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A DANCE THROUGH THE FIRES OF TIME

9505 EARLY BURNOUT – 1960s part 3

My revolutionary fervour had well and truly died down by the latter part of the 1960s, and ultimately so did my entrepreneurial zeal. More important, as I continued to fight my way up the career ladder, it ended with two of the worst jobs I ever had, and the sacrifice of my family to that career.

The end of the happy times was, unknown to me at the time, signalled by the first real holiday our family had taken.  Previously we had gone to my parent’s home, and occasionally to the cottage.

This time we went further afield. The problem in taking a holiday was that, at that time in 1968, Sarah was four and Miles was only two. The thought of driving down to Cornwall -- where the holiday was to be -- was horrendous at the time before the motorway network developed.  So, instead we went by Motor-Rail.  This was quite crude then, in as much as the cars were simply driven onto flatbed tracks which were hitched up behind a few passenger carriages.  Crude as it was, it worked well. We had a compartment to ourselves and were able to entertain the children until we arrived on the edges to Cornwall.

The holiday itself was to be taken in a chalet village near St. Ives. The chalet had been hired -- as happened a number of times thereafter -- by my parents. It was a pleasant location with the chalet located in woodland.  But the main point of it was to be able to go to St Ives and the other nearby seaside resorts. It was before St Ives itself contained the various museums which are now its main feature, so it was then just a fishing village.  Mainly, though, we had come for the sandy beaches at Carbis Bay, between the chalet and St Ives.  Accordingly the whole family spent a number of days down on the beach there, indulging in the typical British seaside holiday. 

One day we got talking to the people sitting next to us, since their children were about the same age, only to discover that the husband worked for Cussons.  As we will see later I had just decided to join Cussons in Manchester -- so this was a useful contact to test the temperature of the water.  Working in the product development part of marketing there, he was very enthusiastic about Cussons, and this reassured me; unfortunately though, as later events proved, his enthusiasm proved to be too infectious. 

Whilst down there we did all things you might do at the seaside, going to the beaches of Newquay, driving around the countryside etc. The only thing unusual that we did, with my parents babysitting the children, was to go off driving around the countryside and -- for the one and only time of my life -- make love in the car.  I know it was the great American teenage ambition, but they had larger cars.  In a small UK car it was not such an enjoyable sport!  In any case, we came back to find that Miles, having been told he couldn't have any chocolate, had managed to climb out of his cot and spread a whole one pound bar of the stuff all over his cot and himself! 

The really sad moment came when we left the beach on the last day of our holiday. We had been building a sand-castle and we all jumped on it to knock it down. Little did I realise that it was the destruction of the best time of my life!

This was at the time when I was leaving Gallahers and had looked around for marketing manager's job -- remembering that I was that stage an acting marketing manager.  The one I had come up with was that at Cussons in Manchester.  This was a genuine marketing manager job, since I had a brand manager reporting to me.  It was also reporting to a boss who quite found a very attractive person. Hugh Goodwin was one of the Cussons family.  His mother, Marjorie Cussons was married to a Goodwin -- although she was also president of Cussons.  Hugh, as the son, was the marketing director.  As well as being a multimillionaire, Hugh was a very nice guy.  I liked him as soon as I walked into his office in Kersal Vale in Salford. 

The only problem then was that he invited me to go for drink in the central Manchester, close to where I was due to catch the train home.  Unfortunately, when we went into the hotel bar, I discovered that the Gallahers sales team was having a regional meeting there and everyone rushed across to ask what I was doing there!  It was an embarrassing moment, but I managed to wriggle my way out of it and they didn't realise what I was really up to.

Before we could move to the North from Chalvey we first had to sell our house – for the asking price of £5,200! We tried all the estate agents, but to no avail, so we advertised in the local papers. At the first attempt we had only one (Indian) gentleman, who offered £5,000. We thought long and hard about it, but decided we couldn’t accept. Fortunately, at the next attempt, we had several offers - one of which met the full asking price. A few days later the Indian gentleman knocked on our door and asked if we were now willing to take his £5,000 offer. When we told him we had got the full price he then said that he would now take it at full price. He claimed that we had offered it to him at that price – which was true – but carefully chose to forget that he had turned that down. He simply couldn’t understand that we were not contracted to sell it to him. With the house already sold, I hugely enjoyed the (pseudo) negotiation with him! Usually it is the buyers who have the whip hand.

By the time I left the job at Gallahers I had spent almost a decade in the south of England, in Greater London.  With the move to Cussons I returned to the north.  This was more dramatic than I had thought, since the house we chose in Knutsford wasn't complete and we had to live with my parents for three months.  This was problematic, since my parents only really had a two-bedroom bungalow; the two children had to slot into the study.  Never mind, we managed it!

When I moved to work at Cussons, we had to look for a new house. The Cheshire area South of Manchester was where the best houses were to be found.  We looked at a number.  We even looked in Prestbury which was the most expensive place at that time.  We found a four-bedroom house there, but we gave it up when the London express crossed the embankment behind house; and whole house jumped up and down.  We also noticed detritus on the grass around it, and the estate agent helpfully reassured us that the last time they had flooding – a few weeks previously - it came no closer than 20 feet to the house!  Moreover, we realised that these four-bedroom private houses were in the situation that was normally occupied by council houses in other lesser neighbourhoods!

We looked at another house in that direction, and were quite keen on it until the housewife blurted out that “the dual carriageway, when it is built, won't come closer than 20 feet”.  It turned out that the garden was to be cut through by a completely new dual carriageway.  We were grateful for her indiscretion.

Eventually, therefore, we ended up on a new estate being built south of Knutsford.  There were numbers of new estates being built in the area, being built for the new ‘professional’ classes -- detached houses each with its quota of four bedrooms.

Knutsford itself was an attractive town at that time, possibly the nicest place we ever lived. It had delightful old streets and hotels, and a delightful range of old shops. 

It was also right next Tatton Park, which was a wonderful place to go for its gardens; especially its Japanese garden. Tatton Hall itself was a superb example of an early 1900s country house.  In particular it had a massive trophy room with walls covered by the heads of all the animals the owners had shot in Africa.  It also had tunnel underneath it, along which coal was delivered, for the servants to carry up to all fireplaces around the building

Our own house, although smallish, was – in keeping with the aspirations of the time and since - detached (albeit by just a few feet) with four bedrooms.  In particular it had a very small dining room downstairs, though it had a long living room. 

Upstairs it did have four bedrooms, one of which we fitted out with vinyl tiles as a playroom. The rest of the house was carpeted in very expensive carpeting, which I got cheap from my contacts through Dri-Foam.  It was hard-wearing Wilton and we took it with us to several more houses. I say it was cheap, but it had to be fitted separately and the end result was that it cost almost as much as if we had bought it retail. The kitchen was only a narrow galley, but it was fitted out with all the fashionable new units; and it was the first real luxury house we had  owned.

We went shopping for all the new furniture we needed.  In particular we put white Venetian blinds into the main living room, hidden behind heavy woollen net curtains. This was a very effective solution since it allowed light in during the daytime but at night, when the Venetian blinds were closed, they looked opaque. Thereafter the curtains also came with us around the country. They, and a number of other pieces of furniture, were bought in the expensive shops in Liverpool, most notably George Henry Lees, as we started to go up market.

The main feature of the living room was a track lighting system, with lots of spotlights and floodlights.  This was the ‘in’ lighting system of the time, mainly used in shop-fitting.  I bought it in London and brought it back by train. That was not a problem; except that, in the taxi to Euston, the track lighting system - which was twelve feet long - stuck out of the window at a very dangerous angle. The driver was not altogether happy about this.

It took a long time to get the garden sorted out, but I eventually I split it into two halves. One contained the all-important climbing frame. The other had a lawn, leading to mound on which we had a small patio; complementing the main patio behind the house. It took so long for me to complete that we didn't really have time to enjoy this before we moved on again.

We got friendly with the people over the road.  The wife ran her own programming agency. Thus, as early as the mid-sixties, we already used to talk endlessly about computers.

This was when Sarah, who had been at a playgroup in Chalvey, went to her first real school, just at the top of the road. Miles of course wasn't even ready for nursery school. 

The big advantage of being in Knutsford was that we were relatively close to my parents, only three-quarters of an hour away even before the motorway links were built. Accordingly we went over to see them, or they came to see us, most weekends.  In the summer we also went out to the cottage with them. On the other hand, I can remember that I was so pressurised by work that I even had to phone in, to see what was happening, in the middle of Snowdonia; from a public telephone box up in the rain-clouds. 

In particular, having just completed doing out the inside of our new house, we drove over to my parents for the first Christmas. However, they were so close that we decided there and then to have Christmas at our place -- it was bigger. So we packed all the food for Christmas into the two cars and raced back to Knutsford. En route it started to snow. There is something about snow at Christmas.  I'm certain must be coincidental that my favourite Christmases were those when we were surrounded by snow.  Maybe it is just the feeling of being snug in a warm house surrounded by snow that brings everyone together.

When we were staying with my parents I had to commute to Manchester each day, through the Mersey tunnel and out along East Lancs road to Salford.  It wasn't too bad in fact; only just over an hour. I had a new car, of course. It was a Ford Zephyr.  It was an unusual car at the time, probably for almost all-time!  It was absolutely enormous.  In particular it seemed it must have been about eight feet wide since it could easily seat three people breast.  The problem wasn't the size, though it was rather like driving an ocean going tanker; in that you had to start turning the steering wheel long before the car started to respond! The real problem was that the engine wasn't up to it.  It was a small engine for a massive car. Accordingly I also had to decide long before overtaking that I wanted to do this, and build up speed gradually. Moreover, the engine was particularly unreliable. It had one of the first automatic chokes and this was always going wrong; to the extent that I always carried a spare carburettor with me. Mind you it wasn't as bad as that of my brand manager Roger, whose car, a rear-engined Renault, was once pulled over by the police since it was steering rather erratically. He carefully explained it was the engine in front.  The police, who had seen the television shows where this sort of joke had been set up, didn't believe him and insisted they be shown.  He opened the boot in the front; to show them he was carrying not merely a carburettor but a whole spare engine!

Eventually we moved into our new house in Knutsford.  Even then the journey was not negligible, because of the traffic around Manchester.  I had to set out almost as early as I had done in London and travel a considerably greater distance.  With the size of the car this also meant that my travel bills were much higher; and this almost took away the whole of my £1,000 increase in salary!

In the morning it was much easier to travel in along the M6 and then along the East Lancs road.  In the evening I used to come back part way through the motorway system to Altrincham and then down the dual carriageway.  It still took nearly an hour, much the same as it took into Gallahers -- but it took far more miles and petrol.

It was also rather more risky.  One morning, when approaching the East Lancs road junction on the M6, I saw this service vehicle - with its yellow lights flashing and its headlights blazing - driving down the middle reservation, with the driver waving at everyone.  Other drivers waved back, but I immediately moved my car into the inner lane and, as we rounded the corner, I saw a wall of fog; and I slammed onto the hard shoulder.  A lorry came shuddering to a halt alongside where I would have been had I stayed in the inside lane.  After a long delay we were able make our way through all the crashed cars, with ambulances and bodies everywhere.  Miraculously no one was killed, but that was very good lesson for driving carefully.

When the time to move had come, driving the family in the new Zephyr from London to my parents was not too much of a hassle. At least the Zephyr was well set up for constant high-speed travel on the motorway.  When I later bought a mini, second-hand, in London the journey - this time to Knutsford -- was nowhere near as comfortable.  It really was a fun car, we had two of them over time; but they were not built for long-distance driving!

When I duly arrived at Cussons they, like PST, had a relatively large marketing structure for the volume of business.  They were running with sales of around £8 million overall, in the difficult position between being a medium-sized company and a large one.  They desperately needed to cross the divide and become a large company.  This is why they were investing so much in the marketing activities.  In fact they never managed to cross the divide until, sometime after I left, they were bought by an American conglomerate.

The main product was Imperial Leather Soap.  This was, surprisingly given the size of the firm and its main competitors (Unilever and Procter & Gamble), the brand leader!  It was brand leader on the basis of being a quality soap.  Although brand leader, of course, Cussons overall sales were based on this one brand where the competitors had a range of brands. Between these they had a much bigger share than Cussons.  Never mind, it was the brand leader and consequently much of the factory was giving over to stamping soap bars and packing it -- the soap itself was produced at a sister factory (owned by Gerrards) in Nottingham.

My part of business was 1001.  This was the dominant brand in the carpet shampoo market.  This had long been just a detergent. It needed to be rinsed out, since the residue when it dried was sticky. But, just before I arrived, they had launched a new version of this; 1001 Dri Foam.  This was a much better product, since the detergent dried to a dust and could be vacuumed out of the carpet afterwards.  It really was a major step forward.  Having said that, the launch had been badly handled and my first job on arriving was to consolidate the position of the new brand.

How temporary our position was, was indicated by our offices; which were in an arc around the packing material warehouse.  With the glass wall to the inside, I could look out and see all packing material we had in stock!  Eventually, they built a corridor wall so that we were at least screened from this.  In the other direction there was a beautiful view over the only green space in Salford; its cemetery!  But I wasn't there for the view. I was there for the job.

In fact I was there for my boss, Hugh Goodwin. I found, as I had expected, that I got on very well with him. Accordingly, we worked together well and started putting in place all the things which were needed for a major brand -- from the market research through to the sophisticated advertising.  In this I also had Roger Ollerton as my brand manager.  Roger was fascinating guy who was on the cusp of the 1960s sexual revolution.  Thus he was free to enjoy all those new sexual experiences which I had never experienced. He came in most mornings to tell me all about his adventures the previous night. Incidentally he was in the same group of clubbers as George Best, the famous Manchester United footballer.  Most nights Roger used go round the same nightclubs as him.  But, Roger had something of a hangup. He was also one of the last of the older generation who couldn't quite handle sex on demand.  Accordingly he almost always ended the night with Julie, his most willing partner; who was used to provide the requisite sex when all else failed!

The soap part, Imperial Leather, was handled by another brand manager -- a rather strange guy and somewhat political.  Around in the background was one of those management consultancies, an associate of the company's accountancy firm, who were gradually working their way in -- and as usual selling their own products rather than caring about the business. On the other hand they reported to the managing director, who I will in this case call X -- since I soon found that he was the nastiest person I think I ever met!

As I have said, things were going well for us.  However, X was fighting to take control of the company.  He was, of course, managing director but he was not a member of the Cussons family. Thus, although he was the CEO, the family still had veto power. Marjorie Goodwin (a Cusson) was president, of course, but that was not a particularly powerful role.  I used to see her at important meetings, where she delighted in presenting herself as a typical housewife. In particular she used to talk about her buying experiences in the local supermarket.  What she didn't mention was the fact that the chauffeur used to take the Rolls to the local supermarket and she would wait outside in the Rolls whilst he went in and did the shopping!

The real power of the family was in the form of Hugh Goodwin.  He was their insider who would warn of developments and, significantly, control unwanted changes.  As a result X saw him as a major block on his ambitions.

As I said, X was the nastiest person I ever met and he set out to undermine Hugh's position. He harried him and harassed in at every opportunity -- and I felt some backlash from this as well. Eventually he was so successful that Hugh had a nervous breakdown!  It is a terrible thing to force someone to a nervous breakdown simply because you want them out: as I can vouch for from personal experience later on.

Accordingly a new marketing director was hired, this time to X's own specification!  Unfortunately, this marketing director also, from time to time, opposed X. This was not because he supported the family against X, but because he used his marketing experience to underpin his judgment.  That did not please X.  Unfortunately the new marketing director, as it turned out, was a recovering alcoholic.  To get rid of him, in turn, X pushed him off the wagon. Accordingly, returning to drink, when the marketing director got in of a morning you could smell the drink on his breath. I can think of nothing more pernicious than deliberately pushing a recovering alcoholic off the wagon!

Indeed, the whole organisation was under stress. It had far too many layers of management; since the consultants had brought in the structure needed to manage a much larger company. This structure, on a pegboard, covered a whole wall of one conference room. Every so often X’s secretary would lock herself in there for a couple of days; to rearrange things. When she finished, everyone rushed in to see if they still worked for Cussons; and often one or two found out in this way that they no longer did!

Ultimately, as a supporter of Hugh (and having been hired by him) and something of a whistleblower, I was - in my turn - eventually fired by the managing director.  In some respects it was as well that this happened. For not long afterwards, when the company got into financial trouble, each layer of management -- of which there were in any case far too many layers -- sacrificed the managers underneath them to protect their own jobs. Thus the middle managers, of which I would have been one, got rid of the junior managers underneath them.  But in turn the middle managers were sacrificed by the senior managers. These directors were then sacrificed by the main board.  The main board in turn were sacrificed by X -- only for himself to go, as the company brought in another Cussons son to take over the organisation!  It was one of the nastiest organisations I have worked for. It was the start of a very bad period of my life.

Mind you, Hugh Goodwin was one of the nicest bosses -- pity he didn't stay.  That is always a problem in going where one person attracts you.

Nevertheless, the product I was to manage at Cussons was interesting, This was not least because it became one of the most successful new product launches of the decade; although that was partly because we cannibalised the existing 1001 product business. Indeed, where 1001 had long been sustained by advertising jingle which went '1001 cleans a big, big carpet for just half a crown', I pushed the price to three shillings!  The first thing I did however, was to put in place some more sophisticated research -- which was readily agreed by my boss, Hugh Goodwin -- and we started to do all the things that I did at Gallahers. In particular I once more used Kelly grids as the introduction to factor analysis. We planned to make use of the results from this later on.

One of the big problems with Dri Foam was that it was heavily seasonal. Something like half the sales went in a couple of months - at the beginning of spring – as housewives literally used it for the spring cleaning!  To achieve this we used to manufacture it all the year-round, and store it in a warehouse on-site. This was expensive, but it was even more expensive if the forecast was wrong.  If we set up the production target too high, we ended up with a warehouse full of stock and had to cut back on production.  If we aimed too low, we had an empty warehouse and lost sales.

Incidentally, the warehouse was another of those consultancy problems.  The warehouse had been significantly expanded on the basis of a very carefully crafted design by outside consultants.  There were just two problems.  The first one was that the aisles were three inches too narrow; so that the telescopic hoist on the forklift trucks used to whip backwards and forwards as the drivers tried to manoeuvre them into place -- and this cost an enormous amount in running repairs.  The other was that there simply wasn't room in the yard for all the lorries to work, so we had to load them in the road outside. Fortunately, it was not a very busy road and the council did not prosecute us. But it was as well that they took no action, or we would have only had space for half our output.

I soon got going, to produce a new commercial, with a housewife shampooing the carpet and then throwing the curtains open to allow shaft of light to bring a sparkle to the carpet.  Remember this was in the days when advertising on television was in black and white.  I well remember the shoot.  It was a very long day. I had to arrive there something like seven in the morning and we didn't leave until about two in the morning.  The big problem wasn't the shots of our model, but was the close-up of the shampooer going forward on the carpet and then pulling back to lay a nice strip of foam.  This one shot took us five hours!

I also remember the model, who was gorgeous.  She had actually made the first chocolate commercial which was banned.  I spent all day chatting her up in the hope of some reward, but - just as we were due to leave - the director minced across and said “Duckie I think I might know of another job for you”; and off they went hand-in-hand into the night! 

As usual, in those days, there were a lot of promotions.  My big one was with one of the women’s magazines, Woman's Own, in which we were to pack a sachet of our product along with an offer of shampooers at attractive prices.  I ordered a large quantity of shampooers on the basis that this would be a major activity.  Unfortunately, at the last-minute, our evil MD (X) cancelled the sample being put into the magazines and the editors moved our competition to the back pages!  Of course we didn't shift half the number shampooers we had planned for; and X blamed me for this!

Indeed, I came head-to-head with X on the number of occasions.  The most important of these was the outcome of our factor analysis.  This showed that the last thing housewives had on their minds was 'deep cleaning' the carpet, which had been our previous slogan. Instead the immediate reward they experienced was a much brighter carpet when they shampooed.  But we realised they could get this just by brushing water onto the carpet!  Accordingly we came out with a new campaign which was about 'surface cleaning'. Instead of the deep cleaning, we suggested that housewives brushed the shampooer across much less vigorously - which of course they appreciated since deep cleaning was quite a heavy work - but they still got the bright colour emerging; it was only a function of the water on the fibres. We suggested that they should do this two to three times more frequently than they had previously.  In this way we planned to make the process of carpet cleaning much more attractive to those housewives, and at the same time sell two to three times as much shampoo.  It was not merely a trick, since it still cleaned the carpet and the housewives were much happier

On the other hand, X unilaterally decided that, since it was not the technically best way of cleaning a carpet, he would not support it and the new campaign was cancelled. His view was that to promote anything which was not technically the best process was immoral. As well as being the nastiest manager I have worked for he was a moralising bigot! We were accordingly left with the previous campaign and the previous sales level.  All my marketing skills were wasted.

It was at this time that a new carpet shampoo, was launched by Johnson & Johnson. They were, of course, one of the biggest multinationals and they were determined to get into the market.  I decided to do exactly what I had done previously and blocked their launch at every stage.  Accordingly I went to X and asked to double the budget.  He prevaricated, and told me that I should go ahead without his signature; on my own authority.  He never signed off the money, and I was sure that - had it failed - I would have immediately been for the high jump. I would have been the ideal scapegoat!  In fact he was nowhere to be seeing during the marketing campaign.  This suited me down to the ground, since I could at last get on with the proper marketing, but I knew very well what would have happened had the campaign not succeeded.  Fortunately, not merely did it see off the new competitor product, but it actually increased our sales by more than enough to cover the extra cost of promotion.  X said nothing, but when success was guaranteed he signed off the project. Later on, of course, he fired me anyway!

A much more fundamental problem came from elsewhere.  One of our researchers showed me the new product in use. It was an aerosol which was sprayed onto the carpet. If a match was then applied to the foam it burnt! There was a particularly nice demonstration whereby you sprayed a circle of foam on the carpet, and in that case the flame went round and round the ring, never going out. Not merely was this dangerous, but it was actually in contravention of the petroleum acts. J&J had put the wrong propellant in the can.  I immediately went to X and asked him to initiate a complaint with the relevant authorities, to get them to take the product off the market -- which was our genuine duty in order to save lives. It would also have made certain of killing the competing product.  To my astonishment X refused to do this, since he said it was unfair to a fellow MD.  I then went to one of the safety organisations and discreetly let them know -- and I have a horrible feeling they told X and that contributed to my demise later on.

The agency, which I inherited at Cussons, was McCann Ericsson. They were one I used at PST, and they probably knew the history of my firing at PST -- which boded ill for me.  They were also, unfortunately, under examination since their advertising had not been particularly good.  In fact their advertising ideas for Dri-Foam were quite creative.  But their media buying was rather less successful. Accordingly they were under a considerable amount of pressure, not least from myself. Used to the PST approach, I pulled no punches.  Indeed I may have been rather more brutal that I needed to be.

They clearly were desperate to impress me when I arrived. During the morning meeting the account executive kept telling me what a wonderful lunch we were going to have.  After the meeting we walked down the road to the restaurant; which turned out to be the Au Savarin. As we walked through the door, the head waiter came rushing out as usual -- but not to the account executive.  Instead he rushed over to me and said “How nice to see you again Mr Mercer, do you want your usual table”!  I have never seen an agency deflated so quickly. I almost felt sorry for the account executive.

Even so I spent a lot of time working with the agency.  Indeed, on average, I probably worked with them three times a week.  My routine, therefore, was to drive to Wilmslow Station, where I became such a regular that the car park attendant kept a space for me.  There I got the lunchtime train and had lunch on the way down the agency -- during the two and a half hour journey. Incidentally, I would put in a full morning's work at Cussons, in Salford, before driving to the station

Once in London I did a full afternoon's work -- avoiding the penalty of a very boozy lunch -- and left at the end of the afternoon.  I then caught the Pullman back to Manchester, again having my meal on the train. In this way I was able to put in the morning in Manchester and the afternoon in London; only penalised by having my meals on the train.  It was process that worked well, but it meant I travelled 50,000 miles a year on that railway line!.

I would have thought that, with me being such a regular, the staff on the train would soon come to know me -- but they studiously avoided recognising me. On the other hand when, one lunchtime, I went with Hugh Goodwin my boss, they immediately hovered over him giving him the best service possible.  I realised why, when he gave them massive tip.  As a millionaire he could afford this. I couldn't.

He also could never understand why I had difficulty getting a hotel room in London -- it was the time of the great hotel room shortage. He pointed out he could just walk into Claridges any time he wanted.  What he didn't realise was that he was on the select list of people who -- as millionaires -- were worth the hotel cultivating in this way.

Hugh rarely flashed his money around, but my brand manager Roger told me of one lovely example.  They were driving in a taxi round Trafalgar Square when he said “Roger, if you could have one car and if you didn't have to worry about the price, what would it be?” Roger thought a minute and suggested something like a Mercedes. Hugh replied “I think I would like one of those new Aston Martins”, pointing out one which was just passing. That was on Friday afternoon.  On Monday morning he drove into work in just such a new Aston Martin!  But, as I say he was a lovely guy and never played on his wealth.

Before Cussons much of my time as a brand manager had been concerned with maximising profit.  The main device for this was, of course, maximising the sales revenue.  But almost as important was cost reduction.  As a result, I spent a lot of time considering cost accounting.  In many products the allocation of the overheads is the main factor involved -- and that is an art not a science.  The products I had usually been responsible for, though, had typically had their own production lines and it was much simpler to allocate overheads.  This meant that, as brand manager, I was able to leverage the cost down as well as the sales up.

This was also true to a certain extent at Cussons, though the actual cost of the product only represented something like 10 percent of the overall price, and most of that was the pack -- the actual carpet cleaner itself cost a fraction of a penny.  The main cost, indeed, was the promotional cost -- especially advertising -- which accounted for almost two-thirds of the ex-factory price.

The summation of all these various movements in cost used to come at the end of each financial year. Thus at PST, and to a lesser extent at Gallahers, we looked at what we needed to do to make our financial targets for the year.  We then manipulated the figures to do what was needed to reach this.  If we were going to be over, then we bought in extra packing material and product.  If we were going to be under, then we typically deferred purchases of the packing material, and got the agency to bill us late for media.

Come the end of the Cussons financial year, we found ourselves -- across the company -- short of the financial targets.  Accordingly, I suggested that we deferred purchases of some packing material.  I was taken apart by the MD (X), who said that would be dishonest; the accounting figures had to be correct.  By then I knew X well, so I refrained from pointing out that the accounts are guesstimates rather than an exact science (he would never have understood the concept).

Instead, X put a very big sales promotion loader onto Imperial Leather. He offered 12 cases for 10, for the first time ever.  As a quality soap, we had never promoted it on the basis of price; even to wholesalers.  To compound matters, X also put a price-off sticker on the soap itself. It was tremendous success, and we made our financial targets. It didn't occur to X that loading his sales figures in this way was just as dubious as postponing the purchase of packing material.  What was worse, in the process he hit his own profits. A cut-price was not needed to sell the product, after all it was the premium quality brand in the market, and cutting the price came straight out of profits. Even worse still, it hit the brand in terms of its quality image.  People, when buying premium brand, often judge its quality by a high price.  Slapping a money-off sticker on the brand devalues it a lot more than that it might at first appear.

As it turned out there was worse than that to come. The trade, delighted with 12 for 10 bonus which they didn't have to pass on (they knew what a quality brand it was), stocked up. When the bonus ended, their buying stopped almost dead for a number of weeks. Desperate for sales, X was forced to put out a new bonus.  The trade stocked up again, and when it ended once more stopped buying.  This new pattern set by the trade - buying only on bonus and not when it was off - became the new pattern. It meant that, in effect X, had instituted a permanent 20 percent cut in price.  Remember, there was only one place where this could come from -- the profit of Cussons - which is why they got into financial problems later on.

Even though I was interested in the cost accounting, at Cussons this really was not significant factor, and -- despite my interest in production -- I very rarely walked out on the production floor; even though it was less than a hundred feet from my desk.  All it involved was pouring liquid into a bottle.  Even the managing director was rarely seen on the factory floor, but there was a lovely story told about one New Year's Day.  At that time, New Year's Day was not a public holiday, and X was upset that -- almost traditionally -- half the workforce didn't turn out on New Year's Day. This was understandable, since they would have had massive hangovers. On this particular New Year's Day, X was seen on the balcony around the factory floor with his arm outstretched as he counted how many people were on the floor.  Up from the floor floated  a very Irish voice which pronounced “Begorrah he's blessing us”!  At least humour was not killed completely by his management style. 

It's taken me years to get my head around the problems I experienced at Cussons -- and in the other companies that I worked for.  But, at Cussons I seem to have been marked out as a sacrificial lamb very soon after Hugh Goodwin was pushed out with a nervous breakdown.  I was a marked man since I was Hugh's choice.  I was even more marked when I went against the MD on a number of key issues.  The end result was, after 18 months, I got my marching orders.  Again, fortunately, I was given three months notice.

Even so, it was once more a terrible time. It had its consolations though, since I was a home with the children and a had more contact with them than I ever had been in my time at work. I've always been a workaholic, or at least been pushed to work long hours to justify my position. Now, fired, I was able to go out for long walks with the children through the countryside.  I particularly remember walking with Miles through the local woods, getting a real sense of family bonding.  It echoed a similar walk guide taken in the days of my youth through Eastham woods with my father. 

But I had to find another job and once more began the round of applications and job chasing. This time I covered a number of the management consultancies. In particular I went after McKinsey.  This was the creme de la creme of consultancies.  Its special feature was its personnel director, Brigadier Langstaff, who was so impressive that you automatically wanted a job with them. I passed all the various tests and the interviews with the various managers, and was about to be hired by them.  The final hurdle, though, was that I had to spend half a day working with one of their consultants -- to see whether both of us were happy with my joining.  I have to say that both sides recognised it was a mistake.  On my side I was horrified when the consultant said “The first thing you must do when you get into any project is to sell the next job”.  Thus, you couldn't get on with the consultancy work – which is what attracted me - until you sold a couple more years of work and got it on the books!  I just couldn't cope with the idea of in affect being a salesman. Maybe it was because of my sales experience in retail outlets. Anyway, it wasn't my scene.  Paradoxically, later on, the opposite was the case when I -- as part of my career development -- was forced to be a salesman at IBM; and yet found the job was actually that of a consultant!

Even so as the task of finding a job became more and more urgent, I eventually settled for a job with another consultancy -- AIC -- who did actually hire me. Unfortunately it was at the time when they had to retrench and I never got my job; though in theory I was hired by them, since I was given three months payment in lieu of notice!

I went through a whole range of the job interviews. Accordingly, there were - once more after three months - a number of offers.  One of these was from my old company, FCB, who wanted to hire me for their new promotions manager.  Another was with Lever Brothers, again as promotions manager.  The most senior, I suppose was as general manager of the Far East division one of the pharmaceutical companies.  In that case, I just felt nervous about the risks involved.

Eventually, though, I found myself selected for interview at BTR.  It was, at that time, starting out to become a conglomerate; though it was still largely based in the field of rubber -- particularly conveyor belts, It had, however, long since got rid of its tyre business. The job looked attractive, since it was called Group Business Manager.  Indeed it was very attractive, since it involved handling, with general manager responsibilities, a division with something like £8 million turnover and two factories -- employing 700 workers.  It seemed like a dream come true, but I didn't expect to get the job.

I remember travelling up, from London, to the interview at a hotel near the factory in Burton on Trent. It was November fifth – and, as I looked out of the train windows, fireworks went off everywhere.  We met that evening at the local hotel, which was very luxurious.  The whole process was conducted by the Tavistock Institute -- by their consultancy arm -- and was very sophisticated.

Thus, the first evening, the separate candidates met over dinner, to discover that we were having dinner with an equivalent number of BTR staff.  I realised later that this was part of the recruitment process and their chitchat was designed to learn a lot about us.  Even more terrifying, the head of the division, John Cahill, unexpectedly stood up and made a speech about what the job was.  In turn, each of us were then forced, at a moment's notice, to make  a similar speech about our own background!

The following morning we went into the offices at the factory. There we were set a range of intelligence and personality tests. Having been for jobs at the consultancies, I was very used to these; which helped.  In particular, though, I was given a Rorschach Blot test by a psychologist from the Tavistock itself.

Then, while they marked up the tests, we were taken round factory; each one of us with one of the factory managers.  Again, as I later realised, this was just as much a test. If you didn't show interest you were out. We then met for a series of round the table discussions, which - to see how we were performing - were also monitored by various BTR managers.  At the end of that, half the people were sent home -- they weren't even interviewed.  This left four of us to be grilled, and I mean really grilled, by the managers and the psychologist.  At the end of the day I and another guy were selected.  I got the general manager job and he got a consultant job.

I later learned that John Cahill - who liked me - chose me, where the managing director (who I never got on with) was against me. In the event I was chosen for what, for a long time, was my highest powered job.

A decade or so before I joined it, BTR had been one of the United Kingdom's main tyre manufacturers. Tyres were the main use of rubber in those days, and indeed this is still the case. BTR had, at that time, decided to become much more sophisticated and had invested in management accounting; a practice I would always encourage.  In particular, it had looked at its whole operations in terms of cost accounting.  The outcome of this was that it had realised that it was actually making a net loss in its main business, the production of tyres.  The board, having received this information, took what seemed to them the logical step.  They shut down its tyre making capacity in its entirety -- hoping to get rid of the net loss. Unfortunately, as is often the case for those who have only a little knowledge, they had not noticed that the tyre operation was carrying almost all the overheads of the business.  Accordingly, when it was shut down, all those overheads transferred to everything else; and the company overall went into a massive loss. It had been lucky to survive this.

It had facilities all round the country. In particular it had since merged with Leyland rubber in Lancashire, which was strong in the production of conveyor belts.  My location was at Burton on Trent, where it had two factories close together. Again, the spectre of management incompetence haunted these.  Thus, a few years before I arrived, a helicopter fluttered down from the sky to land on the helipad which was in the corner of the sports field -- which itself was in the centre of the factory.  The distinguished figure of one of the main board directors descended and asked that all the workers be congregated on the sports field.  He then mounted a soapbox and delivered what was intended to be a morale boosting speech to these workers.  The gist of it came at the end, when he said that “...by the way next week we will be shutting down our Burton on Trent operations, but I hope this doesn't spoil the weekend for you chappies”!  At that he got back into his helicopter and fluttered off again.

A week later almost exactly the same thing happened, except the there were now far fewer workers gathered on the field -- since those who could had got jobs elsewhere.  The gist of it this time was “...I don't know if you remember what I said last week, but I think I mentioned something about shutting down the factories here.  Sorry about that mistake, I really meant those in London”!  When I looked at the board minutes, soon after I arrived at BTR, I found that what actually happened was that, on the Monday after the first visit, the board had only then decided to debate the implications of the shut down. They had found, to their horror, it was complete and utter folly. 

The result, in terms of the Burton factories, was that anyone who was any good had gone elsewhere for a job -- leaving behind a workforce made up of those who couldn't get jobs elsewhere!

Surprisingly, considering what happened, it was actually a very loyal workforce.  But it was not a very skilled one, and certainly not one I would have chosen

The overall division, Polymeric Division, was divided into three businesses.  One of these comprised precision mouldings which included cutless bearings (used on the propeller shafts of naval vessels).  Another one was PTFE, polytetrafluoroethylene plastic, which was then used in the chemical industry -- and BTR had a massive order for a reactor, which was a cube - in Central Europe - several hundred feet on each side, filled with PTFE lined pipes.

The remainder was my province, the polymeric business.  The biggest part of this, on the main site, was the general moulding shop.  It was essentially a job shop, but associated with it we also had the manufacture of vulcanised pipe stems. The other products, on which great hopes were pinned, were printing rubber and escalator handrails.  The biggest drag on the business, however, was in the smaller factory and was the production of rubber boots.  This was my inheritance.

I suppose our house move to Burton was just about the most complex we ever made.  As I had to start the job almost immediately, and we needed the money, I was forced to go down there and stay in a hotel for the first couple of months -- coming home at weekends.  This lasted until we managed to sell our Knutsford house. 

In the meantime I was by myself in a hotel on the outskirts of Burton. Even having the sold Knutsford house, as our new one was still not ready, we had to move into temporary accommodation in Lichfield.  Thus, half of our furniture went into store and half was used to furnish a small flat. Fortunately we had bunk beds for the children, since this flat only had two bedrooms. 

Pat was out most of the day. She had to take Sarah to her new school and Miles to his new playgroup. Unfortunately Miles finished at lunchtime and Pat then had to keep him busy before she collected Sarah.  Their favourite haunt, with chips for lunch, was the ten pin bowl just by the bridge over the Trent; since this also had a games arcade.  Milers still is a fan of computer games.

The reason for the length of time it took us was that we were waiting for our house to be built.  On the other hand, this gave us the opportunity to make the modifications we wanted.  It was, for the first time for us, a four-bedroom/two-bathroom, house.  It was actually in Burton on Trent itself, and probably was the most expensive house there.  It was at the top of a little estate, Hillcrest Avenue, which overlooked the Trent; to the Peak District in the distance.  It was expensive for Burton – at £10,000. But the estate was in nice setting, surrounded by school playing fields, where the children used to play when we eventually moved in.

As I have said, upstairs it had four good-sized bedrooms with a main bathroom and an en-suite off our bedroom; which was one of the largest bedrooms we ever had.

Downstairs it had a reasonable sized living-room and a separate dining-room. The kitchen was relatively large -- though it was still not large enough to eat in.  We made a significant change by converting the integral garage, on the front of the house, into a playroom.  Also the various rooms - playroom, living room and dining room - all had wide openings which could be closed off with louvred doors.  The idea was that we could, however, open them all to provide one large space for the children's play or for parties -- not that we had many of these. To replace the garage we had a separate (large) single garage built in the garden with a carport in front of it, along the side of the house.

Behind the house, with French doors opening onto it from the living room, was a large patio. Behind that, eventually, was a landscaped garden that we had a professional landscape gardener produce – the only time I have used professional help in this way.  Because the ground rose steeply, we had two levels with a massive rockery and waterfall between them. Something like to 20 tonnes of stone went into the rockery; in the process breaking the arm of one of the workmen.  It was a nice idea except that the waterfall, as it fell, was blown back into the rock-face and then disappeared. So we had to keep topping up the water. In theory it should have been ideal for the children; if I only had been there to play with them. Indeed occasionally, very occasionally, I played football with them on the patio.

It might have seemed as if BTR’s boot-making operations, which were part of my business, were closest to my previous consumer goods experience.  Production of them was located in a separate factory, about a mile away from the main one.  BTR had been, until relatively recently, the largest manufacture of rubber boots in United Kingdom.  Thus its Bull's-Eye brand had been the chosen boots which my father wore.  It was, though, in the business of handmade boots.  Thus, each individual boot was built up, on a last, from strips of rubber moulded or cut in separate departments.

The whole process started by producing sheet rubber, and in particular fabric bonded to rubber, on machines called calendars.  These were really like rather large wringers, where the rubber was put in on one-side and squeezed - into a long thin strip - out of the other side.  When it was coating material, cotton, the only difference was that the bowls of the machine were run at slightly different speeds thus forcing the rubber into the cotton.  All of this material was then moved to ‘clicker’ presses.

A sheet of rubber material was laid out on the press and various formers, actually shapes with knife sharp edges, were placed by hand on it. The press was then brought down, to ‘click’ through the sheet; to produce a piece of material to the required shape.  For each boot, therefore, a whole range of these formers were needed.  It was even worse than that, in as much as there had to be a whole range of these for each size of boot.

These pieces were then laid out on a last, of which, again, hundreds were required to match the range of sizes and shapes in the range. The workers then proceeded, by hand, to build up the boots in much the same way that leather boots or shoes are still built.  The only difference was that, instead of being stitched, they were glued with latex rubber.  It was a fairly skilled process, and certainly a complex one. The boots were then put into large autoclaves to vulcanise.  All in all, it produced a very good product, but one that was expensive.  Our competitors had recently invested in injection moulding equipment which produced a whole boot in one action. 

There were something like six hundred people working on our factory floor.

The problem was that my predecessor, who John Cahill thought had been a marvellous businessman, had discovered the secret to making paper profits out of the boots -- despite the competitors inherently cheaper processes. What he had discovered was that the BTR overheads were recovered in the main when the boots were put into warehouse, and not when they were sold!  Accordingly, he had filled a nearby warehouse with one million pairs of unsaleable boots.  This boosted his profit, on paper, and made him look good for the board; but it left us with an enormous great millstone round our neck. Ultimately I had to shut down the factory for more than six months, laying off something like 600 people, until we worked our way through those million boots.  I remember discreetly suggesting, one November fifth, that people might like to have their firework parties near to the warehouse, since all rubber products are highly flammable.  Unfortunately, no one took up my suggestion.

In terms of production this factory ran itself. It had been running for years, and everyone knew what they had to do.  It was a delight in that respect.  In financial terms it was a nightmare. There was no way that the production process could remain competitive, and added to that was the millstone of one million pairs boots in the warehouse. I think BTR thought that, as a consumer marketing expert, I would have the magic answer.  I didn't. In fact nobody had one, and the business was doomed!

In some respects the general moulding shop at BTR should have been the least of my worries.  It represented the history of production operations at BTR, not the future of them.  Following the business dictum that you should support the winners, I should have been looking elsewhere to spend my time.  But, like so much of British industry, the day-to-day problems caused by this historical black hole absorbed ever more of my time. Again like so much of industry, it made no net profit. In fact it made a net loss but, again like so much of industry, it paid for a massive proportion of the overheads; so I couldn't ignore it.

As I said, it was job shop. This meant that our customers asked us to quote for producing their rubber parts from the presses we had.  This meant the generation of the products we manufactured were largely out of our hands, and the business we got was very price sensitive.  The moulding shop was, therefore, stuffed full with as many presses as we could get.  But these were, unfortunately, almost all antediluvian.  We only had six relatively new presses.  The others went back to the 19th-century.  This was a problem faced by an industry which just didn't generate enough margin for new equipment.  The only new equipment I bought, for this type of work, was a calendar -- since our existing one was falling apart -- and the one I bought to replace it was second-hand and had originally been made in 1890!

The whole process started with the production of the rubber. The first stage was weighing out all the ingredients; sulphur to vulcanise, carbon to strengthen, and fillers and various other chemicals to add specific properties. Of course, the main ingredient was rubber; though there was a vast range of rubbers, from artificial to natural latex. For the larger runs we used a mixer called a Banbury.  This was the size of a small house, and had rotating screws inside which mixed the product.  Having mixed the products for the requisite time, and at the same time heated it to help it mix better, the load was dropped down to a bin on wheels which was then taken to where it was to be used. The only time I had problems with this was during the electricity blackout which resulted from the industrial disputes in 1970.  Only once, though that was enough, the electricity went off the middle of the mixing cycle.  I found myself, in my best suit along with the departmental managers in their overalls, hacking lumps of raw rubber out of the bowels of the machine before they could set solid and write off the whole machine.

The other method of mixing, which predated the Banbury and which was used for smaller amounts, was hand mixing on ‘twin bowls’.  These were massive cylinders rotating with a small gap between them. The rubber was thrown into that gap and churned around until it coated the bowls (cylinders).  At that stage the manual operator used a knife to cut the rubber off and throw it back between the bowls, so it was mixed even further.  At the time when I was there these machines were at least protected by safety stops. The very real danger was that the rubber cut in this process could drag the operator into the bowls.  As soon as his body touched the safety bar, however, the machine would stop. In a previous era, however, there was no such luxury and many mixing operatives lost their arms.  This was the reason that rubber company head offices always had their lifts run by attendants; this was the job that was reserved for operatives who had had lost their arms to the mixers!  A similar accident occurred while I was there, in that an operative managed to get his hand caught in a calendar -- which was messy enough.

The only other big accident was when an operative tossed a bag of sulphur into one of the skips, and it turned out the pack was mislabelled. It wasn't (as it was labelled) antistatic and, as the dust went down the shoot, the sparks from the static caused the sulphur to explode in the face of the operative.  This happened while I was hosting an international meeting of BTR managers from around Europe.  I sat there, with fire engines roaring around the building, not knowing what on earth was happening.  Fortunately, apart from some serious injuries to the operative, the factory didn't burn down. Rubber factories are a considerable fire hazard. Even a small fire can rapidly wipe out the whole plant. Accordingly, whenever a fire alarm went off in the factory, fire engines started out towards us from up to 20 miles around; and we would attract perhaps ten or a dozen fire engines within a matter of minutes. 

Back again to the moulding floor, the presses stretched out into the distance in what would have been neat rows if there hadn't been so many different types of presses.  This was not because they were fulfilling a different job, though some did, but was mainly because they had been bought second-hand as job lots. As I said earlier, much of the industry was like this.  Largely this was set by the machinations of the car companies.  They deliberately held down the margins by playing games with their suppliers.  When I was there, one of the car companies booked around half a million items to be called off over six months. Needless to say, it was cheaper for us to make the half million in one big run.  They were then called off, by the car manufacturer, a month at a time.  After three months they came to us and said the whole thing was cancelled.  In essence it was blackmail, since they knew we had a warehouse full of parts. They told us that they would only take what we had in the warehouse if we offered it at half the price!  This was a cut-throat business, but it could have been said that at least it got very low prices for the motor industry.  The real problem, which ultimately killed the motor industry in the UK, was that none of its suppliers was ever able to earn enough money to invest in new equipment. This meant that we were all competing with old equipment, and this was inefficient equipment which was much more costly to run.  Thus the short-term gains by the car industry resulted in long-term higher costs -- which its continental competitors didn't suffer.

The products then went through quality control.  This was something of a disaster, since most of the quality control was quite simply visual inspection.  If product didn't have a big hole in it, it would get through inspection. We did use AQL on some products.  This was where a sample of the product was taken and tested, sometimes to destruction and always extensively.  AQLs were Acceptable Quality Levels.  Hence, the idea was that a certain percentage of failure was acceptable, indeed inevitable. The corollary was that the smaller the percentage failure you wanted then the higher the cost in achieving that.  Certainly our quality levels were very low, as were those of most rubber moulding job shops.  This concept ruled the roost until, later in decade, the Japanese simply decided it was an irrelevant concept and went for zero defects instead. It turned out that if you put in sufficient effort into the design and quality standards, you could actually produce almost nil defects -- and this actually saved large quantities of money rather than adding to costs.

Although I would have loved to have avoided the BTR moulding shop and its problems, it dominated my life.  In particular, for one morning each week, I and the production controllers sat down to schedule all the work on the shop.  It was a nightmare, since there was so many different machines which could only handle certain of the orders.  We literally spent three to four hours in a sitting, with half a dozen of us involved, to pencil in the production plan for each machine for each day of the following week.  I learned more about production scheduling in that time in than I have ever learned since, though I later became one of IBM's experts in production control.

My job was ideal for a workaholic.  The one-time we actually recorded our activities, in special diaries - because BTR wanted to see how it could improve our productivity, I recorded 85 hours work during the week; and that was a slow week for me!  I used to get in first thing in the morning, not long after seven o'clock, and would then have various formal meetings with groups of managers through until nine o'clock.  I would then continue with informally scheduled meetings through until five or six o'clock at night.  I used to work over lunch, having sandwiches brought into my office.  In between times, in my limited amount of free time, I used to walk around the factory seeing what was going on and general interfering!  The best time was after five o'clock at night.  Suddenly everything went quiet, as everyone went home. I was only then able to relax and then get on with the real work of the day - my paperwork and reports - putting in another four hours of work.  In this way I typically worked from 7am until 11pm on weekdays.  At the weekends the pace was much slower.  I worked from nine until five, on both Saturday and Sunday.  I was much more productive at weekends, since there was no one around to interrupt -- except for the few managers I called in for special meetings.

I had been very determined to run an egalitarian management system.  Thus, I had come down from Cussons having produced a set of flip charts which gave my history and my objectives.  I presented these to my managers on my first day in office.  In retrospect I suspect they thought I was mad -- since they knew BTR and I didn't. But I genuinely wanted them to be involved in the management at the organisation.

The problem was that life wasn't like that. BTR was a very hard-nosed hire and fire company - as I found out to my cost later on.  It was also  a very high-pressure company, and increasingly I started to fire from the hip. Later on I realised that in many meetings I had simply issued orders, and I had no longer involved the other participants in my decisions.  It's something you eventually become proud of. You have got so little time to do anything, that you grow to be proud that you can take instant decisions; and bark orders at subordinates. 

I guess that this came to head with our visit to Italy. We had a relationship with an Italian company in Turin. They were very similar to ourselves, and we decided to exchange technology.  This meant I, and a team of around a dozen managers, had to fly across to Turin for three days; to go round their plant. The idea was that  would go and see what we could pick up in terms of help for our own operations -- since they operated in very much the same field, being immersed in the Turin car industry.

My great coup was to work out that a bank holiday gave us three days without actually intruding on our normal working time.  Accordingly I took my managers across for the whole bank holiday.  I didn't occur to me, until years later, that they probably would not have been as keen on this as I was.  But for me it was ideal. I didn't lose a single working day.

Incidentally, I flew across with my factory manager, Hamish.  As we were about to take off I noticed him gripping the arms of his seat and looking very nervous.  I said “...don't worry about anything. This is no problem I have flown dozens of times”. He then told me that he had been navigator during the war, on a Lancaster which had been converted as a VIP transport. It flew, with various generals on board, landing just behind the front line.  It was incredibly dangerous.  He had been in three planes which had literally disintegrated around him as they crashed, and significant numbers of the crew were killed.  For me flying meant that I stood one chance in the million of crashing. For him, based on his previous wartime experience, there was one chance in a half a dozen or so!  It put my own flying experiences into perspective. 

It was an interesting visit to Turin. Although it was engaged on exactly the same work as ourselves, it was somehow very different -- almost having an Italian accent!

At BTR I had a large management team reporting to me, the largest I ever had -- perhaps as many as fifty overall if you included the charge-hands.  As I have said elsewhere, the workers at BTR were those who were left after the famous closing down speech.  This applied just as much to the existing management.  In fact they were all very loyal managers, and adequate for their jobs.  The problem was I needed managers who could lead BTR into a new era.  Accordingly we advertised to recruit a significant number of very high-powered middle managers to work under me.

As it had been so successful, we decided to follow the Tavistock team's approach.  Thus we started with dinner, the night before, and continued the following morning with the intelligence tests - along with the factory tour - before we had the discussions and the individual interviews.  The most significant difference was that, instead of the Tavistock, we used a (less expensive) freelance psychologist; and this meant we couldn't use the Rorschach Blot Test, but had to rely more on personality tests. 

In addition, seeing it from the other side table, things looked rather different to me. 

Thus, we focused very tightly on the people and the answers they were giving rather than letting the interviews run themselves, as happened elsewhere.  In addition, I saw the mechanisms at work beneath the surface of the process.  For example, while everyone was touring factory, the psychologist was frantically marking the various tests. In addition, while the candidates were having their lunch, the management team received the report from the psychologist and put together the initial review of the candidates -- even before they had reached the main interview process.  After the group discussions, we had yet another meeting together to agree which of the candidates we were to actually take forward to the individual section.

The great advantage of this process was, as well as selecting down to a small number of (4) candidates, we went into the final individual interviews knowing a considerable amount about each of the candidates.  This was the very opposite of the normal process whereby the first question the candidate is asked is “...tell us about yourself”.  Instead, we launched directly into ferreting out their best and worst points.  We could, from time to time, even use the good cop bad cop routine.  I remember, in particular, one candidate who we thought might have had the ambition to become a Conservative parliamentary candidate -- where the BTR job was just a stepping stone to that.  I launched immediately into him, giving him a very tough ride - saying what we thought - and gave him the third degree, to try and break him.  I didn't succeed, but he then went on to my colleague, the good cop, who said “...oh my god you must have been with David, he's a bastard”.  The candidate then replied “...you bet he was, he pursued me all over the place about my Conservative candidacy.  But there was no way I was going to tell him that's what I did want, even though that was true!”

The information we got even went beyond interview, for those that we recruited. Thus, we were able to start off on their introductory training programme knowing what faults we had to correct and what strong factors we could build on.  Incidentally, the final benefit of the process was that it guaranteed that the candidates would accept the job.  As I myself thought, and one of our candidates said out loud, “If you have put so much effort into the process and you think it is the ideal job for me then who am I to quarrel.”  Interestingly I had set out believing -- based on my father's experience -- that the candidates didn't necessarily need to have a university education. I thought that there must be people out there who were just as good.  Indeed, a couple of our candidates looked very promising on paper, since they had had an excellent track record in their jobs.  Unfortunately, what I found was that these people -- who had worked really hard on their careers -- were at the top of the junior management ladder; but didn't have had the intellectual resources to then take them on to the high-powered middle management jobs we wanted.

In this way I hired six new managers, largely to manage the marketing side of the operation.  Thus I had several new managers who were effectively brand managers for the 'new products' - including the printing business and handrails - as well as some new managers for specific aspects such as quality control.

We had only one dispute in the whole process.  The deputy managing director was once more involved.  He liked a candidate from South America.  However, his test results for personality - and in particular IQ - were suspect. His scores were low, and we would have automatically dropped him.  The psychologist, on the other hand thought it was possible that cultural differences meant that he had blown the various tests.  We still thought he was too much of a risk, and essentially was not very bright; but the deputy managing director thought he was great. So he hired him for his operation.  It turned out that, after only three months, we had been proved right. He was, indeed, not very bright and they had to get rid of him!  This showed just how invaluable the various IQ tests were.

On paper, therefore, I had a well-balanced team.  I had my half-dozen high-powered new managers and perhaps another 50 adequate -- but distinctly under powered -- managers who were already there.  What I, in my inexperience and naivete, did not think about was the potential clash between these two groups.  The existing managers may have been all that was left over after the shutting down speech, but they had had a number of years to hone their survival skills. Hence they were political survivors.  I, and my team, were the intruders who didn't recognise the lie of the land.

Indeed, most of the existing managers, certainly in the middle rankings, were political animals who did what was needed to survive. In particular they said what they thought was wanted to be heard.  Accordingly, I got much better input from the shop stewards.  I got on very well with them, not least because they were honest. Despite the way the workforce had been treated over years -- they genuinely fought for the good of the company as much as for their own workers.  This was not altruism but was because they -- rather than my managers -- realised that their workers’ continuing employment depended on making the factories efficient.  Thus, I enjoyed talking with the shop stewards as I went round the factory -- something that might have alienated even further from my managers -- where I felt uncomfortable with the them; since I was convinced the latter were telling me anything but the truth! 

At the end of the day this backfired on me, since I made too many enemies amongst these managers.  When I was fired my own team, which I'd hired, volunteered to resign along with me -- though I didn't let them -- where the other managers just appeared to take it in their stride: to them it was just what I deserved!

What was especially strange, however, was the way that I was able to lay off 600 workers in out boot-making plant for six months, in the process ruining their lives, without really giving it a second thought.  For me, as for the shop stewards who were very helpful whilst getting the best terms for the laid off workers, it seemed almost a bookkeeping transaction.  On the other hand, when I personally fired the few individuals who had to be removed in this way -- because they had their hand in the till or had indulged in some other unacceptable behaviour -- I worried about this.  It was a very unpleasant experience at the time -- especially where we had to send the company chauffeur back with them, so he could drive their company car back (in case they tried to keep it).  I could, having met them face-to-face, recognise that the step I was taking would damage their lives.  But, one step removed, I didn't worry about the 600 others, whose lives I had just as much damaged. It was illogical. But it explains why so many fat cats seem to have no feelings when it comes to declaring redundancies.

At BTR I at least had a number of new products under my belt. One of these was that of magnetic rubber.  We had only one customer for this, Edwards, which was a firm in Sheffield.  They took the magnetic rubber we produced and bonded it with plastic.  It was then used for signs, fridge magnets etc.  In particular, though, the most prestigious use was for the weather charts which were shown on television.  The presenters could move the clouds around on their magnetic boards as they wanted -- without fear of them falling off. 

As part of the general moulding shop we also produced raw rubber, blending it but not vulcanising it, for a tyre valve manufacturer which was located in Northern Ireland. This company, Bridgestone Brass, was in fact handled through an agent -- who was the person we dealt with.  I was always nervous about going to Northern Ireland to see him, since his method of steering his car was to position it with the white line in the middle of his bonnet as he roared at high-speed around blind corners!  Equally, the business over there was rather more competitive than I was used to.  His son, for example, was sent to prison for not just burning down the competitor's premises but emptying the safe while he was doing this. 

I do, however, remember having lunch at Burton with them.  There were two of them as well as my boss John Cahill.  When there was a lull in the conversation John, who was Catholic, threw in the comment that he thought Bernadette Devlin (the leading Roman Catholic MP from Northern Ireland who had been speaking on television the night before) had been very impressive. There was noticeable silence and then the two of our clients (the agent and the manager from Bridgeport Brass) literally put their heads together and, after some muttering, the agent turned around to say cryptically “... well our orange order doesn't wholeheartedly support Bernadette”! 

Also in the general shop we produced very hard rubber mouldings for Kent meters.  They were difficult to produce and we got a high reject level. Kent themselves also found a high reject level.  Accordingly they demanded compensation for this from us.  This row had been going backwards and forwards for several months until we had a face-to-face meeting.  The device I used, though I only told my brand manager about it after the event, was that I had agreed - in my mind - to give them the full £30,000 they wanted; but I'd also decided that I would hike the price by 1 percent for every minute they talked on.  Accordingly, at the end of the meeting I gave them the money and told them that, because of the difficulty in producing the part, I had to increase the price by 50%.  They were happy with that, and so were we; since we recovered the £30,000 in the first month.

Best of all, we though, we had the business from Otis Europe for producing escalator handrails.  You have probably never thought about escalator handrails, you just think you brush your hand on these as you go up the escalator.  But they are quite sophisticated items of equipment. They were built up in much the same as a rubber boot; built up, from long strips of rubber impregnated fabric with solid rubber over the top.  These were then cured, in 24' long strips, on a special press.  At the time we were in trouble, since we didn't have sufficient press capacity, even though we were running 24-hour shifts. Accordingly, and with a lot of effort having gone into persuading the board, I spent £25,000 on the new press so we could double of capacity.  That, I suspect, was my eventual undoing.

We sold these handrails to Otis, who had a factory outside Liverpool. I had a special brand manager, who was more a salesman, to handle contact. I remember one meeting when they bitterly complained to us about the lifts (fortunately nothing to do with us!) they were installing at the new Roman Catholic cathedral in Liverpool.  The authorities there were insisting that the warranty for the lifts covered the lifetime of the cathedral -- which was expected to be something like 1000 years!

Our biggest business though I came from FlohrOtis in Germany, who were then the major force behind escalators in the Otis European empire. AscintreOtis, the French sister company, also had to buy our handrails along with everyone else -- but were (as was often the case) quite anti British.

I and the brand manager used to go across to Berlin quite frequently, to meet with the manager from FlohrOtis who was responsible for buying in handrails.  He was a nice guy and we used to go at dinner with him quite often. The only faux pas I made was when I asked him how he lost one of his fingers; only to receive the reply “I lost it in the British prisoner of war camp”! The war was not that long over at that time.

As I have said, this part of business was my actual come-uppance.  I was aware that the brand manager was not very good salesman, though I compensated for this by closing the business myself.  The lesson I should have learned was that I should have kept quiet and seen how the brand manager himself was getting on. That is the way that you manage salesmen.  As his manager, it is much more important that you understand the salesman than you understand the customer.  The problem was that, underneath the surface and unrecognised by my brand manager, changes were taking place in FlohrOtis.  We were, thus, presented - out of the blue - with the news that control of the escalator business was moving from FlohrOtis to AscinterOtis in Paris. In this way our business disappeared almost overnight. It was very embarrassing since it was in the leading edge business being invested in.  Accordingly, the board demanded that I fire the brand manager. I, though, thought he had done nothing other than be rather naive, so I refused. I hadn't realised that - in a company dedicated to finding scapegoats - there was another level of these. I was, as we will soon see, fired instead!

Looking back on my time at BTR, and with the benefit of my hindsight gained as a business academic, I can now see that I had no chance!

I was hired as the most senior non-board manager.  I was even promised a seat on the board within a couple of years.  Certainly, the Tavistock – the expert consultants who had advised on my appointment - had cleared me for general management. On the other hand, as I later found out, although they had been excellent in analysing my capabilities, they hadn't noticed that the actual specification was written on the back of an envelope.  What was wanted, as was the case in many companies, was not a genuine general manager but someone who would do what they were told; and that certainly wasn't me.

Being the next in line to go onto the board, I was the target for every political opponent in the company -- though in my naivete I didn't realise it at the time.  More ferociously, I was the target for a number of people at the Burton on Trent location.  Not least, I was target for my two fellow business group managers.  They had had longer than me settle down and well knew that you didn't win by being good but by destroying your competitors!  Accordingly there was a constant competition from them.  What was worse, of course, was that they only had products that would succeed where I also carried the products which were failing. Indeed  these dominated my basket of offerings.  It was inevitable that I was always the butt of criticism -- usually justifiably so.

But even within my own operations there were all the existing managers, who had every reason to want to see the back of me; and no doubt were telling stories to my director behind my back. That was how the company operated, and that's how the director loved to operate.  Rather idiosyncratically, he (correctly) saw himself as a jumped up market stallholder.  Indeed he was proud to describe himself as such, having had little or no education.  He was, of course, bright but put his success down to being savvy -- to beating everyone else by underhand methods in whatever game was being played.

Then there were my direct competitors.  The least obvious, at least to me, was the individual who was running our operations in the US.  I didn't see him as a competitor, until he took over after I was fired. It was only then I realised that the disagreements we had experienced were politically motivated.  And then, of course, there was the consultant who had been hired at the same time as myself. In fact, though, it turned out he was almost as badly placed as myself, and didn't get my job

Indeed, my most bitter competitor was actually my predecessor. John Cahill still thought the world of him, and it was his image that I was tested against.  He, like John, had been a barrow boy -- up to whatever trick was necessary.  John was full of stories about how he had tricked people. Not least, was of course his trick of putting one million pairs of boots into the warehouse. John thought he'd done very well in this, and I had done badly by not being able to get rid of them!  Of course his final glory was that he had the good sense to get out!  Hence he departed in a cloud glory, and that was the success against which I was to be measured.

Then there were those people who had hired me and now were my superiors.  John Cahill, the director who was my boss was -- I think -- initially a supporter; though he eventually couldn't cope with my more convoluted management style.  In particular, he had hired me to launch a range of domestic rubber products (following the example of Rubbermaid in the US).  He did not appreciate it when, after an in-depth investigation, I had reported back that we would make a significant loss if we even tried this.  The company was then trying to build its image as a conglomerate, and such products in the consumer sector would have helped its share price. But, on the other hand, it didn't have any of the infrastructure necessary, and I simply didn't think that the factories would be able to produce products of the requisite quality.  Whatever my reason, my refusal to do this undermined my position with John. 

In BTR’s other divisions there were just as many enemies, as well as the people competing against John Cahill in the boardroom. But there were also those who didn't like the idea that I was in line for the next director position.  In particular, though, my main enemy was - I suspect - the deputy managing director.  He had not wanted to hire me anyway, and had his nose put out of joint when I opposed him hiring his favourite in our own recruitment drive.

It may seem that the whole world was lined up against me. Certainly most of the world within BTR was!

As if that opposition was not enough, there were the inherent problems of the production operation itself.  I learned later, in case studies when I was at the OU, that there is a special type of job where someone is brought in from the outside to rescue operations - which was exactly what I was doing. As such, you had to be something of axe-man. Although I wasn't, in terms of redundancies (if you exclude the need for me to lay off 600 workers for six months). I still rode roughshod over the existing structure in order to make changes which were necessary.  Unfortunately, the inevitable outcome of this process is that, when the job is finished and the problem sorted out, another sort of manager is needed to head the operation. It then demands a much more emollient manager, who will heal wounds that had been created by the axe-man.  Hence, whatever my success, I was ultimately due to be shown the door.

Paradoxically, John Cahill later did exactly the same job when he moved to British Aerospace (BAe) as the axe-man brought in as MD to get rid of thousands of staff.  He knew, better than me, what the role was -- maybe he'd seen what had happened to those he himself treated in this way, for he spent about the same length of time, two years, doing his work and then left.  The difference was that he had arranged his departure in advance, and departed with what was then by far the biggest golden parachute that had ever been seen -- several million pounds. 

The other big problem is that you never know what is coming your way.  Everyone else in the organisation knows that you are due for the boot, but no one ever tells you. In fact one of the other business managers actually did tell me a month or so before -- but I didn't I believe him!  The tragedy was that I had two offers of jobs then available.  One I've mentioned elsewhere, which was the offer of a senior job with Philip Morris, where the head of the European operation was my previous boss -- who I loved working for.  The second alternative was the option to take away a large chunk of the business, run for British Gas. It was time when North Sea gas was replacing coal produced gas in its pipelines.  It was much drier and was drying out the previous seals.  Accordingly British Gas was having to replace the seals on most of the town mains.  To do this they dug a hole around the old seal and put a new clamp and seal over it.  This was one of BTR's biggest businesses, which it had stumbled on by accident.  They had quoted for the rubber part of the kit, which was probably the smallest part in the kit. In the event BTR found itself having to quote for assembling the whole kit, and this came to be a highly profitable operation.  It mainly comprised steel rings and clamps, which were produced by an iron foundry which had nothing to do with BTR.  BTR did produce the rubber sealing rings, but its main contact operation was assembling the various items into kits and putting these in cardboard boxes.  It seems illogical that British Gas would pay for this operation -- but they had bigger things on their minds.  Accordingly, the assembly process just took part in one of our unused working areas.  It was a delight. Although we certainly had the stockholding and forecasting problems, we had no production problems. 

This was in my personal gift, since I headed the group that undertook this work.  I had continued, and built on, the relationship my predecessors had developed; and hence I was the main contact with the British Gas. Had I wanted, I could have taken the multi-million pound business away from BTR.  Not only that, but my contact at Dunlop had told me that they were shutting down a factory in the Welsh valleys, hoping that BTR would take it off their hands.  In this way I potentially had a factory, products, market, customer and a team of managers who were loyal to me.  I could have walked off and become a multimillionaire. The reason I didn’t was partly that, in those days, I didn't know how you raised capital. But it was mainly because I was scared. I felt more secure in employment than as an entrepreneur -- despite the fact I had always wanted to be one -- and I stayed at BTR; only to fired a matter of weeks later!

My main regret was that BTR took so much of my time that I rarely saw the children.  In fact I can only remember going anywhere with them once; which was to Twycross zoo. I didn't even go on holiday with them. Pat went into local hospital for a week, to rest from a slipped disc, so my parents had to take the children to the cottage by themselves.  Miles showed his mettle, since he managed to bite my aunt Ethel in the leg and was violently sick all over the car on the way back.  Back at home, Sarah managed her own minor catastrophe when she rode her bike onto a patch of tar that was being laid; and fell off, scarring her face. Miles, separately, rode into the tar on his tricycle and Pat got a recurrence of her slipped disc - which put her into hospital – rushing to get him out!

As I have said, Sarah went to the local school, where Miles joined her later.  Miles established something of a record when he first started school.  He managed to get himself stood in a corner, not just on his first day at school but during his first assembly at the school!

Overall, though, I can scarcely remember any social life with my family while I was working at BTR.  I certainly had a separate social life of my own, entertaining other people from BTR. My favourite restaurant was nearby in Sudbury, where there was a small restaurant with less than a dozen covers.  The wife was Belgian and cooked superb Belgian cuisine. But I cannot remember ever going out with my family, not even to the cinema or shopping at the weekend. All in all, whilst at one point seeming to be the peak of my career, it was a very bleak time.

Having been fired, yet again, I went into the by now usual job-hunting mode.  This time, though, I didn't continue working but had to leave my job immediately.  Thus, I was at home with the family.  I had, at last, some free-time with them - though I am not certain I made good use of it.

In the morning I used to take Sarah, and then Miles also, up to the school.  In the afternoon I collected them again.  I remember sitting in the car waiting for them, listening to Terry Wogan – at the time when he first was heard on the radio.

Much of the rest of the day I spent preparing CVs in response to job ads -- once more I must have sent out a hundred or more.  The only peculiar pleasure I got was going to the nearby Post Office to buy the stamps for these.  I was working on the principle of mailing the maximum number and, somehow or other, holding sheets of stamps in my hand was quite a reassuring feeling.

Quite often we went into Burton to shop for food.  Clearly -- although I had three months salary in lieu - we were not well off. Accordingly we used to shop in the covered market and our favourite meal (which actually was very tasty) was made up of salami scraps mixed up with tinned tomatoes and rice.  I also had time to go to the library, which in any case was next to Department of Social Security from which - after the three months had passed - I eventually drew my dole! 

As you can see, this time it took somewhat longer than three months to get another job. It seems the higher up the ladder you are the longer it takes. Eventually, however, I had a handful of offers. More important, when I was fired I went back to the Tavistock and said “...you got me into this mess how do I get out of it”. They gave me some very good advice, the best of which was why didn't I forget about trying for a specific job and instead try for the right company. Accordingly, amongst my other applications, I applied to a small handful of companies who I respected and thought I would want to join.  One of these was IBM and indeed, IBM had been one of companies suggested by the Tavistock; since they had specifically said “...you are of a very high intellectual calibre, the sort of person that IBM will use”.  Accordingly I found myself in Richmond on Thames, at the local IBM branch, being interviewed by the branch manager, Ron Davies.  Fortunately, I got on well with him.

More important I got a high score on the IBM DP aptitude test.  This was the one essential test for getting into IBM. In essence, it was just an IQ test; but, as I had found at BTR, IQ was a very good measure of the capability of managers as well as professionals. It certainly served IBM well -- as you will gather from my book about it.

I was then interviewed by the regional manager.  I particularly remember it, as the interview took place in his office in the new regional headquarters in Croydon. They were only just fitting out the building, so I had to walk through unfinished offices to reach the completed ones in the far corner.  Again I got on well with him, and I was eventually offered a job.

Paradoxically, I have fonder memories of the periods when I was out of work than when I was in work. This was especially true of my time in Burton, where the job had been so stressful and – despite the high status – so unfulfilling. On the dole, instead, I followed a very relaxed routine - since I had nothing to do – which was very pleasant. Even though it was always a worry whether I would get another job, where we had very little in the way of savings, I just felt happy and relaxed! 

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