All posts by Althea Taylor-Salmon

Blogs & News

SMF Appointed as NED at Green Dragon Gas

Video

Wayne Roberts
SMF Wayne Roberts

Green Dragon Gas Ltd (AIM:GDG), one of the largest independent companies involved in the production of CBM gas and the distribution and sale of wholesale gas in China, is pleased to announce the appointment of Wayne Roberts as a Non-executive Director of the Company with immediate effect. Mr Roberts has over 25 years’ experience in the Oil & Gas industry; he will be an independent member of the board and will be a member of the Audit Committee.

Until earlier this year, Mr. Roberts was Senior Vice President, Commercial, at BG Group plc (“BG”) for Africa, the Middle East and Asia and was accountable for commercial, business development activities within that region and was directly responsible for BG’s businesses in Tanzania, Kenya and Madagascar. During his tenure with BG, he was also President of BG Asia Pacific, based in Singapore, where he was responsible for BG’s oil, gas and power businesses in Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia and China. His responsibilities for China involved signing concessions with China and negotiating the successful sale of assets to CNOOC and Sinopec, thus developing senior-level relationships with both CNOOC and the Chinese Government. Mr. Roberts also had management responsibility for BG’s newly-established LNG business in Singapore.

Prior to joining BG in 2000, Mr. Roberts worked at Atlantic Richfield (“ARCO”) in the UK and the United States where his experience included being a member of the BP/ ARCO merger integration team. Before 1994, when he joined ARCO, Mr. Roberts managed the refining and petrochemical consulting business for Europe, the Middle East and Africa for Honeywell. Mr. Roberts is a Chartered Engineer and holds a first class honours degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Manchester and an MBA from INSEAD.

Commenting, Wayne Roberts said: “I am very pleased to be joining the board of Green Dragon Gas at this important time. The Company has a unique and prospective set of assets in China, together with an experienced and committed team ready to take the business forward. It is an exciting time of investment and growth for the Company and I look forward to bringing my gas industry experience to the board to help Green Dragon Gas serve the high-growth, high-value gas markets in China.”

Commenting, Randeep S. Grewal, Chairman and CEO of Green Dragon Gas said:
“I am delighted to welcome Wayne to the Green Dragon Gas board. I believe that the range of his expertise and the breadth of his experience are quite complementary to our current board and thus will be of great accretive value to the Company. In particular his experience of operating integrated gas-only focused businesses as well as his experience within the PRC combined with his engineering background will be of significant benefit. I look forward to working with Wayne as we expand the scale of the Company’s operations as it continues its development from exploration to production; his addition to the board is timely.”

For further information on the Company and its activities, please refer to the website at www.greendragongas.com.


Wayne Roberts is a Sainsbury Management Fellow.

 

Blog

Guide to Entrepreneurship – The Idea!

Chirag Shah (1)
Sainsbury Management Fellow, Chirag Shah, is a serial entrepreneur.  A Londoner born and bred from a family of medical doctors, he studied Engineering at the University of Cambridge. He completed his Engineering apprenticeship at Rover Cars where he worked as a Production Manager before gaining a scholarship through the Sainsbury’s Management Fellows to pursue an MBA at INSEAD Business School in France. Following a short spell in management consulting, he started his first business at the age of 28. His entrepreneurial ventures include Trading Partners (a business services company), écurie25 (the largest chain of Supercar Clubs in the world), MarketMaker4 (an internet software company), and Assassin Live (an iPhone application game). He is also active as an angel investor.

Most people think the biggest obstacle to getting started with a new business is coming up with a really great idea. But this generally isn’t the case. Ideas are all around us and mostly come from finding solutions to our problems.
Unless your name is Jesus and you can simply perform miracles whenever you hit a problem, we generally tend to address problems by tolerating them or avoiding them. The key to successful entrepreneurship lies here. Instead of living with your frustrations, take the extra few seconds to challenge the issue and explore how you might solve the problem. The answer could be your business idea!

In my experience, the much more challenging aspect to getting started is turning the idea into a viable business proposition. To illustrate, I’m going to use as an example my 19 year-old cousin – who has half a dozen more new ideas every time I see him. He’ll be a great entrepreneur one day but first he needs to overcome what I call the “CARD-test”. In order for an idea to become a successful business it needs to be Commercial, Aligned with resources, Relevant (to you) and Defensible.

An idea my cousin had when we were 15 was the concept of having a rotating sunlounger. Just like a sunflower, the lounger would turn slowly during the day saving the users from having to get up and move the lounger themselves.

Commercial
Applying the “Commercial” test, the key question is: “can you make money from the idea?” If one manufactured the product, would there be enough sales to offset the manufacturing and distribution costs and still leave some profit leftover? In the case of the rotating sunbed, I’m not sure ‘enough’ users would pay the necessary sum to avoid getting up and turning the lounger themselves.

Aligned with resources
Another idea he had was to build a field of solar panels and sell the electricity, whilst growing some vegetables in the shade. In the right circumstances this idea can meet the Commerciality clause, and indeed there are such implementations around the world.

Alas, for my poor cousin, he does not have enough money to implement this idea nor could he hope to raise sufficient funds from other people given his lack of previous experience as a farmer or energy consultant or similar. So for my cousin, this idea falls down because it is not ‘aligned’ with his level of resources. [A particular frustration of mine, and a reason why I think the green energy movement fails to reach breakthrough levels of adoption is that so many innovative projects very quickly require significant levels of capital to bring them to market and hence remain the remit of larger institutional sources which are inherently more risk averse than your average entrepreneur. Compare this with the Internet revolution where the cost of starting a business is very small and new business concepts dominate.]

Relevant (to you)
As a general rule of thumb I tend to advise budding entrepreneurs to focus on businesses that they actually know something about – by way of their prior work experience, or background, or specialist product knowledge, etc. From the businesses I have seen people starting up around me, I would say your chances of success are less than 20% if you know nothing about a particular product or market, and probably closer to 80% if you have worked in that sector, already have relationships with potential customers, and are familiar with your competition. If you have a great idea in a sector you know nothing about, then getting a job in that sector is a great way to start.

Defensible
Defensibility, or Barriers to Entry as the academics would call it, refers to how difficult or easy it is for others to copy what you are doing. Patenting or copyrighting an idea is an important consideration but don’t assume that just because an idea is patented it cannot be replicated or if an idea cannot be protected that others will definitely copy it. In any case I mention this criterion with lower priority than the others because a business lacking defensibility is not necessarily doomed to fail.

As you will see in later posts, how well and how quickly you execute your idea can play a much larger part towards its success and having imitators can even be a good thing. There are benefits to competition in terms of growing the size of a market that can outweigh the downsides of competing for business. For example, one of my own companies, écurie25 Supercar Clubs, is the global market leader for enthusiasts wishing to share the costs of owning a Ferrari but I actually wish we had more competitors because the sector would grow from the resulting greater awareness of such clubs. And I would rather have a smaller market share of a larger sector than a large share of a niche market.
Now that you have your idea in-hand and you’ve vetted it with the CARD Test, it is time to get started. In my next post, I’ll give you some tips for making sure you de-risk your venture as much as possible before you commit too much.

Press Releases

SMF Jo Hallas is Appointed to the Board as Non Executive Director of Norcros plc

Jo_HallasNorcros plc, the market leading supplier of innovative branded showers, tiles and adhesives, today announces the appointment of Jo Hallas to the Board as Non Executive Director with effect from 27th September 2012. This follows the resignation of Les Tench from the Board which was announced on 26 July 2012. Jo will also be appointed Chairman of the Remuneration Committee.

Jo is currently General Manager of Invensys Heating Controls. Her twenty-year career has been focused on international general management in the consumer products sector, including four years with Bosch in Germany and the UK, latterly co-leading the Bosch Lawn & Garden business. Jo also spent ten years with Procter & Gamble, leading business improvement initiatives, working variously in Germany, the US, Thailand and the Netherlands.

Commenting on her appointment, John Brown, Chairman, said “I am delighted that Jo is joining the Board. We were keen to attract someone with significant international experience in the consumer products sector to complement the existing range of skills and experience of the Board. Jo was the ideal candidate and we look forward to working with her as we continue to develop the business.”
There are no disclosures to be made under Listing rule 9.6.13.

Norcros is headquartered in Wilmslow, Cheshire and employs around 1600 people. The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange. For further information please visit the Company website.

Blog

How the MBA Changed my Life

David-Falzani-President-SMF-MCP_3834-(landscape)
David Falzani
President Sainsbury Management Fellows

CEO of a consulting company Polaris Associates, David has extensive executive and strategic business development experience in various industries. David began his consultancy career with LEK Consulting which recruited him from the prestigious Wharton School in Pennsylvania.

David has worked with a wide variety of clients including IBM, British Bakeries, Kingfisher, BAE Systems, Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury’s, 3i and Cooperative Bank. Additionally, David is a Visiting Professor at Nottingham University Business School.

Let me start by saying that in my opinion an MBA is a beginning, not a destination in its own right. No MBA can hope to make you any kind of expert in one or even two years in as fluid and nebulous a field as business. It does however offer a good introduction.

In starting my MBA I think I had a well-researched set of objectives and intentions. I already knew that a top MBA would double my salary. I knew I would receive a useful network of contacts, a toolbox of functional business skills and have a call upon the school’s all important brand name to supplement my own.

What did surprise me was the extensive rewiring of my brain that seems to have been an unintended but virtuous side effect of the crucible of learning environment. To illustrate this point, my first job after my MBA was a role with a leading strategy consulting house (yes I know, you may well call it “falling into the management consultancy trap”, but I call it a good place to consolidate new skills).

These firms are quite notorious in the hours they can require you to spend. The economy was booming and it was busy: I averaged some 70 hours per week in my first year. But my point is that I recall this seeming like a bit of a holiday compared to the MBA.

The MBA really was an expansion process that, yes, increased my understanding of how business works, but it also quietly stretched my brain into something new and improved. It was also one of the most rewarding periods of my life in all kinds of ways.

Spending 40, 50, 60 hours a week with the same group of people involved forming friendships and relationships that were quite different to the norm, and remain priceless. Also, the richness of the environment was astounding. Imagine being surrounded by world class faculty, interesting intelligent colleagues, being set continually stretching challenges; a learning machine wrapped all around you to whet your appetite and then satisfy it, and an addictive growing sense that anything was possible. If I could have stayed on for another year on my MBA, I would have jumped at the chance.

Post MBA, the fun continued. The opportunity to launch a start up business came via my classmates.  The confidence to raise venture capital funds came from the MBA. We may have missed the IPO window with that venture but the lessons learned were incorporated into the framework set down during the MBA. The next role was more demanding: a tech turnaround. The next: a service business. And so the fun continues today.

Fast forwarding a few years, I still marvel at how those lessons gave me an ability to immediately understand the larger business picture, and the sense of confidence that such insight brings.

That MBA was a set of starting blocks (if we’d made that IPO I would have said launch pad!) for a learning journey that continues to intrigue and challenge, and there’s no sign of it getting boring or processional any time soon.

In answering how the MBA changed my life, I should also ask myself what would the last 15 years have been like if I hadn’t done the MBA. Would I have been more successful? I honestly don’t know. After all, the vast majority of the world’s leading entrepreneurs and business persons don’t have an MBA, and many haven’t attended any university, let alone business school.

Would I be better informed? I think it’s unlikely. As I say, as an introduction to business a good MBA is hard to beat.  But would I have had more fun? I seriously doubt it.

case studies

School for CEOs

Patrick Macdonald, Partner, School for CEOs

There Patrick Macdonaldhas never been a greater need to prepare businessmen and women to become CEOs. The biggest recession in 80 years, intense media scrutiny and investor nervousness all combine to make the top job tougher than ever.

When I was CEO of John Menzies – a £1.5 billion quoted plc with a substantial family shareholding – it struck me that, as in any position, CEOs get better as they learn. I certainly did. But the old dictum “leaders are born and not made” still holds sway in many quarters. We still expect CEOs to take on the toughest job in business without any specific preparation.

This seems a little strange!

We have in the past teamed up with David Sole, the well known international rugby captain and business coach, to launch the School for CEOs. David has coached main Board directors and senior executives from a wide variety of functions including finance, human resources, sales and marketing, IT, property, legal and company secretariat.

Experienced businessmen and women teach the next generation of business leaders using a carefully structured curriculum. A highly accomplished Advisory Board works with us, including Sir David Reid (Chairman of Intertek plc and ex-Chairman of Tesco plc), Jonathan Warburton (Chairman of Warburtons) and Alex Wilson (ex-Group HR Director at BT plc).

The two-day Vital Few residential programme covers the complexities of:

  • managing up – forming a relationship with the Chairman and Board
  • managing down – leading the team
  • managing out – handling investors and the media and
  • managing in – staying centred and grounded

Future leaders explore what really happens in the boardroom, rather than academic theories and frameworks. There is follow on coaching to help embed the learnings, insight and wisdom gained on the programme. And delegates join a fantastic network which will grow as the School grows.

The Vital Few is a standalone programme. It also forms the first module of the comprehensive Alchemy of Leadership programme which lasts eight days spread over several months.

The course is aimed at anyone three years or less from becoming a CEO, as well as those already in the job. For future programme dates, visit www.schoolforceos.com.

Case studies correct at the time of publication.  SMFs may have moved to new posts since publication.  For the latest career information on our Fellows visit our SMF Profile Page.

Blog

Can We Help You Prepare for the Top Job?

Patrick Macdonald
SMF Patrick Macdonald, Partner, School for CEOs

There has never been a greater need to prepare businessmen and women to become CEOs. The biggest recession in 80 years, intense media scrutiny and investor nervousness all combine to make the top job tougher than ever.

When I was CEO of John Menzies – a £1.5bn quoted plc with a substantial family shareholding – it struck me that, as in any position, CEOs get better as they learn. I certainly did. But the old dictum “leaders are born and not made” still holds sway in many quarters. We still expect CEOs to take on the toughest job in business without any specific preparation.

This seems a little strange!

So I’ve teamed up with David Sole, the well known international rugby captain and business coach, to launch the School for CEOs. David has coached main Board directors and senior executives from a wide variety of functions including finance, human resources, sales and marketing, IT, property, legal and company secretariat.

Experienced businessmen and women will teach the next generation of business leaders using a carefully structured curriculum. A highly accomplished Advisory Board will work with us, including Sir David Reid (Chairman of Intertek plc and ex-Chairman of Tesco plc), Jonathan Warburton (Chairman of Warburtons) and Alex Wilson (ex-Group HR Director at BT plc).

  • The two-day Vital Few residential programme will cover the complexities of
    managing up – forming a relationship with the Chairman and Board
    managing down – leading the team
    managing out – handling investors and the media and
    managing in – staying centred and grounded

Future leaders will explore what really happens in the boardroom, rather than academic theories and frameworks. There will be follow on coaching to help embed the learnings, insight and wisdom gained on the programme. And delegates will join a fantastic network which will grow as the School grows.

The Vital Few is a standalone programme. It also forms the first module of the comprehensive Alchemy of Leadership programme which lasts eight days spread over several months.

The first programme takes place in London on 19/20 September. It’s aimed at anyone three years or less from becoming a CEO, as well as those already in the job. For future programme dates, visit www.schoolforceos.com

Blog

NEDs Just Got Interesting?

Mark Winkle - IDDAS Executive Coach and Chief Operating Officer (small)
Mark Winkle, COO, IDDAS

The world of the NED has been moving at a pace, the traditional view of a NED; ex-top executive, one or two board positions after retiring and aged in ‘his’ 60s, is still with us, but there is a marked trend towards, younger professionals, who are making a deliberate choice to abandon corporate life and pursue an NED portfolio and who have reached senior executive positions relatively early in their careers and want a change of lifestyle.

This trend has been articulated in the recently published IDDAS NEDs Perspective Report, which is the third in the IDDAS Board Dynamics series.  These Reports provide a unique insight into the Board world, with the previous two Reports giving the Chairman’s Perspective and a Females FTSE 100 Perspective on Boards.

This powerful triangulation of Reports provides a real sense of how the Board works and what it is like to be on a Board; ‘hearing’ directly from NEDs, Chairman and FTSE 100 female Directors the reality of the Boardroom.  The most recent NED Perspective Report has given a number of insights and views, for example.

  • The majority of NEDs are reluctant to have compulsory quotas introduced to increase the numbers of women on boards, but recognise the need for change.
  • A third think the level of remuneration for NEDs is too low given the increased workload and greater risk to corporate reputations now involved with the role.  However, most acknowledged they were well rewarded and that too much focus on financial reward could compromise independence.
  • NEDs see challenge in the boardroom as vital to their position, however they agree this should come with an equal measure of support – a balance they sometimes find difficult.
  • The lifestyle and practical changes between executive and NED roles are vast. As well as stepping back and accepting less control, NEDs commented on the lack of administrative support they were used to in their corporate careers.
  • NEDs have mixed views on whether those from outside the corporate world such as media, HR or academics should be considered for NED roles.
  • Many said that the board should not be a team, rather that they should learn to understand each other and work effectively, which should be done outside the boardroom.

The full report consists of a wonderful array of quotes directly from the NEDs and we hear the ‘real voices’ of their motivation, frustration and excitement.  In particular, I was stuck by the sense of the ‘Board’ not being viewed as a team, but as a collection of individuals who meet in a common space, the inference being that being a ‘Team’ takes away objectivity and is too cosy.  This provided a fascinating insight which got me thinking of how we define this Boardroom space.  How can we start to provide the ‘Board’ with the sense of their own worth as a ‘Team’, based on the definition of a high performing team, as needing, a common vision, values and strategy; constructive, creative, challenge and debate, which surely is a prime function and description of an effective Board?

Potentially, this misunderstanding of what a team is, could well be at the core of how we develop effective challenge and behavioural frameworks for the ‘Board Team’ to become most effectively.  We may need to re-calibrate this space in a different way from traditional ‘team working’ and be more cognisant of the different perspectives that the constituent cohorts bring to the Board. Certainly the NEDs are coming to this ‘team space’ with a clear and increasingly demanding ‘governance’ perspective and a keen eye on their duties and responsibilities as a NED, which are increasingly in the spotlight.

The Executive Team, additionally brings a set of perspectives and energies which are closely linked to their central individual values and ‘status’, to which any ‘threat’ is likely to elicit a strong reaction.  One of the key developments emerging from neuroscience research is the impact that threats and anxiety can have on our power for rational deliberation and perspective.  As the brain is threatened it becomes overwhelmed and reverts to a short term protective mode, with a shortening of horizons and acute awareness of the immediate, at the expense of the longer term.

The Chairman’s role is to ‘orchestrate’ this space and develop a coherent and robust atmosphere of Trust, Challenge, Vision and Coherence, which is quite a balancing act.   There are many artful Chairman who able to ‘pull’ this off, but one of the aspects of our Chairman’s Research was how little Development and Support Chairman had received to achieve this level, most having got there through a process of previous experience, trial and error.

Some of the aspects of this balancing act have been identified by the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) in their ‘Guidance on Board Effectiveness’, which identifies the need for appropriate decision making frameworks and the creation of an atmosphere of effective challenge towards strategy and the risk model of the organisation.  The refining of this ‘Board Team’ space is overdue, the challenge is for Boards to more clearly understand their own interpersonal dynamics and create an open and recognised decision making framework which stands the test of tough times.  The FRC guidance describes the dangers of ‘group think’, and a casual and untested decision making process which can be overrun by events.

Additionally, the IDDAS Chairman’s Report and the FTSE 100 Female Directors Report, along with other reports in this area have identified the ‘female’ approach to challenge and decision making, which is less directly confrontational, more systematic and less ego driven, as a positive influence on Board performance.

It is likely, that as we drive toward the achievement of the Lord Davies Report targets of 25% females on FSTE 100 Boards by 2015, there will be an updraft of females onto Public quoted Boards and also onto the organisation’s Executive Committee, which the Davies Report rightly identifies as the feedstock for Board Directors of the future.

So, it is my hope, that as Boards review their performance and fitness for purpose for the future that we will see both the desire for; and increased capability, to deliver an open and interactive ‘Team Space’ environment which leads progressively to enhanced board effectiveness.

Blog

Is Manufacturing the linchpin of the British economy?

Chris Coopey - SMF Guest Blogger
Chris Coopey, Partner, Carpenter Box LLP

The 3,000 redundancies planned by BAE come as a bitter blow to the firm’s employees and to perhaps, the 6,000 subcontractors who supply the firm.  But what does it say about manufacturing in general in the UK?  As someone who trained as an Engineer but is now a Partner at a chartered accountancy firm I believe that unless some real action is taken to fundamentally shift the balance of our economy, these redundancies and more like them will change nothing.  Whether we are talking about BAE or Bombardier (1,400 jobs lost at the train manufacturer in July 2011) or numerous other examples down the years, what seems obvious is that as a nation we continue to lie back whilst our engineering and manufacturing skill-base is inexorably eroded.

For more than 30 years manufacturing has been written off as a mainstay of the economy.  We’ve blamed foreign competition, trade unionism, poor management and a lack of investment for the decline in our manufacturing fortunes but the truth is we haven’t as a nation stepped up to the plate.  If the same care had been taken to protect and nurture manufacturing as has been put into promoting the UK as a major global financial centre we would have a strong and vibrant manufacturing base keeping people employed, paying valuable taxes and selling the products we are so good at inventing and developing for other nations.  Imagine the engineering equivalent of the redeveloped square mile and Canary Wharf and you start to understand the analogy. I’m not for a minutes suggesting that we abandon our banking and services industry, but what I am saying is that we should recognise that the balance has swung too far away from creating tangible wealth.  We’ve come to depend far too much on the intangible wealth associated with city.

In the words of George Osborne, wrapping up his last budget speech;

‘We are only going to raise the living standards of families if we have an economy that can compete in the modern age. So this is our plan for growth.

We want the words: ‘Made in Britain’ ‘Created in Britain’ ‘Designed in Britain’ ‘Invented in Britain’ To drive our nation forward. A Britain carried aloft by the march of the makers. That is how we will create jobs and support families. We have put fuel into the tank of the British economy.’

Sadly the present government, despite its own words, has still not woken up to the fact that manufacturing should be the linchpin of the economy rather than the poor relation of the banking and the business service sector.  To put manufacturing back into centre stage will take billions in investment and a long term structural shift, but it has to be the future.  Now is the time for the government to stop talking and to start to take action.

Chris Coopey is a Partner with Carpenter Box LLP, Chartered Accountants and Chartered Tax Advisers.  He originally trained with a subsidiary of Simon Engineering in Gloucester, qualifying as a design draftsman.  In 1979 he moved to the telecommunications industry where he worked for 10 years.  Chris subsequently went to Exeter University before qualifying as a solicitor.  He joined Carpenter Box as Practice Director in 2005.
 

Press Releases

Engineers Sit at Top Table in FTSE Companies

Engineers are not widely recognised as business leaders yet new research commissioned for the Sainsbury Management Fellows’ Society (SMF) reveals that engineers are now represented on the boards of almost 60% of FTSE100 companies. The research, conducted by EngineeringUK, also showed that almost 15% of FTSE100 executive board members have an engineering degree. This increases the diversity of skills on the board.

SMF, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary, helps UK engineers develop into industry leaders by providing MBA scholarships that equip them with the skills to take board positions.

In 1987, Lord Sainsbury, one of the UK’s leading philanthropists, created the Sainsbury Management Fellowship Scheme to increase the quantity and quality of senior executives with engineering qualifications at the top of UK organisations. SMF now has 300 Fellows, including directors and c-level executives at major organisations such as DTZ, Deutsche Bank, AECOM Europe and Jersey Electricity.

David Falzani, President of The Sainsbury Management Fellows explained SMFs’ work: “Every year SMF awards 10 scholarships to talented young engineers to study at world class business schools. Today, sixty of these Fellows have built successful businesses in heavy engineering and manufacturing, biotechnology, green technology, wireless/telecoms and internet sectors. Other Fellows hold senior management posts and multiple non executive directorships. One hundred of them work for FTSE companies, and 15 are directors of FTSE 100 companies.

“This is an excellent start, however, we must continue to build on this number to ensure that more engineers sit at board tables and make key decisions. Engineers with management and business qualifications offer businesses an invaluable blend of skills. They make a real difference to the performance of companies and help our economy to grow.”

At the recent annual dinner of The Sainsbury Management Fellows, Lord Sainsbury said: “Science and technology are vital to the country’s economic future. The Government is now strongly supporting the setting up of University Technical Colleges. Also, as a result of the setting up of the STEM ambassadors scheme, the STEM Clubs, the Big Bang Fair and the revival of GCSE triple science in England, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of young people doing ‘A’ level STEM subjects. Between 2006 and 2011 we have seen an increase of 17% for the biological sciences, 25% for chemistry, 3% for physics, 52% for mathematics and 75% for Further Mathematics. Between 2005 and 2011, the number of young people doing Triple Science went 43,000 to 134,000.”

At the Annual Dinner, the President also announced that the Charity Commission had just confirmed SMFs’ status as a registered charity. Falzani said: “SMFs’ vision remains the same; to promote and demonstrate the value of a combined business and engineering education to improve the performance of the UK economy. We will do this by promoting continuing business education for those in the engineering profession; creating and operating a charitable fund to help support their continuing education; and developing a network of engineers who illustrate the merits of such education for the public benefit.”

Press Releases

Are HR Bosses Right to Lack Confidence in Engineers at Board Level?

Only 66% of HR directors believe engineers possess the necessary skills and attributes to make a valuable contribution on a board of management, according to a new study being debated by an organisation set up to develop engineers as leaders in UK industry.

The research was carried out by Sainsbury’s Management Fellows (SMF), a not-for-profit organisation that enables UK engineers to acquire the knowledge and skills to make the transition from a technical to a senior management role. SMF, which provides talented engineers with a £30,000 MBA bursary to achieve board level status, interviewed 100 FTSE250 HR directors to get their views on the importance of input from engineers at a senior level. The results show a lack of confidence in professionals who do not have legal, financial or marketing backgrounds or experience.

SMF’s survey showed that the career backgrounds most valued in the boardroom are accountancy, sales, marketing, HR and legal, with professional engineering coming way down the scale. Yet when asked if professional engineers with MBAs are suitably qualified for board positions, 80% of the HR directors agreed that they are.

SMF President, David Falzani, comments: “Engineers, by their very nature, have a wide range of skills that offer so much more than just technical knowledge including problem-solving and the ability to oversee complex project management tasks. Engineers who undertake MBAs through our scheme assist businesses to minimise risk and make them more profitable. The findings from our report show there is a still a long way to go in convincing UK industry that engineers have what it takes to make it to the board and many excellent candidates are being overlooked simply because they are not from a legal or financial background.”

SMFs’ view on the importance of a varied skill set on a board including engineers is backed up by the Institute of Directors (IoD), which believes a strong board extends beyond gender diversity, and is one that welcomes people from all walks of life.

With over 250,000 engineers employed in the UK, it is important that organisations utilise their skills and knowledge and that HR managers are aware of the benefits of including engineers in decision making. To help, SMF has published the findings of the survey in a booklet for HR professionals which encourages them to consider the role of professional engineers on the board. The booklet includes a skills matrix to assist in the assessment of an organisation’s needs and how a business-qualified, professional engineer can add to the effectiveness of a board.

The survey also uncovered some promising statistics for the future; 86% of those asked were open minded about recruiting directors with non-financial or legal backgrounds and where engineers have MBA qualifications and business experience, 80% of HR directors felt reassured that engineers had the skills worthy of a place in the boardroom.

David Falzani comments: “Historically, engineers have not been seen as a natural choice for the boards of blue chip organisations. But this research shows recruiters are discovering that once they gain legal, financial, and marketing training, they have a vital contribution to make.”

The booklet – Re-engineering the Board to Manage Risk and Maximise Growth – for HR professionals can be downloaded here. ADD LINK