Tabla de contenidos para December 2016/January 2017 en Management Today

It’s no exaggeration to state that the earth moved for British business on 23 June this year. For good or ill, the Brexit earthquake will mean we are all going to be taking an entirely different path from the one on which we were headed a year ago. But quite how long the path is, how painful it will be to walk on and where, precisely, it’s going appears to be known to very few people indeed, even at the highest levels of government. The change – and accompanying bewilderment – became even more profound last month with the unexpected election of America’s new president. The ‘liberal, metropolitan elite’ threw everything they had at Trump and the Leavers to no avail. Indeed, it’s claimed their lack of emotional proximity to…

A team that has worked together night and day for over a week on a competitive pitch will feel an unspoken sense of belonging GET MORE CAREER ADVICE at managementtoday.co.uk/ your-career Q I’m back at work after taking a year’s maternity leave. Although everyone has been very supportive, I no longer feel like part of the team. They all coped just fine without me and I feel like I’ve become ‘replaceable’. Have I inadvertently sabotaged my own career by taking a long baby break? A Teams begin to feel like teams – and to act like teams – in large part because of shared experiences. And the more intense the experience, the greater the bonding effect. A team that has worked together night and day for over a week, including…

Rethinking Reputational Risk Anthony Fitzsimmons and Derek Atkins Kogan Page, £29.99 Tesco, Volkswagen, BP, Serco, RBS – there seems to be a never-ending stream of companies who have messed up. Yet this is happening at the same time as companies are spending more money on risk management and compliance than ever before in the history of business. So why do things still keep going wrong? I was working inside one of those multinational companies when they famously screwed up. My experience at the commercial coalface has given me some insight into why the current huge effort on risk management doesn’t always reap rewards. And this is a perspective which is shared by the authors of this new book on tackling reputational risk. Risk management all too often apes the starting…

1 ARM This year’s winner, Cambridge-based chip designer ARM, could hardly be more deserving of the respect of its peers. The father of Silicon Fen is also a leading role model for higher education and business working together. It wins four criteria awards for Financial Soundness, Quality of Goods & Services, Company Competitiveness and Innovation. ARM is a world-leader in the design of low-energy, high-performance processors – its designs are used in 95% of all smartphones. No wonder that Japan’s SoftBank paid a whopping £24.3bn for ARM in July. 2 UNILEVER Another year, another strong performance for Unilever. The Anglo-Dutch consumer goods giant is the only company to have been in every BMAC Top 20. It also takes the criteria awards for the Ability to Attract, Retain and Develop Top…

BMAC WINNER TOP IN SECTOR: SOFTWARE & COMPUTER SERVICES CRITERIA WINNER: FINANCIAL SOUNDNESS, QUALITY OF GOODS & SERVICES, INNOVATION AND COMPANY COMPETITIVENESS Software Website: arm.com Head office: 110 Fulbourn Road, Cambridge CB1 9NJ Number of employees: Over 4,200 BRITAIN’S ADMIRED COMPANIES COMPANY SHOWCASE 2016 COMPANY SUMMARY ARM® technology is at the heart of a computing and connectivity revolution that is transforming the way people live and businesses operate. Every day more than 40 million ARM-based chips are shipped by our partners into products that enhance the human experience; connecting people, improving lives and making the impossible possible. From the sensor to the cloud and all points in between, ARM is shaping the smart connected world. GROWTH MARKETS Our advanced processor designs have provided the intelligence in 86 billion silicon chips…

TOP IN SECTOR: BUSINESS SUPPORT SERVICES OVERALL 10TH PLACE Information services Website: experianplc.com Head office: The Sir John Peace Building, Experian Way, NG2 Business Park, Nottingham NG80 1ZZ Number of employees: 17,000 BRITAIN’S ADMIRED COMPANIES COMPANY SHOWCASE 2016 Experian unlocks the power of data to create opportunities for consumers, businesses and society. We gather, analyse and process data in ways others can’t. We help individuals take financial control and access financial services, businesses make smarter decisions and thrive, lenders lend more responsibly, and organisations prevent identity fraud and crime. For more than 125 years, we’ve helped consumers and clients prosper, and economies and communities flourish. Our 17,000 people in 37 countries believe the possibilities for you, and our world, are growing. We’re investing in new technologies, talented people and innovation…

JANE NÍ DHULCHAOINTIGH Perhaps unsurprisingly for the inventor of Sugru, the world’s first mouldable glue, Ní Dhulchaointigh finds a kindred spirit in Tim Harford, whose book Messy she reviews. ‘It’s a brilliant book that instantly appealed to and vindicated my naturally untidy tendencies.’ MATTHEW TAYLOR In his review of The Fourth Industrial Revolution by Klaus Schwab, the Royal Society of Arts CEO explores whether automation can be harnessed for the many not just the privileged few. ‘Intelligent robots may soon rule the world. What a pity there wasn’t one standing for the US presidency.’ HOWARD DAVIES RBS chairman and MT diarist Davies looks ahead to the Trump administration. ‘In New York just before the election, some Wall Street Upper East Siders asked me how it felt in the UK after…

Latest statistics show that more than 900,000 people in the UK work under zero-hours contracts, up 20% on 2015. ‘Zero-hours’ is a general term used to describe employers hiring staff with no minimum level of work or pay. Workers are engaged on an ad hoc, casual basis and only paid for the work they actually do. The legal position on zero-hours contracts is often misunderstood. They are not illegal, but are regulated. Individuals engaged in this way are likely to be legally categorised as ‘workers’ or ‘employees’, meaning they qualify for rights such as holiday pay and the minimum wage. Additionally, a term in a zero-hours contract prohibiting the person from working elsewhere, known as an ‘exclusivity clause’, is unenforceable. While the flexibility of zero-hours arrangements is often beneficial for…

Your new product isn’t selling like it should because the market doesn’t like it. It’s a problem that is commonly addressed by adapting the product to suit what the market wants. But, as this insight derived from an accordion-playing cat shows, that may not be the right thing to do. Over summer I was on holiday in Italy. Every evening on the main street of the town where I was staying, there was a string of entertainers. One of them, an accordionist, was really good. When he played the fast passages, you couldn't even see his fingers moving. But he wasn’t getting much money in his hat, because there was another more successful accordionist 100 yards along. Musically he was pretty mediocre, but his hat was piled high with coins.…

THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION ? MESSY ? RETHINKING REPUTATIONAL RISK The Fourth Industrial Revolution Klaus Schwab Portfolio Penguin, £14.99 Ryan Avent in The Wealth of Humans makes a telling point about the Luddites, the weavers who destroyed mill machinery when it threatened their livelihood in the early 19th century. Of course, they failed and their name has since become synonymous with futile resistance to technological progress, but perhaps, suggests Avent, they had a point. For almost a century later, life got worse for tradesmen as they were forced to work in hellish factories and live in urban hovels. The Luddites were vanquished by a powerful ruling class unchecked by democracy, but in the face of today’s impatient voters, imagine the fate of a politician promoting disruptive technological change on the…

It’s entirely apt that the 2016 Britain’s Most Admired Company award is won by a business that was created in the year of BMAC’s birth – 1990. ARM (Advanced RISC Machines Ltd as it was then) came into existence 26 years ago as a tripartite venture between Acorn, Apple and VLSI. Its headquarters were a converted 18th-century barn in Swaffham Bulbeck, a village eight miles from the centre of Cambridge and success was not immediate. One of its early designs was the microchip used in Apple’s first handheld device the Newton – a resounding flop. Undeterred and under the leadership of first Robin Saxby and then Warren East – now CEO of Rolls-Royce – the company grew steadily through the 90s and noughties. Its very particular expertise – the design…

A bold new winner in a stormtossed sector In a business beset by ‘passporting’ fears and regulatory troubles, our winner stands out. Decentralised ‘anti-bank’ Handelsbanken, where branch managers take all loan decisions and bonuses are banned, tops its sector for the first time. Former UK boss Anders Bouvin is now in Sweden running the group, and he expects ‘no direct impact whatsoever’ from Brexit. Q3 profits almost halved to $843m at secondplaced HSBC where CEO Stuart Gulliver has said that 1,000 jobs may leave London post-Brexit. Last year’s winner Santander is in third place. Its Q3 post-tax profits are down 11% to £1.07bn, a fall which the firm blames on the new 8% Bank Corporation Tax surcharge. Diageo on top, SABMiller and AB InBev conclude megabrew deal Former double overall…

A n affable old-school toff with a BoJoesque barnet and dressed-down manner, Crispin Tweddell is about as far away from the stereotypical bloodless, buttoned-up private equity tycoon as you can get. But don’t let appearances deceive you – despite the non-industry-standard rumpled jacket, faded red chinos and twinkly eyes, he’s a remarkable entrepreneur-investor who founded Pitcher & Piano in the 80s and whose backing helped take fashion brand Boden (from whose catalogue he may well still dress) from sales of £18m to £156m in the noughties. His Piper operation’s current portfolio includes Turtle Bay Caribbean eateries, posh dog food brand Forthglade and gourmet snack biz Propercorn (founded by MT’s 35 Women Under 35er Cassandra Stavrou) to name but three. Nor is Piper’s HQ to be found in the rarefied financial…

TOP IN SECTOR: CONSTRUCTION _ HOME OVERALL FOURTH PLACE CRITERIA WINNER: QUALITY OF MANAGEMENT Residential developer Website: berkeleygroup.co.uk Head office: Berkeley House, 19 Portsmouth Road, Cobham, Surrey KT11 1JG Number of employees: approx 2,500 BRITAIN’S ADMIRED COMPANIES COMPANY SHOWCASE 2016 COMPANY SUMMARY The Berkeley Group builds homes and neighbourhoods in the South of England. It is made up of five autonomous companies – Berkeley Homes, St George, St James, St Edward and St William. We work together with other people to tackle the shortage of good quality homes; and we make a lasting contribution to the landscape and to the communities we help create. We build homes for everyone: from families to first-time buyers, students to older people, and luxury living to affordable housing. Our business is about placemaking not…

TOP IN SECTOR: ENGINEERING _ AERO & DEFENCE Engineering Website: gkn.com Head office: Ipsley House,_Ipsley Church Lane,_Redditch, Worcestershire_B98 0AJ Number of employees: 56,000 BRITAIN’S ADMIRED COMPANIES MOST COMPANY SHOWCASE 2016 COMPANY SUMMARY Every time you travel by road or air almost anywhere in the world there is a good chance that GKN is helping you on your way. No matter the vehicle maker – car or aircraft – GKN designs, manufactures and services systems and components for original equipment manufacturers around the world. Founded more than 250 years ago, we have adapted, developed and grown into a £7.7bn business at the forefront of global technology. Our network of 56,000 people in more than 30 countries offers our customers an unrivalled breadth of technology, geographic footprint and experience. Our engineering moves…

TOP IN SECTOR: LIFE ASSURANCE & INSURANCE Wealth management Website: sjp.co.uk Head office: 1 Tetbury Road, Cirencester, Gloucestershire GL7 1FP Number of employees: 3,259 advisers within the St. James’s Place Partnership and 1,445 employees across the UK COMPANY SUMMARY St. James’s Place is a FTSE 100 company that provides highly personalised face-to-face wealth management advice, investment management and related services to individuals, trustees and businesses. Established as one of the UK’s leading wealth management organisations, with geographical reach extending to Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore, we have over £71bn of client funds under management. Our dedicated advice service is delivered to clients through our expert advisers, known collectively as the St. James’s Place Partnership – so called because of the way they work in partnership with clients. PROMOTION AND DEVELOPMENT…

MOTOR MOUTH Lexus RC F This sports coupé packs a powerful punch. But is it enough to worry arch-rivals Audi and BMW, asks Andrew Saunders Lexus is best known for A8- and 7 Series-worrying luxury cruisers and hybrid eco-wafters. But it is not a brand that has caused the hard-riding types at Audi’s RS or BMW’s Motorsport divisions many sleepless nights. Buyers of flashy coupés with near-supercar performance do not naturally turn to Toyota’s premium stable, but rather to established class-leaders the BMW M4 or Audi RS5 But the boys and girls at Lexus clearly think they should, and have made a determined stab at providing a credible alternative to the high-speed Teutonic hegemony. The noholds- barred RC F is the result. Like a sumo wrestler, its styling may lack…

MONDAY Often the loudest sound in any organisation is the bee in the chief executive’s bonnet. Interestingly in most of the Smokehouse office, a vast open-plan sea of desks modelled on worst practice in the poultry industry, no one can hear this particular noise. That of course is because the vast majority of our caged workers are wearing colossal noise-cancelling headphones. These headphones are currently what’s most on Lynton Spivey, our bewigged chief executive’s, mind. It doesn’t help that several people on his train in the morning also have massive headphones playing ‘irritating tinny thumping’. Spivey’s been complaining about headphones in general for some time and because the board are the only people old enough not to wear them, we get the benefit. TUESDA Headphones have become an issue because…

I’ve always been a hard worker. I did a paper round from the age of eight; I worked on the production line at chocolate maker Terry’s of York while I was at school; and I waitressed in a restaurant while I was at uni. If I have my way, I’ll be working until I’m 100. My first job after my PhD was with British Airways. I was intelligent and inquisitive but, when you’re at the bottom of a big company, it’s hard to understand what the hell’s going on. Most of my research since then has been on how large corporations are run. In 1982 I moved to PA Consulting and became its youngest – and first female – director. I had the big car – a BMW 7 Series…

Amid all the political turmoil of the last few months, one big question has come to preoccupy me: where have the men in grey suits gone? Over the years, they have perhaps not had such a great press. The phrase was first coined by the late, great Alan Watkins, whose weekly political column was a pillar of The Observer for decades, to denote the group of senior Conservative men who famously told Mrs Thatcher she had to go in 1990. Many in the Party have never forgiven them. In fact Watkins’ original coinage was the more prosaic ‘men in suits’, and Willie Whitelaw always maintained that he would not have been seen dead in a grey one in White’s. But the colour grey soon crept into the phrase and has…

Messy: How to be Creative and Resilient in a Tidy-Minded World Tim Harford Little, Brown, £20 was instinctively drawn to Tim Harford’s new book Messy. In life and in business, our culture is uncomfortable with untidiness. And, until reading this book, so was I. I’m an accidental entrepreneur, having invented Sugru mouldable glue while I was studying product design. Today, Sugru is stocked in more than 8,000 stores and we’ve just recently shipped our 10 millionth minipack from our factory based in east London. You don’t get to this scale by being untidy. So for years, I’ve had to suppress my natural messiness in order to succeed. Now, having read all about the creative benefits and cultural and economic value in being ‘messy’, I’m reconsidering my shame! The premise of…

HIGHEST RISER 2016 RENTOKIL INITIAL Risen by 133 places to 25th Founded 1925 Key staff Andy Ransom (CEO), John McAdam (chairman) Business Pest control, hygiene and workwear services Employees circa 31,000 Revenue, H1 2016 £987.1m Adjusted pre-tax profit, H1 2016 £98.3m HOW THE WINNERS WERE CHOSEN In conjunction with Leeds Business School, part of Leeds Beckett University, MT asked Britain’s largest public companies in 25 sectors to evaluate their peers. Each sector comprises a maximum of 10 companies. Using 12 criteria, participants rated their sector rivals on a scale of 0 to 10 (0 = poor, 5 = average, 10 = excellent). Analysts at leading City investment firms were also polled. On the basis of these scores, three rankings were arrived at: all 241 companies (left); top 10 overall on…

Telecommunication Website: btplc.com Head office: BT Centre, 81 Newgate Street, London EC1A 7AJ Number of employees: At 31 March 2016, we had 102,500 full-time equivalent employees in 61 countries, with 81,400 based in the UK. This includes 12,800 who joined the group as part of EE BRITAIN’S ADMIRED COMPANIES COMPANY SHOWCASE 2016 COMPANY SUMMARY BT’s purpose is to use the power of communications to make a better world. We’re one of the world’s leading providers of communications services and solutions, serving customers in 180 countries. Our principal activities include the provision of networked IT services globally; local, national and international telecommunications services to our customers for use at home, at work and on the move; broadband, TV and internet products and services; and converged fixed-mobile products and services. Our goal…

TOP IN SECTOR: ENGINEERING & MACHINERY OVERALL SIXTH PLACE Engineering Website: spiraxsarcoengineering.com Head office: Charlton House, Cirencester Road, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire GL53 8ER Number of employees: 5,000, including 1,300 sales and service engineers BRITAIN’S ADMIRED COMPANIES COMPANY SHOWCASE 2016 COMPANY SUMMARY Spirax-Sarco Engineering is the world leader in each of its two businesses, Spirax Sarco for steam specialties and Watson-Marlow Fluid Technology Group for niche peristaltic pumps and associated fluid path technologies. The Spirax Sarco steam specialties business provides a broad range of products, engineered packages and site services, helping industrial and institutional steam users improve production efficiency and product quality; reduce energy costs, water usage and emissions; achieve regulatory compliance and enhance the safety of their operations. Watson-Marlow Fluid Technology Group offers solutions for fluid path applications with highly accurate,…