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Secrets of my successInspirational leaders share their winning formulas

BUSINESS CONNECT / SECRETS OF MY SUCCESSBUSINESS CONNECT / SECRETS OF MY SUCCESS

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HouseMark’s Business Connect programme aims to help housing providers gain valuable insight into the operations of successful businesses in other sectors, which can then inspire their own business planning process. Business Connect has so far helped more than 100 participants unearth new ideas and better ways of working and build professional networks in and beyond the housing sector.

On 25 November 2015, HouseMark invited Business Connect delegates to a special Secrets of my Success conference in London. A variety of speakers revealed their inspirations and what they learned in realising their goals.

Winning formula

Contents

From Nelson Mandela to Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell has met and worked with some of the best-known “winners” of the past three decades. So who better to understand what makes them tick?

t is difficult to imagine what kind of person would make the hairs on Alastair Campbell’s neck stand on end.

The writer and journalist is, after all, the man who, as Tony Blair’s strategist, helped Labour win three successive elections and whose high-profile role inspired the character of Malcolm Tucker, the fearsome, foul-mouthed spin doctor from the BBC’s political satire “The Thick of It”.

Yet, Campbell admits to HouseMark delegates, he has indeed met a handful of winners and leaders that he finds electrifying. “There are only three people I’ve met who made the hairs on my neck stand up,” he says. He suggests boxing legend Muhammad Ali and football icon Diego Maradona as two idols that inspire him (Campbell is as passionate about sport as he is about politics, two distinct worlds united by a common theme of competition), but it is Nelson Mandela he places at the top of his list.

Campbell describes Mandela, who features in his book “Winners, And How They Succeed”, alongside myriad famous names, from elite athletes to business tycoons, as “the defining political hero of our lifetime” or a contemporary Abraham Lincoln. When he met the first president of post-Apartheid South Africa, Campbell asked him, “How do you not have hatred? How do you have a big smile on your face, go and sit down with your enemies and talk of the future? He said that if you have hatred and bitterness towards your enemies, they have won.”

Campbell is still active in politics, as well as spending his time between writing, speaking, charitable fundraising, consultancy and campaigns (see Key facts). Among his 10 books are six

volumes of diaries, three novels and a personal memoir on depression.

Leaders, he says, are both born and made. Adding to the list of those he admires, Campbell suggests “Tony” (“a very special sort of prime minister”), Bill Clinton (“a modern communicator”), former Irish taoiseach Bertie Ahern (“brilliant in the peace process”) and German chancellor Angela Merkel (“really impressive”).

So how does Campbell define “a winner”? He compares Virgin boss Richard Branson and media magnate Rupert Murdoch to illustrate his answer. Why does the former have a better reputation while the latter, despite his wealth and status as a global media giant, has “lost his”? The difference is that Branson’s businesses and investments seem more clearly driven by a sense of purpose.

He adds: “Branson told me he never went into any new venture saying, ‘This is the one that’s going to make me rich’…He said he went in thinking, ‘This is going to meet a need that’s there’.” Campbell stresses that the point is not just that you win, “but it’s how you win”.

Obvious traits shared by winners, he says, are that they all work really hard and have a meticulous, almost obsessive attention to detail in their area of expertise: “They understand the need to motivate and inspire other people. They have an absolute endless fascination with the process of what they do.”

Determination is another characteristic: “The difference in my mind between people who do stuff and people who don’t is that they decide to do it.”

Comparing winners with losers, Campbell offers up a favourite quote from Irish missionary and athletic coach Colm O’Connell: “The winner is the loser who

evaluates defeat properly.” Throwing a rhetorical question to his audience, Campbell asks if people feel the Labour party is evaluating defeat “properly”; for Campbell the concept of learning the right lessons in defeat is vital to winning.

Linked to the concept of learning from failure is the development of resilience. Campbell is a high-profile campaigner on mental health issues, putting his own well-documented experience to powerful use to raise awareness and remove stigma. He says his “golden rule” is “getting good out of bad”, adding frankly and with black humour: “I developed resilience through having a psychotic breakdown in 1986 – the worst thing that happened to me then, but the best thing in retrospect.” His wish, he says, would be for school children to be taught and encouraged to develop resilience, instead of simply a focusing on “pass this exam, pass that exam”.

That brings the writer to one of his favourite topics: strategy. “Success does come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. The first measurement for it is what you’re trying to achieve.” He suggests that the reason David Cameron did not win an outright majority in the 2010 election was that he confused his strategy and tactics.

“You can have your objective, but your objective won’t work without strategy, your strategy won’t be successful unless you’ve got real strong leadership and you’ve got teamship as well,” he adds. Ed Miliband’s strategic error, argues Campbell, referring to Labour’s massive general election defeat, was that he allowed a narrative to develop that the Labour government caused the economic crisis. “We allowed the narrative and did not want to rebut it because we wanted to say we are different from the Blair-Brown era.”

Winners, concludes Campbell, know the difference between wanting to win and having the will to win. Too many people, he says, live “in the comfort zone”, ignoring the fact there is always room to improve their skills and expertise. He paraphrases a conversation he had with Wasim Akram, the former Pakistani fast bowler widely acknowledged as among the world’s greatest cricketers: “The will to win is what you develop, working out all the things you need to do to give yourself the best possible chance to win.”

Man on a missionLivity’s Sam Coniff on why a sense of purpose is vital to commercial success

A public-private servantHelen Bailey shares the lessons of a career spanning both sectors

What did delegates think?

Brave new worldWe all need to think like start-ups, says the serial entrepreneur Stuart Marks

Liquid AssetsDetroit Soup founder Amy Kaherl explains how a simple dinner inspired an entire city

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Key facts

Background: Born in Yorkshire in 1957; studied modern languages at Cambridge University from 1975-79

Journalistic career: Joined the Daily Mirror in 1982, before becoming news editor of Today in the mid-1980s. Returned to the Mirror after his nervous breakdown, rising to political editor, then chief political columnist

Political career: Tony Blair’s press secretary, spokesman and then director of communications from 1994-2003. He returned for the subsequent three general elections to help first Blair, then Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband

Family: Married to journalist and education campaigner Fiona Millar, with three grown-up children

Interests: Running, cycling, bagpipes and following Burnley FC

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“Winners understand the need to

motivate and inspire other people. They have an absolute endless fascination with the process of what they do

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Man on a mission

A public-private servant

Sam Conniff, co-founder of youth marketing agency Livity, has built a £4 million business on the belief that a sense of social purpose can drive commercial gain

Understanding the increasingly blurred boundaries of the state is vital if public services are to thrive, says Helen Bailey, the London mayor’s head of policing

am Conniff, chairman and co-founder of multi-award winning youth marketing agency Livity, recently changed his job title to

better reflect the secret of his success. Since August, Conniff has been his

organisation’s chief purpose officer – he believes his sense of purpose is fundamental to his success and the position, he predicts, will be “the most important job role in the future”.

A chief purpose officer, he explains, boosts the long-term success of an organisation by aligning the values of customers, teams and business objectives to create positive impact, leading to profitability. While traditional business

focuses solely on commercial gain, Conniff’s mantra (which may sound familiar to social landlords) is that purpose and profit go hand in hand, as proved by the Livity story of commercial success for social gain.

Conniff launched his first business, cult youth brand Don’t Panic, from his bedroom at the age of 21. He set up Livity in Brixton, south London, with co-founder Michelle Clothier, and, after a glitch in 2004 when over-ambition led to mass redundancies, the company was reborn with a trailblazing belief in harnessing the power of brands and communications as a force for good.

Today, Conniff’s socially responsible marketing agency turns over £4 million a year, with clients including Google, Channel 4, Penguin and the NHS. What

Sharon White Service lead money support and customers, Trafford Housing Trust

“The Business Connect programme gives you an insight into

other businesses’ working practices and cultures; it makes you think about other approaches to everything from commercial operations to customer focus. It’s been interesting to hear about how other businesses operate to create brand and customer loyalty and I have lots of ideas to bring back to my organisation.”

Sally Lynch Head of Space Property and new business, Yorkshire Housing

“I enjoyed thinking about purpose from Sam Conniff – that

clear vision about what you want to do, and why you’re doing it – and how to apply a sense of purpose in business in different ways. I found that really useful.”

Alan Purvis Managing director, MetroMail

“Alistair Campbell’s session prompted me to think

about the idea of reputation in business. So, as a leader how would you like to be remembered? As someone who made a lot of money or who had a good reputation? Today’s sessions make you rethink the definition of success and, actually, it’s all to do with reputation.”

Clare Thomson Chief executive, Islington and Shoreditch Housing Association

“Helen Bailey struck me as someone who is very clear that

her contribution is within the public sector, and she’s had an inspiring, really wide-ranging career path. I liked hearing about her ideas for having ‘safe spaces’ to innovate. Business Connect gives you a great range of speakers – the events are always inspiring because they give you room to think and pick up tiny nuggets of learning.”

Joseph Gray Senior account manager, Livity

“A lot of people in the room could perhaps listen to a combination of

what Sam Conniff was saying and what Amy Kaherl is living. Innovation happens when you bring together a really diverse range of people … different ages, different ethnicities, different postcodes and that’s what makes our work interesting.”

Steve Boyd Chief executive, Solihull Community Housing

“I get more out of the Business Connect events than I do

from most housing sector conferences because they bring together diverse businesses and allow you to learn from other leaders. You gain a different perspective on how you operate, and that makes you think twice about what you do.”

re the health-related services you use on a regular basis truly part of the public sector? Helen Bailey, chief operating officer

at the London Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC), asks this rhetorical question as she discusses the role, remit and future of public services.

“What is public service and what do we think of as public service?” asks Bailey. “It’s interesting that the GP is a private sector small business … you only hit the public sector bit when you go into emergency care.” Both opticians and pharmacists, Bailey reminds the audience, operate in the private sector, as do the companies

that manufacture medicines, while dentists deliver both public and private sector work.

And as for housing – a sector that Bailey has experience of thanks to her role on the board of Affinity Sutton – private developers are involved in creating affordable housing and the Office for National Statistics has reclassified housing association borrowing as public sector debt. No wonder, as Bailey suggests, the parameters are shifting.

Bailey’s views are based on a career spanning both public and private sectors. Facilitating and delivering change in the public sector is at the heart of her work.Since 2011 she has led MOPAC, which

world are vital. As Bailey acknowledges, some housing professionals in the audience “probably think you’re firmly in the private sector, some of you think of yourselves in the public sector, and some think you’re spanning the two”. She adds that straitened circumstances provoke organisations to rethink their approach to business and partnership.

For Bailey, “the space for innovation is in cracks between regulation”. She suggests difficult times spark creative measures, adding that, despite the tough times, “I’m not going to let myself tailspin into a spiral of despair.”

She concludes with what she says she has learned during her career: “You have to maintain your optimism about your ability to do something to effect change that will do things for people and improve the world in some way. We are all here because we are all engaged in doing something which is not only valuable in itself, but which improves the quality of people’s lives.”

sets it apart from its peers is the fact that, as Conniff says, “it’s basically a marketing agency with a youth club in the middle”. Some 10,000 12-24 year olds have passed through its doors since its launch, gaining experience and offering their unique perspective on marketing campaigns (see Key learning points). “The way that we work is unlike any marketing agency because we share our space on a daily basis with young people,” says Conniff.

The low point of 2004’s redundancies triggered something of a Damascene conversion in Conniff who admits that Livity “took on projects that were just about the money”. He decided then never to do anything that “wasn’t about making the

world a better place. Our purpose is clear: it is to benefit the lives of young people.”

Conniff illustrates this through a quote from business theorist Arie de Gues: “Companies die because their managers focus on the economic activity of producing goods and services, and they forget that their organisations’ true nature is that of a community of humans.”

Conniff talks of a paradigm shift towards purpose-led profitability. As well as the rise of ethical investment funds, he cites other examples such as John Lewis’ employee-owned partnership model and US brand Toms, which donates a pair of shoes to an impoverished child for every pair sold.

Referring to research suggesting that business lifecycles are now 15 years – an irony not lost on the man who founded Livity almost 15 years ago – Conniff says this changes the way companies do business. “The ones that last are the ones that are cohesive and have a mission and adapt, and are creative”, he adds.

Amid economic uncertainty across all sectors, Conniff argues that the time is ripe for purpose-led stewardship: “Purpose and innovation are what drives the longer term businesses.”

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events are always inspiring because they give you room to think and pick up tiny nuggets of learning

“Companies die because their managers focus on the

economic activity of producing goods and services, and they forget that their organisations’ true nature is that of a community of humans

WHAT DID THE DELEGATES THINK?

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Key learning points

Designing with your audience in mind, not just today’s policy, means starting with needs – in Livity’s case, the needs of young people

Livity used this approach to create the Zipit campaign for the NSPCC to combat teenage bullying caused by sexting. Livity’s free phone app included the slogan: “Get flirty chat back on track”

The app offers a library of jokey animal pictures (such as a dinosaur, captioned with the message: “Never In A Million Years”) that users send to defuse a situation if they have received unwanted or worrying messages.

Key facts

The London Mayor’s Office for Policing And Crime (or MOPAC) is a strategic oversight body

It ensures the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) is run efficiently and effectively and holds it, and other criminal justice services, to account on behalf of Londoners

It sets the MPS’s strategic direction and allocates resources

MOPAC is headed by London mayor Boris Johnson and the deputy mayor for policing and crime, Stephen Greenhalgh.

is responsible for setting the direction and budget for the Metropolitan Police Service (see Key facts). Before that, she was chief executive of Local Partnerships – a joint venture between the Treasury and the Local Government Association set up to offer commercial expertise to public sector organisations. She has also been director of public services at the Treasury, chief executive of the London Borough of Islington and a management consultant at PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

Amid economic uncertainty, welfare cuts and shrinking state services, issues such as cross-sector partnerships and how public servants operate in the commercial

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Brave new world Liquid assetsInnovators are challenging business models in all industries, says entrepreneur Stuart Marks – which means established companies need to think like start-ups

Amy Kaherl launched Detroit Soup as “a new town hall”, empowering citizens to fund inspiring local projects. The project is now being replicated across the globe

Honesty is the best policy in business, according to Stuart Marks. The veteran tech entrepreneur, who has

built and sold four businesses over the past 25 years, says he operates according to one rule: “Be honest to yourself and your audience.”

As chairman of L Marks, he is currently working alongside John Lewis on JLab to fast-track the growth of start-up companies by helping them refine their products and their business models.

Marks’ opening gambit – in line with his aim of honesty – is to declare that most entrepreneurs don’t admit they have had more failures than successes. Hinting at the masochism involved in running your own business, he jokes: “You’re setting up and selling businesses, threatening to retire and then setting them up again … you do have to be a bit strange to do this” (see Key learning points).

More seriously, he says, the honest approach means being pragmatic about what you can achieve with a product, despite the prevailing assumption that customers expect perfection: “Consumers now actually are a lot more forgiving if you are open with them. They recognise it takes time to get to 100%.” He gives the example of the relatively clunky first-generation iPhone as a device that has been fine-tuned over the years.

Marks began as an entrepreneur in 1990 when he acquired a direct mail business, backed by family money, which went from almost zero to £8m turnover in three years. Today, L Marks is a technology and start-up investment fund focused on corporate innovation, working with big UK brands to run accelerator programmes across different sectors, encouraging innovation and collaboration

hen Amy Kaherl launched crowdfunding project Detroit Soup five years ago, the monthly money-raising dinners

in aid of the city’s creative projects were held in an empty bakery loft once used as a drug den. The first event, attended by 40 people, raised $110 (£73) for a local art project.

Fast-forward to today and, while the values behind the groundbreaking model remain unchanged, its size, scope and profile have grown massively. Over five years, some 13,000 people have attended Soup dinners in Detroit, raising more than $100,000 (£66,000) for projects across the city’s deprived communities. The model has been honoured at the White House, replicated in almost every US state and is emerging in other global cities, including 43 areas in the UK.

Past Soup winners have started non-profits, local businesses, after-school programmes and park clean-ups, all vital in a city that famously went bust in 2013, and where 40% of residents live below the poverty line. “Soup is a platform for connection, it’s a theatrical environment,” says Kaherl of her organisation’s story. “Soup has become a gateway back into the community.”

Other winners include a new theatre company which puts on free performances of Shakespeare, a two-man team using reclaimed wood to make benches for the city’s bus stops, and a project to transform graffiti – which as Kaherl says is a plentiful resource in Detroit – into jewellery. Its most high-profile success, though, is the Empowerment Plan – a not-for-profit organisation that makes coats which convert into sleeping bags and are given to homeless people.

Kaherl explains how it works. Dinner guests pay $5 (£3), which entitles them to soup, salad, bread and a vote. At each

between start-ups and corporates.For Marks, a key element in a successful

business is, as the adage goes, not what you know, but who you know. He talks of operating in a “person-to-person” manner, as opposed to “business-to-business”. “So junior and middle managers you grew up with early in your career are now sitting on the boards of big organisations. Knowing the right people is important.”

As for what to watch for, Marks says the housing sector, like any other industry, is not immune to disruption from innovative organisations that displace established market leaders. Look no further than transport firm Uber, he says, which is a threat to the taxi industry, despite the fact it does not own its own fleet of cars. How can the housing sector be disrupted? Through changes in procurement, says Marks, as well as logistics, construction and network connectivity, otherwise known as the Internet of Things.

“We’ve shifted to a business world where collaboration and connection are replacing hierarchy and bureaucracy,” Marks continues. While the status quo is being disrupted by start-ups, established businesses must adapt and innovate to thrive. In 2001, he says by way of example, book retailer Borders thought ebooks were unimportant so outsourced this to Amazon. Borders is now bankrupt while Amazon is a global retail behemoth.

Offering a glimpse into the business future, Marks describes the potential of technologies such as beacons – micro-location-based technology that communicate with beacon-enabled devices via Bluetooth – and 3D printing.

Ultimately, says Marks, you do not have to be an entrepreneur to think like one: “I find people in corporates who are entrepreneurial are sometimes like caged animals because they want to get out and do things and they can’t … We all have an entrepreneurial streak and use it in our daily lives.”

event, four people pitch four-minute-long presentations – without the use of technology – on projects ranging from art to urban agriculture, social justice, social entrepreneurialism, education, technology and more. Audience members ask each presenter up to four questions before discussing and voting for the scheme that they think will most benefit their neighbourhood. Whoever gets the most votes takes home the money from the door.

The project’s core values of diversity and democracy have led to its success (see Key facts). “It’s artists sitting alongside entrepreneurs and urban farmers beside people who are advocates for social justice next to people looking at abandonment issues,” explains Kaherl. And having a cross-section of society in the audience is vital. “You want no one to look like you or be in your network or live in your world. You have a shared experience, you can turn to your new neighbour who could be your new friend and you get to have a conversation of, ‘Hey what idea did you like and what are you going to vote for?’”

It is easy to see why Kaherl refers to Soup as “a new town hall”, where the community feels empowered to fund and choose how to improve the local area. While acknowledging the success of the project, Kaherl still has much to strive for to drag her home city – with its numerous social and economic challenges – out of the “dark ages”. “My goal and my dream is to bring people into the present in Detroit.”

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Key learning points Stuart Marks’ top tips on how to succeed in business:1. Dream but stay in control2. Choose your co-founders and team very carefully3. Stay focused4. Don’t be under-capitalised5. Don’t plan too much6. Listen to your customers7. You don’t have to be perfect8. Avoid bad advisers

Key facts Soup is:

a collaborative situation a public dinner a platform for connection a theatrical environment a democratic experiment in micro-funding a relational hub bringing together various creative

communities a forum for critical but accessible discussion an opportunity to support creative people in Detroit

Soup is not: a social enterprise startup competition a tech startup pitch contest an artist pitch competition a food competition

“ “Consumers now actually are a lot more forgiving if you

are open with them. They recognise it takes time to get to 100%

Soup is a platform for connection, it’s a theatrical

environment … It has become a gateway back into the community Ph

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HouseMark is the leading provider of integrated data and analysis, insightful knowledge transfer, high-quality consultancy support and, via Procurement

for Housing, cost-effective procurement services to the social housing sector. More than 950 housing organisations are HouseMark members, and we are

jointly owned by the Chartered Institute of Housing and the National Housing Federation – two social housing sector not-for-profit organisations that

reinvest their surpluses into the sector.

Business Connect delivers its programme through a mix of business study visits, leadership interviews and networking and shared-learning opportunities.

The programme allows delegates access to high-performing, successful and inspiring businesses at a senior level to learn about new business models, ideas

and opportunities. Organisations working with Business Connect include Capita, The NEC Group, Timpson, Greggs and Nissan. For more information,

please contact manveer.hundal@housemark.co.uk or call 024 7646 0500.

Campbell Tickell and Inside Housing are supporters of Business Connect.

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