Balancing wealth and the public good: An interview with the COO of Abu Dhabi’s development company

Waleed Al Mokarrab Al Muhairi discusses Mubadala’s double bottom line, bridging investment and development.

Mubadala Development Company

 is a study in contrasts. An investment company with assets of $24 billion, its businesses deliver both strong commercial and social returns—reflecting the government of Abu Dhabi’s policy agenda. Its subsidiaries span multiple industries, including aerospace, energy, health care, hospitality, infrastructure, real estate, and technology—and while its sole shareholder is the government of Abu Dhabi, it has announced plans to take several of its local subsidiaries public in the next decade. This makes it a virtual incubator of companies that the government expects to play a critical part in the economy that Abu Dhabi is building.

Among the most distinctive contrasts at Mubadala is its charter’s mandate that it should not only be profitable but also lay the foundations for a diversified economy in the Emirate. Its mission is closely aligned with Abu Dhabi Economic Vision 2030, an official document mapping out the Emirate’s primary development areas from a government perspective. In an era when companies around the world seek to integrate social values and the public interest into their business models, Mubadala stands as a vivid example. Its mission and structure are built around what it calls a “double bottom line”: pursuing opportunities that could deliver both strong social returns and commercial profit. In a July 2010 interview, Mubadala’s chief operating officer, Waleed Al Mokarrab Al Muhairi, spoke with McKinsey’s Zafer Achi about Mubadala’s role in Abu Dhabi’s economic development and the trade-offs the company makes to fulfill seemingly competing mandates.

The Quarterly:

 How do Mubadala and Abu Dhabi’s development fit together?

Waleed Ahmed Al Mokarrab Al Muhairi:

 The Abu Dhabi Economic Vision 2030 is a directional blueprint that maps out the primary areas of development for the Emirate. Its purpose is to enable the Emirate to, among other things, shift the balance of its economy from one primarily reliant on hydrocarbons as a source of GDP to one in which nonhydrocarbon industries will play a much larger role. If you look at the different priority areas where Mubadala deploys its capital, you’ll see that there’s a very good fit between what’s articulated in the 2030 vision and what we do. We invest in highly innovative industries that play to Abu Dhabi’s strengths and competitive advantages, such as those that are capital intensive or rely on world-class logistics. Such industries help meet our aspiration to increase innovation and the role of intellectual property in the Abu Dhabi economy.

The Quarterly:

 How do you meld the pursuit of economic wealth and of strategic social goals in the public interest?

Al Muhairi:

 We look at a number of filters as we debate the Abu Dhabi Economic Vision 2030 and figure out what makes sense for Mubadala. Those filters range from goodness of fit—meaning playing to our strengths—to things like how significant a sector could be over time and the types of jobs an investment might create. We take a very deliberate approach to picking sectors, picking clusters, and understanding what’s needed to get from a large investment to a thriving, productive contributor to and, ultimately, driver of the GDP and the economy.

Take our investment in Emirates Aluminum. This joint venture between Mubadala and Dubai Aluminum is constructing the largest single free-standing smelter in the world. Phase one is already operational, and we think we’ll be able to reach 1.5 million tons per annum over the next few years, with an aspiration to be a top-three or -four producer worldwide. This investment was a good fit: aluminum is an energy-intensive business and relies on a multifaceted transport infrastructure, both of which we have. It also creates the type of employment we think will be quite beneficial for Abu Dhabi. So in many ways, it meets our priorities. Now, there are many opportunities for deals we might make to support Emirates Aluminum once Mubadala has firmly established itself in that space. For example, we want to diversify and secure our upstream supplies. We don’t necessarily have a target in mind, but we will look for potential transactions.

The Quarterly:

 Does any part of Mubadala invest for purely financial returns—without a strategic objective?

Al Muhairi:

 Yes, although all our deployments of capital, even from a financial perspective, have had a strategic twist. For example, our investment in General Electric has certainly turned into not only one of our largest, and most important, deployments of capital on the financial-investing side but also into a very strong and very strategic relationship—as a result of the framework agreement that we’ve put in place. So what started out as, “Hey, we think it would be a great idea for you to invest in GE,” ended up with the creation of a significant joint venture, Mubadala GE Capital, along the lines of a GE Capital, here in Abu Dhabi.

We have many examples of investments that start out as financial investments but take on a strategic angle. But nothing prevents us from looking at pure financial plays—and we will do so increasingly over time.

The Quarterly:

 How do you trade off financial returns against strategic contributions to society?

Al Muhairi:

 We tend not to compromise on this. Part of the thinking is that if you start making those trade-offs, you’ll end up on a slippery slope that can take you places you wouldn’t ideally want to be. So we always use financial returns as the first filter when making an investment. If it passes the financial test, we look at the strategic metrics and see if, together, the financial and strategic metrics create a cluster or businesses that make sense from an Abu Dhabi perspective.

If our shareholder asks us to do something that makes sense only from a social perspective, we’ll try to turn it around and engineer it in a manner that respects the mandate of Mubadala to produce economic returns. If that doesn’t work, we’ll go back to our shareholder and say, “We don’t believe this is the right project from Mubadala’s perspective.” And the government of Abu Dhabi and our board of directors are quite adamant about staying true to both sides of our mandate.

The Quarterly:

 What about the trade-offs between the responsibility to produce annual returns and long-term goals that are 20 years out?

Al Muhairi:

 Because of our bondholders, we are committed to being very transparent about our financials, which we release twice a year. We have our pro forma midyears and then we have final statements we release at the end of every year. We’re committed to doing that and think that’s done wonders, from a transparency perspective, for Mubadala. But we are an investment vehicle that is quite mid- to long-term focused. Our board has given us very, very clear guidance: “The shareholder wants you to think seriously about developing these clusters. We know you can’t do that on a six-monthly timetable.” So it’s important to keep yourself honest. It’s important to be transparent, hence the six-monthly reporting. But don’t lose track of your vision.

We’ve taken that advice to heart, and that’s really the way we manage as an organization. Not having the intense quarter-on-quarter expectations takes away some of the pressure but none of the discipline.

The Quarterly:

 Mubadala has a renewable-energy initiative, Masdar. How does that fit into your mission?

Al Muhairi:

 Masdar signals a commitment from both the leadership of Abu Dhabi and Mubadala to deploy significant amounts of capital into an area we think will have superior financial returns—and which we’ve also identified as a target area for innovation and growth from an economic-diversification and -development perspective. In many ways, Masdar is similar to our health care initiatives, our aerospace initiatives, our technology initiatives. You can think of it as our renewable-energy initiative. Now, it tends to be a little bit more encompassing than some of the others, in the sense that it has embedded educational partnerships, including venture labs and accelerators. So it’s a very holistic view of how we want to approach what we hope will be an important sector in Abu Dhabi’s economic future.

The Quarterly:

 How do you deal with the limited availability of talent and labor in Abu Dhabi?

Al Muhairi:

 It’s one of the things that we’ve had to tackle quite quickly. Everything we do, in health care, aerospace, semiconductors, even Masdar—all that revolves around how we find solutions for human-capital issues. It’s something I spend a lot of time thinking about.

As a result, we’ve worked quite closely on curriculum issues with the Abu Dhabi Educational Council, for everything from primary schools to tertiary education. And we’ve tried to find models that work for the different types of positions we need to fill in different industries. For example, in the semiconductor industry we need people with a polytechnic type of background, all the way to PhDs who can help us on manufacturing and process design. So we work with the authorities to create the linkages between industry and academia, and as a third and important pillar we’re thinking about how we can use R&D to help bridge that talent gap as well.

The Quarterly:

 This is certainly important for the economic diversification of the Emirate, but doesn’t it add to the portfolio companies’ cost of doing business?

Al Muhairi:

 I wonder if that’s true. The way we think about it is educating our own people and getting them in productive industries. Any way you look at this, it’s positive for the economy and therefore has benefits, whether through social dialogue or the impact educated parents will have on educating children.

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Those are things we don’t quantify—we just take those positive externalities for granted because they are things we like. Education and training are a necessary part of doing business, and the issues aren’t unique or endemic to our part of the world. Think about aerospace, an industry that traditionally invests a huge amount in R&D and training. As you would expect, the innovation element of that is really quite high. So we’ve looked at what other countries have done—looked at Singapore and South Korea, both of which are quite strong in aerospace. We learned about how government and industry work together to “upskill” the workforce, to take advantage of these positive externalities and ultimately have a productive workforce that’s able to deliver on quite ambitious targets.

The Quarterly:

 Is the double-bottom-line mind-set something that you look for in new people?

Al Muhairi:

 We take our values and ideals quite seriously, so we always look for people who have both the discipline to make the type of returns we want but also the passion to create the types of strategic returns we’ve talked about. That’s a theme that connects the great majority of our people and a key element of distinction for Mubadala, so it’s incredibly important as we think about the people we bring in. It’s also something that we reinforce—as people progress, as people develop, as people look for new opportunities—and that we use to seed some of our businesses. So as we give people opportunities for line-managerial roles in our subsidiaries, we expect them to export not only their brains but their hearts as well, in the way they think about taking the Mubadala culture into some of the businesses we set up.

The Quarterly:

 What’s your reaction to the emerging debate around state capitalism versus traditional capitalism?

Al Muhairi:

 The distinction may be slightly academic, at least in our context, since the economy in Abu Dhabi and the greater United Arab Emirates has evolved with a preponderance of government-related entities. That’s always been the case.

What’s interesting is that today you’re seeing spin-offs which are becoming more and more private sector–like, which illustrates the importance of state-sponsored capitalism. Although the government is the main engine for economic development, what you’re seeing is the spinning out of wholly private entities that are injecting the kind of dynamism we need in our economy—which helps us move away from state sponsorship as the main source of innovation. For example, Mubadala is 100 percent owned by the government of Abu Dhabi. But if you go a level down, to our portfolio companies, six or seven have already gone public through an IPO. That’s how we move away from 100 percent government ownership to create opportunities for nongovernmental actors. Obviously, each of those companies has tendrils and networks that reach even further into the economy and away from state-sponsored capitalism. So while state-related entities will be important in our part of the world for the foreseeable future, there is a clear direction toward increased private-sector innovation.

The Quarterly: Let’s talk about Mubadala’s health care partnerships with Imperial College, Cleveland Clinic, and so forth. How did those happen?

Al Muhairi: If you spend time in Abu Dhabi or the UAE, you know that there’s a clear need for world-class health care. Lots of patients travel abroad to get health care. And as we thought about creating businesses, we always felt that we would distinguish ourselves by offering best-in-class service—in addition to doing things that hadn’t really been done before. Take, for example, the Imperial College London Diabetes Center in Abu Dhabi. Here, we did a couple of things that were quite new.

First, we imported a very common business concept, the “one-stop shop,” into health care before other folks did, at least in our part of the world. Managing diabetes doesn’t mean managing a single disease but, rather, managing multiple conditions. We asked ourselves, “Doesn’t it make sense to have cardiologists next to nephrologists and ophthalmologists and podiatrists so that they can work with the endocrinologists on the front line of diabetes treatment to address the disease holistically—instead of what used to require eight different trips to a hospital?”

The second thing we did—and, again, this is very simple, but nobody had really done it before—was to design the diabetes center from the inside out. We wanted to make sure that folks could navigate the building in a manner that reflected the way their condition was treated. We designed the center in a circular pathway so that patients could start with endocrinologists, followed by cardiologists and other specialists, and then be done in an hour and a half. This was really quite game changing, quite revolutionary, from our perspective.

And the success of the diabetes center has prompted us to look at creating more relatively small, self-sufficient centers of excellence around Abu Dhabi, both from a patient-services and a support-services perspective. Our goal is to create an integrated health care network, anchored by the Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi—a tertiary health care facility fed by a network of specialist centers that reinforce one another, all of which ultimately puts the patient at the center of the experience. It’s a very simple but powerful idea, developed jointly with our partners, that has worked spectacularly well. It’s not a particularly large investment for us; it’s actually one of our smallest. But it’s a home run in terms of returns on invested capital—and from a social-impact and a personal-satisfaction perspective it’s had an outsized impact across the community and the region.

The Quarterly: How would you describe the general progress toward the 2030 plan?

Al Muhairi: It’s too early to declare success, but there’s no question we’re heading in the right direction. Mubadala, as a reflection of that vision, is still quite young. Yet we’ve grown from a handful of people in 2002 to the 600-plus we have today, not counting the subsidiaries, and that’s really astronomical growth. Managing that growth, managing the cultural elements that propel you from A to B, managing the people issues and the institutional framework for reporting and cash management—these are all things we’ve had to look at, and we’ve had to learn very quickly as an institution. It’s been challenging but gratifying.

About the Author

Zafer Achi is a partner in McKinsey’s Dubai office.

Voicing values in the workplace

Professor Mary Gentile explores ethical dilemmas at work and how to act on them.

Recent years have seen

 an unprecedented breakdown in public trust of business, spurred in no small part by instances of unethical behavior at some of the world’s most powerful institutions. Mary Gentile, director of business curriculum at Babson College, says the real challenge for business students, employees, and executives isn’t knowing what’s right, but knowing how to act on those convictions within an organization. In this video interview, Gentile shares insights and experiences on how to do that, which she’s gathered through her work developing theGiving Voice to Values curriculum and her eponymous book.¹ McKinsey Publishing’s Lily Cunningham conducted the interview with Mary Gentile in New York in June 2010.

 download a PDF

Source:

McKinsey

Retaining key employees in times of change

Source: Total Executive

Many companies throw financial incentives at senior executives and star performers during times of change. There is a better and less costly solution...

Too many companies

 approach the retention of key employees during disruptive periods of organizational change by throwing financial incentives at senior executives, star performers, or other “rainmakers.” The money is rarely well spent. In our experience, many of the recipients would have stayed put anyway; others have concerns that money alone can’t address. Moreover, by focusing exclusively on high fliers, companies often overlook those “normal” performers who are nonetheless critical for the success of any change effort.

Our work with companies in many sectors (among them, energy, financial services, health care, pharmaceuticals, and retailing) suggests there is a better and less costly approach to employee retention—and one that will serve companies well as they merge, restructure, and reorganize to seize strategic opportunities as the economy picks up. It starts with identifying all key players, but targeting only those who are most critical and most at risk of leaving. These people are then offered a mix of financial and nonfinancial incentives tailored to their aspirations and concerns. A European industrial company applied this approach during a recent reorganization and found that it required only 25 percent of the budget that had previously been spent on a broad, cash-based scheme. What follows are three suggestions for companies with similar hopes of keeping their top talent without breaking the bank.

1. Find the “hidden gems”

HR and line managers need to work together during times of major organizational change to identify people whose retention is critical. Yet too often companies simply round up the usual suspects—high-potential employees and senior executives in roles that are critical for business success. Few look in less obvious places for more average performers whose skills or social networks may be critical—both in keeping the lights on during the change effort itself as well as in delivering against its longer-term business objectives.

These “hidden gems” might be found anywhere in the company: for example, the product-development manager in an acquired company’s R&D function who is nearing retirement age and no longer on the company’s list of “high potentials”—yet who is crucial to ensuring a healthy product pipeline; or the key financial accountant responsible for consolidating the acquired company’s next financial report. Even if the employees’ performance and career potential are unexceptional, their institutional knowledge, direct relationships, or technical expertise can make their retention critical. In one merger we recently observed, certain sales support personnel who filled orders and took inventory turned out to be just as important as the star salespeople.

Once HR and line managers have generated a thoughtful and more inclusive list of key players (usually 30 to 45 percent of all employees), they can begin to prioritize groups and individuals for targeted retention measures—in our experience, 5 to 10 percent of the workforce. The key is to view each employee through two lenses: first, the impact his or her departure would have on the business, given the focus of the change effort and his or her role in it; and second, the probability that the employee in question might leave.

When a European industrial company conducted this exercise, it mapped the outputs on a risk matrix. The results were sobering. The company had been launching a new centralized trading unit—requiring almost all traders and their support staff to relocate, with half of them heading to another country—and was steadily losing people. The risk matrix revealed that another 104 people were likely to leave. Among them were 44 employees who were critical for the success of the trading unit. To be sure, some were traders but most were IT, finance, and administrative staff with unique knowledge of the unit’s systems.

2. Mind-sets matter

One-size-fits-all retention packages are usually unsuccessful in persuading a diverse group of key employees to stay. Instead, companies should tailor retention approaches to the mind-sets and motivations of specific employees (as well as to the express nature of the changes involved).

When executives at the European industrial company looked beyond their standard retention package (bonuses plus compensation for the costs of the move) and focused instead on the needs of individual employees, they found a more nuanced situation than they had anticipated. Among the key people at risk were two main groups with two different mind-sets.¹ One consisted of individuals who were worried about relocating because it would uproot their families. The people in the other, more career-driven group didn’t mind living and working abroad but wondered, as they faced change in any event, whether staying or searching for another employer would best further their careers.

In one-on-one conversations with the people in the family-oriented group, managers explored specific concerns and discussed how the company could add to the measures already in place to increase the likelihood of retaining these individuals. On the menu of incentives: an increase in base pay, assistance in finding schools and kindergartens for their children, career counseling for their spouses, language training, and alternative work arrangements so employees could work at home or commute instead of relocating.

Meanwhile, in the conversations with the career-driven people, managers offered them a cash bonus but focused primarily on the organizational chart of the new, centralized unit, which had been designed from scratch. For people who had held senior roles in their local organization, it was essential, for example, to learn about their new responsibilities and how many direct reports they would have; for many of the more junior people a key question was who their bosses would be. Also high on the agenda was a dialogue with each individual about his or her future career and leadership opportunities in the context of the unit’s new strategy.

This targeted approach, which cost just one-quarter as much as the broad financial incentives plan the company had previously applied, succeeded in stabilizing the new unit. One year after its launch, some 80 percent of the staff who received special attention had started to work in the new location—a significantly higher share than for the group that didn’t receive this attention. Since its founding, the unit has increased its sales by more than 30 percent and its earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) by more than 90 percent.

3. Retention is about more than money

As the European industrial company’s experience suggests, financial incentives play an important role in retention—but money alone won’t do the trick. Praise from one’s manager, attention from leaders, frequent promotions, opportunities to lead projects, and chances to join fast-track management programs are often more effective than cash. Indeed, a 2009 McKinsey Quarterlysurvey found that executives, managers, and employees rate these five nonfinancial incentives among the six most effective motivators when the main objective of the exercise is retaining people.²

One financial services firm undertaking a recent cost-cutting initiative elected to use onlynonfinancial measures—including leadership-development programs—to retain the pivotal players it had identified as being at risk of departure. One year later, none of those players had quit.

Leadership opportunities are a powerful incentive in any sector. In a pharmaceuticals merger aimed at building the North American acquirer’s presence in Europe, some 50 middle managers from the acquired company accepted invitations to join trans-Atlantic teams with key roles in integrating the two organizations and developing business strategy. The chance to network with the acquirer’s senior people and develop leadership skills during the two-year program signaled to these high-potential employees—in many cases, people who had been slated for promotion before the merger was announced—that they had a promising future in the new organization. For the acquirer’s senior executives, one benefit was the opportunity to assess first hand a potential next wave of top management talent. The program was one part of a carefully designed communication and engagement plan that made it possible to sustain the energy of the 50,000-person strong workforce during the merger. The company ultimately needed to offer only 750 targeted employees a financial incentive.

When financial incentives are required, it is important to design them appropriately and use them in a targeted way. For example, one-third of the retention bonus during a merger might be paid to pivotal staff even before the deal is closed, with the remaining two-thirds to be paid out a year later—dependent in part on the recipients meeting defined performance criteria such as the successful transfer of systems from the acquired company.

Targeting retention measures at the right people using a tailored mix of financial and nonfinancial incentives is crucial for managing organizational transitions that achieve long-term business success; it’s also likely to save money.

Still, executives mustn’t view employee retention as a one-off exercise where it’s sufficient to get the incentives packages right. Rather, best-practice approaches build on continuous attention and timely communication every step of the way to help employees make sense of the uncertainty inherent in organizational change. Ultimately, what many employees want most of all is clarity about their future with the company. Creating that clarity requires significant hands-on effort from managers, including the ongoing work of tracking progress so that companies can quickly intervene when problems arise.

About the Authors

Sabine Cosack is a consultant in McKinsey’s Vienna office; Matt Guthridge is an associate principal in the London office, where Emily Lawsonis a principal.

Notes

¹ The number of groups will vary according to a company’s specific situation. We have observed circumstances where employers have identified up to six distinct employee segments.

² See Martin Dewhurst, Matthew Guthridge, and Elizabeth Mohr, “Motivating people: Getting beyond money,” mckinseyquarterly.com, November 2009.

 

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McKinsey

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How does Responsible Leadership relate to Retail?

Yesterday I caught up with an old friend who has recently retired after leading a key organisation in Australia and overseas.

We discussed thoughts on Responsible Leadership, particularly in relation to their global manufacturing and retail business as their business expands internationally.

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They began by suggesting that Responsible Leadership is an unusual description to apply to many businesses. "It has some conservatism attached to the thought.”

Responsible leadership is broadly viewed as part of governance in their manufacturing and retail areas of business.

Looking forward, leaders should always focus on adding value. This is their core responsibility.

Businesses who manufacture and sell products are not a utility or insurance company with governance that relates to those industries and their regulators.

Our business make and sell products people need, so as leading providers in that field, we have integrated responsible leadership into the structure of our business. We went on to look at the key areas where this has been done.

Responsible Leadership Adds Value to Stakeholders and Customers:

Firstly, “The term 'Responsible Leadership' is about adding value for all stakeholders.”

Shareholders want a good return on their investment. Staff want to be rewarded for their efforts. Retailers and suppliers also expect a good long term relationship that they can build with their supplier.

What ties shareholders, staff, retailers and suppliers together is the customer.

So, successful businesses focus on adding value for all stakeholders by ensuring the end customer is valued and are looked after.

After sales service is where many businesses fail to provide without realising this is where they can achieve their competitive advantage.

Customers automatically expect a product of good quality and value. Every customer expects the same. So how do they choose?

After care service is the point of difference that can be promoted via their retail network. When you buy a product in a shop - you know you are supported by their after care service.

Products from so many businesses are good quality, innovative and good value, including those provided by the global giants.

After sales service is what works to differentiate product from competitors by adding value to the customers purchase. This in turn adds value to all stakeholders as every customer learns from the retailer that your brand ensures products will work properly, and if there ever is a problem, they will have after sales service fix it for you.

Responsible Leaders Empower Staff: 

The second component of responsible leadership is built into supporting how staff are managed and focuses on empowerment.

Run the business through offering staff decision making power. This gives them empowerment to grow - an important attribute of a responsible leader. It also helps with succession planning as future leaders emerge through the actions they make and the outcomes they achieve.

The attributes of a future leader are:

• Having a care factor about what they are doing
• Passion
• Entrepreneurialism

If these are encouraged through developing a business culture that empowers staff to do well in these areas, then this philosophy becomes part of the DNA of the business - a touch point that transcends to the consumer via recommendation of the retailer.

Responsible Leaders Connect with The Community:

The third area of responsible leadership in business is connecting with the community.

Everyone would always like to do more with initiatives that focus on engaging with the broader community in ways that add value to society.

For example, having a sustainable approach to business.

Also try to be generous with the needy and charities. There are however so many causes to support.

Each market worldwide should be dealt with appropriately and differently when connecting with the local community to take into account different cultures and local idiosyncrasies. 

Responsible Leaders are Empathetic and Fair: 

Finally, we looked more broadly at the attributes of a responsible leader.

The core of a responsible leader is empathy and fairness. Good leaders can be sharp business people. Entrepreneurial is good as they take on quality risk. When this is balanced with fairness and empathy it is inspiring for staff.

As a leader you can be tough whilst keeping everyone accountable for their actions and the outcomes they achieve. By also being fair and empathetic you help to keep staff inspired.

Responsible Leaders can Communicate with Everyone: 

Common amongst all great leaders, including those who live an ethic of responsible leadership…

“As a responsible leader you need to be able to talk to the woman or man on the street. You shouldn't be above your station as people will always appreciate your open acknowledgement when you meet and greet them equally.”

This important concept of open communication has been a common theme shared by the leaders we have interviewed on the subject of Responsible Leadership to date. It helps leaders convey their values and beliefs to everyone in a simple method that everyone can understand and follow

Responsible Leadership is about Creating a Legacy - Paul Thorley - CEO, Capgemini Australia and New Zealand ((Tags:Change,Corporate Social Responsibility,Future,Leadership,Performance Management,Responsibility,Responsible Leadership,Responsible Leade

Yesterday I met up with Paul Thorley, Chief Executive Officer of Capgemini Australia and New Zealand, the local subsidiary of Capgemini Group, one of the world's largest technology, consulting and outsourcing services companies.

We discussed Paul's thoughts on responsible leadership and Paul explained that he believes responsible leadership has a lot to do with sustainability in its broader definition, that is not just about being green.

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Responsible leadership is also about creating a legacy. Responsible leadership leaves behind something stronger and better, with staff, shareholders and customers.

As leaders we wrestle with this sequencing of different sectors to create a sustainable environment.

"From my perspective, I like to create an environment around me where people can be successful," Paul explained. "My main role is multifaceted as I help create an environment that is empowering people to achieve success across the organisation."

Working with the operational leaders across our 1,000 staff we support and mentor them so they can in turn support and mentor their teams. As staff are all empowered in this environment - they are also encouraged to take informed risks and approach projects with fire in their belly.

Taking informed risks / chances / bets with people is an important aspect of a responsible leader who is to help them develop. Judge them on values and thereby a value foundation is created.

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All staff are assessed across the 7 values that have been with Capgemini Group from their founder since inception.

·         honesty

·         boldness

·         trust

·         freedom

·         team spirit

·         modesty

·         fun

Encouraging informed risk taking, boldness if you will, then provides them confidence in the market to shake up the competition and be more competitive.

One example of taking risks with people is to promote them a little earlier than they are necessarily ready for. As they are receiving new responsibilities they in turn need to step up and develop into the new role. This is an important aspect of being responsible in your leadership.

Even through the Group’s 40+ acquisitions these values in supporting people and encouraging responsibility, development and risk taking continue and remain highly important.

Paul then explained what he sees as the attributes of a responsible leader.

As an individual we develop our core values from our family and other sources. From my father I learnt the importance of fairness.  When you walk into an organisation their corporate values become literal to you, though you also bring your own values to the role. These values then provide the framework through difficult issues.

Those who build a sustainable business through an ethical code use ethics at the core of everything they do.

In another dimension, those who genuinely are caring about the people around them, and don't see them as widgets or assets, know this people dimension is incredibly important to successful leadership.

Through a focus on values and helping people be successful you are working with the core attributes of a responsible leader.