313. "I told Jimmy Carr to quit his job", with Mike Harle, Jimmy Carr's (last ever) manager

0:00So I'm working for Shell. And then I kind of figured out, look, I'm not happy here. I was kind of low energy. I was not the funny guy in the office. I was just like, this is bullshit. I had a boss there, a guy called Mike Harle, who I recently kind of got back in touch with a little bit. So I went and did like the McKinsey Boston consulting interviews. So I was like, I said to my boss, Mike, I said, look, I'm going to go and try and get a job on these things. And he sat me down in his office and just went, no, I can't see it. I can't see it. she's just going to have the same problem somewhere else.

0:33I just don't see it. And that was kind of enough. It was enough that he saw me as like a funny, nice guy. Just went, yeah, this isn't for you. You're in the wrong stream. That's Jimmy Carr talking to Stephen Bartlett on Diary of a CEO a few years ago. And the boss Jimmy is talking about, we tracked him down. Mike Harle spent 32 years at Shell, ended up as their UK CMO. and today he's telling his story about Jimmy Carr publicly for the very first time. In case you're one of the tiny minority who don't know who Jimmy Carr is, he is one of the UK's best-known comics and is renowned for his sharp takedowns, late-night humour, and more recently, his thoughts on leading a fulfilled life.

1:15Hello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne, I'm a chartered occupational psychologist. My name is Al and I'm a business owner and we're co-founders of people and culture consultancy Oblong and together we help you simplify the science of work. Mike Hall spent 32 years at Shell, rising to become their UK chief marketing officer. He's also been a priest, worked with asylum seekers and is now teaching in the Czech Republic.

1:47But what Mike is most known for is a two-minute conversation in his office around the year 2000 when he told a nervous, chronically late junior employee to quit and become a comedian. That employee was Jimmy Carr. Today, we find out what Mike saw that others missed, why great managers sometimes tell their best people to leave, and what it actually takes to unlock someone's potential. So let's join Mike and Al after this very short break. Does your experience with AI sound a little like this? You prompt for 20 minutes, the output is polished, is confident, and is completely flipping useless. Well, that's what happens when AI doesn't know anything about your business.

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2:49I'm Mike Hall. I had a career at Shell in marketing. I have been a priest for 10 years. I have worked extensively with asylum seekers, supporting them one-to-one in England, and most recently branched into English teaching and mentoring here in the Czech Republic. I've also worked with disadvantaged women in housing projects. I've visited all 92 football league grounds and I've done a kind of million other things. So that's some of the things that I've done. But what am I famous for? You asked. Well, famous is kind of a thing. But I suppose, you know, Al, sometimes we have people at work that play in a rock band in the evenings or they like cracking a joke.

3:44and you kind of say to them, yeah, it's great, but don't give up your day job. Yeah. So we had a guy at Shell called Jimmy Carr and I said to him, do give up your day job. So I was the guy who advised Jimmy to go into comedy and I guess that's what I'm famous for. Fabulous. I mean, that's one of the best ones we've ever had. I tell you what, Jimmy seems to be doing all right these days. So clearly it was the right decision. Yeah, I think he's done obviously astoundingly well. And it's hard to relate to that kind of nervous early 20s guy that I spoke to on that day. But yeah, I mean, it gives me great joy to see that.

4:28Well, we're going to come back to the nervous early 20s guy in a second. Sure. Before we talk about Jimmy Carr, we want to talk a little bit about you. So tell us, you were at Shell. What year are we? Give us the timeline when you were at Shell and when you started, when you finished. Yeah, I started in 1976. I kind of joined Shell from school. I had a good education in Newcastle, went to grammar school. I joined Shell, though, instead of going to university, they sponsored me through a degree course in business and later through an MBA at Manchester. So they were great to me and helped me find my feet after some really horrendous exam results, you know, back at school.

5:08I was great at two things at school. I was brilliant on the flute and swam, you know, like really like a fish. Apart from that, the rest of it kind of passed me by. So I was really, you know, pleased to get the opportunity with Shell. That was 1976. And I finally left Shell in 2008. So, gosh, that sounds like a 32-year career at Shell. You know, my big break, if you put it that way, was getting the job of marketing manager for the UK, which happened in about 1994 through to about 2002. So I did that job for maybe eight years or so. So in contemporary parlance, you would say I was the CMO of Shell in the UK.

6:00And that was, you know, a kind of a big deal. That was to do with petrol prices. It was to do with shops. It was to do with loyalty programs. I was responsible for the brand in the UK, blah, blah, blah. You know, it was a big job. I was thrilled to get it and, you know, loved doing it and working alongside some very talented people. you know, particularly young people and developing a talent pool. So that's the kind of time frame that we're talking about. Jimmy was towards the back end of that sort of 98 to 2000. Jimmy left at the beginning of 2000. Okay, so let's go into the beginning of Jimmy's career.

6:42So you said, I don't think you used the word awkward. I think you said, what was the phrase, the way you described him? Something 21 year old? Probably nervous. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So nervous 21-year-old. I have seen pictures of him when he was a teenager and he's definitely changed his image slightly since then. Did he join directly on your team? He did, actually. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, back in those days, Al, joining Shell from Oxford or Cambridge, I mean, Jimmy was from Cambridge University, was kind of, you know, like the best thing that you could do. May not be so, you know, I don't know.

7:20But it was good enough for Liz Truss. She joined from Oxford. So did William Hague. So there was a kind of pattern. I mean, you wouldn't have thought William Hague, Liz Truss and Jimmy Carr had much in common, but they all joined Shell from Oxbridge. so there was a kind of pattern and a flow to that and there was a central recruitment body in Shell Centre and they were in touch with me and said Mike we've got this bloke for you you know we think marketing would be a good place for him to kind of start would he come and or can he come over and see you so we did that and you know on that maybe 1998 sometime you know know, Jimmy Carr walked in my office for the first time.

8:09And, you know, I said nervous. I mean, I would say that Jimmy kind of was struggling with the reality of what he'd just done. Like, why am I here? You know, have I ended up, you know, in this place doing this kind of job? So So I think even in that first meeting, he expressed some, you know, confusion about that. And, yeah, it was kind of strange. He was nervous. He was apprehensive. He was trying to say the right things, but it wasn't quite coming out brilliantly. so yeah I gave him a job in marketing and sort of helped him along through that over the next next couple of years but he was hesitant and there was a sense that yeah you know am I a fish out of water here Jimmy had a very loose connection with the reality of working life so you know So what you'd expect from a keen young graduate is, you know, polished shoes, a good suit.

9:21Now, Jimmy always had a good suit on. But he was quite frequently three hours late if he came in at all, particularly towards the end. So, you know, it was it was like kind of we had to be a little bit grateful that he was there at all. so he was inconsistent lacking in commitment but a great person to have and have around the office because people liked him and in particular he and I I mean you know this was a marketing hierarchy there were two managers between him and me so really you know I shouldn't have been talking to him apart from his annual review. But I liked him. He liked me. We grew a connection.

10:06And we used to go for a coffee together, go for a beer together, and developed a kind of friendship, which was pretty special. So he was, yeah, remained a fish out of water, I think you could say. but you know likeable great to have around the office um but didn't throw himself into the work of understanding uk motorists and their consumer buying habits i think it's fair to say your job was to ensure that you've got a great team to hit your marketing goals you've just described him as sometimes not coming in sometimes coming late not really doing doing a great deal so why do you keep him around you said you liked him personally but from a professional point of view should you not have just got rid of him in like week four well I don't know I suppose week four we were still trying to work out you know whether whether this pattern would become more consistent or not or whether he was we just put him in the wrong job I don't know but yeah I mean I can't say the thought didn't cross our minds, but he was, yeah, I mean, great fun to be around.

11:24I want to talk a bit more about that relationship that he and I had, which was kind of unconventional because normally, you know, there would be other, you know, intervening managers who would kind of handle Jimmy, but they didn't know what to do with him either. So he and I used to, as I say, go for coffees or go for a beer. At that time, I was going through some significant difficulties of my own. You know, my wife had a terminal illness. I had a young son. You know, things were really tough for me. And he was finding his way. So, you know, at those coffees, he used to share, you know, his doubts.

12:07There was a vulnerability there, you know, on both sides. And sometimes I use the analogy of the water level on the iceberg, you know, and the lower the water level gets because of circumstances, the more of the iceberg you see. And the water level between me and Jimmy got very low. So there was a lot of, you know, who we were as human beings on show to each other. So there was a shared vulnerability and a willingness to kind of exchange at a deeper level than just, you know, manager and kind of subordinate, to use an old fashioned phrase. So we used to talk about pretty much everything. I mean, he was struggling to find a girlfriend at that time.

12:56We would talk about that type of stuff. My wife's condition, you name it. It was great. It was all up for grabs. Yeah. So in a sense, it was natural for him to be talking to me about his options for the future. I think in one of Jimmy's books, I think he mentioned he didn't know his dad and he just knew he'd just known his mom or his dad wasn't on the scene. I remember that. So do you think that you were kind of a proxy father figure to him perhaps, or is that a bit too obvious a question? I don't know. I can't really answer that except to say that, yes, he had a difficult relationship with his dad.

13:35And I think he's documented that pretty well in his book about 18 months ago, Before and Laughter, which he talks about these episodes very openly, and I may say very accurately. So I think I was the right person to give him advice at that time, and I'm not sure he had anyone else. Let's put it like that. So it was kind of me that he came to for the big life advice at that particular moment. There was of respect. There was, you know, I was kind of more than his boss. I mean, I suppose he could, in retrospect, say, was it an example of my weak boundary management in terms of, yeah. But I don't, you know, life fell too short for all that.

14:22Let me talk about this boundary, because I don't think there are many junior execs in Shell today who go for a beer with the CMO. I think it started when we discovered we had shared interests. You know, he was very interested in music and the entertainment world. In my earlier days, I said that I'd been very good on the flute. I'd done quite a few West End shows, you know, Starlight Express, that type of thing, playing the flute as a sort of semi-pro musician. He was kind of really interested in that world. My brother was a professional musician who was about the time that I was with Jimmy. My brother was recording a major album with Elvis Costello and he'd just finished working with Paul McCartney.

15:10So, you know, I was kind of meeting Elvis Costello, hanging out with Level 42, that sort of thing. This was, and Jimmy loved all that. He loved hearing about that and he kind of engaged with that entertainment side. So that's not a normal thing for a boss and a subordinate kind of junior guy to talk about. But we found there was a connection. I remember I think he worked or a mate of his worked at Our Price Records, you know, on Piccadilly Circus. And had one of my heroes, Tony Bennett, the Frank Sinatra equivalent singer going there. And Jimmy got me Tony Bennett's autograph on a CD, which I was pretty thrilled about.

15:55so he was kind of up for that sort of thing as well so yeah he liked talking about entertainment he related to me and the world that I was inhabiting outside of Shell So was there a sign even early on that he was destined for other things? Well there was certainly a sign he wasn't destined for Shell you know there are plenty of those I think he got curious you know one of the things that I most value about people is curiosity, you know, and it's your curiosity. That's the reason I'm on this podcast now. So I really value curiosity in people. And Jimmy was curious about what it would look like if he tried stand-up comedy.

16:44You know, would it work? Did it matter if it didn't? Could it lead to something? You know, these were the kind of questions that he was asking at that time. So, yeah, it was early signs, early signs of him looking outside the standard, you know, world of business. And I think it's great that someone at 24, 25 can quickly realize that this life isn't for them. You know, I mean, I get people who are 55 and have spent the last 30 years in a kind of simmering disappointment because they've been doing something that wasn't their passion. And if you can't take a chance at 24, 25 on your future, you're sunk.

17:35And Jimmy was of a mind to take a chance, you know, and some might say he had very little to lose. But he did have a great, you know, a job at Shell, and he could have made a future out of it if he'd been so minded. I've heard someone say that clever people are sometimes funny, but funny people are always very clever. And so was, did you sense that, regardless of Oxbridge, you sense that he was sharp? Absolutely. I think Jimmy was then and remains, you know, a thinker. You know, you just read the kind of people that he likes knocking about with these days. You know, Jimmy is a thinker. He thinks deeply about things.

18:21And at that point in time, he was thinking deeply about his future. It wasn't a casual thing. You know, it was kind of, this is a major life decision that I'm about to take, or that I could take the option in front of me. So he had an innate intelligence, a sharpness, a wit. I mean, of course, you know, in most officers, there are lots of funny guys or girls around. And Jimmy was one of those, maybe a bit above the average. But it was still a significant leap of faith to be talking about going and doing a gig in a pub. Well, let's get into that. So that's the moment. So I believe I've written down here 1998 to around 2000.

19:072000 was the time that you must have had the conversation with him about this. So how did it start? Did he start it? Did you start it? Jimmy came to me and said, hey Mike, you know, can I pop in your office for, you know, half an hour later on today and just talk about something? And I said, of course, you know, feel free, two o 'clock. So there he is. You know, I'm in the CMO office there. And Jimmy came in, sat down. And I kind of remember that what he was saying was, I've got a great opportunity here in front of me, Mike, and I don't quite know which way to go. And he said, I've just been offered a job with Boston Consulting Group.

19:52BCG. Big name then. Probably a massive name now. It was, you know, McKinsey, BCG. This was kind of the place to go. And he said, I'm thinking about taking it and leaving, you know. What do you think? And I said, I'm not sure your heart's in business, Jimmy. You know, I mean, isn't it just more of the same? Isn't it just a high-octane version of what you don't like now? You know, where you're going to be under more pressure, where the expectations are going to be higher, and your heart's not going to be in it. I said, it's flattering. Of course it is. Everyone likes to be approached by companies like that, you know.

20:42But I said, so how are the gigs going? I think at that stage he'd done maybe one or two, you know, in a pub probably near his home in High Wycombe or something like that, you know. So he said, you know, okay, quite encouraging. He said, it's hard finding the material, you know, and I don't know if I'm, you know, but I got a reasonable reaction, so I'm going to do more. I said, bugger it. Do that, Jimmy. That's where your heart is. That's where your passion is. That's what you want to do. That's where you want to be. I said, why not go flat out for comedy? and really see if he can make it. You know, it'll be a lot of hard work.

21:32And he was never afraid of hard work in areas that he was passionate about. I also came from a family. I mentioned my brother was a musician, but I come from a family that's, you know, in the entertainment and media business, essentially, you know. So these kind of jobs weren't necessarily for somebody else. They were for us. And, you know, so it didn't seem that bizarre suggesting someone go into comedy as a branch of entertainment. And that bit of advice was the thing that made Jimmy, you know, take the left fork in the road. As he's acknowledged countless times subsequently. so it was it felt like a really really important moment and uh i'm glad i advised him to follow his heart and nod his head was it an immediate thing you said jimmy i think you should go and you should not take the bcg gig you should go and pursue comedy and he went cool next day i'm off or did it take a little time for it to supercalate i don't think it took long al um my memory is that he might have slept on it or we talked the next day, but it immediately felt right to him.

22:57And it was the right moment to have heard that from the right person, you know. So everything clicked into place. And, you know, I set into process with our human resources people that Jimmy would make an exit. He got paid some money for exiting on a kind of voluntary redundancy scheme, which I think still amuses him to this day that he got voluntary redundancy for leaving a jog that he couldn't stand. But yeah, he was quick onto it. And, you know, the evening gigs were ramping up and Jimmy was getting more and more active. It was a pretty immediate reaction. And I think probably within a couple of months, January 2000, and he was gone.

23:48And I remember, I think I moved on maybe, or I was out of reach for some reason. But on the day that he left, he wrote me a charming letter, really nice letter, thanking me for what I'd done, for the things that I'd said, for being the right person at the right time for him. And I remember his closing sentence, Sal, which was, so Mike, I'm off to join the circus. I'm off to join the circus. Cheers, Jimmy. And that's what he did. So no great deliberation, no BCG. Jimmy was off to join the circus and he's still there. Most managers would never do something you've done there because they'd either want to keep someone like Jimmy because even though they weren't great at the job, they were still like, obviously, you know, people liked them around the office.

24:51Sure. Or there's perhaps a little bit of professional jealousy of going, well, I'm going to stick here in Shell and you're going to go off and do an exciting, like you're going to be a comedian. What made you put Jimmy's career first over what you actually needed as a manager? I wanted to do the best by a human being, you know. I think as a manager and as a person, as a leader, I always had high regard for everyone's humanity and the dignity with which we deal with them at work. And that's why, as I mentioned earlier, I've been working with asylum seekers, why I work with software developers now here in the Czech Republic.

25:40why I worked with, you know, all sorts of people, because I believe, you know, in the equality and humanity of all people. And I believe, you know, that they need to be dealt with with dignity and with agency in their own situation. And I think that's what I was doing for Jimmy. His road at Shell had come to an end, but I wanted the best for him as a person. even if I took a little bit of a knock for you know how did you let that you know slip through your hands Mike or you know what the hell have you advised Jimmy to do here I was prepared to take that here I was the best marketer they had. Where's this come from this belief that everyone should be happy at work where everyone should be treated with dignity where's that come from?

26:35I think it comes from, it came from my dad, probably, you know, I mean, at the end of the day, most things do, or a lot of things can. So my dad was a socialist, in his early days, a communist. he was strong on doing the right thing by people he managed in later years a furniture manufacturing company in the northeast of england with a few thousand employees and he was great with the unions because he wasn't trying to screw them he was trying to get fairness in employment with the people that worked for him and that were committed to him so I think that was ingrained in me from a very, very early age.

27:25And, you know, through my own, you know, political principles, my own spirituality as well, doing the right thing by people, wanting individuals to flourish, you know, to me was an important element of leadership. And I think, you know, nothing that's happened subsequently has changed my mind on that. I still think that's what makes a great leader. If the people around them flourish, you know? You later became a priest for a while. Yeah. And if I remember correctly, that was one of the possibilities of early Jimmy to become a priest. Did you ever talk about that kind of thing? He had a sort of gentle Roman Catholic spirituality.

28:11Mine was Protestant, Church of England. But I suppose we did touch on it. I seem to remember that his mother was quite a committed Roman Catholic. So it was something that he didn't dismiss. It was something that was real to him. But if you like, you know, my own excursion into the church, which lasted 10 years, was something that happened later on when eventually I became, you know, bereaved and was struggling with the whole issue of how to raise a child on my own. how to embed ourselves in a community, and how to, if you like, share what I'd learned from my tough experiences with other people and help them through all sorts of difficult situations, old age, infirmity, suicide, bereavement, mental illness, etc.

29:03And to me, that's what being a priest in the community was about. So that was a really sort of, felt like quite a fruitful time. I also later on after a number of years alone met my second wife through it so that was kind of an added advantage. Was there anyone else in your career that you managed or worked with that you've done something similar and encouraged them to go and go in a different direction? Yeah that's a that's a good question. Working with I mean I've always had those projects going on with people. I've always had those kind of mentoring relationships. There's a guy that I'm supporting now back in Bournemouth who is a Cameroonian asylum seeker who's just got permission to remain in the UK and I'm trying to help him launch his football career.

29:57So that's an example of someone who I'm trying to find a way of helping him unleash his talent. I'm also working here in Brno with a very talented marketing consultant who's working on truth and reconciliation projects between the historic conflicts between Czech and German people, a really, really talented woman. And so, you know, and there are a string of other people like that where I think, yeah, I love their energy. I see their heart. I can help them, if you like, take away some of what I would call self-limiting beliefs about what's possible. and you know that phrase self-limiting belief is I suppose what I took away from Jimmy Carr that day.

30:54So you did your MBA you've obviously learned the academic side of management and then in your 32 years at Shell you learned the actual practical side of it so if someone's listening and like I want to be a great manager like Mike what how where do they start do they need to do the academic stuff as well. I can't say whether everyone should do an MBA or not, but I can say for me, it opened up a world that I didn't know existed. So up until that point, I'd been, you know, marketing this, marketing that in shell. I kind of understood how it worked, market research, product development, you know, diddle.

31:30But as I moved and saw the potential for leadership positions. I needed more of a framework other than being just suddenly made a boss who was, you know, dealing with people in the best way that he or she could. I needed a kind of theoretical framework. I needed some ideas to pin that on that would help me understand what I was doing and how to get the best out of people. So for me, doing an academic qualification at a good business school, not any business school, but a good one, where there was a real freedom to explore ideas, in particular organizational culture and leadership in my case, and to read widely on the subject.