Iain Ferguson
A farmer’s son who has spent much of his working life in the food industry, Defra’s lead non-executive Iain Ferguson is already familiar with much of the department’s agenda, and tells CSW he is looking forward to helping to ensure the future of our food and farming industries. He is also familiar with the challenges of public sector management and governance, having served as a non-exec for Companies House and as chairman of Wilton Park, a Foreign Office agency.

He sees scrutiny of governance as a “minor part” of a non-exec’s role – his priority appears to be supporting the organisation’s strategic planning, and providing an external perspective on this strategy: “Good non-execs are there to help make sure that there is a proper debate and a timely debate about the big issues,” he says.

He also emphasises the importance of proper preparation for meetings – “a high-performance board is the result of a lot of very good pre-work” – and he will, as lead non-exec, take a great interest in ensuring the agenda and preparations are well thought-through.

Ferguson praises the coalition’s determination to produce business plans for each department – something he has seen produce results at the Foreign Office as well as at Defra. “It’s much easier for departments to align their strategies once it’s clear what the strategy is,” he says. “Often, one of the problems is that organisations don’t take the crunchy, tough decisions: one of the positive things you can say about the coalition is that it has tackled upfront quite a few of the difficult issues.”

Written by Civil Service World