Leighton article in the Guardian

[F0zziebear]

Singular skill of a man who relished going plural


The Royal Mail chairman with the maverick style pays tribute to the leadership of others

David Teather
Friday June 1, 2007
The Guardian


Allan Leighton has been described as the best connected man in the business world.
The Royal Mail chairman and former Asda boss certainly has an impressive Rolodex. When he wanted to put together a book of practical advice about running a business, he called in the favours. On Leadership includes interviews with people including media barons Rupert and James Murdoch, Sir Terry Leahy at Tesco, and Lee Scott, who runs the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart. There are another 57 mostly well known names listed in the index.


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He has, he says, learned something from each of them. "Everybody who joins Dyson on the first day makes a vacuum cleaner. Bloody hell," he says with theatrical astonishment, throwing up his big freckled hands. "What a great idea. So then you know you're in the vacuum cleaner business. You think, Christ, it is so obvious. So we'll just nick that as an idea then." Adam Crozier might rue the day he did. He was dispatched to a sorting office at the crack of dawn on his first morning as Royal Mail chief executive, much to the shock of England fans who spotted the former boss of the Football Association shoving letters through the door.
If Leighton is now part of the establishment, he seems to be of a new variety. He went to the local grammar school and technical college, and has an estuary accent somewhere between Tony Blair and Alan Sugar. He wears a nice suit and, on this occasion, a pale pink shirt, without a tie. His head is shaved close and the fuzz on his face is about the same length. Two cappuccinos are ordered from his secretary but, with a big grin, he asks for them in mugs, as if cups might be a bit poncey. He is 54 but talks about music like a teenager. He has just been to see the Killers in Toronto and enthuses about Arcade Fire - "the band of the moment". A key virtue ascribed to anyone he seems to like in his book, On Leadership, is that they are down to earth. When he meets the old-school, pin-striped David Mayhew at the investment bank JP Morgan Cazenove, Leighton is wary at first, but the banker is all right because he is down to earth. "You know, the old boy network, there are bits of it, but not as much. I think there is a new establishment, which is not very established, not very establishment," he says with a big laugh.

Essentials

He struck up a relationship with many of the people in the book in the years after he left Asda and coined the phrase "going plural", accepting directorships at nearly a dozen companies. Leighton has given up most of the boardroom gigs but, as well as running Royal Mail, is still a director at BSkyB, the Weston empire that owns the department store Selfridges, and at Bhs, run by his old pal Sir Philip Green. His publisher Gail Rebuck at Random House happens to sit on the BSkyB board with him, and yes, she is in the book.

If you were to boil On Leadership down to its essentials, the message appears to be this; have a bit of common sense. "I don't believe in the all the pseudo-science stuff," Leighton says. "I think most things are very practical and very simple actually. I always say business is very simple, why go around complicating it?"

Before catching the public's eye, Leighton spent 18 years at Mars. He says he owes a lot to the Mars brothers, who gave him the practical basis for much of what he did at Asda. They would fly economy, hire a car and inspect a factory without warning before management arrived, talking to workers to get a real sense of what was going on. It is a principle Leighton has adopted. He'll stop his car and march up to a postman. "You have a relationship at the top and you have a relationship where the work takes place and you sort of miss out the bit in between," he says. "All the business in between is the permafrost and the business prevention squads and all that sort of stuff and once upon a time I had to be part of that and now, to a degree, I don't. I'm always getting in to trouble because I go direct to people and people come direct to me."

He also says he got an obsession with detail from the Mars brothers. At the petfood business, he really would taste the product. It is impossible not to ask. "The thing you can taste in dog food is the gravy," he says. "Cat food is like pate. If you eat Sheba, you wouldn't know the difference. Sheba is great." But do humans have the same taste buds as dogs? "You might not know what it tasted like for dogs but you got used to how it was supposed to taste."

It was at Asda that Leighton made his name. Over almost a decade he and Archie Norman were credited with resuscitating a business that was on its knees. "We created this culture in Asda which was, we were the underdogs, we were going to fight back." It was sold to Wal-Mart in 1999 for £6.7bn.

Leighton says he decided to write the book with input from other people because a book about himself would have been boring. "I think that you know, behind every success, actually behind everybody, there is a story. It just doesn't get told until there is some degree of fame or infamy." In fact, it is most alive when he is recalling his own experiences. He describes the decision to ditch the Consignia brand that had been foisted on the Royal Mail. "A quick win is very useful for any new boy," he says. He also recalls Rupert Murdoch agreeing to meet him at an Asda in Hull to discuss his joining the board of BSkyB. When Murdoch arrived, the Sun, part of his News International group, had sold out. Murdoch immediately got on the phone to then editor David Yelland. "I'm in an Asda in Hull, it's lunchtime and there are no copies of the Sun," he barked. "Find out why."

Enthusiasm

You suspect Leighton's main leadership skill might be his sheer enthusiasm. His mind is darting around all over the place. He starts sentences that veer off in different directions leaving half-finished thoughts hanging in the air. Some of the management techniques he introduced at Asda, on the face of it, make you wince. He held meetings called SHITMs (or, more formally, stores head office interactive trading meetings) and would put a plank on the boardroom table which people had to shuffle along depending on their answers to questions fired in their direction. It seems like management by Maxim magazine, though that would be a one-dimensional view. At the Royal Mail one of his first initiatives was to start a helpline to tackle workplace bullying.

At best, Leighton says, you can make the right decision 70% of the time. In the book, there is a section on mistakes. In it, Lord Browne, who was then yet to be tripped up by lying about his relationship with a man, offers advice that is bound to make the reader shudder. "The unexpected always occurs," the former BP boss says. "While you can look back and see how it has happened, what you can't tell beforehand is how those tiny little segments will one day just create something." Leighton sent him a note with a copy of the book, drawing his attention to the final paragraph. "On the darkest days, when things aren't going so well, try to remember that failures don't make you an awful person. Likewise, your company's success doesn't make you a genius either!"

Leighton still works pretty much full time. He says he wants to continue at the Royal Mail after his contract ends in March, though it is the government's call. "The Royal Mail gets in your blood," he said. Even after 45,000 job cuts and 2,500 post office closures, he says there is still much to do. But he has no desire to run another company as a chief executive. Being a chief executive, he says, is getting tougher all the time with increased scrutiny from the stock market and the media.

"Running a company is the best job in the world, it's the hardest job in the world, it's the loneliest job in the world and you can put a great team around you but, in the end, the buck stops in one place. And you think about it all the time. And actually, I think if you don't, you can't do it. There is a lot of pressure all the time, which is why I think people are getting younger who do it because I think it's easier to deal with all that stuff. It is also why people want to get out of it earlier than in the past. I was the youngest FTSE 100 chief executive - I must have been 41, 42. Now there would be four or five younger than me."

The day we meet, Martha Lane Fox, the Lastminute.com co-founder has been named a director at Marks & Spencer. She is also in Leighton's book. I mentioned that I would like to interview her. As I'm leaving and the lift doors are closing the last thing he does is offer to put us in touch.

CV

Born 1953, Hereford

Education Magdalen College School, Brackley, Northamptonshire

Career

1974-1992 Mars, rising to marketing and sales director Pedigree Foods

1992-2000 Asda, group marketing director. Chief executive from 1996

2002 Royal Mail, chairman

Family Married with three children

[de-coded]

leighton still works pretty much full time. He says he wants to continue at the Royal Mail after his contract ends in March

Does Full Time now mean only 3 days a week probably just a meaning for him, shock horror

Shame, his contract ended in March shouldn't he have ****** off somewhere else by now to screw things up.

[F0zziebear]

Some people workship him others think he's a c*nt.

Personally I think he talks a good game and doesn't always practice what he says. Having said that he's a shrewd operator, and whilst I and you may not have liked some/much/all of what he has done I still argue that the company would be in a worse position now given the other factors than if he hadn't been involved.

Put it this way I'd prefer him fighting my corner against the DTI than the other way round! Keep your friends closer, keep your enemies closer

F0zz

p.s. Getting into the Soprano's

[L Tommo]

Allan Leighton has been described as the best connected man in the business world.
The Royal Mail chairman and former Asda boss certainly has an impressive Rolodex. When he wanted to put together a book of practical advice about running a business, he called in the favours. On Leadership includes interviews with people including media barons Rupert and James Murdoch..

No wonder he is like he is!!! Anything to do with the name MURDOCH And that is association with SLIME STRAIGHT AWAY..


Before catching the public's eye, Leighton spent 18 years at Mars. He says he owes a lot to the Mars brothers..

Then look at something as silly as the size of a MARS BAR!!! "Q" How small did the bar get when BIG AL become marketing and sales director 74 -92???
For the same price and more... Ring any bells???

CV

Born 1953, Hereford

Education Magdalen College School, Brackley, Northamptonshire

Career

1974-1992 Mars, rising to marketing and sales director Pedigree Foods

1992-2000 Asda, group marketing director. Chief executive from 1996

Go ask Any Asda worker how there job has changed since BIG AL was there???


2002 Royal Mail, chairman

Family Married with three children[/quote] GINGER KIDS!!!!

[johno47]

I BET HE KISSES HIMSELF IN THE MIRROR EVERY NIGHT, TALK ABOUT LOVING YOURSELF, WHAT A BANKER...
UNITY IS STRENGTH

[TrueBlueTerrier]

TOMMO 1974-1992 Mars, rising to marketing and sales director Pedigree Foods

Well he sure is making a dogs breakfast of Royal Mail.

[mdtomuk]

JEEZ I'M 53 AND I LOVE THE KILLERS AND ARCADE FIRE, I ALSO LOVE BJORK, THE KISSAWAY TRAIL, BLOC PARTY, BLONDE REDHEAD, MIDLAKE, MOGWAI, KAISER CHIEFS, FUTUREHEADS, MAXIMO PARK, SWAN LAKE, DANIELSON, VIVA VOCE, THE CRIBS, ARCTIC MONKEYS, WE ARE SCIENTISTS, DEERHOOF, BECK, RYAN ADAMS (thats RYAN not BRYAN!), etc, etc, etc . . . . . BUT I WOULD NEVER TAKE SUCH GLEEFULL PRIDE IN CLOSING 2500 POST OFFICES AND LOSING 35000 STAFF, AND SCREWING UP THE LIVES OF THE REMAINING WORKFORCE OF ROYAL MAIL!!!!

[pillar box]

I wonder if he still eats Pedigree Chum for his lunch.
He is BARKING up the wrong tree this time.

[Carnoustie]

Well he's certainly not a Pal of anybody on here

[IWW Fellow Worker]

He spent 18 years at Mars? More like 18 years ON Mars.
He works 'full'time'? I'll bet he's never done a days' work in his life.
He speaks with an 'Estuary Accent'? If ever there was the mark of a parasite, it's what these idiots refer to as an 'Estuary Accent'.


"On the darkest days, when things aren't going so well, try to remember that failures don't make you an awful person."

No, but being a workshy, overpaid and underworked drone does. But those of us who will be up and about and in work on Saturday mornings had you lot sussed years ago.

[pillar box]

Estuary Accent'?

Dictionary "estuary tidal mouth of a river" well now I know were all the s**t flows from

[Pokemon Postmon]

No mention of Leeds United then? Odd that...

[IWW Fellow Worker]

No mention of Leeds United then? Odd that...

He certainly had the Midas Touch in that little fiasco. He takes one of the biggest football clubs in England from Champions League to relegation in a matter of months. I'll bet the Leeds Rhinos supporters are giving daily thanks that bucket mouth wasn't a rugby league fan.

[norbet colon]

Re Guardian AL
The infamous letters are like something out of the late 80's but this all sounds like the trend for American style management in the early 90's, half the "ideas" came from insane academics. :lfo