Donald Brydon alive!

[POSTMAN]

Chairman puts personal stamp on Royal Mail

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As applications for the job of Royal Mail chief executive start dropping through the letterbox, Donald Brydon, the chairman, has a warning for hopeful contenders: “If you want to make a fortune, don’t come here.”

Finding a successor to Adam Crozier, who is leaving to join ITV — and who often faced criticism over his £1 million pay slip — is perhaps the biggest challenge that Mr Brydon has faced since he started the job ten months or so ago.

“One or two people said they’d like to throw their hat into the ring, to which my reaction was, ‘you might like to wait and see what shape the ring is’,” Mr Brydon says.

For he is very clear about the qualities needed by the successful applicant, who will be paid “what we can afford” — and it is a daunting list.

“There are three very big issues just to be getting on with — the pension deficit, regulation and the funding of the Post Office network.

“The qualities are that he or she must be a natural leader and multidivisional. They must have the intellectual capacity to understand the complexity of the regulation which governs us. They have to be absolutely comfortable with change and managing change. They have to understand the ambiguities of dealing with Whitehall. They have to be resilient — running Royal Mail is a goldfish bowl.

“I would also like the person to be ‘structurally blind’ — to look at the whole operation and see a way of running it, not just accepting the existing structures. They must be good at driving the business without trying to run every bit of it. And they must want to look after the 175,000 people who work for us — health and safety has to be a priority here.

“They must drive innovation — because while we absolutely do not want to lose momentum, we are part of a wider communications industry. And they must want to lead the way in customer passion. Our customers both post and receive mail and we must have passion for it.”

Mr Brydon, who succeeded Allan Leighton as Royal Mail’s chairman, says that though Mr Crozier antagonised the unions with his cost-cutting, he has left a solid legacy: “Adam’s legacy, what he first told me when I arrived, was to just do the right thing. As an industrial transformation, where technology means our revenues are likely to be falling, what this means is that you have to ‘size’ your costs to match revenue.

“That meant changes for a very large number of people and that [how the process has been handled] has been quite impressive — it has gone on steadily. These processes are often noisy and quite volatile.”

Mr Brydon, a former manager of the British Airways pension fund, joined Royal Mail after a distinguished career in the City which included 22 years at Barclays, where he was chairman and chief executive of BZW Investment Management, as well as directorships of companies such as Amersham, Allied Domecq, Sun Life & Provincial Holdings and ScottishPower. He is also chairman of Smiths Group, the FTSE 100 engineering company.

So how did the Royal Mail job come up? “A headhunter rang me up. TNS [the market research company that he chaired from 2006 to 2008] had just been taken over and I had a hole in my life. I felt I would like to do something worthwhile with it.

“I wanted a decent job — and there were plenty going, caused by the financial crisis — and my first reaction was that I was not sure. So I spent a lot of time talking to people and, the more I got into it, the more fascinating I found it.

“It’s the scale of the business and there are two facts I use to illustrate that. One is that the business handles 72 million letters every day. Think about it — every day! When you look at the big picture, that’s an astonishing number. And it’s an astonishing achievement by our people. They work very hard. They go out in the snow — in fact the issue sometimes is stopping them going out in the snow — and every time I visit a delivery office it’s the same thing — they really care about getting the mail to their customers.

“The second statistic is that there are more than 4,000 dog attacks on postmen — on our people, putting themselves out — every year. That’s 15 every day. That gives you a sense of the scale. Don’t forget also how socially important our business and the Post Office network are. Large chunks of our economy depend on a successful postal service.

“Then there was the top management [of Royal Mail] — I was surprised how good they were. Adam has clearly assembled a good team, and that was a nice surprise.”

The clincher for accepting the job, Mr Brydon recalls, was the review into postal services by Richard Hooper, the former Ofcom boss, which recommended part-privatisation: “Clearly, I like a challenge, and this ticked the boxes. I have not been disappointed.”

Mr Brydon, however, avoids saying whether he supports Lord Mandelson’s part-privatisation plans which, having been shelved last summer after pressure from Labour backbenchers, are expected to be revived should the Conservatives win the election: “My job is to make sure Royal Mail is run properly. Who owns it is a matter for the shareholders. If the Government decides it wants a different shareholder, we have to run it to the demands of that shareholder.

“All I would say is that those who oppose it have to be careful. The package, as a whole, had some huge benefits for people working at Royal Mail.”

Once the plan was put on hold, Mr Brydon recalls, many managers needed picking up: “The air goes out of the enthusiasm for a bit — they had done all this work. But the biggest job for me after that was to be an ambassador for Royal Mail with the political classes — to get them to understand this was the biggest industrial transformation in the country, which involves lots of changes for lots of people.

“I think they understand that, although [some of them] can’t understand the economics. The company needs access to capital. We have also explained how important parcels are — and how, with the growth of e-fulfilment, a significant part of our new investment is in barrows. It isn’t just a case of putting a sack of letters on your shoulder any more.”

Mr Brydon admits that the union’s initial decision to call a strike in protest at the pace of change within Royal Mail had been disappointing. However, with negotiations still ongoing with the Communication Workers Union under the auspices of Acas, he insists that there is room for optimism: “The fact that we have gone into proper talks in a forum created with outside help and have been going on quietly suggests there is a problem to solve without us shouting at each other. There is undoubtedly a constructive air to the talks, a realism. These things [the need for change] are not made up by management, they are there for everyone to see and I think there is an understanding of that.”

Mr Brydon hopes the quiet reaction to Mr Crozier’s departure, by comparison with the triumphant tone the union took when Mr Leighton left, is a sign that attitudes are changing: “Maybe that’s because they can see he [Crozier] was trying to do the right thing. If Adam Crozier and Allan Leighton hadn’t rescued Royal Mail, there are an awful lot more people who would not be around today.”

Perhaps appropriately for Royal Mail’s chairman, Mr Brydon’s hobby is collecting postcards — specifically from the Edwardian and First World War era. “They provide a fantastic social history,” he says. It’s a silly thing to collect, in some ways, because there were millions of these things sent.”

If he and his new chief executive do their job properly, hopefully millions more cards will be sent in the future.

C.V.

Born: May 25, 1945

Education: George Watson’s College, Edinburgh; University of Edinburgh (BSc)

Career: 1970-77: BA (Airways pension fund) 1977-81: Barclays investment manager’s office 1981-86: Barclays Investment Management 1986-91: BZW Investment Management 1991-94: BZW Asset Management 1994-96: BZW, deputy chief executive 1997-date: AXA Investment Managers, chief executive, now non-executive director

Directorships: Stepped down as chairman of London Metal Exchange to concentrate on his role at Royal Mail. Remains in the chair at Smiths Group

Q& A

If you could change just one thing in the financial and commercial environment, what would it be?

A more simplified tax system

Who is or was your mentor?

No one individual but I have been very fortunate to work for some great bosses, starting with Sos Green at British Airways and ending with Henri de Castries in AXA

Does money motivate you?

It is always handy

What was the most important event in your working life?

Finding spare capacity on the British Airways booking computer in 1971 and building an early tracker fund

Which business person do you most admire?

Henri de Castries is very impressive; so is Philip Bowman

What gadget must you have?

BlackBerry. I also have a brilliant letter-opener What does leadership mean to you?

Clarity of purpose, open communication, a sense of togetherness, behaving properly

How do you relax?

I am not sure watching Reading FC counts as relaxation these days. So, Reading or reading

[POSTMAN]

Mr Brydon hopes the quiet reaction to Mr Crozier’s departure, by comparison with the triumphant tone the union took when Mr Leighton left, is a sign that attitudes are changing: “Maybe that’s because they can see he [Crozier] was trying to do the right thing. If Adam Crozier and Allan Leighton hadn’t rescued Royal Mail, there are an awful lot more people who would not be around today.

[Wessex]

Has anyone on here ever had a visit from here at their DO ?

[sevenandseven]

What gadget must you have?

BlackBerry. I also have a brilliant letter-opener

Weird!

What does leadership mean to you?

Clarity of purpose, open communication, a sense of togetherness, behaving properly

Weirder still! How does this equate with Royal Mail?

[jockstrapp]

There is no mention of the CIRCUS that he worked for........................AS A F#CKING CLOWN

[ldsposti]

Biggest pile of shite ive read for a long while of the new guy he says "HEALTH & SAFETY IS A PRIORITY HERE" so why are h&s reps and area reps not involved in the 2 men in a van ?

[Wessex]

The biggest qualification is an ability to speak complete twaddle which perhaps explains :lfo and :cfo