Look at the very top of the UK’s leading companies and you will
find plenty of ex-finance directors and marketing chiefs. You will come
across former operating division heads who have stepped up to group
managing director or chief executive level. While at younger companies
that have rapidly grown into major players, entrepreneurial founders may
still hold the reins of power.
A recent survey of FTSE 100 company bosses by Management Today found 36
per cent had come from finance backgrounds, 17 per cent from
accountancy, 13 per cent from marketing and 11 per cent from general
management.
Only one had communications experience: Glaxo Wellcome chief executive
Robert Ingram described his route to the top as through
government/public affairs.
Despite an increasing recognition of the importance of PR at boardroom
level and in an age when corporate reputation is all, a career in PR
would still appear to be inadequate qualification for a key business
role.
But it is also possible to draw the conclusion that the situation may be
changing, albeit gradually.
Last week it became clear that Centrica’s former group corporate affairs
director Simon Lewis, who recently began a two-year secondment to
Buckingham Palace as communications secretary, will (when his tenure
advising the Queen comes to an end) return to Centrica in a ’general
management role’, probably running one of its businesses. What he has
learnt from a career in PR, argues Lewis, will help him in this
task.
’Any significant general management role has a very big communications
element,’ says Lewis. ’Communications is integral to the job. So I won’t
be turning my back on what I’ve done for the past 15 years, I’ll be
building on it.’
So is a career in corporate communications good preparation for a bigger
management job? Virgin Group corporate affairs director Will Whitehorn
thinks so, pointing out that some senior in-house staff are given
responsibilities that extend far beyond the broadest definition of PR.
Whitehorn himself is often involved in looking at new business
opportunities for Virgin, including acquisitions.
’Generally I think that a lot of companies in Britain still don’t give
enough importance to the role of corporate affairs in their decisions
about their business,’ says Whitehorn. ’But at Virgin it’s at the heart
of what we do.
’A lot of PR people are good business people in their own right. If you
look at Matthew Freud he’s definitely branched out of PR in the last few
years. Ventures like Quo Vadis have been successful for him.’
But Freud, the founder and chairman of Freud Communications, thinks that
PR skills per se are not a passport to success in business and must be
complemented by a fundamental understanding of how business works and
the capacity to ’add value’ to a venture, whatever its nature.
’I’ve always felt that PR was a very fast track to nowhere very much,’
says Freud. ’The PR skill set is very specific to PR. And there aren’t
too many examples of ex-PR people who litter the chambers of power.’
The specific nature of PR means that practitioners tend to stay within
the discipline. Even though many senior agency and in-house staff have a
deep appreciation of all elements of the marketing mix, few are invited
to become marketing directors: a job which could be a springboard to
higher things within a company.
But there are always exceptions. Talented people are breaking out of
pigeon holes. Lewis, of course, is one - although exactly what his next
job will be is far from evident. A second one-time IPR president Pamela
Taylor is another. She is now chief executive of water industry trade
body Water UK, following a career which encompassed 15 years as BMA
public affairs director and two years as corporate affairs director at
the BBC.
There are other notable success stories, among them Lorraine
Langham.
Having built her career in local government PR, she is now executive
director at Hackney Council.
’One of the issues for the industry is how PR people break through the
ceiling,’ says Langham. ’There’s not a clear professional development
route. From my perspective I think people with a PR background have a
lot to offer: they understand organisations’ business objectives, are
able to look at issues from other people’s points of view and have
developed the robust skills to tell it how it is.’
First and 42nd managing director Alison Canning thinks that it is only a
matter of time before more PR professionals are given bigger management
roles. Part of the reason why she set up her consultancy, which
specialises in strategic advice at the highest level, is because she
believes that communications is beginning to be recognised as ’the
central business discipline.’
’Of all the communications disciplines PR is the broadest,’ says
Canning.
’It embraces the widest range of techniques and applies them to the
broadest audiences.
It’s only a matter of time before you get the Paul Barbers (Barclays
Bank Retail Financial Services communications director) and Simon
Lewises of this world taking on broader business roles. One of these
days someone like that is going to become a chief executive.’
