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So, I called him and he's like, "Oh, yeah, we need you to talk to Elon." And
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I'm like, "Oh my god." Some of the decisions you have to make about comp or
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not, horrible, horrible decisions. It was asymmetrical warfare because he was so out of control. A good chair will
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help [music] you make yourself heard. But, the main thing is just to keep listening and really, really, really try
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and learn the business. We were in Denver, we were in Paris trying to sell the shares [music] and you have to make
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sure that your business is robust enough to do it. Welcome to Grit in the Boardroom. I'm
00:00:28
Erica Elias and Norris. Today, I'm joined by Dame Martha Lane Fox. Martha co-founded lastminute.com through the
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dot-com boom and crash. Helped set the blueprint for the digital government digital service, gov.uk. Founded dot
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everyone to advance responsible technology and has served as a non-executive director on boards
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including M&S, Twitter, and Chanel. This conversation explores how boards create real value, focusing on
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innovation, decision-making, and culture. Welcome to Grit in the Boardroom, Martha. Thank you so much.
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It's actually not just me. We have a interloper on your podcast today. >> [laughter]
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>> You'll have to excuse me, there's two of us. No problem at all. Let's get into
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it. So, if you could secretly sit on any FTSE 100 board today, uh which one would you
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choose and why? That's a really interesting question. I I don't think this company would want
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me, but I think I'd be very interested to be in a pharmaceutical business right
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now. Um so, you know, whether it was Well, it's obviously got to be a homegrown one, Glaxo. Uh that's the most
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um relevant one for for Britain, I suppose. Uh I think that this is just such a miraculous time of drug discovery and
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the combination of AI application to science with them what must be happening internally as well at the same time. I
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think that would be super fascinating. Also huge global business, massive consequence with how you distribute your
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product, all of the stuff that um you can imagine. So, yes, I think that so would be the one. Although I'd be very
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sad not to have worked with Emma. Yeah, absolutely. Do you Do you think that your knowledge, obviously you've um
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you focused in a lot of digital businesses, do you think that knowledge from those type of businesses translates
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well or perhaps it is just beneficial to have a different perspective in something like pharmaceutical or other
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industries? You know what? I think that after now so long it's They 35 years
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I've been doing this stuff. Uh I feel as though um it's not just about understanding the
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digital world. I think for me it's about having been through moments of really accelerated change and
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what that means for businesses. So, of course at the minute we're talking about
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AI and the you know, profound platform shift that's happening in companies and you know,
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hopefully I'm useful my experiences of understanding a little bit about that
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world. But I think having grown up with change as I hate this expression, but change is the only constant in my
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backdrop of my working life. I feel as though you know, I've been on startup
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boards, I've been on my own company boards, I've taken public com- companies
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public boards, I've been in private boards, I've been in public private boards like Channel 4, I've been on big
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FTSE boards, I've been in you know, crazy boards like Twitter and I you know, and now I'm on Wood for Share with
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and I'm on British Chanel, very structured and structured again. So, literally nothing phases me, I think and
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I feel like I've seen a lot of complex situations in those boardrooms either
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because of personalities or because of macro environment and hopefully I think if you've been lucky enough to have that
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experience it's those things that are always translatable. And of course trying to stay relevant with the world
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as it's changing is another dimension to that, but I think more fundamentally for
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the board members I think just being able to be a bit of a generalist and being able to see the big
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picture, not feel kind of stuck in the situation where you feel like it's a crisis all
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the time but see that wider view. I think that's actually the biggest skill.
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I think that's really interesting because I do tend to find people where or companies when they're
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looking for non-executive directors, they tend to go towards similar industries to who they already have. So
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if they're a product industry, they tend to try and find product people. If they're a service industry, they tend to
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try and find service people. But maybe it's worth mixing that up a bit from what you're saying. Well, I think it's
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it's both. I think it's you have to be super clear if you're finding a particular domain
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expertise, you have to be super clear that that person can also be outside of their domain because no board member
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should just be thinking all the time about everything through the lens of I don't know, cybersecurity. Very
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important to sometimes to have that on the board and to have that perspective and to have that, you know, especially
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now as there's alarm bells constantly ringing. But it's not helpful if everything is then always channeled
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through that lens because boards are beyond that, you know, you've got to be
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able to sit on an audit committee or comp committee. You've got to be able to
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also think about changing CEO and succession plans and the executive team. So I think domain expertise is
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invaluable but it can't be the only thing and I think everybody's different
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but it's the combination of skills that are what make a robust board. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And you've
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been a founder, a chair, and also a digital trailblazer with lastminute.com. What do you think is one thing that
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boards consistently get wrong with regards to innovation because that's something that you've definitely driven
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through your career? Oh, I think it's incredibly hard. You know, I think that's
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innovation isn't something that sits like over [snorts] here. It's a bit like
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lots of planks of I think well how you build a business now, you know, in my opinion you can't have sustainability
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sitting over there. You can't actually we just talked about cybersecurity, you
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can't have it sitting over there. Okay, it's done because we have a person
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worrying about innovation. I think that truly innovative cultures are lived and breathed through every single bit of it
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and that like everything has to come partly from the top. You've got to have
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a CEO, you've got to have a board that are actively showing that innovation is
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they value and incentivize around. You've then got to have you know, ways and mechanisms that people in teams can
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feel they can innovate either to fail or not obviously ideally not but without the massive consequence of failure
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because that's what innovation obviously often produces. Um, so I think probably the the biggest
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error if it's a if it's classifiable as that is that it's seen as a separate
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discipline as opposed to something that's okay, if you want an innovative culture it's got to be a cultural thing
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right through the organization and you have to make sure that your incentives are aligned to that as a real point of
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um, you know, differentiation. And what sort of companies would you point to as being kind of good examples
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maybe not in every scenario but good examples in certain scenarios that you would yeah, look at?
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I think I think most businesses do innovate or they don't survive. You know, I think we can be quite hard on
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corporates like oh, they do a bad job, you know, my airline seat is still rubbish or my
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supermarket stuff but actually I think if we think about it more deeply as a consumer the process of innovation over
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the last 20 years has been unbelievable. It's been unbelievable. You know, we
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expect things now just right there on our smartphone devices. We expect to be able to do everything in parallel. We
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expect to go into a store and have this perfect experience with like high quality produce at good prices and we
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can compare the market in a way we never used to before. So, I think, you know, there's a lot of different strands to
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it, but I think actually is particularly in consumer businesses, we have seen massive levels of innovation. Retail
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obviously does always innovate because otherwise, you know, they're not they're
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not capturing the market in in the way that they can. But obviously the tech sector has been a
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big kind of disruptor into the macro business climate over the last 40 50 years. And the culture in technology to
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test things, to be constantly improving and iterating just because you can, because it's cheaper and the barriers to
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entry are different, has I think created a a different cultural kind of culture sorry alongside perhaps a more
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traditional corporate culture. So, um it's not that I'm sitting here saying
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every corporate is getting it right, but I I do think that sometimes it's easy to
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forget how much experience has changed over the last 20 30 years. Uh and perhaps, you know, one of the
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issues that we have right now as a society is that we are operating in a, you know, 1850 operating model in
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government and public services and we're operating in sometimes a 2050 model of
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our, you know, other user citizen consumer experiences and that is such a deep mismatch.
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And why do you think that is? Cuz I think it's much harder for the public sector. I think public sector,
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you know, I've I've done a lot of work in the public sector where I helped
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create the government digital and we launched gov.uk, um which was a a big step forward for
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the government of the day and huge enormous kudos to the team that enabled that to happen.
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And when I think about that experience, you know, all the stars were aligned. We
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had a prime minister who was absolutely determined to do some bold digital things. We had civil servants that uh we
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got round to our to to help us our way of thinking. An amazing team that came from the
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commercial sector to come and do some public service. It was a big push though and it needed that and I think that
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quite often the public sector's motivations and incentive structures are just not aligned in the same way. You
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know, you're not rewarded for innovation, you're not rewarded actually for thinking much about delivering the
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past, but technology has changed that so that's why I think right now we are at
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this kind of delta where sometimes some of the things and the speed and the process that we expect in our the normal
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other part of our lives, government just hasn't caught up with yet. Mhm. And you took
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>> [snorts] >> lastminute.com through the dot-com boom and the crash. Yes. What The boom part I
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remember only a little bit. The crash part I remember really quite a lot. >> [laughter]
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>> What what did that period of time or those two periods of time, what did they teach
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you about decision-making under extreme uncertainty cuz I'm sure that there are
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people listening and watching this that are boards of directors, they are on boards, they are CEOs and and you've
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managed some very very big changes. Yeah, I mean I think I would be really lying if I said I could remember with
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extreme clarity that period [laughter] of time. I mean for a whole bunch of reasons, some personal, some
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professional. You know, after lastminute.com I had a huge personal accident and some of the things before
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it are quite blurry just as a caveat. But >> you know, when you're 25 and then I was
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29 when we took the business public, Brent and I, um you know, you are only ever learning on
00:11:04
the fly because you know nothing. So we were in this very strange very strange market because landscape, perhaps a
00:11:12
better word, because not only were we inventing things cuz no one had really done a website where people were buying
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this stuff. Amazon existed in the US, there was a couple of people emerging here, but really not very many. So we
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were inventing stuff, but also we knew nothing because we were very young and the whole market was developing. So all
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these layers were that really it was not a kind of right or wrong situation. We were just testing and trying to move on
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quickly and trying to you know do the right thing and stay very true to the product focus. So I think if I think
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back to how we tried to help keep focused, it was you know, many things but the things that stick in my mind are
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such a clarity of purpose about what we were building. You know, it was a product both Brent and I wanted to use.
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It came out of Brent's and and necessity and sorry, necessity to always organize
00:11:59
things at the last minute in his late 20s. He was always trying to get everything ready for the weekend and
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was never anywhere help organize it. So by having that very clear vision, that helps. And then the second thing is just
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really making sure we built the best possible team we could around us. Both um you know, amazingly bright young
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incredible people but also people that perhaps had done things in the sectors we were trying to to to grow the
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business in. And how do you think you build that great team? What what makes a great
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team? Right. Again, back to the clarity of purpose and that being really understood. You know, a really deep
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shared understanding of the direction of travel particularly in a startup. You know, you have you can't say it looks
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like that because you are building it. So you have to really have a very clear way of expressing the
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story that you're telling to people that might come and work with you. And I was
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with a venture capitalist actually just yesterday, brilliant British venture capitalist Anne Glover, who said that as
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a VC, she doesn't really ever just invest in leaders in quotation marks. She invests in people that people will
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follow because leading is one thing but getting people to follow you is another,
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right? You can all say, "Right, we're charging in that direction." But if no
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one comes with you, that's not very helpful. So I guess that um what Brent and I always tried to do is make it feel
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as though this was an exciting journey, that the people working with us were going to learn a ton. It was going to be
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a ride. We were going to do an amazing service for our customers and keep reinforcing that all the time. So that's
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the first thing in team. I think the second thing in team is in my opinion, didn't always do this
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right at all, but this is where I think people work well. So, beyond that kind of overarching
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vision, just a very clear set of things that you are expected to deliver, and then, frankly, to be left the F alone.
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You know, you don't need to be micromanaged if you have got that very clear set of things around you, that
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clear accountability, and you know what your reward system is going to be. And I
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think if those two pieces are very clear, then you can have confidence because it's very clear when
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things haven't worked, and maybe the person isn't in the right role, or maybe
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they're in the wrong company, or whatever the thing is. But then, so easy to say that, and so incredibly
00:14:04
hard to do. Because in my experience, and I don't know if it's the same with
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you, Erica, you can think you've sold somebody, "This is what I think you
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should be doing, and these are the things I want you to own." And they might have a completely different take
00:14:15
on that, or they might not even have heard it. Yes. >> And you have to keep communicating it.
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It's got to be something that is just such a fundamental point of return all
00:14:24
the time, which is really boring as a leader. Because it's really boring to keep telling people, "Okay, just to be
00:14:29
clear, you are doing these three things." And then to check back in on those three things, and keep doing it.
00:14:34
So, you cannot have any room for kind of um miscommunication in that. But then, beyond that, if you get that bit right,
00:14:40
you really can leave good people alone, and then they thrive, in my opinion. Yeah. And looking at the other side, um
00:14:46
I actually I was chatting to somebody yesterday about good teams. And one of the things that they said, I asked them
00:14:52
what one of the most challenging things was as a CEO. And I thought it would be interesting to ask you that question. Um
00:14:59
they said that it was the people. And they said that the hardest bit was the hu- the human part of it, which was
00:15:04
sometimes the making people redundant, firing people, whatever it might be. Did you find the same?
00:15:11
Yes. Uh it's always horrible, and you know, people are the inconsistent thing,
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the variable thing, you know, the magic thing and many times the way you have the fun or the often, but also the thing
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that's the hardest because we're people, right? We're not just tick boxes and
00:15:27
we're not just ones and naughts. So, thank god, but it is also a massive massive headache very often. And what
00:15:34
I've perceived is that there are It's a rare founder and I I'm really not sure I
00:15:38
was one of those people that is able to be the visionary, get the product, drive
00:15:44
the teams, and build the culture. I think that is a lot, right? You can often have a brilliant CEO who's got a
00:15:49
very very clear vision of something and might hire some fantastic people to help
00:15:52
do some of these other things around them and has at least the self-awareness not to try and do all the people parts
00:15:57
as well. I don't think I had that self-awareness at 25. In fact, I think now when I think back on it, at the time
00:16:02
I thought, "Oh, I'm quite good at this culture people stuff." Now I look back
00:16:05
on it, I was 100% just fueling the company with tequila and parties and being ridiculous. And as you said, the
00:16:12
worst parts always, of course, especially when you're building something at speed
00:16:17
and everyone's very young or when you have to get rid of people or move people
00:16:20
on or give people bad appraisals or do all the stuff that is just the you know, the bread and butter of business. And
00:16:27
you know, I can say with you know, a couple of bad days at lastminute.com, but one of the worst was
00:16:31
when I had to tell the customer service team that we were outsourcing them to India.
00:16:36
Uh and there were probably 100 people and they were really really special people. They'd worked with us since the
00:16:41
beginning and been on their bicycles dropping tickets around London when things had gone wrong and you know, just
00:16:47
been in the trenches with us and it was horrible. It was really horrible cuz even though it made
00:16:52
the business good business sense and probably actually helped enable them to go off and get better jobs, it was it
00:16:58
was brutal. Yeah. It's always about the people, particularly if you're somebody that
00:17:04
cares. Yeah. Um which isn't all leaders, I must say, but I think some some of the best
00:17:10
are. Good ones do and I think increasingly you can't get away with not caring,
00:17:15
actually. I think that uh, it's now your EQ and your IQ are so much more, um,
00:17:23
important than perhaps they've ever been before because it's and it's
00:17:28
a much harder and a more ambiguous world in many ways but therefore you need to be able to express that as a leader.
00:17:34
Yeah, absolutely. It's one of the reasons I wanted to start this podcast in the first place is to,
00:17:39
um, bring bring to light, um, how hard it can be for leaders to to go through some of these processes and as you say
00:17:47
about outsourcing to India, that's something that an employee might might just go, well, they didn't care about
00:17:52
me. What what what's the what's why did this have to happen to me? They're just
00:17:56
sat in there at Ivory Tower and they're just making that decision and they don't
00:18:00
even care about me and my livelihood and my future. Um, You know, and the equivalent now is, you know, people
00:18:05
aren't outsourcing to India so much anymore but people are replacing bits of teams with AI tools, right? So,
00:18:11
this is a very prescient discussion and I was just with a business earlier today
00:18:15
where just talking about the the finance function in that business and they're
00:18:18
not firing people but they're not hiring any more people. And over the next 2
00:18:21
years will it shift and change that team? Of course it will. And it's not because the boss of that particular team
00:18:26
doesn't care, of course she does but she's being judged on a set of metrics,
00:18:30
there's efficiencies in the team, you know, there's just people's work
00:18:33
constantly changing and evolving. So, it is really tough. It is really tough. Yeah. And it's interesting that you
00:18:40
link, um, the kind of outsourcing with similar sorts of ideas to AI. Um, and I've I've heard that more than
00:18:49
once even just today, um, on the kind of some of the similarities of, you know, some people when computers
00:18:57
were first introduced, they I've read minutes and spoken to people that have
00:19:02
written minutes back in the day that said, this is going to change the world. Maybe we don't need too many computers
00:19:07
in the office because it's going to be a real problem. And and it's really
00:19:11
interesting reading that now cuz you think, "Wow, how how interesting?" And
00:19:16
no doubt in decades to come, we will also look back and go, "Oh, I don't know
00:19:21
why they were worried about that." Or they should have been even more worried
00:19:24
about it. Who knows? What's your take on it? I don't know. I think that uh
00:19:30
I have I'm not prone to too much pessimism generally in the world. I see it with
00:19:35
optimism cuz otherwise, frankly, what's the point? And I uh but I do feel a kind of generalized anxiety that
00:19:44
governments all over the world here as well are not taking seriously the very, very, very real shifts in the workforce.
00:19:52
And I don't know what that means work looks like. I don't think anybody that
00:19:55
says they do is talking nonsense cuz who the again, who the hell knows what the next 5 years is going to look like, let
00:20:00
alone 15. But there will be massive shifts, and the work will look different, and it will look very
00:20:05
different for a whole bunch of people and not the same people for whom often worlds has changed most in the past, you
00:20:11
know, everyone's talked about how in the past it was about the most kind of entry-level jobs that got affected, and
00:20:17
now maybe it's going to be mid-ranking jobs that are going to be driven much more through technology,
00:20:22
whether you're a lawyer or whether you're a accountant or whatever your your backdrop might your your background
00:20:27
might be, sorry. So I don't know what the answer is, but I think we need to keep thinking about
00:20:31
it and having public conversation about that and staying realistic that um the headwinds of technology and the
00:20:39
climate crisis and you know, changing demographics that that they're very strong. They're very, very strong. Yeah,
00:20:46
absolutely. And it must have been interesting to be so young IPO-ing a company. What's any advice that you would give to
00:20:57
Obviously, there's there's a lot of tech kind of startup founders, whether
00:21:01
they're male or female. And just kind of looking at how that landscape looks, any kind of ideas that
00:21:07
you might give. I mean, I think at the right point in time with the right support and a solid business base,
00:21:14
going public is an extraordinary experience. I don't know if we had that at lastminute.com. We were very small. We
00:21:21
were pushed to go public through this insane kind of reputation and I don't know whether it was the right decision
00:21:26
or if we would take it now. It was the right decision in that we got 100 million in the bank and Brent
00:21:31
says, you know, that was the best defense to but Christmas growth or not. But it was also brutal because it was a
00:21:36
week before the dot-com boom bust and our share price collapsed and that's a
00:21:41
tough thing to navigate as a young pair of founders with a young team who all thought they might be gazillionaires and
00:21:47
we're just not going to be. So, it was a mixed bag for us although ultimately it'll be bonkers for me to
00:21:53
suggest it did anything other than give us the cash piles and enable our survival.
00:21:57
In terms of the So, I should start with that because I think there's a tension
00:22:01
always in a startup that's particularly got funding from a venture capital or,
00:22:05
you know, seed funding in some way to have this exit. You people need a moment for the realization of their profit,
00:22:10
right? And that can sometimes be a real tension because you can have a business that
00:22:14
might not be right to do it yet, might not be big enough, might not be, you know, the right business but there's
00:22:19
that internal tension. So, then you might need to think about other exits whether it's an acquisition or other
00:22:23
other mechanisms. But the actual process of going public is an extraordinary experience to go
00:22:28
through as a as a um CEO, co-founder, founder because it it's really something that's hard to
00:22:35
describe unless you've been through it. It's like a It's a job for 6 months or
00:22:40
so. You have to go and sell very, very consistently all the time to different funds that might believe in your
00:22:47
business. We went all over the world to do that. We flew around in Mariah Carey's jet, very fancy. Um
00:22:52
>> Wow. >> [laughter] >> But but you go into this kind of zone
00:22:55
where you sort of in a weird way leave the business behind a bit. So, you have to be sure that you've got somebody that
00:23:00
is still making sure your business is working and money. Um, and we, you know, we were in Denver, we were in Paris, we
00:23:08
were in, uh, obviously in London, we were all over the place trying to sell the shares. And so,
00:23:13
that's that's the main thing is just to think about focus, how you're going to
00:23:16
do it, how you're going to cope with it, what the storytelling and all that's
00:23:19
going to be. And at the same time, you have to make sure that your business is robust enough to do it, but also has
00:23:26
been set up ready for it. Because when you go public, boom, that's it. Have you
00:23:29
got an audit committee? Have you got a remuneration committee? Have you got the right number of board directors? Have
00:23:34
you got some VCs off the board and some new into um, independent directors in? So, there's always things that you have
00:23:40
to kind of think about in the run up to it, quite apart from the actual quite grueling process of of all the sales to
00:23:46
get to the point of the IPO. Yeah, no, you're absolutely correct. All the all the kind of pre-setup is almost
00:23:54
expected at the point that you're looking for that investment. And if you haven't done it already, even though
00:24:00
you don't really need it if you don't get the investment, is is that pre-work.
00:24:04
It's really important. Yeah. Yeah. Do you um, so when you exited lastminute.com through the IPO,
00:24:13
is there anything that you would kind of look back now and wish somebody had told you that would have made that
00:24:21
process less painful? I mean, I think it's hard not to be very personal at this point because it was such an
00:24:30
exceptional time. And it's quite hard to you know, this this nearly 25 years ago,
00:24:36
right? So, not quite nearly actually. That's a long, long time, especially in the tech
00:24:41
landscape. Things are very different now. I think that um, I wish we'd been a
00:24:46
bit less naive about what funds do, which is their job, but it can feel pretty brutal when you're in
00:24:52
it, which is say, "Yeah, we're going to buy a bunch of your stock. We'd love to
00:24:54
be long-term holders." I can think of two funds that did that. They looked us
00:24:58
in the eye and they said, "We'll be really long-term holders." And then on
00:25:00
the day of the IPO, they flipped our stock, which meant they got the bump, obviously, of that uplift in the share
00:25:06
price that went from, I can't remember, £3.75 to £5.25, let's say, and then
00:25:11
helped in the collapse of that share price. So, I think if I'd been more on it and Brent had been more on it and
00:25:17
we'd understood more, we might have had a bit more clout to be able to build our
00:25:21
cap table in a bit more an effective, long-lasting way. That's one thing. Mhm.
00:25:25
And then also think um that as I was then a young founder, going public is a public moment, you know, to go in
00:25:32
public. And although it would be different for founders now, I hope, because it would be less unusual,
00:25:37
you know, I personally had a massive amount of attention on me. Uh huge amount of PR. And I think about
00:25:43
this a lot because if it was the age of social media, I think it could have been
00:25:46
just completely overwhelming. It was pretty bad then. I got upwards of 100 letters calling me a
00:25:51
excuse me for my language, because the share price share price had collapsed, right? But imagine if that
00:25:57
was the age of social media, what I might have had online. And you could argue I put my head above the parapet. I
00:26:02
we used, you know, me as an idea to build the brand of the company. And I was a young woman and all that stuff. It
00:26:08
was terribly unfair. It was Brent's idea of the company. And he'd get cut out of
00:26:11
photos in the press and so for just this like young woman doing her thing. So, you could argue I I'd done that to build
00:26:16
the business, but I think it was much tougher than I had expected when the um stock price began to fall. And I
00:26:23
personally got a lot of um um thrown at me. So, I think being prepared as a founder that you are now public and
00:26:31
your role is very different. You are in a quarterly reporting cycle. You do have
00:26:36
to behave in a different way as a company. You can't tell everybody everything internally anymore. You need
00:26:41
It's It's different. It is just different. And not always worse, you know, it's a growth growth moment, but
00:26:47
be aware. >> [snorts] >> Yeah, that's really interesting. And that inflection moment of
00:26:54
of that kind of there's the media tend to like somebody to dislike, and they tend to like you
00:27:01
for a bit and then dislike you, and that switch is is interesting. It's the same
00:27:06
with potential like celebrities and the like, but essentially somebody that builds a business doesn't do it
00:27:11
necessarily to become a celebrity and to put themselves in that situation. So, that must have been really really hard,
00:27:18
and I know from the CEO that I spoke Yeah, the CEO I spoke to only a couple of days ago said to me that even some
00:27:26
family and friends were a little like, "Ooh, look what I've read here, and is
00:27:31
this actually right?" And, you know, all this sort of rubbish that gets stirred
00:27:36
up and started creating ripples beyond just the just the business side of it. So, then it was family life. Yeah,
00:27:44
that's interesting. I I don't remember that so much, but it you know, it
00:27:49
the age of What am I trying to say? The age of men of kind of the excitement around the dot
00:27:54
com boom and then the bust was pretty intense, but right now it is just as bad for CEOs, right? You know, a little bit
00:28:00
of something on social media or a bit of a knock on LinkedIn or something that's
00:28:04
bubbling in the employee base. It There are a lot different dimensions to manage
00:28:08
as you become more public, and it doesn't happen slowly. It happens boom, just like that. You know, you're a
00:28:12
private company on a Thursday and you're a public company on a Friday, and your
00:28:15
life has changed, and you're in the public eye, and everyone knows kind of nominally what you're worth as well.
00:28:20
That's another feeling because I even though we, you know, I owned like 2% of the company by the time we went
00:28:27
public, it was still worth about 10 million quid, and there it was very visibly and publicly, and that's a whole
00:28:32
other strange feeling, too. So, there's a lot of different dimensions, none of
00:28:36
which is to complain about all of that. You know, that is what you do. You put yourself out there, but I just think as
00:28:41
a young founder, I wish I'd been a bit less perhaps naive about some of the consequences of all of that. And I think
00:28:50
now it's just as intense. So it's worth being aware of that as well as as
00:28:55
founders now. Yeah, absolutely. And you've you've obviously you now hold non-exec director
00:29:02
positions. So you've moved away from that kind of entrepreneur founder CEO space into the
00:29:08
non-exec director space. As as a kind of non-exec director [snorts] >> however forgotten my karaoke business.
00:29:15
It's okay. I [laughter] did start a karaoke business. Lucky lucky voice. Yes, I have overlooked that one. Well,
00:29:22
there you go. We've got six venues around the country. I don't run it anymore, but I did found it. So I
00:29:27
haven't completely moved away from crazy ideas. So sorry to interrupt. No, absolutely. No, that's great.
00:29:34
Um yes, as a as a non-exec director, what do you think is one of the most useful questions that can be asked of
00:29:42
your CEO? Now you're on the other side of it. Yeah, I mean it does depend on the
00:29:50
moment in time. Of course. >> So you know, it's very different if you're talking to a first-time beginner
00:29:56
startup founder to if you're doing a scale-up founder to if you're doing to a
00:30:00
you know, a CEO of like either a big scale business or about to be public or public company. So
00:30:06
you know, it is very different and I think that's part of it. It's to me
00:30:10
really listening to the CEO. I think that one of the mistakes that sometimes board members make is that they think
00:30:15
they're there to somehow catch out the executives or the team. That somehow they've done their job really well if
00:30:21
somebody's got a bit embarrassed in the board meeting. Yeah. >> [laughter]
00:30:25
>> It's such crap. It really is. If I That's not your job. Your job is to pick
00:30:30
the CEO, get behind them, and then if you don't like them, get rid of the CEO.
00:30:33
Don't keep calling out people. That's not helpful. And with the executives, I
00:30:37
have the same pet peeve in a way. When they're in the room, challenge them of
00:30:41
course, ask questions, get form an opinion, and then give that opinion to the CEO, their boss. You're not their
00:30:46
boss. So, I just carry out that at the beginning because I think sometimes people always think, well, I've got to
00:30:51
do a good job in my board meeting because I got, you know, got Roger on the back foot. It's like, no, no, no,
00:30:56
no, you don't want to be doing that. So, in my opinion, I think questions that
00:31:01
people don't ask CEOs enough are things that perhaps feel a little bit more adjacent. Of course, you want to
00:31:07
understand how they're thinking about the next 3 years, but how are you feeling about the team? And what's
00:31:12
worrying you about the people in the team at the minute? Or, you know, what's
00:31:16
keeping you awake at night? What's your top priority in the next quarter and how
00:31:19
can we help you get there? You know, is there anything we can do to make, you know, chances of success more likely?
00:31:27
And I think, you know, trying to get into their head, it's really freaking lonely being a CEO. And sometimes the
00:31:32
board or the chair or people sort of their peer group sometimes possibly are the only people you can kind of share
00:31:36
that space with. So, that doesn't mean you shouldn't have tough conversations.
00:31:40
Doesn't mean you shouldn't tell them when you think things might not be going
00:31:42
in the right direction, but I would always start from a point of view of like trying to understand what they're
00:31:47
thinking about and what their anxieties are. Um, and then start from there. Yeah, I think that's great. Within a
00:31:55
within a the time scale of a board meeting, and also given the fact that it's supposed to be more strategic than
00:32:02
operational, there's only so much information that a non-exec director or chair can pull out of the executive. And
00:32:08
so, therefore, it is, as you say, a matter of working out where their where their pain points are. Um, and as
00:32:15
you say, encouraging and supporting, assuming that obviously things are traveling in the right direction. And I
00:32:20
think you're absolutely right. I have seen way too many board meetings where
00:32:25
people have almost point scored, whether it's the CEO with some of their own
00:32:29
executive team that might be nipping at their heels and going, well, I'm going
00:32:34
to put them down because last board meeting they said, oh, are they your success Are they your
00:32:38
successor?" And they just don't The CEO doesn't want to hear that. And then they
00:32:42
had The next time they just make them look really silly by allowing them to be under prepared. It does not work very
00:32:50
well. And the best non-exec directors and chairs after meetings have even come to me and just said, "Wow, that was
00:32:57
brutal and completely unnecessary." And if it does anything, it just says, "What
00:33:01
is the culture of this business actually like if someone The CEO is wanting to throw under the bus one of their direct
00:33:08
reports who then manages a whole division?" Um not helpful. Can really not helpful. Completely agree. Mhm.
00:33:17
It's very challenging. But looking at it the other side, when you were a chief
00:33:21
executive, it's a very different view. And I'm finding this myself on my own
00:33:26
board, um where I was independent before and now I'm the CEO and accountable to
00:33:31
the board. I can now see some of the challenges of coming or going into meetings or coming out of meetings and
00:33:39
either uh kind of thinking I should have known the answer to that question the board
00:33:43
asked me or why on earth did they probe so deeply on that when there's so many
00:33:47
other issues that should have been raised and I really wanted to get to that, but they just would not get off
00:33:52
this one topic. With your view now of being a non-exec director, how do you think that having been a CEO
00:34:00
and now sitting on the other side of the table it's changed your perspective on
00:34:04
how you operate as a non-exec director? Uh I don't think it changed it because I
00:34:08
was only ever a non-exec having come out of being a founder and have my own board, right? So, I guess I've always
00:34:16
have tilted towards thinking about things from the management perspective. And I think most good non-executive
00:34:21
directors do try and do that because most of them have been in some kind of operational roles, so don't be too down
00:34:26
on everybody. But I think you can as you get a bit grander and a bit more away from operational detail, it's a bit too
00:34:32
easy sometimes to forget what that actually feels like. Um so, I don't know if it changed anything.
00:34:37
I hope that's why I've been anyway an effective board member because I'm kind
00:34:42
of starting always with with the person. Um I I think the the other thing to remember, and I I
00:34:48
always say this is, boards are basically completely unimportant until they're
00:34:52
phenomenally important. And so, I always just try and get in my head that the CEO
00:34:58
is not worrying about the board all the time. That is just not That's not what
00:35:01
they feel is going to unlock the success of their company. And if they are, then
00:35:05
there's probably an issue, right? So, you know, the CEO is worrying about the
00:35:09
customer base, they're worrying about whether the team is right, all the stuff, geopolitical things might be
00:35:13
going on. And so, just bit bearing that in mind, I think is also extremely helpful. And most of the time boards are
00:35:20
there to be symbolic, they're doing governance, they're obviously doing the
00:35:24
bits of legal stuff they have to do, all that all that piece. Only at moments of change, crisis,
00:35:31
acquisition, and all those things, that the things become different. And I think
00:35:35
it's it is quite important to keep that in mind. Mhm. Absolutely. You've worked with some
00:35:42
really high-profile and continue to work with some really high-profile boards. When you walk into a boardroom, what do
00:35:50
you think instantly speaks to you about the effectiveness of that board or what signals toxicity um and maybe somewhere
00:35:58
that you might not want to be sticking around for longer term? I mean, I think the relationship between
00:36:05
the chair and the CEO is fundamental. Uh if I haven't been the chair, then that's
00:36:09
the thing that I think creates the board dynamic. Cuz if there's tension between
00:36:14
them, and I don't mean that there may be a challenging question being asked from
00:36:17
the chair. I'm talking about something more fundamental, then I it's I, in my
00:36:21
opinion, incredibly hard for the board to function well because it keeps you you just keep kind of ramming up against
00:36:26
that relationship. And I I've unfortunately experienced that way too many times in my life. So, that's the
00:36:32
first thing is just really understand what that chair CEO relationship is like. If there's anything you can do to make
00:36:37
sure it's as productive and helpful as possible. Um the second thing and you
00:36:41
already pointed it out is how the the CEO treats the the executive team and the team coming into the board, whether
00:36:47
more people do come to the board. Some CEOs can be very private. I don't think
00:36:49
that's very good. I think you should be using the board to expose your team as
00:36:53
much as possible. Um that's that's a kind of indicator. So, I I guess for me it is about those
00:36:58
relationships initially. And I And also reaction to questions. So, you know, when you ask a question, are they
00:37:05
interested? Do they want to give you the answer? Or are they kind of trying to push push you away from the answer and
00:37:11
and and close close you off. Yeah. And what do you think is um a kind of some good behaviors or
00:37:18
behaviors you've seen of the most effective chairs? Cuz being a chair is a massive responsibility, um but also
00:37:25
comes with some very different challenges to being a non-exec director. Yeah. I mean, I think most most recently I
00:37:32
guess it was chairing WeTransfer up to its acquisition by Bending Spoons, big uh European tech company. And I guess I
00:37:38
saw my role there as obviously you just have to spend a lot more time with the company. It sounds obvious, but that's
00:37:42
the first thing, right? A good chair doesn't just rock up and chair, you know, you have to build a relationship
00:37:48
build a relationship with the CEO, build relationships with the wider team, spend
00:37:52
time in the office, try to, you know, be a bit more of the glue so that people get to know you, they see you, you're
00:37:58
not ever acting in a surprising way, they they know some of your surprising behaviors. Um that's the first thing is
00:38:03
just more time. Uh I think the second thing is you know, you are chairing the meetings,
00:38:07
you're not running them, they're not your meetings, they're not your voice,
00:38:10
they're not you deciding. That's the CEO of the company. You have to facilitate
00:38:14
the effective challenge, the effective um provocations or the the right strategic direction. So, a lot of that
00:38:20
is about the agenda, making sure the agenda is good, going through it with the the CEO, making sure that you're
00:38:26
getting to a good cadence through the year, you're covering off topics that the board members want to talk about.
00:38:30
So, spending time with the company, setting a really good agenda, and then spending time with the other non-execs.
00:38:36
You know, I remember when I joined the board of Twitter, I thought I come here from the US UK, sorry, I don't know
00:38:40
anyone here in the US. I'm going to have a cup cup of coffee with everybody on
00:38:43
the board, and got a board member said it was the first time that any board member had ever done something outside
00:38:49
the board with them. And I remember thinking, "Wow, that feels completely bizarre, because how can you function as
00:38:54
a group if you don't sort of know each other a bit?" So, I also see a role of
00:38:57
the chair as kind of being that facilitator, encouraging the non-execs to form friendship not friendships, but
00:39:03
professional relationships, be able to work together well. It doesn't just have
00:39:06
to be social, it can be, you know, just professional as well, obviously. So, I if I'm sharing something, I spend a lot
00:39:13
of time in the company with the CEO without trying to dominate, a lot of time on the agenda, a lot of time
00:39:19
getting to know the other non-execs, and trying to facilitate that. So, always making sure we have a non-exec only
00:39:24
session, a non-exec with the CEO of the company session, and then a wash-up after all of that kind of stuff, and
00:39:30
make sure if there's anything outstanding, you go back to board members, you call them, you you you're
00:39:34
available if anyone wants to talk to you about stuff that might be worrying them
00:39:38
in the business. So, you know, it is work, but it's not it's not rocket science, it's about making the
00:39:44
relationships work, in my opinion. Yeah. And you you mentioned Twitter there, so you were part of the board up
00:39:51
until the the sale of Twitter to Elon. How how did that all kind of not necessarily come about, but how did that
00:40:00
work with regards to the board, because that must have been quite an interesting
00:40:04
situation to be in? Yes, interesting is one way of describing it. >> [laughter]
00:40:09
>> I'm trying to be diplomatic here. I was chair of the nomination committee when
00:40:14
Elon decided he wanted to be on the board. I'll never forget it. I got a text message. It must have been early
00:40:19
San Francisco time, so like after lunch UK time on a Sunday from one of the other board members saying, "We need to
00:40:25
talk. Elon wants to join our board." And I I didn't know Elon, so it was a joke,
00:40:29
basically. So, I called him and he's like, "Uh yeah, we need you to talk to
00:40:32
Elon." And I was like, "Oh my god." Because the first line of defense is the
00:40:35
nomination governance committee chair. Um anyway, as it was the the CEO and the the chair met him first and then I I met
00:40:42
him afterwards. But, you know, in my official roles as chair of nomination governance committee, I had to manage a
00:40:48
process uh that then turned into acquisition. I was also chair of the compensation
00:40:53
committee, so there was a whole bunch of stuff around that with the acquisition and people's comp and what that was
00:40:57
going to look like. And it was really intense. And then I was also on the transaction committee. There were just
00:41:02
three of us, me and the chair and um Patrick Pichette. So, it was for a period of time it was like becoming an
00:41:09
executive in the company, to be honest. It was work every day. I mean, obviously
00:41:13
I wasn't running Twitter. I was here in the UK. But, you know, we had meetings
00:41:16
every day, sometimes multiple meetings. I can remember twice we worked through the night, 24 hours solid without
00:41:21
stopping cuz we had to try and get contracts done. Like two holidays completely trashed.
00:41:25
But, I don't mean like poor me. That that's the job. But, I think sometimes
00:41:28
people don't appreciate that is the job. You know, you you have to show up at
00:41:32
those moments of crisis. We had one board member who I think just didn't quite realize that, you know, taking
00:41:37
your kids to school is not a reason not to come to a a Twitter board meeting that was called an hour before. You you
00:41:42
have to show up. Um so, I feel in some ways unbelievably lucky because it was an exposure to a set of
00:41:49
circumstances that most people don't have in their whole career. And I feel as though stuff happened in that
00:41:56
that 18 months on that board, particularly around the deal on bit that was on the board sorry for 6 years, but
00:42:01
in that in that bit that was, you know, most people would just love to have exposure in their careers. But, in other
00:42:09
ways it it was really it was tough. It was really tough. And it was unpleasant and you know, we had to sell the Elon
00:42:15
because he'd given us this insane offer for the business, but no one woke up in the morning wanting to
00:42:20
to trash Twitter. We were on that board. It was a difficult board to be on. It was a complicated company. It was in the
00:42:25
public eye. And you know, I'm proud of the fact that it didn't kind of turn
00:42:29
into the Hunger Games, which it could have done. Didn't turn into the Hunger
00:42:32
Games in the press. We kept the board together. Kept the management team together.
00:42:36
And in the end, despite what you might think about where the company has ended up, we did the
00:42:41
right thing for shareholders, which was our job. Yeah, absolutely. And that that's
00:42:46
another moment of immense media attention. Yeah. Um you you were used to that, right? Cuz you had experienced it
00:42:55
in >> I mean I guess that fazes me so much and I I think the only thing that fazes me was, you know, some
00:43:00
of the Elon tactics that he uses through his lawyers are unpleasant and that's
00:43:04
not nice. But um you know, personally. Uh but the the media stuff, you know, I I I feel quite robust about that.
00:43:13
Yeah. Oh, it's good. It is really interesting and like you say, it's definitely one of
00:43:19
those moments that not everyone will experience. No, it really won't. And I remember
00:43:25
I kept the FT, I think, cuz I had one of those kind of crazy 24-hour days and then the next day on the front page of
00:43:31
the FT was all this stuff about what we'd been doing. I was like, this is so
00:43:35
weird. It's like living in this parallel universe where there's all this noise
00:43:38
about this deal. At least there was noise around me. Um not I don't mean me and the deal, I just mean where I was
00:43:43
looking, my newspapers or the radio. And I'm in it and it's just so strange.
00:43:47
Sometimes you have this kind of weird discombobulation feeling. Um but yeah, it it's uh it was certainly well, I
00:43:54
learned a lot and I'm so lucky to have worked with some really spectacular people in in the business. They were
00:43:59
really amazing. But it it sometimes I forget that it was particularly intense because it came on
00:44:04
the back of two things that I had had to lead for the company. The first of which
00:44:08
was managing Jack's transition out of the company and recruitment of the new
00:44:12
CEO. So, I led that process and that was pretty high-stakes and quite intense. And also, had to move the activist
00:44:19
investor Elliott off the board. And I remember I got a text message from the general counsel first
00:44:25
first week of January saying, "Well, nothing can possibly be as intense as 2021." Cut to then 2 months later, Elon
00:44:32
wants to buy the company. I was like, "Oh my god." [laughter] Wow. Yep.
00:44:37
Yeah, that that's definitely could be a career-defining moment, but you've had
00:44:41
many of those. Many of those. I'm sure. Um so, boards really do um look at diversity and diversity of
00:44:52
thought. Um and with that sort of thing, sometimes there can be friction, um but sometimes that can be necessary
00:45:03
as part of building building a good team and building a challenging senior team or even looking at the board itself.
00:45:12
Yeah. >> Um what is one uncomfortable truth about how people can avoid the box tick and
00:45:21
and support that kind of constructive criticism without it getting too out of hand? I'm sure you've experienced a lot
00:45:27
of egos in the various different boards that you've been on over the course of
00:45:32
time or been part of. What do you think is is a potential way through that? Well, the first thing I'd say is
00:45:41
read the room, right? You know, different CEOs or different executives react in different ways in different
00:45:47
circumstances, of course, cuz we're all people and we all react in different
00:45:50
ways at different times. So, this kind of one way of being a critic or being a challenger might not always be
00:45:56
effective. So, read the room and sometimes that will mean taking that discussion outside the boardroom, not
00:46:02
because you're trying to have a sub board meeting, but because might be more
00:46:04
appropriate just to say to the CEO, "You know what? I didn't like it when you
00:46:07
called out Blair in the meeting. I I could see they were uncomfortable. I just wanted to give you that feedback. I
00:46:12
think it might be worth thinking about that moment." Or it might be that the
00:46:16
right thing to do is to talk to a couple of other non-execs and say, "Look, do
00:46:19
you think that was this is something we should be having a bit more of a a discussion about?" And and and then
00:46:24
coming to the CEO like that. Or it might be absolutely that it's in the room. And
00:46:27
very often that is the right way. And my own view is that you want to Partly this is a chair-based role, but
00:46:35
it's also you can add to this as a good non-exec. You want to build up trust by showing
00:46:41
you understand the company, putting in the work, doing the time. You know, you can't just walk into a boardroom and
00:46:46
start criticizing everybody. That's obviously going to land deafly. But if people can see that you are trying to
00:46:51
learn, you've been involved in the business, you've got to know some of the
00:46:54
characters, you are doing the work, you read the board papers. Again, I'm always
00:46:58
shocked by how many people sometimes I feel like haven't read the board papers.
00:47:01
Then I think that's is your job. And it doesn't have to be that you're doing it
00:47:05
in a way that sounds like you're being a complete ass. You can do it in a way
00:47:08
that sounds like, you know, I'm interested in this because when I was thinking about it, a different
00:47:12
perspective came to me. How have you been thinking about that? If you want to have a light touch. Or you can say,
00:47:17
"Look, just to give a perspective here. You told me three board meetings ago that by this
00:47:22
board meeting this was going to happen. Why has Why in your opinion has it not worked?" Or something You know, you can
00:47:27
There's always a way to challenge without making it sound like you're trying to be scoring points or being a
00:47:33
bit of an ass. But I think the first thing is read the room. And it's not always that
00:47:38
one mechanism that's going to be the most effective. Yeah, absolutely. And obviously on the
00:47:43
flip side of having that constructive challenge is group think. Yes. >> Um how how do you think that chairs and
00:47:50
non-executive directors and and the executives can help avoid that group think? Because that puts everybody at
00:47:56
risk. Personal reputations as well as potentially the organization. It's really hard. It's really hard, and I
00:48:02
think um it is good to have some grit in the oyster. You know, I've been on boards
00:48:07
with some really some really tricky people, and sometimes they've been tricky just being tricky, and it hasn't
00:48:11
helped, and then way of being tricky hasn't been good. But what they've said
00:48:14
been saying is often been right. Uh I think you know, healthy boards, in my opinion, have a perspective wide-ranging
00:48:21
perspectives, and it is the chair's job to bring them out, and not to be frightened sometimes just to let those
00:48:27
opinions sit there. You don't always have to react to everything. You can bring out people who might say, "Erica,
00:48:32
what do you think? I'm sure you're going to have a different point of view." And
00:48:35
you can sort of set it up, and then you can enable that person to speak. It's
00:48:38
just basic common sense in many ways. But I do think letting everybody speak is a good way, so that people find their
00:48:44
voice. They feel like it's okay to talk. And you can definitely help as chair.
00:48:49
And if you don't feel your chair is helping you, then talk to them. And say,
00:48:53
"You might not be aware, but I don't feel I can speak this stuff. Can you
00:48:56
help me express my opinion? Or what do you think?" I think, you know, building
00:48:59
those outside relationships doesn't have to be all in some kind of Lady Macbeth
00:49:03
plot. It can just be being smart about building relationships, right? So, um that's what I enjoy doing on boards. I
00:49:10
think helping them function better is is really really important. And you know, I
00:49:15
just joined a board recently and just asked the CEO if I could have some time with them, and we had a really great
00:49:21
couple of hours. Some of it was about the business. Some of it wasn't about nothing about the business. But I know
00:49:25
that because of that, and he now trusts me a bit more, we know each other a bit better, I told him a couple of things I
00:49:30
thought actually just about the format of the board meetings, and now I know that if I was going to challenge
00:49:35
something a bit bigger and deeper, we've just we've got that banked bit of trust.
00:49:39
So, you know, none of what I'm saying is is anything other than common sense, but
00:49:43
again, just a perspective from so many different boards is that I think often people don't think that it
00:49:48
is important to put in the time on those relationships to build that trust as it
00:49:53
as it can as it is I in my opinion. Yeah, and people are human, right? So, it's about having that humanity and
00:50:01
bringing that to the leadership position the same as you would do any other role.
00:50:06
But the other thing to just remember is you are not an executive. You're non-executive, right? And so, sometimes
00:50:12
you will say things and you will be disagreed with. And you will think they're wrong and you will probably be
00:50:17
right. Sometimes you'll be wrong. Sometimes you might be right. That's it, right? You can only give your
00:50:22
perspective, but I think accepting that you don't you're not trying to drive always
00:50:28
the outcome, that you're trying to kind of help in the process of the thinking.
00:50:32
That's quite a good way of thinking about challenges well. Yeah, [snorts] absolutely. And boards
00:50:39
when they have um their conversations and debates, will talk about risk appetite. Yes.
00:50:46
And I think few [snorts] fewer than I would hope really understand what that means. Yeah.
00:50:54
Um how do you think boards should approach risk? The world is fast changing, right? It's constantly
00:51:01
evolving. I think risk registers are one of the things that make me laugh the most. You
00:51:05
know, the charts where you've got like you know, all these things plotted on a
00:51:08
picture and you think, well, now I always say, "What do you do with this? Where does this live in the business and
00:51:12
what has this What has changed in the business because you've done this picture?"
00:51:16
And I think that's quite a good starting point. It's like, okay, what what is how
00:51:19
do you manage risk and really understanding that as a board member so that you can get a sense of it. Um
00:51:25
and obviously you have different levels of risk in different bits of a business and different life stages of a business,
00:51:29
but just having a general discussion about, okay, what is our appetite for risk?
00:51:34
If you're just pre-IPO, probably quite low because you don't want to screw
00:51:36
everything up and you want to make sure you're not going to do some crazy high
00:51:39
or some mad acquisition and and things are going to go in the wrong direction. So, I would say it does depend a bit on
00:51:46
the the time and space. Um and apart from that, I think it you've just got to keep it a live
00:51:53
discussion and it can't be again that we started this conversation, oh risk, it's
00:51:58
over there. Yeah. It's got to be something that you talk about as something that is living and breathing
00:52:03
and and that it's a bit more intentional. Yeah. And and looking at risks when
00:52:10
things go wrong, that tends to lead to a crisis and we've already mentioned a few
00:52:14
of them of those kind of intensive public scrutiny or even IPO which isn't necessarily a crisis, but it does create
00:52:22
that tension. How did you stay calm? I think I am just lucky. I am quite a calm person. I'm not I can get very over
00:52:29
excitable and I can be completely ridiculous, but fundamentally I'm quite calm and it's hard to analyze yourself,
00:52:35
isn't it? But I I'm again I I don't mean to uh get the the the tiny violins out, but you know, the
00:52:41
accident I had was so completely life-altering. I went from being an able-bodied person to a disabled person.
00:52:47
And when that's your backdrop, you don't sweat sweat the small stuff quite as
00:52:51
much. You just don't because I'm lucky to be able to walk. And so even when,
00:52:55
you know, Elon's swearing at you and you think you've got everything wrong and
00:52:59
all that, it's like just hold on for me just hold on to that my central thing
00:53:04
which is I am alive and I'm able to function. And so you just need to find a
00:53:09
thing for you that's that thing. And I also um you know, this that's a bit
00:53:13
personal perhaps, but perhaps more helpful than having a catastrophic car accident, I'm not suggesting that.
00:53:18
I just have a hinterland. You know, I say this all the time. You know, for me again, it's reading, it's going to the
00:53:23
theater, obviously my family and all those things, but it's incredibly important to me to have something else
00:53:28
in my life. I'm not a kind of business maniac. I'm not an obsessive just do
00:53:32
work work work. That's my business work all the time. I would be terrible at
00:53:35
that. I like writing. I love reading. I go to the theater a lot. I you know, I enjoy a bunch of things and if I have
00:53:41
them in my life, I know I feel calmer, and I can feel my head getting a bit like full up and hectic if I don't have
00:53:47
that what for me is a pressure valve and a release. So, find your hinterland, whether that's exercise, being outside,
00:53:53
reading a book, whatever it is, reading a poem. Yeah. That's That's a really good piece of
00:53:58
advice. It's probably good piece of advice for anyone in any situation where
00:54:02
it's stressful. Um Probably better than have a catastrophic correct. >> [laughter]
00:54:07
>> Yeah, but you talk about gratitude, and that's important. Um and it's gratitude
00:54:11
for for life and what you have. Um and I think that that everybody can and can kind of take a piece of that and apply
00:54:20
it. And keeping perspective, you know, I know some Some businesses are dealing with life and death. I get that. I've
00:54:26
never really been involved in a business that's where people might actually die.
00:54:29
I mean, now I'm on the board of British Airways, it's slightly different. I'm on
00:54:32
the safety and security committee for there, and uh Allison Britton, the very other brilliant other non-exec, she's
00:54:38
always like, "This is actually the only thing that I do where people might actually die."
00:54:41
But generally, people aren't going to die, and so I think it's just worth
00:54:45
Okay. So, maybe our SaaS sales this year weren't that brilliant. I know it's it's
00:54:50
it's something we have to work through, but just taking a breath and thinking
00:54:53
about what it's like being a woman in Afghanistan. I also find that quite helpful. Yeah, absolutely.
00:54:59
What do you think, talking about kind of hard decisions, what do you think is one
00:55:03
of the hardest board decisions that you've been part of, and what did it teach you?
00:55:07
Definitely all the stuff around dealing with the hardest stuff I had to deal with. Um just the micro daily micro of
00:55:14
the stuff he was throwing at us as a company or he's throwing at the executive team, some of the decisions
00:55:19
you have to make about comp or not for the team in the deal. Horrible, horrible decisions. And dealing with it was
00:55:24
asymmetrical warfare because he was so out of control. Um beyond that, I think in boards, the difficult decisions have
00:55:31
normally been around CEOs and when to move one on and whether to hire the a new one. Um I feel like I've been
00:55:38
involved in far too many CEO transitions of big public companies, of smaller companies. It's never easy, especially
00:55:45
if you have to move someone on when they weren't expecting it. Uh, so I think they're they're the two
00:55:49
the two things. Is there Do you think that there's any way I've also been in situations where
00:55:54
I've seen CEOs being moved on and they were totally blindsided by the whole thing?
00:55:59
I'm I'm probably asking a question that I don't even necessarily feel that even
00:56:03
I could answer, but do you think that there is any anything that board should be doing or maybe not to um
00:56:12
tip off or advise that the the CEO is potentially in that area? I don't Some
00:56:18
of the situations. Sorry to cut across you. >> No, I think Yeah. I think the board
00:56:22
hasn't done its job if the CEO is blindsided. Fair enough. >> Because ideally you should have set up
00:56:27
clear measurable outcomes, metrics. You should be judging the person regularly, having regular feedback with them. And
00:56:33
so it shouldn't be it should never be a surprise. The board has not done its job
00:56:37
well if it's a surprise. And from the other side as well, and if the CEO decides they want to leave, they should
00:56:41
also have built some succession plans, had some open conversations. And that's
00:56:44
all about creating a collaborative environment on the board. So it's not like them and us. The CEO feels they can
00:56:50
talk to the chair. It doesn't have to be the whole board even, but that that is
00:56:53
that is the fundamental job of a of a board is to make sure the company is run well. So I think that's a a fail.
00:57:00
Yeah, absolutely. And I've seen that myself with CEOs deciding to leave and there is then just a a gap because
00:57:08
everyone thought that they were in it for the long term and they wanted to stick around and do whatever it might
00:57:12
be, but there was just no way that that was going to happen. And And that was it, they were gone. Final question,
00:57:21
um, if you were mentoring a new non-executive, so new to being a non-executive, um, that had just joined
00:57:29
a board that you were on, what one piece of advice would you give them that you wouldn't find in a handbook?
00:57:41
I mean, I think a lot of things you probably would find in the handbook, but I'm not sure it's as easy to do them as
00:57:45
you imagine. So, I think the first thing is this combination of finding your voice quite quickly so that you're you
00:57:53
establish yourself but listening for a very long time. So, that it can be a tricky combination cuz when you first
00:57:59
going to be like, "Oh, I've got to speak. I must make myself heard." But a
00:58:03
good chair will help you make yourself heard. Um but the main thing is just to keep
00:58:08
listening and really really really try and learn the business. I think, you know, as I said, I think the thing that
00:58:14
lots of people don't do that's always valuable is just ask the other non-execs
00:58:18
to spend half an hour with you. Get their perspectives on things. You know, they may look like they're being
00:58:23
intimidating or they don't want to know, but that's not true. Everybody likes to
00:58:26
be asked. The worst they can do is say no. Um so, I would I would always say you probably would anyway spend time
00:58:32
with the chair, but ask the other non-execs to spend half an hour with you and you'll learn a lot. And try and get
00:58:38
that combination right of finding your voice but also taking the time to really listen and learn from the business.
00:58:45
That's great. Thank you very much, Martha. It's been fantastic to have you
00:58:48
on the podcast. Thanks for joining me. Thank you for inviting me. And if you're
00:58:52
thinking about going on a board, do it because it's an amazing extra piece of
00:58:55
the puzzle in the career, I think. Yeah, thank you. That's great. There were a number of elements that
00:59:03
stood out to me from the conversation I had today with Martha. Um one of them was around the learning
00:59:09
curve that she experienced with lastminute.com. She was in her 20s >> [music]
00:59:14
>> and moving through that process and also stepping towards the IPO process and
00:59:19
what [music] that meant for the organization and also for her personally was really interesting. I think the fact
00:59:24
that she um said [music] that understanding funds and investors more would have helped her.
00:59:30
Um is hopefully incredibly helpful to organizations that are going down that IPO route um and uh allows them to
00:59:38
[music] think about some of these things maybe in a little bit more detail. She spoke about creating great teams,
00:59:44
which is what she said was part um if not a very large part of her success. [music] And she said that building those
00:59:52
teams was about having a strong sense of purpose both [music] personally but also
00:59:57
the team as well. I think that realistically [music] in today's modern world, modern boards, AI is going to be
01:00:05
a topic that comes up regularly. And Martha spoke [music] to us about that and said that it was really important to
01:00:12
keep AI under consideration. She didn't have all the answers. I don't think
01:00:16
anybody does, as she said. Um but that [music] real life impact on people and human
01:00:21
uh humans is so important. Finally, [music] I think the consequences of going public was something that really
01:00:29
stood out to me. So, she spoke about the consequences for her personally and the
01:00:34
fact that she was pushed [music] into the spotlight even though she was a co-founder. Um she was personally um the
01:00:41
person that everybody wanted to talk to. [music] And she also spoke about a lot of the negativity that came from that um
01:00:49
and a lot of the criticism that came as a result. If you found this conversation valuable,
01:00:54
please follow the show and share it with someone who leads through complexity. Until next time, stay thoughtful, stay
01:01:01
brave, and stay in the room. >> [music] [music]