Part Four – Time to say goodbye…suicide via a conference call
19 – Wages Of Sin
Bankers’ bonuses have been a hot topic in recent years and for good reasons too but before you all get hot under the collar reading this the vast majority of bank employees are outside looking in on the annual gorging fest that takes place to reward the seemingly great and good. As far as I was concerned I was never in danger of being able to retire early to the Riviera but there were a few years where I was lucky enough to earn a few extra quid at the end of the year for a performance over and above whatever targets had been set by the preceding annual finger in the air methodology.
However, if I had been planning a lavish reward such as a new sports coupe then it would more likely have been the Eastern European version rather than anything Italian or German, which is not sour grapes merely putting the issue in perspective. The main “bonus” earned most years was on the back of the advice in the MCC toilets all those years ago which was to stuff those shares under the bed for a rainy day…and an early finish to use cricketing parlance. Although that scheme has long since been outlawed by the Government there were still generous tax-efficient share based savings plans that, providing the shares kept going north, were very good savings routes.
The downside and one of the seldom mentioned side effects of the excesses of the likes of RBS, HBoS, Northern Rock and the much smaller Bradford & Bingley was that when these institutions crumbled the values of life savings accrued over years by ordinary employees vanished in a puff of smoke. With hindsight you could say that for these employees to place all their eggs in their employer’s basket was not the best approach but banks were supposed to be safe and reliable investments, if not even a bit dull. I know of people who worked the same length of time for similar banks and saw their retirement nest-egg smashed to bits. All this in a lax regulatory environment, created by a Government that promoted the virtue of saving for the future. Undoubtedly, there are a lot of people out there with very bitter feelings and who could blame them?
Frankly, our business never really got to grips with the bonus culture and clearly, in these austere times, the banks in general do not have a clue nor appear to care a jot about sentiment out in the real world as they continue with the annual feeding frenzy. In our pokey little business we were always either one great year from a modest bonus and hero status or a few fallow months, zero status and the abject humiliation of being put on a PIP – Performance Improvement Plan – by a line manager who had no idea of how to actually improve your performance because they could not do the job in the first place. The business lived from month to month with absolutely no understanding of a long term plan or strategy, largely because senior management could see no further than the next step up the ladder – ideally with a fat bonus to accompany them.
The setting of targets that would play a large part in governing any bonus pot were so arbitrary it actually bordered on the farcical. For instance you often got a recent joiner on a target so low that they could actually achieve a very good bonus pro-rata to their annual salary, whilst another guy might have a target sometimes more than double or treble this and struggle to feed the pet budgie at the end of the year; this despite their overall contribution to the business dwarfing Newbie. By picking up an established portfolio with business in the pipeline waiting to drop, Newbie could seem a great signing, until the free passes dried up the following year and reality bit the protected species flush on the backside. Hero to zero was a common theme in the business and it was clear what was behind this.
To compensate, salaries should have reflected experience and proven, consistent value to the business, but they normally were far from this and quite often we would discover new recruits on salaries not far off the established and proven producers. Such was the feeling of mistrust generated by this, if you really were not that money motivated and were happy with your own penis rather than a metal version made in Germany, you tended to strike a better work/life balance to compensate. As one of the juniors I coached at the club once remarked “you must spend all day on preparing our training plans coach”. Well, the perceptive little bugger was not far off and it was a lot more interesting than asset finance, albeit a lot more challenging trying to get Little Johnny to bat straight.
Towards the end of life as I knew it, there was a quarterly incentive introduced which I found hard not to believe was simply a ruse for the incumbent Managing Director to get four free extra trips a year to top up his tan; strangely, given most people detested the bloke, he seemed to view his presence as part of the prize for the recipients. Just why anybody would have wanted to spend a whole weekend with the man in question beats me. Hell, you could have offered me an accompanied trip to the Playboy mansion, all expenses paid but if it had to be on the same plane as him I’d rather have a solo chalet at Butlins, Skegness. Okay so I never got invited but when we saw the list each quarter you wondered how they picked who they did. Still, as I said, at least the grass at the club was not in danger of growing over and we had a new clubhouse to build so it was head down for a few years to get on with the fund raising.
Of course at the end of a tough year on the road selling in one of the most demanding arenas there is, we were entitled to feel that we were due a drink on the business. As glib as I may be from time to time about the job the actual procuring of business was hard graft with tough customers, sometimes disingenuous competitors, hard economic times and the dreaded business prevention boys tucked up safely in Head Office waiting to “just say no”. And the business agreed, so it allocated us £15 each every year to go and get wasted each Christmas!
Needless to say, a few of us thought better and where the £15 ended up who knows. There was also a clear North-South divide exacerbated by the location of Head Office in Basingstoke, a relatively short hop for most of the guys in the Southern and Midlands teams, but a five hour slog for us in Yorkshire and a Polar expedition for anybody further North. Clearly, familiarity allowed our Southern cousins to become far closer to the movers and shakers down in the subsidised canteen in Basingstoke whilst the visits we made were as rare as royalty.
There was one night out that evidenced this divide like no other; it was the Christmas party night on the lash for the Northern team up in Newcastle. During the day, we had held a team meeting of sorts at the Stadium of Light, home to Sunderland AFC, which was free to us because Sunderland banked with Barclays at the time. Then it was off go-karting on an outdoor track, although I declined this attractive option of freezing my arse of in a sub-zero North-Easterly, preferring the temptations of the hotel pool and Jacuzzi proving once again I was clearly not a team player; at least I avoided frost bite. On the night out we ate at a pizza restaurant, clubbed a few quid into the kitty and hit the infamous Quayside.
Just as we got to the only night club that would let us in, I took a call from a colleague in the Southern team. And so as my colleague, Martin, tried manfully to get the doorman down from £5 a head to £3 I discovered our Southern colleagues’ night out had been very different. Their evening had begun with a few drinks at a bar close to the London Eye, followed by champagne and canapes aboard the Eye before dining at a very well know restaurant. They had just negotiated an “excellent” group admission to a club for a modest…’er…£1500. By contrast Martin and I were soon at the bar having also negotiated a group discounted entry to the dive under the Tyne Bridge for the princely sum of £27. Yes, we did work for the same business but there were many occasions when it was hard not to believe that it was in name, only. To be honest, most of the lads I worked with would not recognise a canape if it poked them in the eye and a pint of Stella does just as good a job as a glass of Moet but if the business wanted to believe it had a joined-up-team ethic it was far from the truth.
Hotel accommodation when on training courses got gradually worse towards the end of the decade, although we had never stayed in anything flash apart from on one glorious occasion where Martin and I ended up in a country retreat called Tilney Hall, just outside Basingstoke. We ended up there because for some strange reason Basingstoke was literally booked up that particular week, most likely with asylum seekers, so the only place we could get in was this palatial pad located deep in the woods. You know when you are on to a good thing when the driveway is almost a mile long and there is not a McDonalds in sight. The final confirmation of gravel on tyre tracks told me to hide the shitty company Saab somewhere around the back.
We looked up at the stately façade and wondered if we had the wrong place – surely Premier Inns were not this good – but yes, we were booked in here for two nights of fluffy white towels, Moulton Brown in the bathroom – stolen by Martin, not me dear owners of said establishment although it did not work because the wife left him anyway – and the most gorgeous array of replica Bond girls staffing reception you could ever imagine. One flutter of Eastern European eyelashes, a quick glance at impossibly pert boobs and Martin and I both thought we had died and gone to Heaven; Premier Inns would be like cold turkey after this. It got better as, unbelievably, we did not have to observe the Barclays tradition of tossing a coin to see who got the lumpy camp bed and who “won” the slightly less lumpy main bed – we had twin beds – whoopee! Had Premier Inns gone bust?
The night was surreal as well, for several reasons. We began with drinks in the bar, a sort of gentlemen’s club with high chairs, lots of ruffling of papers and coughing and spluttering. Most of us had dressed casually but when we were about to be shown to the dining room it was pointed out that collars and ties were de rigueur and jeans were certainly not. Amazing how standards relax when fifteen lads threaten to hit the town and bugger off for the night for burger and chips and a crate load of ale at Weatherspoons. Soon we were being served by the best dressed waiters I had ever seen and “entertained” by some old girl on the piano albeit that “Knees up Mother Brown” did not seem to be in her repertoire.
In many ways it was a formative night because our guest of honour was our Sales Director, Keith Sangwin, who had come through the ranks and was a highly popular and trusted leader with many of the guys. It was broadly half way through the year and, to borrow that old saying from the long departed Silver Fox, it had been a traditionally slow start. We all knew that Keith was in an unenviable position because if the numbers were not there at the end of the year then it would be his head, not the architect of the “grand plan”, firmly on the block. Keith would simply be the fall guy and you could tell he was genuinely down about where we were numbers wise – it was not good. And yet that night was probably the best demonstration of collective unity I ever saw with a table full of consistent high performers committing to turning the whole year around in the remainder of the year. Such was the support for Keith that it was a passionate, almost emotional night and, true to our word, the year ended in a flurry of business. However, the joy of sales is short lived for you may bask in your glory on New Years Eve but in a few short hours the clock is back to zero and off you go again.
On the flip side of Tilney Hall may I offer you the Dalby Hotel in Liverpool, which has to be the cheapest and worst hotel Barclays has ever stumped up for. For a while Martin had assumed control of booking various team days out but his budgetary controls could be a touch lax shall we say after the early frugal promise displayed in Sunderland. Due to his romantic liaisons with a gorgeous HO girl at the time, Martin’s Tours had arranged a bonding team night out with the London Team, which was a bit like getting together the supporter’s clubs of Celtic and Rangers. Clearly we had to go to meet them as that’s where Martin’s squeeze resided so we ended up in some poncy London curry house eating the worst, most ridiculously priced curry you could imagine. A buffet style offering including what tasted like stale, spiced Dairylea cheese triangles came to over £100 per head. Had we nipped to the local Khyber in my village the total bill would not have been a £100.
When the management present saw this bill they literally crapped themselves and we had a bizarre payment process where the bill was divided across each and every company Barclaycard present to attempt to disguise this gross waste of money. We were all lined up and the restaurant staff must have wondered what was strangest of all; this procession or the fact that we had chosen to eat at their shit restaurant. As a consequence Martin was sacked as tour organiser and our Regional Sales Director, a strange title because I never saw him direct anything related to sales, assumed responsibility for all future bookings and we went rapidly downhill as his attempts at parsimony grew by the year, his supreme achievement being the Dalby, viewed by us all as revenge after this one trip had blown the budget out of the water.
What a shit hole this place was. You just knew when you entered the car park that it was dinner at McDonalds and no chance of a shower till you got home. In fact, the shower was actually akin to a sealed tube and God knows how anybody taller than six feet and heavier than eight stone ever got in it, let alone got a wash. It was like an upright plastic condom but the biggest shock was the sleeping “accommodation”. Honestly we had bunk beds and the gap between the top bunk and the ceiling would not have been allowed in the local prison.
Consequently, the toss of the coin took on massively more importance and, unbelievably, for the first time in our many years of rooming together, Martin finally won and I trotted up the metal ladders to see if my big nose had any clearance from the fly infested ceiling. And so, if one day anybody ever retrieves my Personal File from HR and notes any comments suggesting I was a grumpy and cantankerous old fart on a meaningless training course in Liverpool designed to get us to sell an insurance product that nobody ever wanted, nor ever sold and was withdrawn anyway – another good idea from the top – consider this? Did the Trainer stay at this dump? Not a bloody chance, which is why he may well have appeared chipper the following morning whilst I was sleep deprived, unwashed and had a back sorer than my head. Global market leading business…my arse!
20 – Lets Be Friends (Skin To Skin)
Large organisations seem almost universal in the apparent desire to control the people who work for them, seeking to instill a shared message of love and harmony on a continual basis. Sometimes I felt that if they could have got away with it they would have had us marching round the ring road in Basingstoke, saluting the higher echelons as they perched on the roof of Churchill Plaza like something out of that pleasant, happy- go-lucky land of China. And so in times of plenty we would all be corralled to some venue miles away – unless you lived in the South – for the annual conference, a blatant exercise in ego massaging for senior management.
I often wondered, such was the almost rabid desire some showed to get on to the stage, whether or not they had been harbouring a grudge for decades having been passed over for the school nativity play many moons ago. And clap and holler we bloody well would because, after all, it’s not about you it’s about us! Over the years I developed conference avoidance into a fine art. I carefully scheduled trips to somewhere warm to coincide with the latest attempt at circulating the “Feel Good Factor”. In fact, I missed so many that it fuelled rumours that I had been secretly bumped off by the powers that be. As Regional Director, Happy never challenged my latest excuse for not being there, preferring the shared distance between us. Occasionally, curiosity got the better of me and, as long as there was a pool and it did not clash with the cricket season, then I would accept being fed for a couple of days and the chance to catch up on some free beer and sleep.
If you took a straw poll amongst the attendees, it’s pretty safe to say that we all had a shared view of what a conference should really be about. Forget about the fancy stage, the sound crew big enough for a Beyonce concert, the legion of woefully, under prepared, dreadfully dull speakers – simply put us up at a decent hotel somewhere in the middle of the country, drop in a coach load of HO girls and let’s have a good old piss up. Once there we could gain more from each other – honestly – simply by sitting and chatting on the issues of the day, rather than being force fed the view from the top which was pointless anyway given their distance above the clouds of reality.
The only saving grace as far as most of these events went was the growing anticipation as the day wore on of the actual arrival of a few coach loads of Hampshire girls, let out for the night to party till the wee small hours. Long months of cultivating Curvaceous from Collections would now have a chance of flowering into something special, at least for one night only. Sadly, the Joy Police even put a stop to this in later years and so there was nothing, absolutely nothing, to alleviate the tedium – barring getting a seat on the back row, pray for lights down and slowly closing the eyes.
One of the earliest examples of the clear desire by senior management to be “loved” was an event held at the Granada Studios in Manchester, home of Coronation Street. The theme was based on replicating a studio television game show with the great and the good taking key roles on stage and demonstrating just why they never did make the school play. It was orchestrated by a resident professional crew from the studios who must have been baffled by what they saw and longed to be back with the gritty realism of Coronation Street. At regular intervals we were implored to either “clap”, “laugh” or “whoop” by placards raised by the studio staff in response to some supposedly witty line from the stage.
In addition at a pre-arranged signal we were told to stand up and cheer like trained monkeys and when that came I was pleased to look around from my still sitting position to see several others simply not willing to become trained clones sat there shaking their heads in disbelief. You can call me a killjoy if you wish but I will get out of my chair and shout and cheer if what I see stirs some emotions, but not simply to fall into line and play to some idiot’s ego. Fortunately, the evening was better remembered largely for the sighting of one of the great and good being so pissed he took out a pot plant in the hotel reception area leaving it like a victim of the wrestler Big Daddy. His days were numbered from thereon.
The selection of venues for these annual bashes seemed to be a touch arbitrary as long as the compass pointed south and a couple of venues were chosen for several years in succession, although there were whispers as to why this was the case. For some time we used what resembled a modern day prison camp out in the sticks somewhere in the Midlands presumably chosen because any attempt at escape would be useless as there was simply nowhere else to go. There was a rumour that the place was almost “owned” by the bank so to ensure it looked healthy to a future prospective buyer all our external training was based there for some time. It was also used as a training camp for the Premier League football referees whose strut and air of self-importance gave our senior people a serious run for their money.
The actual prison camp was not that bad once inside, as at least there was a pool to escape to that was detached from the conference facility. This was essential if you had ticked the “No Publicity” box and needed a place to slope off too. There was also a golf course meaning that those who had managed to convince their other halves that it would be a good career move to not be seen to vanish too soon on the Saturday morning, could roll home much later – convinced that the eighteen holes had not done much the for game of golf but may have pushed on the career drive.
However, in golfing terms a far bigger prize awaited with the moving of the conference from Stalag Daventry to Newport in South Wales and the luxurious Celtic Manor Resort, soon to host the golfing equivalent of the World Cup, the biannual Ryder Cup between Europe and the USA. Now, perhaps it is tantamount to a conspiracy theory to suggest there may have been a trade off for hosting our annual conference here for a few years running, with the Ryder Cup just around the corner, so let’s just park that thought for now.
Although the quality of the venue had gone up several notches, sadly the content was the same old dreary nonsense and the business, even in the boom years, had the ability to feel as good about itself as a ninety year old spinster. I guess in part to rein in the budget, the evening’s entertainment was a barbecue followed by a night out in Cardiff. This year though, somebody had come up with the great wheeze of drawing your room partner out of a hat which would have been fine if they had still been shipping them in from Collections Dept –a sort of keys in the ashtray approach. But this was not to be and so you risked a night with some guy you had never met in your life, who may well spend all night snoring and farting in his sleep…just like me.
By this time my regular room-mate, Martin, provided the added value of some great male beauty products and only moderate snoring but the guy I had been drawn with was a comparative fossil and I just did not want to endure this enforced bonding. Worse still, I had dressed for the occasion, resplendent in beach shorts and shirt looked like a complete moron amongst the chinos and corduroys assembled for the barbecue. It seemed flip-flops had still to catch on all those years since The Hoff had tried to launch the concept in Bradford. Cardiff had about as much appeal as a night in Bradford, so by ten o’clock I had snuck out the back door having passed on ever finding out whether Old Geoff did actually snore preferring a four-hour slog back up the motorway.
The following year was my most memorable conference ever and not simply because the room sharing experiment had been consigned to the bin. There had been another turgid morning of speech after speech, from people most of us had never heard of, all keen to tell us how indispensable they were. Lunch had come and gone and, unusually, the post lunch keynote speaker had been nothing special, so much so I cannot remember what the subject was. This was particularly galling as there was a Test Match on and rooms at Celtic Manor had Sky Sports so I was getting twitchy, sat at the back of the auditorium. And then came that moment familiar to anybody who has ever been to a conference – -the “breakout sessions”– specifically designed to cover up the reality that there is nothing else left to fill in for the next few hours despite them having had months to plan this.
Typically, the audience of around a few hundred would be broken up into several smaller groups, depending on some arbitrary coding, generally a sticker on your seat, although nobody knew who had what so you could basically go where you wanted. And so I did, to my room, feet up, tea on, biscuits at the ready and England batting. This may appear cavalier but as nobody knew which group you were supposed to be in and the return to the main auditorium later generally meant a change of seat, you could literally vanish into thin air. After about an hour of this I decided, given the cricket was a bit dull, to venture down to the magnificent pool area and, as conference lurched on I had the entire pool, sauna and steam room all to myself.
I’m not sure what great messages I missed and to be honest nobody else could tell me much later, as I carefully enquired as to what they had thought about the afternoon. Luckily, each and every time I was asked what I thought, my earnest stock answer of “thought provoking, challenging and exciting” seemed to do the trick – save for those that really knew I was just taking the piss. Never mind, surely if it was this easy a seat on the board may not be that impossible? I just had to keep on faking it but hard as I tried, I could never scale the heights of the ultimate faker I ever witnessed.
As I have mentioned, the Graveyard Shift was the hardest slot to fill by far, due to a combination of factors. Having escaped from the morning torture, only to be dragged back again, must have compared with a Guantanamo Bay inmate being given a week in Barbados before being hauled back for more water boarding. We were lucky to have some great speakers, including a double amputee who ran marathons for fun, a NASA scientist who left us agog with the inside story on the space shuttle disaster and in my opinion the best of all, Francois Pienaar,South Africa’s Rugby World Cup-winning captain. He was awesome, recalling the intensity of post-apartheid South Africa and the build up to and execution of South Africa’s first World Cup – ending in supreme triumph. And then there was Sir Humphrey…
Apparently Sir Humphrey had sailed around the world backwards, a feat he claimed remarkable but which left a few of us wondering why. No matter as this rambling tale, doubtless recalled hundreds of times for the same fat fee and designed to inspire us all into presumably sailing around the world, the right way at least, went on and on and on… The finale was a tale about seeing a whale that was apparently, according to Sir Humphrey, in severe distress as they passed by. For some reason (and don’t ask me as I had nodded off), they passed the whale again, only this time, according the Sir Humphrey, it was now dead… with supreme timing he started to cry which is exactly how I felt having listened to him for almost an hour.
Unbelievably, there were people getting hankies out all around me. I felt like standing up and shouting “it wasn’t dead it had just had to listen to you blather on for an hour!” And then, if it could not get any worse, our guest left the stage – cue more whoops – only for our current main man to skip back up to the stage, offer him a consoling pat on the back and then break down himself at the lectern. God forbid anything really bad should ever happen to these people.
There were many other attempts at the spurious concept of team bonding, including an “It’s a Knockout” Day, complete with water hazards, all guaranteed to leave the participants soaking wet, which might have been okay had we been in Spain but in the Midlands in early April this was a flawed concept to say the least. We also hired an events team whose theme for the day was to get us to create a “railway” around the room which I could not see the point of especially as I was still haunted by my supreme failure at my one attempt at creativity – a toast rack made at school – which my mum still keeps as a reminder to my ineptitude at all things practical. Why I would ever be expected to make a railway, and out of cardboard to boot, was beyond me and i am sure the Japanese would have shot me in Burma. So each and every time the brightly coloured, happy-chappy facilitating the event asked me why I was stood by the window staring out of it I could only offer the honest feedback that I had lost the will to live.
It was at yet another attempt to work as a team – these people clearly did not know that we all worked from home in filthy pyjamas in splendid isolation – where we were to glimpse our first sighting of a much heralded – if mostly by himself – new man at the top also a former colleague of my new line manager, Daryl. A big, gentle guy originating from New Zealand, Daryl joined us from RBS and was a very good person to work for, preferring to trust us to get on with the job and having the ability to look at the bigger picture rather than trying to micro manage us on a daily basis. The new man at the top had released him from his past job and had now followed Daryl, ultimately marking time for Daryl in his new role.
Our new Messiah had joined us claiming – as they always did – to apparently transform us. That he would do in time, but not exactly as he had doubtlessly sold it to the main board – more of that later. Now Daryl knew I was at this event at the Ricoh Stadium, home of Coventry City FC, largely out of respect for his wishes as I gritted my teeth and sat quietly until the wine flowed. I was doing quite well until my first sight of the Messiah a character I just had an instant bad feeling about and would cross swords with spectacularly a few years later. Wee Willie clearly loved the stage almost as much as he loved his pin striped suits and he was that polished you could almost believe he had been schooled for some US election campaign.
But when he finished his initial speech and implored us to get stuck into making a paper tower as an exercise in strategic team building the bugger may as well have been dressed as if he were presenting CBeebies. Daryl, sensing I was a touch irritated, did what all good managers should and threatened to break my legs in true Kiwi style if I moved. So I sat there, whilst the paper tower was built, convinced that my time was coming to an end.
21 – Wrecking Ball
I wrote earlier about the effect of a change at the very top of the business, which in the case of Barclays Asset Finance was almost as often as a change of manager at a struggling Premier League football club. In years gone by this event was never viewed with much great interest as it was commonly felt that given the relative insignificance of the business to the whole group, then it merely served as a temporary plaything for the next supposedly super bright wonder kid. A three year tenure at most was all that they had to suffer, which was just about enough time to get some level of understanding about a business with more than its fair share of quirks, before instigating a plan to deliver a total transformation – usually demanded in less than a year – to allow them to continue their path up the greasy pole and onwards to Canary Wharf leaving total chaos behind.
And so it was that we had foisted on us a series of Messiahs appointed by the senior board, all of whom, clearly had neither grasped the nature nor the culture of this small side business they controlled. Generally these guys were all typically white, middle class males, circa five feet tall with a nasty “little man’s” streak about them. Generally they were viewed as harmless, particularly if you worked in the North, as by the time they decided to visit you they were generally about half way through their tenure of destruction and depression and their eyes were firmly on the door marked Exit.
Their only contact with the North would be with Happy who had clearly spent the time he had free from the golf course taking some serious one to ones with Alistair Campbell. Happy had mastered what all senior managers dream of doing – nothing. Supremely skilled at shovelling and deflecting any incoming flak, the next few years were about to offer unexpected opportunities to the man in the right place at the right time. Happy’s days of plenty were just around the corner.
In 2007 the business broke with tradition, word clearly having spread amongst the lower echelons that the job of Barclays Asset Finance Supremo was not all that it was cracked up to be. So for the first time in many years we had a new man at the top sourced externally. In many ways the new man who we had first glimpsed at The Ricoh, Wee Willie, maintained the tradition we had come to expect: short, white and nasty. He had been “recruited”, we were told, from one of our key competitors, although I soon formed the view that he had been given a free transfer and was probably amazed to have landed another job so soon. Again the parallels between football management seem to ring true here.
Ironically, as I mentioned earlier, Wee Willie was well known to my boss at the time as Daryl had worked with Wee Willie before and had actually been given his cards by him. Daryl was one of the best guys ever to work for because he simply treated you like an adult and as Team Leader for what were then seven of us spread across Yorkshire, the North East and the North West he did a great job simply by leaving us alone. If you were doing the business, as most of us were, then all you had to think about for the quarterly review meeting with Daryl was what sandwich you fancied from the hotel menu and how much time we both needed before we got back on to the motorway.
Daryl was such a gent that he even travelled regularly from his home in Cheshire to meet me supposedly halfway…in Bradford. I think being a Kiwi he was used to having to drive three days for a pint of milk so the M62 held no fears. Plus, in truth, there was not a great deal for Daryl to do, so driving up and down the motorway taking in a few tunes was not a bad way to earn a living. Happy was happy, so there wasn’t much crap floating downstream and the numbers from the team were very, very good. Just as it was all chugging along nicely, along came Wee Willie with his wrecking ball.
According to those in the know, Wee Willie had been passed over for the top job at our rivals, so why the top brass thought he was the man for us is a mystery. Our competitor was hardly one we feared – a lumbering, over staffed giant of a business that could have been a public sector organisation…and ironically now is. However, if Happy was developing into a master politician he had nothing on Wee Willie who had clearly done a merry jig around the senior boys at Canary Wharf, convincing them he would transform this tiny business into a giant of the Barclays Empire.
Unfortunately there was a more sinister edge to Wee Willie. Daryl had warned me that he was a nasty piece of work and in common with a lot of little guys he ruled by fear. Those closest to him, with families to feed and large mortgages to service, hardly enjoyed a period of collaborative and consensual management and he had the usual Teflon coating allowing nothing to stick to him. So in late November 2007 we were summoned by Happy to a regional team meeting at the conveniently located Tickled Trout Hotel, just off the motorway network in Preston, to hear Wee Willie’s grand plan. Fortunately, the prospect of a day with Happy was softened having only just met a lovely girl in nearby Chorley, so the afternoon had promise as long as Happy’s monotone did not put me into a coma.
It must have been serious because at the meeting that day was Keith, Head of Sales now – new title, same job, bigger shit raining down – and now dangerously close to Wee Willie in the event of the ceiling falling in, which it would do not too far into the future. And guess what this little genius Wee Willie had come up with having had almost a year to concoct his grand plan? Yes, he was going to double the business size in an instant. How? Simple we would just double the headcount, something the business had tried so many times before with equally ineffective results. Even Keith, who had to deliver this bollocks, looked totally unconvinced, probably because he had seen it all fail before.
One glance at Happy and I could see he was already trying to figure out how to avoid getting caught up in the inevitable maelstrom – flipping burgers with that posh accent would never work. There were several inescapable truths that Wee Willie had failed to understand in his desire to rule the world of asset finance.
- We already had around 25% of the market space where he wanted to expand the most.
- That figure was viewed as pretty good given the amount of competition out there.
- The expansion plan was based on us going “down market” – as an aside how ironic that Barclays announced (The Times – February 2011) that they were withdrawing the asset finance product from all companies with a turnover less than £5m – we had spent the last few years going up market for better quality, higher value deals. The plan was targeted a lot lower than £5m turnover companies.
- Lower value deals were more expensive to find, land and service. They were nowhere near as profitable and carried much higher levels of risk. The current Barclays strategy would tend to suggest they now agree.
- We already had some of the best and most experienced people in the industry. As we were to discover the market place was not exactly overflowing with talent.
- There would always be an element of the marketplace that was price driven and price driven alone. We had never been the cheapest but to penetrate this part of the market cheapest only would do.
- The market was flat and we had no new products to offer – there were many attempts at developing new products over the years but these were generally so complex that neither we nor the customers could fathom them. Consequently most customers simply suspected they were having their legs lifted which, in broad terms, they were.
I could go on but you get the point but there was no way we were going to deflect Wee Willie from his chaos theory – it was his way or no way but should it all fail then it would all be down to us. The good news for Happy was that he was about to receive even more protection as not only did the plan at the medium business level call for a doubling from seven to fourteen of the sales force – bugger me I could barely fill the working day as it was without diluting my patch by half…that cricket field would be outstanding this year – it also included another Team Leader and a Regional Director.
I calmly pointed out to Keith the undeniable fact that, without malice, Team Leaders and Regional Directors were non-producing, cost centres – I was feeling brave intoxicated by thoughts of Miss Chorley later – and that, in our case we currently had a ratio of 7:1 in terms of Producer: Cost Centre (sorry Daryl!). Wee Willie’s grand plan would mean that would now change to 14:3 and furthermore as Cost Centres not only produced less but cost more this plan may have a few flaws. No matter, there was nothing anybody would be able to do as Wee Willie’s finger was already hovering over the Red Button. These would be good days to be tucked away in the much ignored Northern wastelands, for as sure as the river outside the Tickled Trout would keep flowing by, bad times were a coming.
In one last desperate attempt at seeking some kind of rational debate and input of intelligent thinking, a colleague and I penned a detailed critique of Wee Willie’s grand plan and emailed this off up the line so to speak – I still have a copy. It was pointless and nothing would deflect Wee Willie…only James Bond could now save us from this madness and I need Miss Chorley. It was clear that Wee Willie ruled by fear, a really progressive feature considering we were supposed to have evolved over centuries into sophisticated creatures with enquiring and intelligent minds. Shame on those on high that they allowed this to happen and, as far as I was concerned, that little shaft of light that the Fox and, latterly Macca had started to pursue was now shining ever more brightly. It was time to refine that exit plan and start digging the tunnel.
22 – Dead Man Walkin’
As a precedent to Wee Willie’s grand plan the business had hit on the novel idea of off-shoring several of the functions carried out in Basingstoke just at about the time most UK Corporates were realizing what a bad idea this was, especially for a customer-focused business that we, allegedly, were. This had been announced at a national get together earlier in the year and, despite groans from the audience, soon our customers were about to be greeted by cheery sounding “Peters”, “Rogers” and “Harrys” with a “and how is your day going today, sir?” all the way courtesy of technology from the sub continent.
To be precise, the off shore operations were based in Chennai,India. Now none of us had anything against the people in India other than they were simply clueless as to what we did – which was not their fault as most of us were – but they very quickly conveyed that impression to the customers they dealt with. The whole experiment was an unmitigated disaster and I will offer my opinion that over the years it was a net cost rather than a saving to the business. The fact that it was all based in Chennai was to have a wonderful irony a year or so later.
The first year of Wee Willie’s grand plan was total chaos, despite all the bluster and spin straight from Alistair Campbell’s New Labour “Guide to Lying Through Your Teeth” coming out of Churchill Plaza. Dozens of bodies were thrown at the sales effort but in reality the business continued to be produced by the same consistent performers as, even though most of the new joiners were industry experienced, adapting to the Barclays way proved more than a challenge for most. If I were being slightly critical, I would say that some of the new joiners came from competitors where controls were somewhat laxer and the focus on earning a margin on a deal somewhat more relaxed. True enough we obtained some good people, a lot of average people and some who simply were crap. If we were aiming down market, then that’s where some of the new recruits where surely going to take us.
Daryl had opted to take the newly created position of Team Leader in the North West, which was not unexpected given where he lived in Cheshire, although I worried about how he would now fill his time without the opportunity to spend it traversing the M62. As his replacement we got someone I am convinced must have hypnotised the interviewer because she was not capable of being a Cub Scout Leader. The woman was utterly useless and from the day we were introduced I simply could not believe what I was seeing. I was not alone in my antipathy towards our new Team Leader and it was no surprise that she did not last that long but every day she did seemed a mystery to me.
In addition to our new Team Leader we also got a new Regional Director for the newly created Medium Business Team. Now the best I can say here is that when the going gets tough, the tough get going and the rest become invisible. That was to become very apparent over the next few years. Nice enough guy, but to use a building site analogy, the hod carrier rather than the architect. And so my last few years were under the so called management of The Messenger for that is essentially the only task he ever carried out, desperate as he was not to expose himself when the flak really started. After all it’s not as if Happy would be volunteering himself as a human shield having secured his own personal bunker.
Frankly, although the business continued to flow in 2008, despite clear signs that dark clouds were circling, the combination of reduced levels of good and experienced staff at Head Office and more critically, reduced skill levels, combined with ever increasing self-imposed paper chases meant that our service levels plunged from very ordinary to abysmal bordering on apathetic. For many years, we had prided ourselves on our people and our service and out in the field we had the backing of mature, experienced back room staff. Now we had a stripped bare, dumbed-down operation with, in many cases, bunches of young kids who clearly did not care a jot.
The brave new world it may have been but the monkeys had been inserted at the asylum as we were now paying monkey rates and, as they say, you reap what you sow. There was barely a day went by when a customer was not on the phone, justifiably irate at some pathetic “service” endured. It became apparent that doing less business would mean a quieter life. The more we protested up the line the more we were simply met with a wall of silence. To compound all this, the business decided to adopt a compliance procedure demanded by some obscure and never ever explained European statute –Basle– but at a level bizarrely over and above even that which our parent company demanded.
This was known as Know Your Customer (KYC) although there was fat chance of that as most of the line management had never met any of them. KYC was ostensibly there to establish that you knew who you were dealing with and to prevent fraud – fair enough – but boy did we make a mountain out of a molehill. Barclays were operating at Basle 2, which crucially meant that you had to identify every individual or body that owned at least 25% of your customer. The halfwits at Churchill Plaza decided that we would up the ante and go for Basle 3, which lowered the bar to 10% shareholding.
So, imagine a Barclay’s customer having already gone through this charade, probably having banked with Barclays since the business was established and funded assets, similarly. Not only do we now go back to the same customer and demand that they provide the same information again to meet the same requirements, we actually demand that they go over and above this despite our own parent company being satisfied with existing Financial Standards Authority (FSA) guidelines. It was simply horrific made many times worse by an army of powerless jobsworths at the centre who seemed to delight in saying “no”.
That the business did not lose a raft of customers was entirely due to the conversion of us on the ground from salespeople to form fillers and diplomatic envoys. And once again, there was nobody at the centre who seemed either willing or able to take responsibility for this total and utter shambles. Added to this were our ever decreasing service levels, of which there were countless incidents; this was often compounded, as customers could almost accept the odd cock up, but could never understand nor accept being given the clear impression that our people could not care less. It was scandalously bad.
So, with Christmas looming and precious little good cheer about, we received notification that Wee Willie wanted to address us all via a conference call from his Basingstoke bunker – his “State of the Nation” address. When working from home, the drill for one of these calls was to register, put the iron on and crack on with a few shirts. This particular day the England cricket team were on tour in India and playing a test match in Chennai of all places, the match having been moved following the terrorist atrocities in Mumbai. For a change, things were going well on the field, en route to a decent first innings total. With the conference call about to begin, my Morphy Richards spurted out a blast of steam and off I went determined to at least keep up my rate of one shirt an over and avoid a self-imposed fine for slow shirt rate.
As I concentrated on getting my creases in a straight line my ears started to prick as Wee Willie started to come out with the biggest load of tosh in many a year and, slowly, the iron was put down – stuff the fine – and I could not believe what I was hearing at the end of woeful year. “Bugger me, Blair should employ this one”, I thought. His general theme was that all was rosy in the garden – sure we had had some “wee” problems but everything was now great – bollocks – our customers loved us – crap – and senior management were delighted with the staff survey – read it with sheer horror and quickly binned it – and they were determined to take on board all we had said – there was not enough time left in our lifetimes.
And what had our almost invisible senior management team been doing all year whilst we had been copping all this flak out in the marketplace? They had been working on a new strap line that in one fell swoop would cure all our problems, make customers happy again and solve the Middle East crisis to boot. These deluded, arrogant, egotistical, idiots had the following to show for their combined efforts when all around the shit was raining down: “Our Customers Will Recommend Us Every Time”. Not in my life they wouldn’t. I could not believe what I had heard. It was not just the iron that was steaming by now.
Alongside Wee Willie, in his bomb-proof bunker, sat his sidekick and heir apparent, Wee Willie Jnr and the guy in “control” of Chennai. Now the normal process was for the messages to be off loaded and then to open up the lines for questions. This was generally an opportunity for some smug arse to butter up Wee Willie with some easy question around how his Porsche was performing at the moment and for me to crack on with a few more shirts. So when the facilitator said the words “if you have any questions please press 1” somehow an outer body experience began that was both career defining and almost simultaneously career ending. My jaw dropped as did the iron when I heard those words “and the first question is from Steve Wilson. Please go ahead with your question, Steve.”
“I’m sorry” I began, almost apologetically and still with time to cancel the call and save my career “but having just listened to what you have said over the last twenty minutes (and ironed five shirts) I think I must have been working for a different business for the last couple of years.” And then the last few years of sheer pent up frustration just exploded into an outburst, which was described in various emails received from colleagues as follows:
- “plainly without being rude and passionately without being out of control…”
- “brave and brilliantly executed”
- “I can’t understand this new vision, no customer of mine will be recommending us”
- “Steve Wilson for MD” {unlikely!}
- “I’m glad that somebody pointed out the customer in all that’s been going on”
and finally one I treasure from our support staff who were apparently cheering at their desks:
- “we were all nodding in agreement but pissing our pants at the same time!”
There was a stunned silence from Wee Willie’s end punctuated by the ping of emails landing on screen and the bleep of text after text and I kid you not, all were in support. Some of the support staff down in Basingstoke, I was told later, were apparently cheering at their desks but I said what I said simply because I cared about a business I had spent my working life with, and I was fed up with being treated like an idiot. They claimed they wanted open and honest feedback and they got it.
After attempting to placate me, Wee Willie did what he did better than anybody else and passed the buck to Wee Willie Jnr who did what he did best and floundered as he lamely attempted to offer me an explanation of the credit crunch. This was patronizing to say the least – did the idiot not know that we too had newspapers up here? This really hacked me off and caused me to offer the reply “look I am not a bloody numpty!” causing the email and text traffic to ramp up. Clearly sensing he was losing, he tried to hand back to Wee Willie but his Teflon coating was having none of it and so Jnr tried to convince me that Chennai would be wonderful next year to which my retort of “the only good thing to come out of Chennai is that England are 173 for 2!” caused uproar.
I was in no mood to let go of the moment, so rather than wait for Wee Willie and Jnr to try to spin it a bit more than the Indian bowlers were, I ended the call with something along the lines of “I’ve said my piece and now it’s time to stop hogging the line. Besides I’d better be off down to the Job Centre before it shuts!” prompting an almost instantaneous and helpful email from a great friend of mine “I hear they are looking for Santa’s about now, although I think you may look better in an elf suit!!!” Priceless. So typical of the man, Wee Willie promised he would send Jnr up to Bradford to come and see me in the New Year and get a better understanding of the issues face to face. As I expected, the visit never materialized.
I had no idea how many people were actually on the conference call and had reckoned on no more than a hundred or so. When I was told that there were closer to four hundred, including other parts of the Asset & Sales Finance Division I began to realise that this may not be the usual quiet Friday. As it was, that lunchtime it was the Bradford office Christmas lunch followed by beers out and about in Bradford. The reaction when I rolled up to the hotel at lunchtime suggested word had spread pretty quickly and fame and notoriety may be my companions to the Job Centre.
It surprised me when people suggested that I had been brave, reckless, mad or simply nuts to say what I said. Frankly, the powers that be did not have a leg to stand on as they were always bleating on about being open and honest in communications – just as long as you did not say anything that they did not like. In fact they were so far out of touch with the people at the heart of the business they would never be able to understand the issues we faced. And because their individual game plans overrode the bigger picture, they knew that whatever the issues, they would be somebody else’s problem soon. And what of Happy, my Regional Director? Total and absolute radio silence. Small wonder the man deserved as little respect as he got.
23 – Human Touch
I thought it only fitting that I hand out a few plaudits here to some more of the fabulous customers I have enjoyed working with over the years.
Around 2001 I was introduced by Redders to a family business outside of Huddersfield, which I saw grow to become the largest, independently owned producer of bottled water in the country at the time of my departure. As with most family businesses, the man in charge was a durable character; Lord Selwyn, as I called him, although not to his face, was a textile man at heart who began trading in machinery but was wily and shrewd enough to see the final days of that sector well before most others did. You may see this as good fortune or simply due reward for hard work but Selwyn’s discovery of water on the land he owned created a new business to replace the ailing textile trade was created.
After Redders had left the bank there was a steady procession of bank managers in and out of the ever revolving door at the business. I witnessed each and every one of them suffer their induction to Lord Selwyn with a gathering of the Board plus local accountant Nick and myself, almost as the acceptable face of Barclays…or at least one who they knew the name of. Looking a bit like a scrubbed up version of Compo from Last of the Summer Wine, Lord Selwyn would launch into his well rehearsed “you bloody banks” tirade wandering around the table, occasionally offering me a mischievous wink as the rest of the family wondered how long it would be before they were allowed to get on with the day job.
Like a cat with a mouse he would play and play before leaving the new manager under no illusions that he had a very dim view of banks. And not without good reason, as for many years ago he had been advised by a Barclay’s manager simply to forget about bottled water as there simply was no future. I always had a soft spot for this business and if you liked the people and believed in the business that was half the battle. You fought hard for most deals as you had to, but some customers you simply would go more than the extra mile.
Of course hospitality in the form of a welcoming cuppa was a key part of every customer visit and there were simply some good cuppas, some acceptable and some that were bordering on chemical warfare. The worst by a street was provided by Kev, Finance Director at a major supplier of kitchen worktops and occasional supplier of the odd marble chopping board to me, as yet an undeclared benefit in kind. It was best to pretend that time was precious when visiting Kev, so as not to give him time to actually go fetch one of the cups of poison which, unbelievably, he had to pay for. Not that anybody – especially Kev and myself – would ever seek to challenge his Boss who was a giant of an ex-rugby player and could probably have smashed us both to pieces without getting out of his chair. The business was always challenging, largely because it dealt with the retail sector and you always have more than your fair share of ups and downs in this sector. Perhaps that’s why the tea was that bad, it kept visits from their customers brief and to the point. Negotiating hard on price may well have necessitated another cuppa…
I have to give a special mention to an effervescent character I will call Mad Tania, one of the funniest people I ever met in the job but also one of the hardest working too, having joined the business from her company’s external auditors and driving it forward to become a major supplier to the furniture sector – another notoriously uncompromising marketplace. When I first met Tania in 1999 she spent the whole meeting jabbering about men, cars, kids, life, relationships and I think I got about three words in. And then she kept me waiting ten whole years before we had a meeting that actually resulted in some business, although we still talked about the same stuff anyway, or rather she talked, I listened.
At last, after years of persistence, she finally wilted and gave me some business. This was not as bad as it sounds because for a large part of that period so successful was the management here they did not need much external financial assistance and when they did the incumbent bank’s finance arm local man was prepared to “drop his trousers” to keep the business in house. Some things I would do…some things I would not…even for Mad Tania. When she finally rang me, completely out of the blue to see if we could do something, I nearly smashed my car into a tree. It’s not often you greet the Finance Director of a multi-million pound prospect with the words ”f**k me!” Wonderfully funny, mad as a hatter and the best biscuits on the circuit, you always needed to keep a couple of hours free for each meeting and, just occasionally, we would actually discuss business matters too.
She explained this as follows: “You did by a long way get the longest meetings and they were always the most entertaining and thought provoking I’ve had, and ever will have, I imagine.” This is not to say she did me any favours because, as scatty as she liked most people to think she was, she is probably one of the sharpest things to come out of Barnsley… although given this is the land of Dickie Bird then the competition may not have been that hot. I confess that when I was on my farewell tour, this was one goodbye that had the eyes welling up a touch. Business is hard but there’s no reason why it should not be fun too and life with Mad Tania was never, ever dull; I miss her more than most.
Relationships were key to me and the most enjoyable part of the job, so when the bank’s policies started to cause those relationships to disintegrate I knew it was the beginning of the end for me as I could not square my own values with those I was being asked to work for. One of my most enduring customers had been with us for some twenty years and over that time had built itself up to be a very profitable and successful freight business. No matter, when the economy began to implode anybody that operated a truck may as well have been carrying lepers because the policy makers had decreed that the transport sector was high risk.
Who these dimwits were nobody ever really knew –“pension protectors” –was what one senior colleague labelled them, as they had turned risk management into a box ticking exercise and done away with rationale thought and analysis. Fine if they were running a computer dating agency, but not an asset finance business where our decisions could cost jobs and businesses, especially, as was often the case, if we were simply too frightened to make a decision. My eventual departure from the bank legally speaking almost coincided with the retirement of Mike who was the company’s Finance Director.
Now Mike will agree with me that the business I derived from his company would hardly make or break my year one way or another and, indeed, he was not short of competitor funders seeking to usurp us. This was not the issue, as we had dealt with each other on trust and had done so for a very long time. And for a while I got his unqualified loyalty as the business had changed banks from Barclays to a competitor around the start of 2000 to finance a management buyout. The other bank came up with a bid that Barclays could not match so the management team who were seeking to buyout the founding directors had little option – business is business.
Thus Mike was under pressure to place all his asset finance business with the new bank, but we continued to get his support and the relationship was maintained until we decided that, having conducted business for almost a decade since the buyout, we really were not happy with the way we were doing things. To cut a long story short it was “take it or leave it” to which Mike quite rightly stuck two fingers up and, in a flash, I lost a customer that had been with us for twenty years without one problem.
To compound this – as you may also counter that business is business – the customer had endured some of the worst customer service I can recall and if Mike had called for a public lynching of me as the local face of Barclays Asset Finance, he would have been justified. Time after time the incompetents we were employing at the centre could not perform the most basic of tasks and this culminated with the total embarrassment of a colleague of Mike’s being turned away from a car dealership, where he had arrived to collect a new car, and all because we had totally and utterly cocked up the standard documentation needed to fund this.
Unbeknown to Mike, I went right to the very top causing alarm for my line managers – Happy included – as you simply did not bother the likes of Wee Willie and Wee Willie Jnr with little customers like this. Still, it was a complete waste of time and I knew then that we simply had lost touch with reality. Clearly, Barclays could not give a stuff about customers, whether they had been with us twenty minutes or twenty years. Wee Willie’s advice to me on that Friday evening was to “have a G & T!”
My final mention – and I could go on and on so fortunate have I been to meet some great and funny people – goes to a business so typical of those covered in the media over the last few years, justifiably citing their real grievances with the banking industry. The business is a relatively small player in the trailer rental business, competing in the same arena as Hill Hire. I was introduced to Ken, the Managing Director around 2003. This was a bit of a grand title as the business was never many more than three people and we all knew that his niece, Catherine, really ran the business as accountant, secretary, HR and occasional tea maker if Ken could get away with it. Right from the start we got on brilliantly and I viewed the old boy as a bit of a mentor from time to time, indeed when it was time to go he was unstinting in his agreement.
Very early on, I invited him to a local bash and I will never forget the sight of Ken in a kilt with the worst legs since Ernie Wise – the man was a character and business was going to be fun. It may well be a relatively small business but it was very well run and actually had some six hundred trailers out there on the roads under its control, supporting many other businesses, so whilst in isolation it was small this does not show the whole picture. Ken had been known to Barclays in a previous business life, although that business went down through no fault of the management as it was due to a defective component. To explain the business manufactured trailers and the component supplier subsequently went bust leaving them on the hook for a total fleet recall, something that was unmanageable. Ken paid off the bank in full and you would have thought that this may count as a positive in future years.
It didn’t, despite us having forged a mutually productive relationship since 2003 it became clear that we were going to exit the business for no other reason than it was too small and did not bank with us, albeit Barclays had had several opportunities and had been courting Ken for several years. Once again the faceless idiots at the top were asking us to go out and jettison customers who had been loyal, productive and profitable, just because they did not fit in with Big Bob’s new vision of the world that all the bank really needed were the investment banking super heroes, to ensure their annual feast of bonuses – and the government to bail out the system when it all went wrong. We let the likes of Ken and many others like him down very badly – it was a desertion of our customers just when they needed us most and it stunk.
Fortunately, Ken is old enough and wise enough to just get on with it, but it cannot be morally or ethically right that he and countless others should have had to contend with being let down in such a shameful manner. Barclays may strut and claim that it never took the government money but had RBS and Lloyds not done so the whole pack of cards would have come down. Indisputably, Barclays was a beneficiary even if it preferred to seek expensive Middle East funding instead of the Government shilling. Whilst they made sure they looked after No 1 it was effectively “sod off” to a very large number of customers.
24 – The Long Goodbye
I am very conscious that it may seem as if my twenty five years with the bank was one long struggle with line management and that I was simply a bad lad that failed to toe the line. That’s not the case and I will concede that I got plenty of things wrong along the way and could certainly have behaved better in certain circumstances. Sales though, is largely about passion and commitment, it is competitive and at times its bloody hard going so even the mildest of souls is liable to blow a gasket from time to time.
Just as over the years the job changed beyond recognition, so too did the role of the old fashioned, generalist manager into a formulaic, sterile and cloned role requiring not a great deal more from the individual concerned than simply to follow a set of instructions to the letter. If Macca once famously claimed that when his boss said jump he asked “how high?” at least once he landed he still got his nine holes in before lunch. Today’s modern breed of Team Leader simply appear unable nor unwilling t0 actually think for themselves.
I worked for some fabulous man managers in my time; people who you felt confident would fight your corner when you needed them most whereas others, notably Happy, would be instantly invisible when things got tricky. Phil was last of the old breed alongside the likes of Macca and Mr C in Bradford. They commanded respect – okay so Macca and I had our differences but you still respected the guy and, more importantly, you cared – which is why we are still in touch. In later years you just tended to pay lip service to line management unless it was someone like Daryl or the inimitable JC who were strong enough characters to trust you to simply go and get the business.
JC was the type of man I only saw once before and then only briefly, in my final days at MCC under Disco Nigel, so named as he bore an uncanny resemblance to John Travolta . Both could have come out of the window of Gieves & Hawkes, so impeccable dressed were they and as polished as a new car showroom. More importantly, they let you get on with it largely because, in JC’s case, I’m not sure he was that technical; in truth it simply did not matter if you had a boss with that kind of aura. Sadly he did not last long as he could not do the politicking and left for greater things overseas.
I will never forget Daryl pitching in to bail me out after a blond moment on a grand scale for when I needed him he was as solid as a rock. Driving between appointments with two of my favourite customers, sun shining, Springsteen blasting out and with time on my hands, I had stopped to refill Sammy Saab at Hartshead Moor Services on the M62 motorway just outside Bradford. The day was going really well and even the prospect of a sweaty, five-quid service station tuna sandwich could not ruin my optimism until, with an instant chill down my back, I realized that I had filled Sammy to the brim with unleaded petrol, his preferred tipple being the black stuff…diesel.
If you have ever done this try to remember how stupid you felt knowing it was you and only you that had cocked up and now had to confess all. Fortunately, the lady at the service station was magnificent, comforting me that this happened daily – clearly qualifying her as expert in dealing with dickheads. Perhaps she should consider a career with Barclays? I made the call to Daryl and although I did so feeling that there would be no major issues he made it so easy that you never forget things like that. The matter – along with the costs of remedying the tank and towing me into Leeds- were managed away, albeit it probably amounted to not much more than a lunch for some guys. And that’s the ultimate test of any manager – if they come up trumps when you really need them.
Fair play to Cobber Daryl as we all called him, although when the reward for that loyalty was me sat opposite him at the Ricoh threatening to destroy the table’s paper tower in full view of Wee Willie, I felt he really had a raw deal there. Daryl was not going to be with Barclays for long, he was simply too fair and all too willing to back his guys and besides Christchurch and his homeland were beckoning. When I told him about this book he had other things on his mind as he was sifting through the rubble of the recent earthquake disaster – thankfully he and his family had all survived – Later he sent me an email with a telling passage or two:
“I often look back and reflect on the words of one of the one training guys who actually made any sense who said “the purpose of your job as team leader is to get to the point where you are no longer required”. I realised pretty quickly that I was closer to this point than most in the business. I recall many conversations with team leader colleagues complaining about the grief they were getting which was due in the main to their guys not performing. I tended to find the “coffee & sandwich” strategy much more effective that the “PIP” strategy. I remember Happy telling me I wouldn’t get on because I hadn’t had to tackle a non performance issue, and here was me thinking being part of a performing team was the objective.
I can’t say that Wee Willie joining was the main issue but it certainly instigated the discussion at home. How different the world would have been if Hitler had listened to the generals that knew what they were doing instead of taking on Russia. How different….would have been today if they looked at the area that was performing and maybe thought they must be doing something right, lets look at what they do and listen to them. But no, Russia looks more appealing.”
I am not saying that a Daryl or any of the guys mentioned would have changed what happened during the last couple of years of my tenure but I do know that they would not have gone AWOL and hidden under their beds as things got tougher. The modern breed of manager take the titles by default because they do not manage, they simply instruct as instructed. They have no flair and no ability to think beyond this, relying on the fact that most people have mortgages, kids to feed and car payments to make and are kept in line by these factors. Sure enough, there will be the occasional smart arse who will challenge but they know – as I accepted – you cannot change the direction of a ship as big as Barclays; in then end you really do not matter that much at all and life will go on long after you have left. And so, as the economy started to hover on the edge of the abyss and our abdication of the market became clear to all it was time to seek the exit door.
25 – Johnny Bye-Bye
The following is the text of an email I sent to the then Chief Executive of Barclays Bank plc, on my final working day as he planned his own exit from Barclays. Call it naïve, call it pointless, call it what you will, I had to have one last say so why not go straight to the top. Needless to say it went unanswered.
From: Wilson, Steve [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 05 November 2010 11:15
To: Varley, John: Barclays Bank PLC
Subject: Goodbye
Dear John
Today I will leave Barclays Asset Finance after 25 years enormously proud of my contribution to what I considered for many years to be a great business if not ever likely to be a dominant element of the Barclays Group purely in terms of scale. However, what we did at the grass roots we did very well, highly professionally and with an enormous pride in our brand. There was a time I would have walked through a brick wall for the brand. I am leaving having accepted redundancy terms because the time for me to seek new challenges is long overdue although the inescapable truth is that in recent years I have completely lost my passion for this business largely as a direct result of its poor management and our treatment and attitude towards our people and our customers.
Over the years I have seen a procession of senior people foisted upon this division apparently with only one thing in common: that of seeking individual advancement and promotion above all else at whatever cost. That they have chosen to do this by treating this business almost as a breakable, throwaway toy and in so doing subjecting the business to several ludicrous, ill-conceived, unachievable and ultimately terminally damaging “plans” beggars belief. Furthermore their arrogant dismissal and disinterest towards a multitude of highly critical staff opinion surveys hardly fostered any belief that anybody really cared. Frankly, if you were prepared to voice an alternative opinion you were simply a “troublemaker”.
I walk away with great memories and am very grateful for the opportunities afforded to me by working for the Barclays group. I am sure you will do too but it cannot be right that the people we both leave behind have to suffer the vanities of certain individuals. Disturbingly there is a culture within our business of managing by fear and a total inability to consider alternative views by intelligent adult consultation. It’s a top down process and it’s inefficient, damaging to morale and totally at odds with everything I ever believed about the Barclays ethos. Great businesses require great leaders to inspire great people and there is an obvious missing link here in my experience.
With regard to our approach to customers over the last few years I accept these have been challenging times for the banking sector but I recall two of the many mantras we have claimed to aspire to over the years: “Trustworthy above all” (an old Mercantile Credit war call) and “Our customers will recommend us every time” (a recent BAsF aspiration). Frankly, we have not even come close to living up to these words in recent years and without good, loyal customers we are nothing. I have been overwhelmed by the responses from my customers – see a sample of emails below – so I hope you get a sense of an individual who cares fiercely about the standards he has attempted to live up to over many years and is leaving whilst still at the top of his game.
The three weeks since my exit was confirmed have been woeful to be frank. Whilst I have attempted to transfer both customer and internal relationships including several current deals with the professionalism you would expect it is almost as if I never existed as far as BAsF is concerned and I still do not have my confirmation of terms letter despite being promised this weeks ago. The UNITE “helpline” is useless as well. One request was answered although without much inspiration to be followed by a complete refusal this morning to help me on another matter because I am not a member. I am baffled as to why we were provided with this number.
It might have been easy to simply walk away in silence. However, I am a proud professional committed to what I do and how I do it and this is not the world class business I joined. I simply cannot believe that we should not aspire to being a whole lot better in so many ways. Sadly. I would not recommend anybody to seek a career in BAsF as I sit here today and having been proud over so many years to fight the fight that is sad.
May I wish you good luck in your future career wherever that may be and thank you for reading this.
Regards
Steve Wilson
Relationship Manager, Asset & Sales Finance
Barclays Corporate
Tel: 07775 541661
Fax: 01274 620502 (Home)
Fax: 01256 337017 (Head Office)
Email: [email protected]
Address: Barclays Corporate, Asset & Sales Finance, Churchill Plaza, Churchill Way, Basingstoke, RG21 7GP
www.barclayscorporate.com
In my opinion what the business failed to or simply did not want to acknowledge was that we had been given a clear remit as “Relationship Managers” to go out and develop…relationships; essentially these were based on trust, ethics and a high degree of professionalism and in return we won significant business from our customers. In many cases, we had developed into key business partners with these customers; in short, we became critical to the day to day operations of businesses that employed thousands of people and, yet at a time when they needed us most, we started to squeeze the pips out of them, threatening the very existence of these businesses.
This was the ground level impact in our tiny part of Barclays of the global credit crunch with banks scrambling to recapitalise distressed balance sheets. I am no Harvard economist but it was explained to me that the shortage of capital would mean that the major customers – the BPs, Shells, M&S’s etc – would be at the head of the queue whereas the thousands of small businesses that are the bedrock of the UK economy were in for a hard time. Within Barclays the same scenario was played out and the former CEO, Bob Diamond, set an aggressive “hurdle rate” which meant that divisions of the bank that fell short of this internal target were fighting for scraps at the table when the bank was distributing its own scarce capital. If the bank earned a better return in Kenya then the UK asset finance business could sing for its supper. And the only way to hit the target…hike up the price of your product….take it or leave it Mr Customer!
One customer summarised this all beautifully as follows: “I see this as just a game…for years I have had you lot by the balls desperate to do business and I could name my own price. For a year or two now its your turn but when things turn – as they will – I will have you again…and I wont forget!” Had there been an equal trace of honesty down the line then at least we may have understood what we were being asked to do and why – however unpalatable. As usual though, it was silence from the top. Due to a combination of much larger events, made significantly worse by our own ill-thought, ego-driven, fatally flawed strategies largely courtesy of the since promoted Wee Willie, at the very beginnings of a global tightening, we had not only been hit by the perfect storm but we had actually flown into it eyes wide shut.
I owe Barclays a tremendous amount and have had a fantastic time over many, many years but all good things must come to an end. Equally I did not set out to take an cheap shot or two safely now on the outside and, two years on, this has yet to hit Waterstones so you may wonder why bother at all? Well of course, the book has raised money that will help junior cricket but, more importantly, many of us will look back in years to come at events that were frightening in their scale and the consequences of which will last for some time yet. I simply wanted to tell it as I remembered it from my modest level, warts and all.
I have learnt skills that I can take anywhere with me and have formed enduring relationships with people I have nothing but the ultimate respect for. This book will not have the slightest impact on Barclays, or any bank for that matter, as the industry has proven only recently how distant and arrogant it is towards the common man. As The Sunday Times put it recently: “The age of the relationship banker is over, replaced by centrally set targets and computer-driven lending criteria. The politicians can bleat all they like but, honestly, what impact have they really had in achieving some form of redress? Bankers remain untouchable…and they know it.
How many senior bank employees have been hauled across the coals for trousering millions in personal fortunes whilst your local library may soon be about to vanish? How many have lost their jobs at that level compared pro-rata to the thousands in back offices and on counters across the various networks? As I write yet another report is out this time trying to explain away the recent LIBOR (London Inter Bank Offer Rate) fixing scandal as a bit of tomfoolery. All too often the relationship between those regulating and those practicising has been uncomfortably close and politicians also remain unwilling to get their hands dirty – remind you of anybody – or, in the case of the opposition, far too complicit that they simply close ranks for a while with Government hoping to brush it all under the carpet.
There are thousands of decent bank employees working very hard simply trying to make a living, pay their mortgage and achieve a good life for their families. That those still feasting in the ivory towers of the Square Mile remain oblivious to everyday reality is something we all have to deal with in some way and the impotence of politicians will be hard to forget. People are not powerless and the likes of Cameron, Miliband and Clegg will at some point, face a defining moment or two; sadly, this will be long after the horse has bolted.
History is littered with vainglorious, greedy people, convinced that they were ultimately untouchable by the people they ruled over. Maybe these bankers, politicians, city traders and the countless others that contributed to the chaos and pain now being felt by ordinary people can still sleep comfortably knowing they are secure. Who knows? Overall, I had a great time doing a job I loved with passion, integrity and a bit of skill too, but when that job was effectively destroyed there was no point in hanging around till the bitter end enforcing decisions I had no empathy with.
Was it cavalier and a touch reckless to have walked out on a secure job with a blue-chip employer ditching the car, phone, salary and pension? In my opinion, not one bit! The only person that seemed surprised was The Messenger but I had offered a clue. Some six months before the one on one meetings where we were all supposed to plea for our jobs again – the last reorganisation having being little over a year previous – we had had my half yearly review, in May, and he did at least acknowledge how hacked off I was, nothing having changed since the infamous conference call.
“So what would make you happy” he asked.
“A cheque!” to which he had no answer.
So when he completed reading the pre-scripted HR rubbish advising me that in a week I should know if I was being retained for more misery, he stood up only for me to stop him there and then. It had been a long, long weekend prior to this meeting but I was clear and my time had come.
“We are not finished” I said “I’m off. And that was it…twenty five years with a big black line drawn under it.
When I first published this I wrote that little would change ” Time flies in the blink of an eye and its not too long before you are yesterday’s man. Memories fade fast and pretty soon bankers will be filling their boots again, politicians will be shafting us all quietly again having atoned for all of two minutes”. I defer to the great man though, Bruce Springsteen, for the last words from “Jack of All Trades” on the marvellous Wrecking Ball album…”The banker man grows fat / working man grows thin / it’s all happened before and it’ll happen again…”
Rohan Eli says
A superb read!!!!!
Steve Wilson says
Thanks for the comments…you are helping me put any thoughts of a meaningful job firmly out of my mind with this encouragement…from my contented padded cell thanks again mate!
Steve
Jon lowe says
Spare a thought for the poor souls still living the nightmare
Steve says
I do mate!