Leadership podcast transcript: Allan Cook

Hear podcast at http://www.harveynash.com/oam/podcast/

Carol Rosati: Welcome to the Harvey Nash Leadership podcasts.

I’m Carol Rosati, and in this series I am meeting a number of prominent business leaders from all walks of life, discovering what makes them tick, what has inspired them and what career decisions they made that led them to their current position.

In the studio this evening we have Allan Cook Chairman of WS Atkins Plc Chairman of SELEX Galileo Ltd and Former Chief Executive of Cobham plc.

Allan is an engineer both by trade and heart. Over his thirty year career he has international experience covering the automotive, aerospace and defence industries, holding senior roles in renowned organizations such as GEC-Marconi, BAE Systems and Hughes Aircraft.

He is also deputy chairman of Marshall of Cambridge and is an active Chair for several industry bodies fully utilizing his wealth of experience to contribute further to these mammoth sectors.

He was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours list in 2008 and is a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

So Allan your turn, where are you from? and what do your parents do?

Allan Cook: Well it won’t come as a surprise Carol by my accent and those people listening, to detect that I am from the Northeast. So I was born and raised in Sunderland and moved away from the Northeast just after I graduated, most of my life since then I spent in Scotland.

My parents, my father was an electrical contractor and he had his own business. My mother was a telephonist back in the very very early days when it was a GPO and the post office so I think that certainly my love of engineering and my involvement of engineering spread right the way back to working with my dad in his business

Carol: so OK so would say one of your most early influences was your Dad

Allan: oh not only the earliest experiences and influences were my Dad, not only my early involvement in engineering but also influencing my career path really and what I have done since starting my career as an apprentice

Carol: OK, as you rose through the ranks who besides your dad do you think inspired you who to become who you are today do you think?

Allan: many people, my dad was a huge influence and unfortunately he died just after I graduated so he didn’t see my move into some of the areas; I was only in my early 20s when he actually died. But he was still a huge influence of my early career and I think the work ethic. People have influenced me right the way through my career and if I start right from the beginning after I graduated, it would be the people that I worked with in Ferranti, a guy in Edinburgh called Dave Nesbit, fantastic engineer, a brilliant man who was a very good business man. Ferranti for those of your listeners who don’t know or don’t remember was an Edinburgh based company renowned for it engineering ethic.

Carol: Very well respected

Allan: totally respected and in fact someone said to me this week that I had never met in my life, I talked about my career and talked about being in Ferranti said to me “oh yeah I remember Ferranti fantastic company, great engineering ethic”

Carol: A great reputation

Allan: Great reputation, then when I moved from Ferranti into management I worked for an American company, Alan Bradley there was a number of people who influenced me moving into general management, into production and working on the shop floor and I suppose in later years people like Sir Peter Gershon who was actually the Chief Executive of GEC Marconi and he was an engineer but primarily he was a business man and a very very astute business man and probably my days in Cobham, our Chairman Gordon Page, who recruited me into Cobham offered me the opportunity to run what I believe was one of the best aerospace and defence companies in the world

Carol: absolutely yes

Allan: so there have been a number of people that has influenced me so the two biggest influences are my dad and Sir Peter Gershon

Carol: so can you actually describe a typical day, do you have one. What part of your working life gives you most satisfaction?

Allan: I think first of all that is there is not a typical day

Carol: That is why I laughed

Allan: yes, the only typical working day for me is that I am an early riser

Carol: me too

Allan: So I am normally up and about at 4 o’clock

Carol: Not quite that early, goodness

Allan:I have this dread of when I finally pop my clogs that some smart alec is going to put on my tomb stone this is the idiot that got up at 4 o’clock in the morning but these are the sort of things that people remember you by. It amazing that through my career I started off delivering newspapers, so I was a paperboy

Carol: oh it was ingrained in you then

Allan: In those sort of days you didn’t pick them up in the train you didn’t pick them up in a hotel room, they actually were delivered to you door, so I delivered them

Carol: We still get that in Somerset you know

Allan: Do you really? You must be one of the few counties in the country, so I think from that point of view I started delivering newspapers at 5.30 in the morning so I was up at 5 o’clock and I got used to it, I enjoyed it that early morning time and I still enjoy it, so my day starts at 4 o’clock in the morning

Carol: goodness me

Allan: Normally I am in the office, if it is an office day I would say, around about 5 o’clock. What I have been used to doing, I am still an active squash player and if I can find anybody stupid enough to play me, I will play squash after I have been in the office, come back to the office and start the day at 8 o’clock

Carol: If you are in London I will give you a game, I love squash as well so there you go

Allan: Fine RAC club, RAF club we can do that, in fact I was just playing this week but unfortunately it is at 7 o’clock in the morning and people they have no stamina now. There is not a normal day it revolves around people, it revolves around the companies I am in involved, obviously WS Atkins and the work I am doing with SELEX Galileo and of course, at one point you said I was Chairman of Marshalls I am not I am deputy chairman

Carol: deputy chairman sorry

Allan: Just in case Michael Marshall thinks he has been ousted, or even worse his son, Robert Marshall, thinking his career path is going to be ruined here

Carol: sorry

Allan: Whatever we do and whatever I do, it revolves around people so it is being involved with the various boards that I am involved with, the engineering side of the business. The Government agencies that I work with and it is around the people and processes, and the skills and capabilities that I am used to working with.

Carol: OK, you were made MD at the age 35, responsible for European Sales and Manufacturing that is a pretty young age for that level of responsibility I think and certainly is not the norm these days. Who recognise you're potential do you think, what challenges did you face and what did you learn?

Allan: I was working in the Northeast; I was basically a Production Manager. The guy that I started working for in the Northeast left the company and moved back to Scotland and he called me up and said there was an opportunity in the company, it was a company called Bournes Electronics & PMI, would I come up and run part of their business I did and I was quickly promoted to actually running the organisation. It was a fantastic opportunity, I suppose the thing that really discriminated me from anybody else, at that point in time, was I had experience in engineering, I had involvement on the process side and I had been involved in manufacturing for probably at that moment in time for about 8 years and I got really well, really well with the Americans. So there was a guy who I worked for that was a Senior Vice president of Operations and one of the leading lights of the company in the USA and he gave me the first opportunity of moving into that particular role. Our headquarters, our Sales & Marketing headquarters were in Switzerland

Carol: mixture

Allan: they had this fantastic sales organisation that was quite separately organised from the manufacturing and operations side. There was a close link to what we were doing, obviously and what the sales team were doing, so he was really the first one that gave me the opportunity and from there I continued to grow and develop. What did I learn? I leant all sorts of things

Carol: Shed loads

Allan: Shed loads, good terminology shed loads, lots and lots of things about people, lots of things about international, because working with the Americans was a fantastic experience and working with the Swiss was also fantastic experience, working with people who had the ability to actually communicate in 4 or 5 different languages. I worked with a guy in product development and business development, a guy called Werner Segler, he was our main link with some of the people like Bosche and Siemens in Germany – he had the ability to, he was fluent in English, fluent in Swiss/German, and he could actually, I remember, he was having a conversation in German with a colleague over a technical matter, his secretary came in and he switched from German to Swiss/German that was quite different

Carol: it is very different

Allan: and then as I walked into the office talk to me in English, this guy was having a conversation in 3 different languages over a speaker phone. I remember being hugely hugely impressed about their linguistic skills. Fantastic, so I learnt that, I learnt that although you can trust people, and you can lead people and you can manage people, there are certain people who just will not and do not subscribe to what you didn’t want to do

Carol: Absolutely

Allan: and I can remember one or even two particular guys who I tolerated for far too long. I recognised what the problems were right at a fairly early stage and I should have taken action then and I didn’t take action then and I regretted it for probably 2 years

Carol: and it makes its far bigger

Allan: and the difficulties associated with it, and you know in your heart that these guys are not going make it. They just don’t buy into to what it is you are trying to do and every chance he got to undermine what I was trying to do and influence badly, I thought, what we were trying to do as a team. It made the job so much harder, it would have been so much easier if I had actually changed the way, and we tried, I remember thinking at the time young, fairly inexperienced thought this guy is going to change

Carol: it is a good lesson to learn that stands you in good stead for the rest of your career

Allan: And I sure he thought I would get sick of it long before he did and I didn’t

Carol: you are from the Northeast

Allan: absolutely

Carol: OK. Fast forward to today then as experienced leader yourself Allan, do you believe leaders made or are they born?

Allan:I think you can certainly can train people to be leaders, I would say that a lot of it is about your character, your confidence, obviously your ability and I don’t think we should also underestimate the amount of hard work that actually goes in to becoming a leader and what that really really means. I have really long held the belief that I cannot remember who made the quotation but basically your leadership is about sort of 95% perspiration and 5% really innovation. It is something that I elieve getting up at 4 o’clock in the morning working long hours, it’s because you are trying to instil really into the people you are trying to lead an example you are trying to set and tht means in today’s environment as fast moving as it is there is a case of there no substitute for hard work

Carol: absolutely and commitment and focus

Allan: and people recognise that

Carol: yes

Allan: I’m absolutely certain that people recognise that you are committed to the task in hand irrespective whether that was for Cobham or whether that is involved in WS Atkins and what we are doing as a company. We are now completely international in Atkins, so the things we do in the UK now only constitute only 50% of our business. It means you are dealing with the Middle East, Far East, America and of course Europe. So it means our Chief Executive now has be capable of operating on an international basis which means

Carol: multicultural

Allan: multicultural and its timescales. People, I learnt that from very early age, especially working with Americans that in most cases they have no concept they are 8 hours ahead of you and sometimes it is 1 o’clock in the morning

Carol: I have a colleague in New York and she starts her day two thirds of the way through mine and I carry on with my day because we need to get things done, simple as that

Allan: When I was in GEC Marconi and BAE systems, I was responsible for business in the US and business in Australia. I could start work early in the morning being in the office at 5 o’clock and talk and have dailies with our Australian colleagues and work through the day in the UK and then start conversations with the US

Carol: at the other end

Allan: at the other end of the day, so I mean, it covers the whole spectrum. Are they born or are they made? I think you have got to have a desire that is born in to you, I think you have to have the ability; you have to have something to work with

Carol: Intellectual capacity as well

Allan: You have got to be able to assimilate lots and lots of pieces information and you have to be able to turn that information into something that people can actually believe in

Carol: something useful

Allan: they can actually follow

Carol: yes

Allan: you have to have the desire, it is a very very very rewarding career I would urge anybody listening or participating, I would not change anything about my career; it has been a fantastic opportunity

Carol: Good

Allan: It has been, it’s fantastic

Carol: Good, one things I have heard you speak about is the future Engineering in the UK how do you think we can influence the younger generation both male and female to choose it as a career?

Allan: I have just come this morning from a meeting with Mark Prisk on of the ministers responsible in BIZ and in that meeting were a number of leaders from the Royal Academy of Engineers, Dr Paul Goby from Engineering UK, a number of people from Rolls Royce, BAE Systems, GKN and EDF energy people. The subject was, this was literally 8 o’clock this morning and the subject was the future of engineering

Carol: There you go

Allan: And it is really topical, Carol, because what we are talking about is “what is the future” I personally, I am an optimist and I believe engineering is the fundamental part of our DNA.

Carol: Absolutely right

Allan: It constitutes 25% of the UK GDP, it employs 10s of thousands of people and some of the things we were talking about was diversity. How do we actually attract women into - we were sitting around a table and there was probably 20 people in that room, we had 2 women actually sitting at the table talking about this, 2 out of 10 you are talking about 10% and really women constitute 51% of the population

Carol: of the population you are absolutely right

Allan: Is there a future of engineering absolutely, what do you do and the question was what do we need to do amongst us to get that message out there. One of the guys was actually from, basically, an engineering consultancy group not our organisation in Atkins. He was saying about how we could use something like the Olympics. The Olympics is going to be delivered on time, of course, it better be and below cost

Carol: Yes

Allan: despite some the comments this week from the national audit office about the cost involved and how we must.. But basically it has been delivered or will be delivered

Carol: it’s ready

Allan: its ready and it got to be and that is a fantastic engineering achievement

Carol: a massive engineering feat and they have to publicise it

Allan: we are trying to do that UKTI and Engineering UK and Biz and other organisations are using this as a platform, to illustrate just what we can do well. Are we getting this message out probably not as effectively, guarantee some of people listening to this podcast, will not be aware of what we have done. But you know go to the Olympic site and take a look what we have done in the environment

Carol: It is truly amazing

Allan: It is truly amazing. So anybody that.. I took a drive around, about 6 months ago, the stadium that is going to be used for athletics. McAlpline has done a stunning job in the construction and the ..

Carol: we should be proud of it

Allan: and we will be, I mean, we will be. It is a marvellous feat of engineering, programme management and business. We should not forget there is a business involved in doing this

Carol: So linked to that then how can industry or society can develop female leaders of tomorrow

Allan: a lot of it is about the perception that exists within the engineering community because even now it is changing but very slowly, even now there is a perception that we still have, it is still about oily rags and tool rooms

Carol: and it so isn’t any more

Allan: noise and smells associated with it, and of course, there is some of that and we should be very proud of that, some of the skills we have in the tool room are fantastic.
But it is also about software development, if you look at some of the women we employ in Atkins or SELEX Galileo they are into software development, systems engineering, environmental, I mean in Atkins we have about a dozen people, 5 or 6 I think are women who are involved in archaeology and you thinking what an earth is an engineering company, well it is actually about, when you are doing sites and working on the infrastructure you come across a dig

Carol: you have to

Allan: you have to have that sort of skill. I was in Bangalore in about 3 months ago and we had a presentation from a team that were developing some of the power systems for the UK and this team were 100% women, engineers

Carol: there you go wow

Allan: fantastic and we have got about 1000 people in Bangalore and this was a group of people dedicated to the development of power lines and associated design programmes a with that and this was a whole team, a full team of woman engineers.

Carol: brilliant

Allan: Are we doing enough? Absolutely not. How do we get the message over? Get rid of the perception that this is..

Carol: its old fashioned industry

Allan: yes that it is old fashioned. We also have to try and instil into people like yourself, Carole, and others that this may well be now a male dominated environment but that is not the future, the future is not that, we have to get confidence; they have to have role models

Carol: Yes

Allan: We were talking this morning about, where are the role models that you talked earlier on about, who influenced my career? it was my Dad

Carol: so important

Allan: so important so we have to get that message out at an early age 8& 9 year olds 10 year olds,11 year olds. We have got to persuade teachers and parents that engineering and business and manufacturing and advanced engineering is something we want to develop and grow and be something to be proud of.

Carol: you will be really pleased to know my 8 year old built a bridge last week so there you go

Allan: with meccano, meccano

Carol: no it is a proper bridge with wood and stuff

Allan: fantastic really impressed, Carole, send their CV

Carol: you never know, so finally, what would be your advice to those individuals who are just about to step up to the plate or indeed already got there and looking for direction

Allan: Nothing, absolutely nothing, substitutes for hard work. This is an industry that is fast moving and innovative we need people with vision, we need people with skills, we need people with ability, but you have got to be prepared to work hard

Carol: work

Allan: I do not know any leader or anybody that has had a major influence on me that hasn’t been prepared to work hard. It is not the only criteria; I think you have got to be passionate,

Carol: yes

Allan: I think you have got to really believe in the things you want to do and want to achieve. You have to be lucky

Carol: Get the breaks

Allan: I have been very, very fortunate to be in the right place at the right time, working for fantastic companies and for people to persuade me I could do more with my career than what I have done. But hard work, passion a sense of fun, liking people,

Carol: it is essential

Allan: you have got to be able to. There are certain people; I could say that probably 98% of the people or 99% of the people that I have worked with in my career I have had an absolute blast with, they have been fantastic.

Carol: you have got to like

Allan: you have got to like them, really like them

Carol: Thank you Allan, that was really great for that fascinating insight into your life and career.

Allan: My pleasure

Carol: In subsequent podcasts I will continue on the journey, meeting other business leaders and continuing to examine the routes of leadership.

For more executive careers advice and insight as well as the full archives of the podcast series please visit www.harveynash.com/oam Thank you.