to shifting markets. Since this is now a scarce skill in society, such candidates tend to be rare, and so they also end up as leaders. The best thing you can do at the outset of your job search is to build that capacity within yourself. It will stand you in excellent stead. 

  • Sir Martin Sorrell on AI and the future of China

    The Founder of S4 Capital surveys the geopolitical landscape in 2022 and finds both dangers and opportunities

    While it’s true that the metaverse has been thoroughly hyped, I’ve been listening lately to Bill Gates and others, and it’s clear it will have a major impact. One obvious example is the question of work-from-home patterns and hybrid-working. But my sense is the impact will be much broader than that. For instance, I’ve seen some significant activity recently around training – for instance, the training of pilots and the training of factory processes.

    There’s also some fascinating movement on medical processes, and the carrying out of operations. It might even be that metaverse or haptic touch technology will be used to conduct operations. Incredible things are being done and my sense is that from what we’ve been through in the past years that these things will experience dramatic acceleration. We’re on the cusp of massive transformation – and I suspect that what we don’t realise is that inflation will also encourage that.

    However, I continue to be worried that the pandemic papered over the cracks of Brexit. I hesitate to say that we forgot about Brexit during the pandemic, but its impact was definitely backgrounded, and understandably so. My view is that as a result of Brexit, the UK growth rate has been badly hit and that it will take many years to get that back – and build businesses more like my own S4 Capital which we’ve built to be genuinely able to look beyond these shores.

    To do that you need to realise where the opportunity is. Talking to the forecaster gurus recently has confirmed me in the opinion that the economic opportunities are in Asia – but then nobody will be surprised to hear me say that there are opportunities in China and India. But I also see great possibilities in East Africa, North and South America and in the Middle East.

    By contrast the prognostication of Western Europe hasn’t been great. This is why we’re looking to increase our activity in Asia from around ten per cent of our work where it currently is, towards 40 per cent.

    The biggest problem our clients currently face is the question of what you do in China – even before the Russia-Ukraine conflict, you could have said that the US and China are at loggerheads, even in a kind of Cold War.

    It’s true that there are glimmers of hope – we’re beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel in respect of the climate change question, in which instance China has come on board to some extent. But beyond that, progress hasn’t been good and we have to accept that the Chinese are moving in different directions, and increasing their soft power in Africa and Latin America enormously.

    All this should come as no surprise. Anyone who has witnessed the Belt Road Initiative – not to mention President Xi’s ‘dual circulation’ economics policy – will know that China is taking a more independent route. COP 26 seems a long time ago now, but in retrospect it’s still significant now to consider that neither Putin nor Xi were in attendance. We’ll have to see what happens in the Ukraine, and how it will feed into China’s calculations in respect of Taiwan, but I think the odds have always been in favour of China following suit in Taiwan.

    The luxury markets are worth watching too: premium and luxury do very well in China and I see nothing in the 14th five year plan to counter that. China’s growth rate is strong, and will remain strong. I also think it’s interesting to note that China is loosening its monetary policy while everyone else seems to be tightening.

    America is also difficult to predict. I can’t see the midterms going well for Joe Biden and the Democrats. If so, that will mean deadlock after 2022, with the effect that no significant legislation will be passed beyond that point. There have been significant successes: the infrastructure spending was needed, since as a portion of GDP infrastructure had been historically low in the US.

    But the bills Biden has passed are by their nature inflationary: going forwards, I expect that if clients think they can raise their prices they will.

    All of this makes the world a very interesting place in 2022. There are huge risks out there but I think 2022 will be strong – especially for those who seize the opportunity.

    Sir Martin Sorrell is the CEO of S4 Capital

  • Stuart Thomson on the importance of building your personal reputation

    Reputations do not just apply to businesses. We all carry a reputation with us at all times – good or bad. Thinking about building our personal reputations, especially in a work setting, is a critical aspect of building a career.

    Reputations are, in their simplest form, what people think about you. In the workplace this is important when thinking about building a career, in the development of relationships with colleagues, or helping to build a practice and attract new work. So, your personal reputation is critical and needs to be invested in.

    There is no one way to build a reputation but they are not simply awarded for long or dedicated service. Instead, it helps us to think about both what we want from work but also what we contribute as well.

    In their excellent book, ‘The Squiggly Career’, Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis encourage us all to think about our careers and recognise that “no one cares about your career as much as you do.” The concept of a career ladder is redundant and instead they are squiggly which means we all have more individual power.

    It is impossible to capture, in a simple way, the wealth of ideas in their book but taking their core skills – super strengths, values, confidence, networks, and future possibilities – shows that we need to think about our own career design and what is needed to achieve that.

    Taking the concept of a personal reputation seriously means considering both what you want to be known for and reflecting on how you are going to achieve that.

    Skills are, of course, important but you may also want to reflect on the type of work you do and who you do it for. But also think about how you communicate your brand. How will others know?

    One way is to gather evidence throughout. That could be through a social media presence with a clear work element but is also about accurate record keeping so you can provide examples of the good work in which you have been involved. Others may choose thought leadership to build their brand. The odd award or shortlisting here or there is another way in which you can show who and what you are.

    Just as a business will put steps in place to build and protect a reputation, which includes thinking about the risks and where it could go wrong, then the same thinking should go into career building. But what are the benefits?

    • It develops expectations – a reputation provides a shortcut to the knowledge that you deliver good work in your field, can be trusted to advise clients, work well in a group etc.
    • Stand out from others – it enables you to paint a picture of yourself. The competition for work and jobs is fierce so take every opportunity going to show how you are different and maybe even unique.
    • Are a representative – organisations like to know that their team can be trusted to represent them. Employees are, after all, the embodiment of any organisation. So a reputation, whilst important within an organisation, is also about your wider, external presence. That can be really valuable to employers.

    So, as Tupper and Ellis believe, “reflection, self-awareness and continual learning are now a career ‘must do’ rather than ‘nice to do’.” That means taking the time to reflect on your reputation and where you want to take it. Invest in yourself not just because it builds your career but because it helps others to know who you are.