Lord Browne
Lord Browne, former BP chief executive, is both the lead non-executive for the Cabinet Office and the government’s lead non-exec. As such, he’s responsible for helping to implement reforms to all departmental boards.

So what will the lead non-exec hope to see from the reformed boards? He tells CSW that a good board must focus on strategic vision and “be supportive of management decisions when they further strategic development, yet critical when managers diverge from the direction set for them”. Above all, “It must recognise that delivery of results is a very human activity,” he says.

Asked how senior civil servants can work effectively with the new non-execs, he argues that a collaborative attitude is key. “A healthy degree of challenge [on the part of non-execs] is important, but there is no benefit in creating a combative atmosphere of ministers-versus-non-execs-versus-officials.” He calls also for boards and senior leaders to set “a strong, consistent direction”, particularly as “departments undergo difficult programmes of change and restructuring”.

Browne says he is “always impressed by the spirit and intellect of public sector officials”, but the complexity of public service delivery can lead to “weaknesses which I wouldn’t expect to find in a successful private corporation”. He cites a tendency to respond slowly to new challenges as one weakness of the public sector; another is the paucity of “management information available on which to base decisions about the future”. This data, he adds, “needs to be consistent, allow comparison with similar organisations, and forecast forward as well as describing and analysing past performance.”

Ian Davis
Ian Davis has spent almost his whole career with consultants McKinsey & Co, joining in 1979 and becoming world managing director in 2003. He stepped down from this position in 2009, but remains a senior partner at the firm and has taken on a number of non-exec roles – including sitting on the board of BP.

HSBC Holdings group chairman Douglas Flint, who also sits on the BP board, comments that Davis “tends to be very lateral in his thinking”, and is “keen to see actions, rather than design”. He is “very soft in his approach”, phrasing questions in a polite and circumspect way, says Flint; he summarises Davis’s manner as: “soft delivery; but very penetrating”.

It may, however, be presumptuous to assume that Davis will take this approach at the Cabinet Office board. Speaking to CSW, Davis emphasises the importance of tailoring your approach as a non-exec to each particular organisation. One of his aims as a non-exec, he says, is to “narrow the psychological and management divide between private and public [sectors]”. No matter their sector, says Davis, individual organisations are “all trying to cope with very difficult problems and issues, and ideologically I’ve never really worried much about whether things are in the private or the public sector”.

He describes the non-exec’s roles as supporting managers with advice and challenge, supervising governance, and asking whether shareholders’ (or taxpayers’) resources are being properly stewarded. Part of this stewarding involves helping to shape risk management, adds Davis, adding that he’s “completely neutral about risk – high risk is not worse to me than low risk”. The key question is whether the potential reward is worth it: “If you are taking high risks you need to know that if it works there will be a really big pay-off.”

Rona Fairhead
Rona Fairhead is chairman and chief executive of the Financial Times Group, a post she has held since 2006. She has served as a non-executive director for a number of organisations. Since 2004 she has been a non-exec at HSBC Holdings, where fellow board member Douglas Flint, now group chairman, describes her as “a delight to work with”. She is “incredibly smart, thoughtful and reflective”, he says: “She seeks to understand issues from a 360-degree viewpoint and is not quick to rush to an initial conclusion.”

Fairhead is, Flint adds, “very, very good at remembering, which is a wonderful characteristic and obviously a good challenge”. She will call attention to issues that resurface in an organisation, he says, and is good at spotting patterns which might be symptomatic of wider problems that need to be addressed.

Fairhead also sat on the board of financial information provider Interactive Data Corporation (IDC) for three years, overseeing its acquisition last year by private investors. Dr Ron Greenburg, who also served on the IDC board at this time, says Fairhead has a “very nice way of being able to have everybody participate in the discussion”, and is “very much a consensus-builder”, taking firm decisions without appearing authoritative.

Greenburg also believes she has great respect for logical arguments. Another colleague on the IDC board, Ray D’Arcy – now chairman of IDC, but previously CEO under Fairhead – says she will use her academic skills (a law degree from Cambridge; an MBA from Harvard) to challenge assumptions and question the reasoning behind arguments. “The bottom line,” says D’Arcy, “is make sure that you’ve done your homework because she will have done her homework, and she’s a very smart and thorough lady.”

Dame Barbara Stocking
In June 2010 Dame Barbara Stocking, Oxfam’s chief executive since 2001, was asked by the Financial Times if she could ever work in the private sector. “I would like to be a non-exec,” she replied, “as I enjoy overseeing organisations”. By the end of the year Dame Barbara had taken on her first non-exec role – but rather than overseeing a private company, she joined the Cabinet Office.

Stocking is credited with bringing a more commercial mindset to Oxfam – overseeing fast growth in its retail operations, and innovative partnerships with the private sector. Before joining the charity she worked in the health sector; and Stocking praises the commitment of people in the public sector, telling CSWthat management in the NHS “was as good as anything I have ever met in the private sector”. However, public sector organisations can lack “understanding about how to make things happen”, she adds, and sometimes there are “too many people involved in each issue”.

Stocking told the FT her three best qualities are “integrity; caring about people; and enthusiasm”, while her worst are “getting annoyed when people don’t deliver; impatience; I can move too fast for people and they don’t know where I’m going”. As a non-exec, she will ask plenty of questions, she says. She will expect senior civil servants to be honest about what is working and what is not, and “constructive about other options when things are not working”.

Written by Civil Service World