My first job after graduate school was training people on benefits for good jobs in the banking sector. That quickly evolved into management and organisational consulting.
Over time, I consulted for the government, and businesses, about housing, poverty, climate change, energy, health, education and employment. I regularly worked 60-hour weeks, sometimes 80-hour weeks. It was very hard, but the work was meaningful and thus rewarding.
Read more: Lessons from the C-suite: Nicolas Breteau, TP ICAP Group
I took jobs that I felt would improve lives, but my work kept morphing into making more millions for the corporate world. I realised those things weren’t mutually exclusive, and that I worked best when combining private efficiency with a public-spirited mindset.
The best lesson I’ve learned is to proactively plan priorities and time management – in everything. Every year I sit down and re-assess my life, work goals and priorities, then I make plans to accomplish those goals. If you don’t deliberately plan, you risk the year flying by without accomplishing what you wanted, or being out of alignment with your values.
My proudest achievement is receiving recognition from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for my work that helped win a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. I spent more than a decade of my career working in collaborative business programmes to reduce climate change, at a time when it was an uphill battle for attention and credibility. We helped create a programme that has, over 20 years, reduced greenhouse gases by 4 billion tonnes of carbon equivalent – more than 10 times the UK’s 2023 total emissions.
The worst mistake I made involved a business decision that did not align with my values. I’ve never done it again.
I’m originally from the US, and my biggest inspiration is Barack Obama. He was able to accomplish great things, and was the first president to get any kind of public healthcare system in the US. I admire people who really try, with goodwill and hope, to make the world better.
What keeps me awake at night is envisioning all of the positive ways that AI can make a difference to our business, and ensuring that we are taking advantage of tech developments in real time. What should we invent and implement ourselves, and what is done better by others?
I collaborate with my HR director on every single part of our strategy. I lean very heavily on my HR director to be the strategic lead of our company’s very precious resource.
To advance to the C-suite level, HR leaders need a seat at the strategy table. They need to understand how the company makes money, who the clients are, what clients value, and how their market operates. They need to have very strong financial acumen, outstanding communications skills, and strategic decision-making capabilities are a must.
Right now, I’m reading The Power of Instinct: The new rules of persuasion in business and life, by Leslie Zane. It addresses outdated decision models and suggests that people use instinctive decision-making driven by memories and associations. I’m also reading an oldie but a goodie: Managing the Professional Service Firm, by David Maister.
My top leadership tip is to never forget the value of the discretionary effort of your people. Too many try to lead by dictum and spreadsheet, ignoring the insights and effort that a motivated and creative team can create. Work to be an effective leader with an important purpose, so your people are able to give their best to the business.
This article was published in the September/October 2024 edition of HR magazine.
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