Business Leaders Will Have to Bury Their Inner Branson
What business leaders could the British public name today? Richad Branson and Alan Sugar probably. And Fred Goodwin. But which FTSE 100 chief executives are household names apart from Willie Walsh and Sir Stuart Rose? Have we turned our corporate champions into anonymous or interchangeable nobodies?
Perhaps Justin King and Terry Leahy might just ring a bell with informed laymen, but even they are less famous than their supermarket predecessors. It seems rejection of the cult of personality - and the concept that the company is greater than any person -- means we are not allowing our best executives to shine.
The likes of Robert Maxwell, Tiny Rowland and Asil Nadir got prominent leaders a bad reputation but where are the Charles Clores, Isaac Wolfsons, Arnold Weinstocks, Max Josephs and other corporate giants of the past? Even from more recent decades, where are people as well known as John Harvey-Jones, Lord Hanson or Lord King?
Christopher Gent, JP Garnier, Clara Furse or Geoff Mulcahy might have produced an expression of recognition, but not their successors. Most people have never heard of most large companies' chairmen or chief executives, even though they can list cabinet ministers and probably even church leaders.
If the business chiefs were merely getting on with their job and keeping a low profile it might not matter. It might even be admirable, even though if they want their companies to succeed surely they ought to be known among a wide constituency. But the suspicion is that the job they are doing is managing - not leading.
Leadership does not fit into modern models of corporate governance, where decisions are made by committee and consensus rather than individuals. The recent Walker Report on banks spells out how boards should restrain enthusiastic and dominant chief executives. Flare and decisiveness are negative qualities in boardrooms nowadays, alongside risk.
The result is to drag down to a lowest common denominator any businessman who shows initiative and innovation. There is even the risk that instead of curbing leaders with such traits, they are never even allowed to sit in the top seat.
It is not surprising that able executives quit public companies to work in private firms or private-equity houses where they can have free rein and where leadership and individuality are not dirty words. That is where the likes of Stelios Haji-Ioannou, Philip Green, Lord Hollick and Lord Browne are now found -- along with Branson and Sugar, whose public personas would now sit uncomfortably in public companies.
If business wants to be part of the economic and political debate it needs a voice and must speak up. If it wants entrepreneurs it must accommodate personalities. And if we want a future generation of leaders rather than managers it must have role models to emulate. Who among today's faceless FTSE bosses would a schoolchild or graduate want to follow?