He was part of the founding team that created one of Wales’ most successful ever businesses and now former Admiral boss Henry Engelhardt has turned author to give invaluable insights in his book Be a Better Boss.
His energetic and engaging writing style abounds – a nod perhaps to the fact that he started his career in journalism.
With a quirky sense of humour too, it charts his journey from his home city of Chicago, his time in Paris studying for an MBA at INSEAD – where he first met co-founder of Admiral David Stevens – through to setting up the car insurance firm in Cardiff, a subsequent flotation and a relentless upwards trajectory to becoming a FTSE 100 company with a global workforce of 10,000 and a market capitalisation currently at more than £6bn.
Having known former Admiral chief executive Henry for around two decades, I can hear his words jumping off the pages which reaffirm, while not quite a contrarian, he has always had a natural flair for challenging perceived wisdoms – a left field evidence-based perspective that has served him so well.
While the business boss/leadership book market is a somewhat crowded one, Henry has penned a point of difference, which readers can digest in its entirety or take out sections of interests with useful recaps and checklists.
Whether on recruitment (where Henry imparts a good tip to ask all staff who come into contact with a candidate on their way into the interviewing room to give their feedback), the importance of delegation, and how to handle informing an employee that they would be better suited elsewhere, the book is brimming with sound advice through lived experiences.
His business philosophy, where not surprisingly the emphasis is on the team and not the ‘I’, is one built around excellent two-way communication with staff, first class customer service, with decisions based on smart interpretation of data – and oh yes, having fun.
His emphasis on creating a people culture and reinforcing that it doesn’t cost anything to say good morning to colleagues en route to the office – which in the case of Admiral was open plan long before it became en vogue – is in part a counter to the management style of his own father.
While describing him as a genius salesman – he ran a beef wholesaling business in Chicago – he said this wasn’t matched by his management style.
An inability to delegate, meant he worked incredibly long hours with little time available for home life – leaving the house before anyone was up and not returning until 9pm.
Henry writes: “The reason his business could never grow was because he was a micro-manager whose philosophy seemed to be management by screaming.
“When he wasn’t on the phone buying or selling, it seemed all he did was yell at his staff. Everyone just waited for his orders. It was great learning. Not for them, for me.
“From my father I learned that if you want to create a big business you have to unleash the potential of others. If you try to do it all yourself, you can only create something as big as you (and that’s probably something pretty small). You are just one person and can be stretched so far.”
But for any boss he recognises there needs to be occasional tough empathy.
He writes: “Don’t mistake a softer, people-oriented culture for a ‘weak’ culture.... Trying to help people doesn’t mean, at any time, that you should accept shoddy work or lack of effort. That’s not helping anybody.”
He adds: “Yes, Admiral looks like a warm, cuddly place to work, but actually everything is measured and those that don’t perform, despite repeated attempts to help them, don’t stick around.”
When it launched in Cardiff selling car insurance over the phone in 1993, it wasn’t a pioneer – something I had always assumed – benefiting from first mover advantage.
It was actually the seventh UK player in the direct response car insurance market.
Henry writes: “Frankly, I prefer it when other companies pave the roads for us to drive down.”
Its success was down to running its insurance business more efficiently and costly effectively than its competitors.
His book recalls an experience of Christmas Eve shopping at a Boots store in Cardiff where after quickly grabbing five travel-size colognes he reached the checkout only to be informed that a sixth would be free under a buy-two-get-one-free offer.
Conscious of a large queue that had built up behind him, he didn’t fancy the prospect of rejoining at the back of it if he went to fetch another cologne. However, the woman simply left her checkout position, disappeared into the store, before returning with the free cologne.
It made a lasting impression on him.
He recalled:“Wow! That’s service. And here I am decades later still singing the praises of this lady and Boots.”
He challenges the reader: “How do you bottle this attitude and spray your entire workforce with it? How do you get every member of your team to think customer, customer, customer, regardless of what position they have in the organisation or what they do?”
It led to Admiral staff being sent out to stores in Cardiff to see what they could learn, which in many cases graphically highlighted how not to treat customers.
Unlike his father he made it an aim, although not always possible, of having breakfast and dinner at home.
As for lunch he describes it as being a “bedrock principle” for all staff.
He writes: “It’s not about the food, it’s about getting out and clearing your head. Lunch at your desk or a meeting is fine once in a while, but after four or five hours of work in the morning you need a break.”
Thankfully, I was invited to a ‘semi-working’ lunch where Henry and then head of communications Louisa Scadden shared with me plans to float the business.
Looking back two decades it was part of Admiral’s culture of excellent communication, in this case with someone they perhaps viewed as an external stakeholder.
The float came in 2004 and provided an exit for Barclays Capital, which has supported Admiral’s management buyout from Lloyd’s of London managing agency Brockbank Group – the latter whose relationship with Admiral had been a fraught one.
The deal was structured – and it could have all gone to management – so that the employees shared in the upside with the creation of a staff trust.
Henry, who stood down as CEO in 2016 but then spent time with the group’s US business Elephant, recalled: “When we floated the business in September, 2004, some 1,400 members of staff split up nearly £60m in the day.
“Our flotation did wonders for the quality of the vehicles in the car park.” Post flotation, Admiral has consistently issued shares to all employees for strong financial performance.”
He asks whether Admiral gets more bang for its buck by giving all employees an equity stake?
His response: “I think yes. I have seen people care a little more for the customer, work a bit harder to save money, and be generally engaged in what is going on because of share ownership.” It’s a positive outcome which I have seen in other employee-owned created businesses.
Be a Better Boss is published by Whitefox.
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