Our quarterly e-newsletter will keep you up to date with news and views from Interregna and the world of interim management. Click
here to register!
July 2007
Interview: Sally Muggeridge
If you have ever cursed your local MP for knowing nothing about business, then the Industry and Parliament Trust may prove you wrong. Nick Saalfeld met Chief Executive, Sally Muggeridge.
 IPT: Where Parliament meets business…
2007 is a big year for the Industry and Parliament Trust- the charity is celebrating its 30th anniversary, and taking the opportunity to increase its profile. It shouldn’t be hard- IPT’s Chief Executive Sally Muggeridge has a very PR-friendly story to tell.
“Our core objective is to foster understanding between business and Parliament and we do this in a very practical way. We encourage Parliamentarians to spend time learning about business, or to refresh their knowledge if they have a business background. As a legislator you can get quite isolated from the “real world”. We provide them with a reality check. Mr Speaker, for example, served behind the counter of Marks & Spencer in his constituency, learning about the world of retail.”
“A Member worked as an assistant on the floor in a Boots department store, changing the layout from summer to Christmas. Another MP delivered parcels in London in a DHL van.” These stories might provide instant amusement, but the lessons are extremely valuable: “That MP now understands the customer’s expectation of having a parcel delivered at 7.30am. He then sits on the Environmental Select Committee and has a direct knowledge of how the transport infrastructure being debated affects our daily lives.”
Feedback from MPs on their experiences in business includes comments such as “transformational”, and Muggeridge states that those MPs who have participated form a unique cross-party body of business knowledge. “We call them Fellows. They’ve shared experiences which makes them not only very willing to evangelise about their learning with each other, but also prepared to inform and provide feedback to their colleagues on aspects of the learning”
…and where business meets Parliament
It’s not a one-way street, though. IPT also aims to bring business to Parliament. “Even the most hard-nosed executives who are in and out of Parliament regularly don’t always understand how the Legislative functions. Through IPT, business representatives can linger long enough with Parliamentarians to understand what happens inside Government. We deliver similar education through a series of study programmes in the European Parliament too.”
So far, some 600 Parliamentarians have experienced going out into businesses around the UK. Similarly some 3000 individuals from business have come into Parliament, or more recently into the European Parliament, giving an insight into the mechanics of Government.
But can IPT really be said to have influenced policy? Uniquely, currently less than 20% of Parliamentarians have any sort of business background, and increasing taxes have led to accusations of anti-business sentiment in government. At the very least, IPT is building essential bridges. “Businesses don’t think that Parliamentarians really understand enough about their needs. They also need reassurance on things like competition from emerging economies, so each side has so much to appreciate from spending time with each other.”
A marketer’s career in trend-spotting
You would expect the Chief Executive of the IPT to have some sort of business heritage- and Sally Muggeridge’s career has been one of remarkable trailblazing.
Brands she has worked for include BT, Mars, Cable and Wireless, Mothercare, and Pearson. She mentions the notion of the glass ceiling very much only in passing (“British Telecom, on privatization, was facing customers, rather than subscribers for the very first time, so it was a very male-orientated organization. Certainly when I was first addressed by an engineer, he said ‘My dear, you won’t understand this’”…).
Of much more interest is that her career has spanned two very different roles: marketing and HR. Brand marketing underwent great changes in the 1980’s, and Muggeridge spotted trends which many other senior managers failed to notice. “At Mothercare, in the 1980’s, men suddenly started to buy baby clothes, whereas it had previously been perceived as the prerogative of women. That changed our marketing strategy.” At BT (or British Telecom as it was then), the evolution was even more stark: “One of my first challenges was the phone boxes. A phone box was always in a dark corner- because that’s where the network came out of the ground. It was unlit, nobody wanted to go into it, generally it was used as a urinal, and you assumed it was out of order. To put it in a more attractive location where there might be footfall and revenue to be made appeared to me to be good sense and made a considerable difference. It was necessary to educate the engineers on the importance of siting a box where people would actually use it. Similarly, we revamped BT’s retail outlets where it seemed more appropriate to have a sales assistant selling you a phone rather than an engineer.”
“My move from marketing to human resource management came about when I was running the mobile service division of Mercury. The Chief Executive invited me to get his senior staff together to focus on development. I regret to say that he thought HR people didn’t have the business experience to cope with dealing with senior management. My job was to convince them that for the benefit of the business and for the good of their own career – because it’s got to be both things together – could actually move the organisation forward.”
“Similarly, in Hong Kong, I brought together an initial meeting of marketing and HR in a room together and they suddenly realised that they had a common language around rentention, recruitment etc. They had more in common than they ever thought, and neither would have naturally associated themselves with each other’s issues. In my current role, bringing businesspeople and Parliamentarians together, it’s a great pleasure to see similar results: the hopes and concerns of both who may have previously felt there was a gulf in understanding, do appreciate making the connection.”
You can find out more about the IPT at http://www.ipt.org.uk/
Sally has also just been voted Voluntary Sector Achiever of the Year in the Dods Scottish Widows Woman of the Year Awards 2007
top l home l back
|
