There are too many ‘yes men’ on boards – so pick someone you DON’T like!
After a year of scandals, directors’ leader offers a VERY tough remedy...
CHARLOTTE Valeur doesn’t beat around the bush – and it’s just as well, because she has taken the reins at the Institute of Directors at a time when top bosses need some no-nonsense advice. The IoD is a century-old organisation that bills itself as a guardian of best practice on company boards.
But the past 12 months have been marred by a series of scandals for some of Britain’s best-known bosses: WPP founder Sir Martin Sorrell was shamed over alleged misuse of company funds; Topshop tycoon Sir Philip Green stands accused of harassment and bullying; and entrepreneur Luke Johnson’s leadership was called into question when a black hole was found in Patisserie Valerie’s accounts.
Valeur says captains of industry and the company boards they sit on could benefit from some more straight-talking; too often they are full of ‘yes men’ who rarely challenge each other.
‘People want to hire someone they can relate to, someone who is more like themselves – but we’ve actually just got to pick someone potentially who we do not like,’ she says. ‘That person will challenge us all the time, and make us challenge ourselves. Are we true leaders if we don’t like people challenging us?’
Valeur’s unusually direct approach should come in handy at the IoD, which has suffered its own high-profile scandal.
Barbara Judge, the well-connected businesswoman whose public persona boosted the profile of the IoD, resigned in March while facing accusations of racism and bullying. Lady Judge, known for wearing Victorian-style frilled shirts with a fitted black suit, described herself as a feminist and was the IoD’s first chairwoman.
But her reputation took a huge hit when she was accused of saying black people ‘can get aggressive’ and reducing her staff to tears. Judge denied the allegations, but resigned her position.
It is immediately clear Valeur wants to draw a line under the affair. She says the job for her now is about moving the IoD into the modern era. And while she won’t say it herself, the organisation seems to be trying to send a message with her appointment – Valeur couldn’t be more different from her austere predecessor.
As we sit down for sandwiches in a meeting room in the IoD’s London headquarters, the 54-year-old Dane almost immediately launches into her own story about standing up to racism.
She says about eight years ago, she had moved to St Brelade, Jersey, with her then husband who is of Ghanaian descent (they are now divorced) only for their mixed-race boys, then aged 11 and nine, to be subjected to foul, racially-abusive language at school.
‘My boys had friends calling them n ***** s – and not as some sort of compliment I might add,’ she says. ‘It was very disappointing.’
She confronted the parents about what had happened. She says they fiercely denied that they, or their children, were racist and merely offered the explanation: ‘We don’t have so many black people here.’
‘I said, “Imagine your boy goes to a university in England when he reaches 18 and goes up to a black man and calls him a n ***** – it’s going to be a big problem. Please teach them” [that using that word is wrong].
‘They don’t talk to me any more, but what else could I do? These are my children, they are the most important thing in my life.’ Valeur is certainly experienced in the art of robust discussions from her career in the City. She arrived in London from Denmark, the country of her birth, in 1991 as a trader for Danish bank Nordea, where she had started an apprenticeship after school. She rose through the ranks and moved to rival banks SG Warburg, BNP Paribas and Societe Generale. Now, she has six company directorships and dreams of chairing a FTSE100 company one day, having stepped down as chairwoman of FTSE250 investment firm Kennedy Wilson last year. But she insists she is not guilty of taking on too many board roles – something Lady Judge was criticised for after building an illustrious portfolio of around 30 board appointments and City advisory roles.
In fact, Valeur has a clear message on so-called ‘over-boarding’, where directors are said to be too stretched across different roles to do a thorough job. ‘I could have 200 positions, but I’m not interested in that,’ Valeur says with trademark candour. ‘I get asked every week if I want to take a new position.
‘You have to always leave space in case something goes crazy, and you have to spend more time on that. If you totally fill your time, you are irresponsible, and I do not want to sit on boards with people like that.
‘If someone has more than ten directorships, I would question it.’
Even if the image of a club for fusty old City grandees coasting into retirement is an unfair characterisation of the IoD, Valeur is adamant it needs modernisation.
The business group is housed in a grand, 19th Century building on London’s Pall Mall, but Valeur prefers to be photographed in a more modern, understated part of the building. ‘I was very clear in my interviews for the job that the organisation needs to change,’ she says. ‘I told them that I can’t have people talking about it as an oldfashioned boys club. But everybody else was on side, and it felt like they had already embraced it.’
Some of the old guard, however, may have felt a jolt as they’ve become acquainted with their new advocate. Valeur is frank and open about her private life. She still finds time between board meetings to binge-watch Love Island with her 14-year-old daughter, she says, as well as the occasional Scandinavian crime drama.
She jokes about her teenage son spending his time ‘drinking, partying and smoking’ in Denmark – and freely tells me about looking forward to having a few tipples with her new partner in Rome on their next holiday.
‘My son is going to kill me for saying that about him,’ she laughs.
But she explains: ‘Danish society is super-transparent. When I came I would ask people, “So what’s your salary?”
‘People would tell me that we can’t talk about that. But if I don’t know your salary, how do I know what to ask for?’
Valeur will hope most executives see her quest for greater transparency as the breath of fresh air the City needs after a year of controversy ... unless, of course, they have something to hide.