Leadership and innovation: insights from a serial chair and non-exec - Nick Buckland OBE

In this episode of Business Noodles, we sit down with Nick Buckland, a serial chair and non-executive director with a diverse career spanning both the private and public sectors.

Nick shares his journey from starting as a computer scientist to holding positions on ten different boards. He discusses the evolution of his portfolio career, the impact of technology on business and the significant changes in the education sector, particularly with the rise of apprenticeships.

Nick also delves into the role of non-executive directors, emphasising the importance of offering positive challenges rather than just being critical. He highlights the differences between the public and private sectors and the lessons they can learn from each other. The conversation touches on the productivity challenges in the UK and the benefits and drawbacks of AI in business.

Listeners will gain insights into how boards can stay connected with frontline operations, the importance of business continuity plans and the growing trend of employee ownership in companies. Nick's engaging anecdotes and practical advice make this episode a must-listen for anyone interested in business leadership and innovation.

Transcript

Mark Greaves:

Today I'm delighted that our guest is Nick Buckland, a serial chair and non-exec who has worked with numerous private and public sector bodies ranging from universities, manufacturing and service businesses. He's currently six on 10 different boards, but started his career as a computer scientist. I'm Mark Greaves from PKF Francis Clark and I'll be your host. Don't forget to follow this podcast to get updates and notifications on when our latest episodes are available. Hi Nick, how are you today?

Nick Buckland:

Good morning, Mark. Yes, I'm feeling really well. I've had my morning walk, so I've enjoyed the rain and the wind.

Mark Greaves:

Yes, someone might tell that we're recording this in winter at this stage, but let's start with congratulations on having the most varied career of any of our guests to date, which is quite an achievement. How would you actually describe yourself if you're asked, "What do you do?"

Nick Buckland:

Well, I describe it very much as a portfolio career, which started after I left the IT world in the sort of mid '90s and picked up various things over the years. So it really was a case of it evolved rather than was planned.

Mark Greaves:

And what's a typical day for you like?

Nick Buckland:

I think a typical day doesn't exist. They're all varied, multiple telephone calls, multiple teams meetings, occasionally, less so in the last few years because of the impact of the pandemic, but face-to-face meetings occasionally and the travel time in between those meetings. So it is very varied. Very varied.

Mark Greaves:

We might come back to the changes of COVID later on, but obviously you started in computers. You spent sort of a decade or two as I'd say perhaps a normal career. Were you always going to work in computers?

Nick Buckland:

I studied life as a mathematician. I sometimes describe myself now as a recovering mathematician because that was my degree, but the computers were sort of embryonic at that stage. We're talking quite a long time ago. So the computing world became the world that I got into. I first started off in the research laboratories of British Steel. That was in well-known steel manufacturing area of Battersea in South London, which was quite an interesting place to have that. So I was working on real-time control systems for the steel industry and then I moved into the world of computer manufacturers and spent most of my IT career there working in various roles, both in support and then in sales and marketing and business development.

Mark Greaves:

But that was effectively the start of what we describe as the modern computing age. Did it feel like it was going to revolutionize the world of business?

Nick Buckland:

Oh, I think so, yes, because the very early machines I worked on were pretty crude and pretty small by comparison to the computers we have today. If your listeners can remember what small computers were, I mean the first computer I ever worked on was about the size of half a dozen filing cabinets and it had 16 KB of memory. It was a very big and very small at the same time. I can also remember the first time I sold a one gigabyte disc and it was £50,000 to buy that. The world has changed enormously. In terms of what it's done to change the world, everything from the World Wide Web and the internet and the impact that that's had, the word processing is just a very simple example. I can remember when people were still using typewriters in business and then along came word processors, very simple word processors, and now we have things like ChatGPT. So the world has changed enormously. And I was also involved in high-performance computing as well. So it was the development of crash-worthy cars. It's all the exploration in the drugs industry. There's a whole raft of stuff where computing has had a major, major impact and it's the foundation now of most businesses and organisations.

Mark Greaves:

I can still remember having to go into the computer room, that glass cube that you'd have to go into and it would just have a keyboard and a screen in it because the computer was the whole of the next door. I also remember the first portable computers, which I didn't think actually were that portable. You had to pick them up with two hands. Okay, so you stayed in that a while. You talked earlier about then falling into the portfolio career. What was the first couple of posts like?

Nick Buckland:

Well, it was kind of unusual because I'd actually moved down to Cornwall from the southeast in the late '80s, and at that stage I was working for a company where I was doing a lot of international travel, so as long as I could get to an airport I was okay. And we also developed a thing we called the Cornish weekend, where on a Friday or a Monday they knew that I'd be based in Cornwall. So that worked that quite well. So that was the first kind of foray into working from home, which was quite interesting in the late '80s, but that got a bit tedious after a while and then I changed companies to a company which was very much office-based near Reading and I got to the point where I got fed up with weekly commuting, and it was a case of either moving back to the southeast or doing something from down here.

I thought about that for about a nanosecond. I actually I quite like living down here. So I decided that I wanted to exit that company and spent about six months doing so. And in that time I was talking to people about what I was going to do next and I had no clue what I was going to do, but a few people approached me and said, "Would you like to do this? Would you like to do that?" So there was a colleague of mine who was working with the antiques industry and it was about the scanning of antiques and elements in museum, or exhibits in museums and getting it down to a very fine resolution so you can actually have a very fine computer model of the artifact or the antique. Somebody else was looking at recruitment across the IT industry and so there were a few things which kind of popped up and just developed and I kind of fell into that.

And then there was also something around sponsorship acquisition. A friend and I went to see the finance director of the foreign office and we would have a conversation about computing and we ended up coming out with a contract to provide sponsorship acquisition and management for three government events. And I can remember standing on the pavement outside the office at Aberdeen Arch saying, "What happened there with then, Richard?" And he said, "I don't know, how did we get there? I don't know. How are we going to do it? I don't know." And it was surreal, but it's kind of developed in that.

Mark Greaves:

It's more exciting at that particular moment, isn't it? We've talked on previous podcast guests about the use of non-execs, especially in family businesses where there is an increasing use of them but they can still be seen as outsiders. What do you think a non-exec can properly bring to an organisation?

Nick Buckland:

I think it is that outside view. It's because you're not engaged in it on a day by day basis and it really is that distinction between operational and strategic, and I think it's the knowledge of the outside world, other organisations, because a lot of the problems are generic problems. They're normally about growth or financing. They're about how you deal with people, how you deal with operations, how you interact with your customer base and what should your customer base be. So they're very generic problems and opportunities that lie there. So a NED can actually bring a different viewpoint. A lot of people talk about NEDs being critical friends and I dislike that term because I think people will very often focus on the critical part of that. I'd much prefer to use the term offering positive challenge because it's that challenge that an NED can bring to a board and actually examine what is going on and make sure have you thought of this, what are the unintended consequences of that? It's that sort of approach that a NED can bring.

Mark Greaves:

That's a really nice turnaround of phrase on that. Critical is an element of being a non-exec, but you've also got to be supportive and positive at that stage. You can't just nitpick everything. You've got to actually understand the realities of life. Is that different in the public versus the private sector?

Nick Buckland:

There are differences. In a lot of instances in the private sector you've got to go and get the business, you've actually got to go and get the money, so you've actually got to sell to customers. In a lot of public based organisations you do actually get the money coming through whatever you do, though there is a basic difference. That has changed, of course. If you take the university sector or the FE sector, it's now based on the number of students that you have and you get funding coming through that way. It used to be the case that funding just came through kind of willy-nilly to some extent and you didn't have to worry too much as well. You had the students there and you provided the right outputs to the funding body, you've got the money through. Some of the other organisations I work with are research organisations and they have to go and bid for money in grants, etc. And all of that sort of gubbins. It's kind of similar to the private sector, but private sector is very much about satisfying the customer and making sure you are doing the right thing for the customer.

Mark Greaves:

Well, I'm not going to be able to cope. I think you've worked with 40, 50-plus businesses over the years. Let's try and aggregate them a little think in terms of themes, and I'll come back to the education one next, because you've worked with establishments like Plymouth University, Hertford Regional College, etc. How have you seen them evolve over the last five or 10 years?

Nick Buckland:

Certainly in the FE world there's been a massive change there in that FE colleges now have to really demonstrate that they're supporting local businesses and the local economy. So there's a real push there to ensure that they are doing that. And it's part of the Ofsted examinational inspection process that there's a very intense look at what the college is doing for the local economy, and how they can measure their success against that and to make sure that they are actually doing the right thing with regard to that local economy. In the university sector, I guess it's somewhat different in that you are working with some employers, but in many respects you are responding to what students want to do. I think that with the development of high level apprenticeships, and apprenticeships generally, I think we are seeing a massive change or a real change which could occur. And in your sector, the accountancy, that we are looking at many more people going through that route of apprenticeships rather than actually go to university, getting an economics degree and then coming in. So we're seeing a real shift there and that's shift's also happening in the manufacturing sector where people are getting an apprenticeship, a higher level of apprenticeship going and doing an engineering degree, and working through in that way. So apprenticeships are making a big change the way education is going through.

Mark Greaves:

I think that will be driving some of the change going forward where the universities get more and more challenged about contribution to employment, contribution to the private sector more. And I know there's a lot finding it very tough at the moment, certainly financially. Sticking with that, and I suppose there's a question from my side. If I was looking forward now, how I would educate an A-Level student, or how I would educate a degree student at this stage, how do you do that? We can barely predict five years ahead, let alone 10. What skills, how do we focus and prepare them to be an employee of the future?

Nick Buckland:

I think there's a number of things there. One is, I don't know if you've seen, there used to be a YouTube clip called Shift Happens, and it talked about the fact that we're living in exponential times. The graduate of today or the school-leaver of today will be doing a job which didn't exist five years ago in a company which didn't exist five years ago. Therefore, anybody going through secondary education at the moment, they're probably going to be in that situation. And I think there's a real need to provide them with the analytical skills that enable them to work with that change. I mean if you look at my career, I've probably had about five or six different roles or experiences in all that time, and it's that adaptability and that ability to be analytical about what you're going to do and adapt to change. I think also the other thing, is we need to look at not just the education we give in schools and colleges and universities, but it's ongoing education, it's ongoing training all the way through your career. I've always been a great believer that it's continuous improvement. It's almost like a quality system. It's continuous improvement of you as an individual to meet the needs of the organisations you're going to go and work with and the world that you're living in.

Mark Greaves:

It still troubles me a little that we aren't adapting to that as society in that we still focus around retirement. We still look at that cliff edge of I'm going to do a job for 40 years, I'm then going to stop, and I'm potentially going to live for another 40 years without doing a job. And that just isn't the way of the future. That might've been true 20 years ago. I don't think it was true 10 years ago, but we still focus around that. I think we've got to shift that conversation and the education that full-time ... sorry, ongoing life education but also support for that career shift, support that if you do want to change, and I pick firefighters here, you're not going to be a firefighter for 80 years, but does that mean that you just retire at 40, retire at 50? You've also bridged in your career the public and private sector quite nicely. Are there lessons that the public sector can actually learn from the private sector?

Nick Buckland:

I think so. It's not that either side has it completely, has worked it out completely as to what works perfectly. So there are lessons to be learned from both sides, both in terms of the positive and the negative. So I think there's a balance there. So there are lessons to be learned. I think one of the big things and the big issues we have in this country is productivity, and that's productivity on both sides of the fence. And I think looking at ways that we approach the world of work and how people operate, there's a lot to be learned there. Now I learned in the public sector, in the health business in particular, I was chair of a community interest company which took on community health in part of the UK, and as a CIC we weren't hidebound by the rules and regulations of the Department of Health. And we actually went from a situation where it was top down to bottom up, and we were giving that permission and authority to the people on the wards and the community health to do what was right and do the right thing.

So obviously there were the checks and balances against that, but the level of productivity we got out of that, job satisfaction, and also value for money was enormous. Now when that went back into the NHS, I think a few of those things got lost because it is very much a top-down organisation, and that ability for the people to actually get on with it was lost to some degree.

Mark Greaves:

That's really interesting. The NHS as an example, they're being managed very much top down from targets, driven from all that kind of reporting side of things, as opposed to what you're describing there is groups of smaller groups themselves are good at level of managing themselves and then sharing that knowledge elsewhere, and I see some of that, but we've got a long way to go to shift from that old target driven top down thou shalt approach.

Nick Buckland:

I've got an example there, where some years ago I was working with people in the defense industry, and they were talking about the length of time it took to do a refurbishment of a tank engine and it took something like six months, which was ridiculous really to refurbish an engine. So the company got in some management consultants who worked out that they could actually get it down to about two months. They made a few changes and then some bright spark said, "Why don't we go and ask people on the factory floor what efficiencies we could make?" And they got it down to something like two weeks and it just demonstrates that if you ask the people who are actually doing the job very often you'll get a much better answer and the efficiencies that come in there. So I come back to that whole point about productivity, that productivity is our biggest problem I think in this country in terms of getting efficiencies into the system and also the growth that the government's looking for.

Mark Greaves:

Certainly listening to that front line work, that's a general principle which resonates at the moment in that how does a board stay in touch with what happens at the front line and what their customers' experiences are? Have you got good examples of how a board can stay focused at strategy? Yes, but also understand what happens at the front line.

Nick Buckland:

Well, in fact, if I take HRC, Hartford Regional College and the way we operate there, at every board meeting we have somebody come in and talk about what's going on in their area within the college. So you get a very good view and that's 30, 45 minutes of them telling us what's going on in the college at their level, and that's normally departmental or course level. Every year we have a governor's conference where the morning is spent going around to various areas of the college and just talking to the students and understanding what they're doing and also talking to some of the staff as well. We also have biannual staff. It's a celebration of the college, so it's basically a bit of food and a bit of conversation, and governors are encouraged to go to that as well so they can talk to people on the ground, and they're also encouraged to make visits to the college on a regular basis. So it is that engagement, and that informs you for the board meetings and some of the decisions you're going to have to make about the college. And I've brought that into other places where we bring people in to talk about what's going on in the organisation at the beginning of board meetings.

Mark Greaves:

Okay. One of the current topics we've got that everyone's fascinated is about AI, and we've talked to numerous guests about that and I know you've been involved in a number of tech businesses including Dell, which is a previous podcast guest. What's your views on the current, and then potential future of AI in business?

Nick Buckland:

I think it's got tremendous benefits, but it's also got a number of drawbacks which are associated with it. So I'll deal with some of the drawbacks for the moment. I think the danger is because it's interpreting things from information that gathers from the web, there's a danger that it gets ... the only way I can really describe it is daft information. It is false information that is out there, and we know that probably 50% of what's out there in the web, it's not correct, and therefore there's a danger that you can actually pick up ... If you ask AI to go and do something, it's going to pick up some false information and actually make a false assumption about what you're looking at. On the other hand, and so one has to be very careful how one uses it and make sure that you moderate against that and actually look at the output and make sure that that is correct.

But there is that danger of people picking up and enhancing false information as it goes forward. On the other hand, it can be incredibly useful in terms of interpreting data and making life a lot easier for organisations. So for example, I had an organisation which asked me about a conflict of interest policy. So I just put into ChatGPT, "I want a conflict of information, a conflict of interest policy for a small board." And it popped up, it literally wrote it in front of me. And with a little bit of editing it was absolutely fit for purpose. So what would've taken me an hour or two normally it took about 10 minutes to actually get out a decent policy. And I was talking to somebody, somebody who's now in government actually who's a lawyer, and he said that AI would be much better at writing a contract than I ever was as a young lawyer.

So I think there are lots of places where it can help. It's things like that, but it's also interpretation of data. There's a vast amount of data that we have out there. We're generating data at an enormous rate and AI can be used to interpret that data and go back and look at old data and reinterpret that. I know that we did that not using AI obviously, this is about 10 years ago, looking at old seismic information and going back on old tapes and old surveys and actually reinterpreting that information using modern techniques. Now AI would be able to do that to look at old data. So there's a whole raft of stuff which will make life a lot easier for all of us, but it will change the way we work. That's one of the key factors.

Mark Greaves:

I always like description of AI as being the average of the internet. That's what it's learned on. What you're getting is the average, and if you put it in that sort of context, it's there. Okay. Do I want a starter of an average conflict to interest policy? Actually yeah, a starter of that would be quite good. Do I want an average device on treating heart surgery or something like that? Actually no, I don't really want an average here. I want the best at this particular moment. Sticking on that to a certain extent, how do you see boards at the moment preparing their enterprises for the threat from cyber attacks?

Nick Buckland:

In fact, one of the organisations I work with had a cyber attack recently. The fact that they put some deterrent and some systems in place to actually demonstrate that they've got a cyber attack and enable them to shut things down and minimize the damage. But the fact is that those who instigate cyber attacks are getting more sophisticated and the number of attacks are getting greater. So I think, from a board perspective, it's to make sure that their IT suppliers or their IT departments, or whatever they use to manage that activity, they're very aware of it, and individuals are aware of it as well. So there was an example of an organisation which there was a breach of their IT, and therefore customers were asked to change the account they paid money into, and it impacted both the customer annual organisation because the customer paid the money over to the fraudsters so they didn't have the money and therefore weren't going to get the goods, and the company lost out because there was no money from the customer to actually buy their product. So it is across the board. So it's affecting us all in our personal lives, but it's also affecting businesses greatly. So going back to your question, I think board should be very worried about it and put business continuity plans in place for that.

Mark Greaves:

I'd pick up on the continuity there. We've talked before about the need not just to try and prevent the attack but also recover from it afterwards and having the systems there really to kick off. And I'd probably pick up on one point in that it's also having a policy to cope for that individual who may suffer from it at that stage because that individual, through no fault to their own, we all got busy lives, may just accidentally do something stupid as we all do, and suddenly they're responsible for lots of different things going wrong, and companies and enterprises need to have a policy to effectively cuddle that employee, I'm phrasing it wrong, but take care of that employee so that they know it's not really their fault that they will be supported.

Nick Buckland:

But I think there, Mark, there's an awful lot of education and we need to make sure is done on a constant basis for individuals and for organisations. And that business continuity also applies to things like fires. A number of organisations where you have a fire in an office or a building that don't survive that sort of thing are enormous. I think 9/11 demonstrated that. Quite a number of those businesses in the Twin Towers went out of business because not only did they lose key staff, but they lost an awful lot of information about the organisations, and therefore one has to be very aware that it's not just cyber, it's any form of discontinuity for the business. So that plan has to cover those things as well.

Mark Greaves:

It's important that the plan also give comfort at that time. There's so many things going wrong, at least you can pick up something. Okay, we thought about this in calmer times, right. What I'm going to do at number one, is this. Going to do it. Number two, is this. Number three. Okay, change topics a little, pick up on some employee engagement we were talking about earlier. You chaired the trustees at Riverford Organic Farmers and you've also seen boards where there's been an employee representative on the board. Riverford ended up being owned by its employees. What did that change with the business, and is it something I know is a growing trend that other businesses should be looking at?

Nick Buckland:

I think for an owner who is looking to change or looking to retire or come out of the business, it is a definitely a very good option. If you look at ... I've forgot the name of the company, it was the Richer Sounds is another good example of that. In the case of Riverford, it was Guy Singh-Watson. He could have sold the business very easily to a venture fund or one of the bigger players around and about, but he was very definitely of the opinion that he didn't want to lose the ethos that set Riverford up, and therefore he did a lot of work. He and the senior team did a lot of work of looking what the options were in terms of going to employee ownership. And he took the view and the team took the view that actually the trust approach was probably the best one.

So rather than having the individuals having shares in the company, the shares are held in trust for the employees. And so you have a three-legged stool in terms of the way that's governed or the governance of that business. So you have the trustees who basically hold the shares in trust for the employees and have a degree of veto or support for business ideas coming through. You then have the operational board and then you have an employee council, and that means that's an elected employee council. And two of the members of the council are then elected as trustees onto the trust board. So you have that connection all the way through. That really is a very good model. And Guy originally put over just over 70% of the company to the trust, and then eventually transferred the rest of his shares over. So it became 100% employee owned about two years ago.

So a really, really good example of good management in that way. And built into the trust deed is the owner's wishes or the founder's wishes, which demonstrate what the company could be and what it should be doing, which is really good because you can keep that going through. So it's like the American constitution, it's a good foundation for the way the operation works. There are lots of good examples and it really is a very good way of an owner actually making sure that A, the business continues and continues in a good way, and the foundation, the ethos of the company is maintained.

Mark Greaves:

I think it's absolutely right on that side and it takes us back to our point about how do you understand the frontline and emphasize a little about that employees on the board as well. But one of the issues on that can be that you are taking someone out from their role and putting in something that they haven't experienced before. How do you prepare an employee to sit on the board? How do you ensure that they contribute as part of the board?

Nick Buckland:

It's all about the induction process and, in many respects, it's almost like giving them permission to be a member of the board and making sure that they understand that their contribution is a very valuable contribution. And one of the examples I'd use, is on the university board and on the college board, we actually have students on those boards. So in the case of the university, you would get the president of the student's union and the chair of the student parliament. Now the fact was that they were probably in post for a year, so you had to make sure that they were contributing very, very quickly. What I would do is I would meet with them and I would make sure that their contribution was beneficial and probably worth more than the average governor of the university because they were living it on a day by day basis, and making sure that they were able to contribute, so if they were a little bit shy about contributing, actually getting them to engage and work with the rest of the board.

And I have to say that in all cases there, and again in the college, the contribution that those students made to the boards is really, really beneficial. It really gave us a good insight as to what their user experience was for the students. In the same way that an employee director can actually give you a very good idea about how this will be received on the factory floor, on the office floor, whatever, how that will impact on people within the organisation. It comes back to that induction process to make sure that ... It's probably the wrong word, but giving them that permission to contribute, that their contribution is very worthwhile and very well thought of.

Mark Greaves:

It's also getting them over the hurdle that they are allowed in that room to criticize ultimately their bosses without any comeback whatsoever. And that can be a tough line to get people across. I want to just come back to, you mentioned about productivity earlier. You've worked with both Plymouth and Exeter science parks. How do you see them trying to help solve our productivity problem?

Nick Buckland:

Well, of course in many instances what they're doing is they're working with young and new companies which are developing and therefore they both have support mechanisms to actually assist those companies in terms of developing. What I found is that in startup and very small companies, productivity actually is quite high because everybody's putting their shoulders to the wheel, they're making it work. As companies grow, there tends to be a relaxing of that approach and that attitude. That issue is one which one leader really needs to look at and understand why things go wrong. I always remember I was interviewed, it was years ago, by the company which eventually became Vodafone and I was talking to them about how they succeeded in making the company grow and actually not lose its productivity, its growth path. And what they said was that they recognized that when the company got to a site whereby the chief executive didn't know the guys on the factory floor about their family, that disconnect, it became us and them rather than us. And so what they were doing, was they were actually setting up individual divisions so when somebody got to a particular size, they would split it. So it still maintained that connectivity between the people at the top and the people on the ground. And I think that's quite an interesting approach to it. So it's that connectivity.

Mark Greaves:

I suppose that brings us back to our earlier discussion on the NHS, the little of trying to get individual units working well and what the optional size is for them.

Okay. We talked about an awful lot of other things and how many jobs you've had, just to bring the episode to an end. Apparently, you also have time to run a farm. How on earth did that arise?

Nick Buckland:

Well, I said earlier that we moved from the southeast now to Cornwall, and at that time we had some horses and so I wanted a smallish house. We had the horses out on a local farm when we were in Sussex, and when we moved down here we wanted about 10 acres of land and a nice house to go with it. And we found that the further west we moved, the more our money bought. So we actually ended up buying not a three bedroom place, but a five bedroom house and an 80 acre farm. And having sold a small property in Sussex, I think the those days have now gone, but it was really good. The other element of the plan was that we would have either a house which needed doing up and the farm was okay or vice versa. Of course, what we ended up buying was a house which was virtually falling down and a farm which hadn't been properly looked after for probably 10 years. So we put in place a five-year Soviet plan to actually get it up all up to snuff, and that did work. But if you could see my hands, you would see they are not the hands of a farmer. I pay the bills and somebody else does all the hard work.

Mark Greaves:

But you're still staying in touch with the front line?

Nick Buckland:

Oh, absolutely. I mean, literally Danny who does the work for us, he stopped me on the drive as I was out for my walk and said TB testing is on the 17th of March. So another panic day then.

Mark Greaves:

Ideal. Thank you, Nick, so much for joining us today and sharing your story. Still don't know where you find the time to do everything in there. And thank you to our audience for listening to this latest episode of Business Noodles. We hope you've enjoyed the conversation. Don't forget to follow this podcast via updates and notifications on when our latest episodes are available.