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 Little was written about the loss
of Sir John Harvey-Jones in Malta’s financial press when he passed
away on 9th January 2008 at Hereford County Hospital.Sir John
Harvey-Jones, ex-chairman of ICI became a TV business guru
associated with an eccentric look of long unkempt hair, colourful
ties and a bonhomie smile. Undoubtedly, he portrayed himself as a
outwardly confident and charismatic leader. Sir John has also been
the Chancellor of Bradford University, a Vice President of the Royal
Society of Arts, Vice Chairman of the Policy Studies Institute and
the Institute of Marketing, and a Trustee of the Science Museum. He
has sat on the Boards of a number of companies. He was voted
Industrialist of the Year in 1988 for the third consecutive year. He
also worked for several charities. Four years ago at age 79 he
joined leading business practitioners and academics at the launch of
a University of Liverpool initiative designed to develop ways of
increasing competition in the market place.
The project aimed to create connections between communities, leading
to innovative ways of sharing experience and expertise in order to
make a difference to the Knowledge Economy.
The so called ‘GNOSIS’ management research initiative did bring
together business leaders, policy makers and academics to share
knowledge and support innovation and competitiveness within UK
companies. With hindsight, I remember clearly reading a book about
his pioneering days at the helm of what was then UK ‘s largest
industry namely ICI. So my thanks go to Sir John for all he did to
make marketing as a profession interesting to me, then as a member
of the local branch of The Marketing Institute. He inspired me on
reading ‘The TroubleShooter’ books.In 1990, then elected as
treasurer of the Malta branch I persuaded the council to explore the
possibility of visiting and filming on Xandir Malta a handpicked
list of local companies in distress and try to help them achieve a
quick turnaround.
It was a pioneering feat years ahead of equally investigative slots
like Disset, Xarabank and Bondi Plus on PBS.
Again, then as of now, you would find no volunteer companies in the
private sector who would open up their boardrooms and air their
commercial woes to the public. Such programmes would not be
attracting the magnitude of sponsorship that supports Where’s
Everybody? slots on the State financed TV station much less on the
political/ private stations. In spite of insuperable drawbacks, as
representative of the Marketing Institute, I did manage in the end
to visit BBC studios in London and discuss with the Troubleshooter
producer how the complex film editing was performed.
 In this article , I intend to give a brief insight of my mentor who
inspired me so gallantly and led me to try (without success) to
emulate his highly educative TV series sponsored by BBC.
Interestingly enough I modelled my original idea after discussing the
project with Dr Josie Pace, then president of the Marketing
Institute. Jose backed me wholeheartedly and he was very supportive
of my initiative .
He did in fact join me on my explorative trip to BBC studios and to
the headquarters of Institute of Marketing in Oxford. Let me give
some more background on Sir John’s career.
In April 1982 he was appointed Chairman of ICI .and was universally
acknowledged as an icon of best management practice in action. John
Harvey-Jones, was a legend within ICI and held in very high esteem.
Elected as chairman of ICI from 1982 to 1987, he transformed the
company from a loss-making outfit making a 300 million pound loss
and transforming it into a billion pound a year profit. As a good
manager he cut non-profit making and what he saw as non-core
businesses, so that at board level he could concentrate on putting
more power in fewer hands. In his words “to reduce the number of
those who can say ‘no’ and increase the motivation of those who can
say ‘yes,’” maintaining that “there are no bad troops, only bad
leaders”. His reassuring words to subordinates was that it almost
doesn’t matter what you do as long as you are constantly trying
something new. Sir John had stripped away many of ICI ‘s peripheral
businesses and concentrated on its core strengths. The chemicals
firm, which made Dulux paint, was struggling when Sir John became
chairman. He brought a sense of adventure and dynamism to the
bureaucracy of ICI and made some bold decisions. Naturally he
inevitably met with stiff resistance to change from certain quarters
who enjoyed the status quo.
 His very first step, predictably, was cost-cutting at the very top,
reducing the main board from 14 to eight. Over six years, ICI’ s
workforce was trimmed down by a third. Linked to his downsizing was
a crystal clear strategy which boiled down to giving ICI’ s
customers what they wanted, rather than what the group already made.If only this motto is universally followed economies need
suffer no sudden recession or serious drop of productivity. Many
remember him for his unashamedly buccaneering attitude to life and
his work. Yet, ironically, what remains of ICI, was sold to a Dutch
rival only a few weeks before his death. At the start of this year,
Holland’s Akzo Nobel announced the completion of its £8bn (€11.2 bn)
takeover of ICI. Paradoxically John started from humble origins and
swiftly made his mark especially during the austere Margaret
Thatcher’s days. In his autobiography, ‘Getting It Together’, he
described his inner motivation and an ongoing emotional struggle as
a person born in April 1924 with a childhood of extremes.
One reads how at the time his
father, an army officer was acting as guardian to an adolescent
Maharajah in India. John spent most of his early childhood in Dhar,
India. He returned to England at the age of 6 to attend a prep
school at Deal, Kent. Later at age 13 he entered Dartmouth Royal
Naval College. At Dartmouth John began a career that he would
cherish the rest of his working life. He learned German and at the
end of 1940 went straight into active service as a sixteen year old
mid-shipman.
Rewarding his service in Naval Intelligence the country honoured him
with a military MBE .
Harvey-Jones then spent several years in MI6, the British secret
service branch, this being the most mysterious period in his career.
It is an open secret that even as chairman of ICI he never dared to
visit the Soviet Union.
His popularity mushroomed with
the production of a commercial TV series aptly called
“Troubleshooter” the perfect conduit for communicating his ideas
about business to a television audience of millions. It also won him
a Bafta award. This was a popular BBC TV series in which he advised
struggling businesses. The series would film him visiting in his
flamboyant style ailing companies, observing their practices,
looking at their books and interrogating directors .The interesting
final part of the programme reveals in real-life scenario the
turnaround based on his recommendations. During his visits to such
companies Sir John would outline proposals, often drastic in nature,
that management needed to implement in order to turn their
businesses around. Troubleshooter series, first broadcast in 1990,
made him, according to one newspaper, the most famous industrialist
of the post-war period. Sir John became the acceptable face of
capitalism through his pragmatic TV programme.
 Back to Malta, I don’t regret one
moment my efforts to generate interest amongst local marketeers to
reach out to ailing companies and try produce a documentary series
that would be of a high educative standard. Naturally we can host a
local business leader of Sir John’s stature. I augur that either FOI
, MCAST or GRTU will join forces and revisit the idea of sponsoring
a “Troubleshooter “ style series to commemorate Sir John ‘s legacy
and improve competitiveness in industry.
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