THAMES VALLEY 250
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Embrace the digital generation and prepare for business model change
With heartening UK economic figures now evident, growth was on the business menu at the Thames Valley 250 CEO dinner* at Stoke Park last month, writes John Burbedge
Key speakers Ronan Dunne, chief executive of O2, and Phil Smith, chief executive of Cisco, led a wide-ranging discussion including integrated IT and transportation infrastructure, employee engagement, funding, and post- Election turbulence, but how to harness potential for growth was the after-dinner ‘main course’.
Dunne laid down three future growth markers:
• The post-recession world has changed. “Let’s not rebuild the past. Let’s build the future.”
• “There’s a lot of focus on startups, but now is the time to focus on scale-up.”
• “The enabler of growth is more likely to be talent than capital.”
“One of my worries is that we are educating and preparing young people for jobs that don’t exist in our economy; not preparing them for the jobs that could support businesses to grow.”
Smith agreed: “The only real battle I have over the next 10 years is whether I can get the best talent or not. If I can’t, I know that I will not survive and grow.”
With increasing competition for young talent, companies would need to look at different ways of creating, retaining and developing their skillbase and knowledge capital.
“We are now working in a very different world; seeing a massive movement towards companies digitising their businesses, or being challenged by digitised competitors that have radically different operational and cost models.
“Having the capability and people who can work and deal with that digitised environment will be a real competitive advantage in the coming years.
Mark Bishop, Grant Thornton welcomes Ronan Dunne, O2 and Phil Smith, Cisco to the dinner
“So, we have to be agile and capable, not only in the people we hire but also in the way we think about continually re-inventing our business. Growth is something we all focus on today, but we need to recognise that a different type of growth will be needed in order to keep growing,” Smith added.
Coping with the disruptive nature of a digitised future would also need brave decision-making – for instance, staff restructuring to fit a fresh business model.
While asking: ‘How do we make sure our talent is fit for purpose?’, Dunne highlighted the different mindset and career approach of today’s young recruits.
“We have a generation coming through who are on average more digitally literate than the average employee in the workforce.
“Our basic business models are based on harnessing human capital – that is we set a task for an individual employee to perform and then we manage the delivery of that task.
“But the digital generation doesn’t work to a human capital model. They work to a social capital model, using collaborative innovation
and team development. And, this generation doesn’t necessarily see their career as working their way up a hierarchy.”
Smith, also chairman of Innovate UK and the Tech Partnership, echoed that different career perspective in urging the business world to get involved with academia to help create the graduate courses and skills needed for today’s industries.
Others at the dinner highlighted the difficulty of attracting talent, achieving employee engagement and retaining younger staff. Flexible and tailored ‘job packages’, internal training academies, share ownership, and embedded company values and culture, were all mentioned as viable methods of addressing such issues.
“What you do is important, but how you do it is equally important,” Dunne pointed out.
“Embedded culture is what happens when people aren’t looking. It’s about creating conditions where colleagues have sense of purpose, are proud to work for the business, and as a boss you can be outside the business and be confident that it is operating to company values.”
Dunne and Smith both suggested management styles needed to change too, with productivity being achieved through engagement methods such as improved and varied internal communication, peer encouragement and recognition, role-model inspiration, and team motivation, rather than simply financial incentives.
“If we are to harness the latent talent of a more digitally-aware generation – essential to all our businesses as we move ultimately towards an information economy – we have to change the way we not only recruit but also train, develop and provide the right conditions for employees within the workplace,” stated Dunne.
“Perhaps the ‘exam question’ is actually changing from ‘Are today’s young people fit for our purposes?’ to ‘Are we as employers fit for purpose, for the talent that is actually available?‘”
* The Thames Valley 250 dinner was hosted by sponsors – business advisers Grant Thornton, bankers HSBC, lawyers Blake Morgan along with The Business Magazine.
The current TV250 list is viewable at:
www.businessmag.co.uk
Business THE M A GA ZINE TM
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