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- Time in the job: 18 months
- Career highlights: 10 years with City of New York implementing economic development policy
- Outside interests: Non-Executive Director of Emap
WS Atkins plc:
- Description: Engineering, Consultancy and Asset Management
- Turnover (FY 2004): £992m
- Employees: 14,176
- Key Markets: Defence, Energy, Industry and Transport
- Geography: UK (predominantly), Europe, US, Asia, Middle East
- Ownership: Quoted
Discourage too much strategy on the job
We set a five year strategy last year and will review our performance against it every year.
Unless there are any events or circumstances that materially affect the strategy, we focus on how well we are implementing it and if there are any execution problems.
And in between the strategy rounds we discourage senior managers from divulging in ‘blue sky’ strategic thinking. It’s all about execution.
Align measures and incentives
The budget sets the basic financial targets and strategic measures for the year. There should be a small number of well understood, higher profile strategic measures, directly linked to the strategy.
Then, during the budget round you can judge how well you have executed against the strategy in the previous year, understand properly where you haven’t, and set appropriate targets and measures for the next year.
Reinforce importance of people
It is not too trite to say that our people are all we have in this type of service business.
In between the strategy rounds we discourage senior managers from 'blue sky' strategic thinking.
There are a lot of HR systems and processes you can deploy to manage that. My key role is to reinforce the importance of people. So my HR director sits in the office next to mine, next to the Finance director and that helps to make the point.
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