Bristol Business School meets leaders of industry
Sir Rob began by referring to the current volatile and uncertain economic environment that is impacting on corporate, consumer and national stakeholders. He saw the recessions as arising from liquidity problems impacting on solvency. He contended that with the further stimulation of debt funded consumption, it is possible to alleviate the more damaging economic and social effects. However, he cautioned that for the next few years, we are likely to see zero or slow growth. Sir Rob saw the regulatory process on money supply as a major factor, where governments reduced interest rates to stimulate demand and where huge fiscal debt resulted. He borrowed the phrase used by Al Gore that we have had a wonderful party but regrettably we now have a painful hangover, and need to get back to earning our living and living within our means. He then linked the discussion on the economic crisis to what he thinks makes a successful and robust organisation – company culture. He defined culture as a composite of values, some of which are explicit and common values, and others as implicit and unspoken. Rob contended that it was a combination of these values that gives long lasting competitive advantage within the industry and he gave examples of companies with ‘great cultures’. Sir Rob said that long lasting competitive advantage is often driven by employees ‘discretionary creativity and energy’ in addition to the norms of honesty, integrity reliability and ethical behaviour. He then used the example of Legal & General and the implementation of the ‘value for money’ model that then had to be adopted into the culture. He concluded by saying how you can change behaviours over the course of a number of weeks or months, attitudes can be changed in months/years, but if you wish to change or add to a companies culture, you must be persistent and have discipline, taking a period of 5-10 years. |
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The second Distinguished Executive Address in the Autumn series was given by Sir Rob Margetts CBE, Chairman of Legal & General on Tuesday 28 October.
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Wednesday 24 February 2010 at 09:40:00 AM
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