What is the most important lesson you have learnt in your career?
To keep a confidence. Trust and integrity are highly valued although being able to understand the accounts also helps.
What is the strangest situation you have had to deal with at work?
Sacking my boss.
What is the greatest challenge currently facing HR?
To attract enough high-quality people into the profession. If we cannot match other functions in terms of intellect, energy, business acumen, expertise and personality, the HR function will become irrelevant, and rightly so.
Imagine being stranded on a desert island with enough food for only two people. Who would you choose as your companion?
Kate Moss. Only because she wouldn’t eat her share of the food.
What are the three things you hope to achieve in your new role?
To develop a proactive, challenging and business oriented HR function, to provide top quality guidance and advice to my board colleagues, to get the IPC Tower windows cleaned.
What is the best thing about being on the board?
Being involved in all aspects of the business and having the scope to contribute across the organisation.
What is the worst?
The volume of paperwork.
What would you do if you had more spare time?
Teach my wife and children to play golf and to support Liverpool FC.
You have stumbled upon a time machine hidden in the vaults of your company building. What time period would you visit?
1993. I could claim the idea of launching Loaded on an unsuspecting world.
If you could adopt the management style of an historical character, whose would you adopt?
Marx, Groucho Marx – you did say hysterical character?
If you were to write a book, which subject would you chose to write about?
Modern journalism, the role of e-mailed interview questions in modern business writing.
What is your greatest strength?
The support I get from my wife.
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What is the greatest risk you have ever taken?
I don’t believe in risk – just opportunities that don’t work out.
