Paul Drechsler CBE | What Great Leaders Understand About People | Extraordinary Life Stories

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0:44Where do we stand in the world today as the UK? Are we a rich country? Are we a poor country? Can we afford to invest in the things that we need? can we make the hard choices that we need to make? Can we tell you the truth? And leadership and achievement is all about people. How do I organise the orchestra into the pit and get to play brilliant music? I love that. It's all about conducting the orchestra and that's transferable. If I walked into a boardroom today and it wasn't at least 50 % female I'd think I was on the wrong planet. If there weren't two or three people of colour I'd say this is a backward company it's only 20 years ago that it was normal to have boards and leadership teams predominantly male.

1:32So that's progress, right? I think we should be hugely proud of what we've achieved in this country, but it's a bit like being really proud of your children. If they're getting a C and they should get an A, you want them to get an A. And I think that's how I feel about the UK. We have one of the best hands of cards of any country on planet Earth. but we have to play them better.

2:09Welcome. Thank you, I'm delighted to be here. I look forward to the conversation. Me too. Tell me, who is Paul Drexler? He is one of the luckiest people on planet Earth, the son of a Czech refugee father, an Irish mother, a father who was an engineer and an academic, a mother who loved literature and when I was growing up every week she gave me a book to read. So I grew up in Dublin City, Ireland, a great city in the 50s and 60s. So much about it to love, probably the best time and what had a big influence on me was being the son of a refugee who lost most of his family in the war has had no doubt a big impact on me in my life.

3:05And then the love of parents. And I was a minority from birth. I had three sisters. But I dealt with that. OK, survived it. And then I went to Trinity College in Dublin, which is a really old university in the middle of a capital city, and made friends from all over the world. So the social animal was let loose in the centre of Dublin and just enjoyed the diversity of people. I met with different beliefs, different values, different religions. It was fabulous. Wow, no days the same. And you carried that on all the way through, talking to you off camera. And we must cover the career side of things to piece that together for people.

3:43But you've got such a zest for life. You've got such an interest in people. If you are the son of somebody who but for the space of one week would never have lived, you start life being incredibly grateful for the fact I'm alive. I've been able to build the most fabulous family with a wife from Cork, three wonderful children who I neglected too much when they were young, but they are everything in my life today. and when you've got that to go home to or to know, you know, what more do you want? So, you know, love of family and then the joy of solving problems with people. You know, I studied engineering and engineering is the science of problem solving.

4:33It's just all about solving problems. And my whole life, I'm like a magnet for problems and I love solving them and I love helping people to solve problems. So, you know, I'm at a stage where I'm not the best person to have on the field, but I'm pretty good on the sideline. Makes you super interesting and a really good person as well. I imagine, you know, people coming to you with a problem or you looking in to solve a problem. So welcome to have you there because the passion you've got for it and the desire to make a good outcome. Well, look, I think that's a nice thing to think of oneself. But I lived in Brazil for two years where inflation was 30 percent a month.

5:13It was one of the most interesting countries in the world. I love the people. But when inflation is 30 % a month, you have to make decisions very fast. You have to communicate very fast. And then I went to the USA, which is all about just doing, doing. It's all action, action, action. So I developed the fine art of communicating very quickly. and then I lived for worked in Holland for five years which is possibly the most direct country on planet earth so whilst many people might enjoy working with me I can be super succinct even though I'm Irish and very direct yes but isn't that what people want in leadership and should we bring that in now because I'd love to open up this this piece but making decisions needing to make decisions fast where procrastination and lack of decisions is is something that certainly in the UK right now we're suffering from.

6:10And can we bring in your career? Almost maybe in a reverse order, because anyone watching or listening, just what you've done, what you've accomplished. I'm so lucky. I started my first 10 years working on a big, big chemical factory in the northeast of England in Teesside. I remember arriving at Billingham train station and wondering, what have I done? This is the end of the world. and I had the best 10 years working with people, all shop floor people, hundreds of them. They were fabulous people doing everything from rigging to fitting to boiler making to plumbing, all the skills to make a chemical plant work.

6:49And a chemical plant is just like getting a motor car MOT. You've got to do the same thing, but at a very different scale. So I started on the shop floor with trade unions, trying to improve productivity, trying to change working practices. So I learned how to influence people, how to influence people that initially they didn't want to do. So it was, and in those days when I worked at ICI, it was a great company for trading and developing people. We invested lots of money in helping people to grow and develop something we might come back to. But trading development is so important. So I did 10 years on the shop floor, but always had an eye to wanting to be a boss, wanting to be a leader, wanting to be a CEO.

7:36So I went into commercial world, doing international business. I then moved to Brazil, as I said, for two years, running the company in Latin America, but having to split it into two. One part became AstraZeneca. but the thing to go to another country with your family, three young kids, and what I said to Wendy and my wife were great opportunity, great job, Brazil. She said, let me give you 20 reasons why we're not going to go to Brazil. One of which was it was known to be very violent, more by reputation than reality. I loved it there. We're not a very problem. But it had this reputation for violence.

8:17It had a reputation for kidnapping CEOs. and I was the equivalent CEO out there. So she wasn't too enthusiastic, but we did go out there, had a fabulous time, loved the people, but I learned how to manage a team of people from all over the world, different cultures, different ways of thinking. I was, I think, so fortunate. And then I went from there to the USA to run a number of businesses and learned another way of doing business and a very different culture. And in my experience, business and leadership and achievement is all about people. It's about how do I organize the orchestra into the pit and get to play brilliant music?

9:02I love that. You know, it's just whether you're chairing a board in a boardroom or managing a turnaround on a chemical factory, it's all about conducting the orchestra. Go further with the American Express Business Gold Card. Earn three times membership rewards points on flights and prepaid hotels when you book through AmexTravel.com. Whether your destination is a business conference or a client meeting, your purchases will help you earn more points for future trips. Experience more on your travels with Amex Business Gold. Terms apply. Learn more at AmericanExpress.com slash business dash gold.

9:36Amex Business Gold Card. Built for business by American Express. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money, whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings. There's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com. And that's transferable. You are so multifaceted. You've experienced multicultures. And then I guess that all these experiences led you to becoming a much better leader yourself. Well, I haven't stopped learning. I still make mistakes. I still get stuff wrong. I still upset people. But I'm normally trying to do good.

10:21So we lived in Brazil. At that stage, I had three children. My eldest son, Mark, who now lives in the USA, he was 14. And I think he was in school number seven. And my wife said, I think it's time we move somewhere in the world where our children stay in the same school and you go off and travel. So we came to London when my kids were young teens to older teens. And quickly thereafter, I ended up taking a job in the Netherlands running a worldwide business that made flavors and fragrances. Totally different business. Very international. All of that's about leadership. It's all about listening.

11:02you know I used to go to Japan I love doing business in Japan the people are so nice but they're so different but if you greet them in Japanese just two or three words immediately you build a bridge you build a relationship and I found is that because you made the effort to come at their level and I never went I never went anywhere in the world without trying to learn good morning good evening thank you very much please no I did one time try to do speech in Chinese that's another story but mostly and have a few sentences just to build relationship. A lot of British people don't do that so there's almost an association of laziness where you go to the country but you make no effort to have any knowledge of their culture or speak their language.

11:46If you look at the history the history of Britain is of course seafares going all over the world and and and doing all sorts of things and but speaking foreign languages I mean if you turn the clock back 20, 30 years ago, everyone in school learned one or two foreign languages. They probably had the chance to go and visit France or visit Germany or Spain or wherever. And I think that's so. So I think languages are important. But, you know, these are all things that they're all, you know, the magic that you need to get people to connect. And if you can get people to connect and it's not you do it for a living, but it's not the easiest thing in the past.

12:24But if you can do it, then the impossible becomes possible. But if you don't... So anyway, the career, that was the career. I eventually ended up on the ICI board in interest at a time when 12 or 14 people in the boardroom, they were all male. If I walked into a boardroom today and it wasn't at least 50 % female, I think I was on the wrong planet. If there weren't two or three people of colour, I'd say, this is a backward company. it's only 20 years ago that it was normal to have boards and leadership teams predominantly male. So that's progress, right? So, you know, I think we can be highly dissatisfied about lots of things we want to be.

13:07But when you step back and look, we have made fantastic progress. And there's so much to be proud about in terms of, I think we should be hugely proud of what we've achieved in this country. But it's a bit like being really proud of your children. if they're getting a C and they should get an A you want them to get an A and I think that's how I feel about the UK we have one of the best hands of cards of any country on planet earth but we have to play them better so that's one part of my life in business and then two family owned businesses that were fourth and seventh generation family businesses very different world but some things we might talk about And then I sort of transitioned into, because I have this mouth, into business organisations and making the case for business in things like the CBI, Business London.

14:04What's the CBI? The Confederation British Industry brings together the most senior business voices, most influential in the UK, and you're trying to influence government so government makes the right decisions so you can grow the economy. And if you do a great job influencing government, it's a win-win. And if you don't, it's not so much a win-win. There's one or two cases we can come back to. So I had a stream of things which was about, and still to this day, I do the Society of Chemical Industry, which is all about science and innovation. We have the best universities on the planet. We have more research success per capita than almost anywhere else in the world.

14:47And our challenge is how do we take that great strength and make it into brilliant value for the UK so that everybody benefits. Proper. This is an amazing mission. And your positivity is infectious. I love it. And we both agreed off camera before we started filming that we are glass half full people. and you made that comment about there's always sediment at the bottom but but the the opportunity if you like and the potential that you talk about there and the actual infrastructure is phenomenal so what's holding it back well so let's just stop for a moment and think you know what what have we got that is fabulous i talked about our science what country in the world has culture like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, William Shakespeare, arts and culture to die for, bioscience, fintech, financial services, the English language, our location, you couldn't offer.

15:44And by the way, democracy that has been, despite all the stress tests, a democracy that has survived hundreds of years, that worked through all sorts of challenges, and the rule of law. So there's a whole bunch of things we should be really happy with. The question then is, do we play that set of cards the right way? And the reality is, for much of our history in the UK, we have, I think, done a good job of that. I think we lost our way. We came off the motorway badly around 2015. And all of a sudden, we stopped thinking about what makes the country great. How often in the past six weeks have you heard about any of those things I talked about?

16:29It's so refreshing to hear. Yeah, I genuinely enjoy it. I don't even read the papers or listen because it's just all negative. But most of it doesn't matter. We've 60 million plus people in this country from all over the world. London, 140 different nationalities, every language spoken, best capital city on planet Earth. You know, we should be dancing in the streets. But what's the news? The news is about stuff, so much of it that doesn't really matter, or it's so profound, as the troubles we're facing today in the Middle East, that we create this sense of people being helpless. So, you know, I think, you know, what does leadership do?

17:10You know, leadership, you have to, to my mind, have a story. What's the story? What's our national narrative? Do we have a great story to tell about the UK? You know, I think if I walked in here as a football manager, I could say, let me tell you all the reasons why we are going to be the best place on planet Earth in which to invest, in which to live, in which to play. I could do that story, but I have to tell you that. I have to tell it to you as a public in a way where you sort of buy into it. And I think we've just lost that art. of storytelling in a way that invites all of us into the room.

17:49That's interesting because we have better tools than ever. You know, the old campfire storytelling that passed everything on. Now we have social media, which by default has got the word social in it, which should be connecting us all. But I don't want to go down a rabbit hole with the algorithm and the kind of negativity. But why is that not amplifying and spreading those positive messages? because a narrative isn't 10 words go off and do a narrative is a conversation because you and I can talk about what we really like about this country it won't be the same as the last guest you had we are we will all have a different perspective so conversations matter social media is just bam bam bam bam 140 characters were done out of here I mean that doesn't build culture You know, my question for all of us is, if we want a better world, don't we have to sit down and think about what that might mean?

18:48To have a conversation about what does a better world mean for you? We have 12 million people in the UK, 12 million who are living in poverty. That means they mightn't have food on their plate tonight, tomorrow or Saturday. what they need is quite different to my friends who are going off flying back and forward to the states once a month difference you know we're living in a world particularly in the western world where wealth distribution has gone off the rails so we have a small number of people living like lords kings and and beyond but a large number of people and that is creating an understandable gap in society.

19:31And we as leaders, we have led our nations, our businesses, our companies to this place. And the consequence is why are we surprised they're all so unhappy? Why are we surprised when we have elections that things are over? Because I have to believe you. I have to trust you as a leader. And if my experience is not good, which for so many people here for quite some time, I want to blame somebody. I mean, that's the way as humans, we either pray or we want to blame. My life isn't good. Who can I tell you? Who can I blame? And, you know, we had our period of let's blame the immigrants. And then we blame something else.

20:14And if politicians foster that. so if the leadership decides the way we are going to run the country is to polarize whatever you say I'm going to say the extreme opposite that doesn't create to my mind conditions for a good society we you know we've we have challenges you know we had black lives matter and challenges about people of color and what does it do it fuels anger and hatred when we should say how do we make this world a better place? How do we ensure everybody has an equal and fair opportunity? That's leadership.

21:16per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. Default terms at mintmobile.com. So if I bring business in, because I know that's a passion of yours and mine, and that's overarching, including entrepreneurship and bringing education into it, that sort of early ambition, aspiration, someone watching you, listening to you thinking, I want to be a leader. I want to make change as a force for good. This is a hard question. But if we use business at the heart of it, what would you change? what needs to change? Because where I'm going with that is that businesses are struggling right now.

21:48If you take the UK, the tax structures that are coming through relatively new leadership that's crippling certain businesses and making it almost unsustainable. And without going into the minutiae of that, just from a leadership, from that self-awareness point of view, I love the fact you brought it back to people. What needs to change? I think everything has to start with the truth. Where do we stand in the world today as the UK. Are we a rich country? Are we a poor country? Can we afford to invest in the things that we need? Can we make the hard choices that we need to make? Can we tell you the truth?

22:27And, you know, the reality is politicians have lost that ability to tell the real truth. The truth is we have to invest a lot more in defence. The truth is the NHS is going to cost a lot more money. The truth is we have under invested in our infrastructure for 15 or 20 years. You have to start with the truth and then say there are consequences. And we have policy choices about how we deal with those things. From a business point of view, the good thing for most businesses is we have choice. I can invest in the UK, I can invest in Ireland, I can invest in Singapore or Japan or wherever, India. There's competition for my capital as a business.

23:16So businesses at the end of the day will look, they'll scan the horizon and they'll say, where is the best place to grow and develop my business? And every business is different. There isn't a standard answer. Some businesses, if you run a restaurant in London, exporting to India is not going to be the first thing on your priorities, just surviving that business. So in every policy choice that's made, it's got different implications for business. Sure. But successful business people, they're all great survivors. They're all great adapters. And no matter what you throw, no matter what you throw at most CEOs, they will sit down, have a look at it and say, God, that's really bad.

23:58How are we going to deal with it? They won't spend an awful lot of time. They will make noise, but they'll always spend a lot of time saying how bad it all is because it's happened. They don't dwell on it. It goes back to the problem solving, doesn't it? It goes back to the engineering mindset. Just get on with it. You're not going to grow your business by moaning about whoever is in government. You're going to grow your business by saying, they've just put that roadblock in. What do I do? How do I get around it? In reality, some of the decisions that are made by all governments, I mean, the worst decision made by a government in the past 10 or 15 years was a decision to ask 50, 60 million people, would they like to stay in the European Union or not?

24:42I mean, that was a decision, not the smartest decision. And it had profound consequences. Today, this country is poor to the tune of£240 billion because of that decision. That's more than the cost to pay for the NHS. So now, did all the companies die? No, they didn't. But we've had 15 % less per annum invested into the UK, 12 to 15. We've had about 15 % less exports from the UK. There's a consequence. So businesses do adapt. Entrepreneurs adapt. And that's what makes business so much fun. The ability to make decisions in the moment and stand by them is a key, key thing I've learned from conversations like this.

25:31I feel like you're going to agree with me on that one. And I just wondered if I can elaborate on that. That's kind of almost like asking you what values you appreciate the most in leadership. Whether it's been your own experience of being around other people where rightly or wrongly at the time that stood out as proper values. To me, it is all about people. And it starts with truth and integrity. Do you bring those values to the table? and then it is you bring the right mix of values. So I had the pleasure of being chief executive of one of the UK's oldest private family businesses. It was in construction and property.

26:13What's it called? The Waits Group. Of course. Fabulous family, four generations. And in that business, when I asked them, you know, what did they want? Their answer was we want to hand over a bigger, better business to the next generation of the family. That's legacy. And it was not just legacy for the business. They also had two family foundations that gave a percentage of the profits to causes that they cared about ingrained into their family values. Those are the sort of things that matter. As a business, I have to be clear what's my purpose? What's the role of our business? And do we matter to society?

27:00Well, every business, they have a shop or a factory or something where there's people who live around them. Those people matter. So I think you have to have a care for society if you're a business. Brilliant. And lastly, the thing, one of the most influential moments in my life was when my older sister, Anne, who at the time was about 14 or 15, maybe 16, had a party. And she had a bunch of students in our house in Dublin. And there was this guy who was Indian sitting on the stairs. And I was about 12 or 13 at the time. And I walked up, we started talking, and he was a South African Indian. And he told me about apartheid.

27:49and I said and and the more he talked to me the more how could we possibly live in a world where your possibilities of mine are different just because of the color of our skin and because apartheid was such a vivid inequality injustice it really it sort of stopped me to think about the world and of course um if i continue the story president nelson mandela one of the greatest leaders ever walked if i could ever do an interview of a leader like you i'd have nelson mandela here i'd parallel there the long walk to freedom is the book of us but he said education is the most powerful weapon with which to change the world and as a business you have to see that educating and developing people, whether the kids in school who will be coming into your business or people in your company, education is the best investment you could ever make.

28:50And if you said, how do we make Great Britain even greater? I'd say, ask yourself the question, does every school of the country have the best school principal who will lead that? I've never been, I've never been to a bad school with a great school principal. never. You know, it comes from the top. You know, I had the pleasure of chairing a charity called Teach First, which was recruiting university graduates to teach them how to lead and teach in classrooms in the most disadvantaged poor schools in the country. We recruited, when I finished, about 1700, 1800s. Brilliant young people, 21, 22-year-olds, and they would go.

29:34And in classrooms, they would teach. they would change the course of the river for every child in the room. So to my mind, the most important leadership role in the country is that teacher in the classroom from preschool all the way through because they can have a profound... I mean, home really matters, but teachers, I think we don't think enough about the power they have and their willingness and their commitment and dedication and they're not paid fantastically. but my gosh do they shape the future of a country and then when you look as an employer what do I want to do I want to recruit the best possible people if I'm in international business I want to recruit the best possible people from around the world Italians Swiss Americans wherever they come from so I have the best people for my business I'll do it make a success so so you know I hope that answers the question I think at the at the core of this these the values question is what do we believe in?