Speaker highlights: what Karren Brady, Tim Harford and Susie Wolff told Airmic delegates
How do you run a football club, what should banks learn from industry and why is insurance similar to Forumla 1? Airmic delegates in Liverpool had one of the strongest speaker programmes to date: from the person described as the most powerful woman in business to the first female Formula 1 driver in two decades. Read their highlights below.
Culture is the biggest risk to any business, Karren Brady tells Airmic
Karren Brady
The single biggest risk to any business is its culture, Baroness Karren Brady told delegates at Airmic’s conference in Liverpool.
According to Brady, who bought West Ham Football Club at the age of 23 and turned it round from the brink of bankruptcy, “culture is the DNA of a business”. And the key to establishing the right culture boils down to effective leadership: in football, she said, the biggest risk is not the players you buy, it’s the managers you buy.
|
Key quote Karren Brady on being an entrepreneur: “The point you think you know everything is the point you know nothing.” |
But don’t confuse leadership with managing people, she warned. Leadership is about “creating a vision and communicating that to others.”
As a leader, Brady said you have to win hearts and minds, but winning hearts is more important: “Your employees have to have respect for the job they do.” And for Brady, monitoring that is simple: “Your annual sick leave records tell you everything you need to know about motivation.”
This principle was and still is at the heart of how she runs her football club: for example, from the very top to the very bottom of the club, everyone has to spend time in another role on a regular basis, she explained. Even the footballers have to spend one day a month in the ticket office. “Everyone has to understand the business and do everything they can to make it a success.”
Tim Harford: Banks have a lot to learn from industry on risk management
.png)
Tim Harford
If you want to understand how risk spread within the complex banking system leading to economic meltdown in 2008, then the Piper Alpha disaster of 1988* is a good place to start, according to acclaimed behavioural economist Tim Harford.
Using his trademark ability to translate complex economic subjects into plain English, he told delegates in his opening keynote speech: “Other industries, banks especially, have a lot to learn from heavy industry…There is a strong connection between these two disasters.”
He explained that there are two components to every disaster: complexity, which creates unintended consequences; and tight coupling, which gives you no time to react. If you put the two together, “you have a disaster in the making”.
|
Key quote Tim Harford on whistleblowers: “We don’t like them. They are usually fairly awkward people. But problems are spotted firstly by staff – not regulators or journalists – and we owe them more protection.” |
In particular, the Piper Alpha disaster taught us two key lessons which the banking sector failed to learn, he said: first, safety systems don’t always make you safer and often make you careless; and second, safety systems can introduce brand new ways for things to go wrong. “In banking, think credit default swaps”, Harford noted.
Harford said that one of the most important traits for managing risk is “active open-mindedness” – in other words, a tendency to welcome challenge and a willingness to change your opinion. “Most people say they are like this, but they’re not. It’s much more comfortable not to challenge yourself. But it’s so important.”
*A North Sea oil production platform explosion, which caused 167 deaths and insured losses of £1.7 billion.
Don’t let gender define you, Britain’s only female F1 driver tells ladies lunch
.png)
Susie Wolff
It is not often that comparisons are drawn between F1 and insurance, but according to Susie Wolff, the first female Formula 1 racing driver in 20 years: “My world is similar to your world: there’s lots of men.”
Speaking at the ladies’ networking lunch that kicked off this year’s Airmic conference, Wolff gave an insight into the “tough journey” of rising to the top in one of the most testosterone-fuelled industries imaginable.
|
Key quote Susie Wolff on life in a man’s world: “Never give up. It doesn’t matter what I look like, what my gender is. It’s the time of my fastest lap that matters.” |
She spoke of her insistence on doing the same training programme as men; how she coped with being issued a pink car; and having to explain to every newcomer that she was in fact a driver – not a member of the catering staff.
But the world is changing for the positive, she said, in F1, insurance and more broadly. “We are riding a wave at the moment, opportunities are opening up.”
And her advice to other ladies? “We’re individuals, so play to your strengths. We are not defined by gender.”