Past Featured Chairmen

The stereotypical picture of a your average senior manager is the macho, hard-playing go-getter. No-one would deny that Mike Fish plays hard - he has sailed the Atlantic three times and has held a private pilots licence since 1988 - or a go-getter - he has set up or worked with companies in the UK, France, Germany and the US, but he defies the stereotype. He has a surprisingly soft side. 'It is okay not to know the answers - both for a chairman and a CEO.

It is okay to ask for help, it is okay to need help. The role of a chairman is actually more about people management than being the tough business man. That is not to say that you don't need to be a tough manager as well at times, but the softer side is too often overlooked.'

Fish knows what he is talking about. For one thing he is something of a poacher turned gamekeeper - not many in his position (currently Chairman of Exie - a Scandinavian software company, but with a raft of senior positions on his CV) have experience not only of working with a VC company - there are many who have done that - but of working for one. He was the person sitting on the other side of the desk. 'It really is all about the management teams. That's what investors are looking for,' he says.

Fish started his career with a bang. A successful engineer on leaving university, he won a Queen's award for Technical Innovation, but, like so many of today's leaders, realised that the key to success in business lay not in the technology, but in understanding sales and marketing.

A job at Hewlett-Packard based in Grenoble in just that area also started was has become a life-long relationship with continental Europe, and allowed the young Fish to understand the importance of local knowledge, not just the language, but custom as well. 'If you want to do business in another country - especially if you are in sales - then it is vital to understand local ways of business, just speaking the language isn't enough.' As you might expect, Fish is fluent in French. A job at what was then Coopers and Lybrand was to give Fish another key business skill. 'The skills of a management consultant are vital - and not just the financial ones, but the ability to come into a company and understanding what is really going on, rather than what you are told is going on.'

But ultimately consulting proved too hands off and it wasn't long before Fish was back in the fray. Leaving Coopers and Lybrand in 1985, he became firstly Southern European marketing manager for a US computer-aided engineering software company, and then sales and marketing director for a UK venture-funded software start up. It was a huge success, with $3m in sales in their first year alone, and gave Fish a taste for the high-pressure, high-reward life. 'In start-ups you have to make decisions very fast - sometimes they work well, other times they don't - but never put off key decisions.'

With a taste for the start up, Fish helped found ECsoft, a Lyon-based, pan-European software and services start up with a $50m US venture investment, at the time the largest in Europe. This was a company that grew from nothing to 600 new staff in the space of a year. 'Simply managing the growth and the internal communications was a feat in itself'.

But soon Fish was back working for himself as a consultant, mainly helping US companies understand and do business in Europe. He was also in demand as an interim manager. 'My first interim role was a marketing manager for an electricity company. I knew nothing about electricity marketing but by lunch time on your first day you are expected to be making a difference. It was the biggest sales quota I ever had - over £100 million - and a sales staff of 80.'

By now, with extensive experience across Europe and with a deep understanding of what it took to build a successful start up, Fish joined Interregnum, a UK quoted technology venture capital firm. 'Investing,' says Fish, 'is less about the technology than many people think. It is all about the team. Are they able to manage the business, do they have the experience and vision?
'There are a series of points of inflection for a company, and you are looking all the time at how the team manages these. Can they stay the course? If not, then you may be looking at finding a new team to take the company to the next level.

'The kind of person who can take a company from start up to £5 million may not be the same kind of person who can take it from £5 million to £15 million.

These are very different skills. Part of the job of the VC is to identify the skills of the team and match those to the job at hand.'

After three years at Interregnum Fish was approached to be the chairman of a grid-software company, Scali. 'People either bring in a consultant to help them accelerate their business, or someone who can bring in the investment. There aren't many people who can contribute in both areas.'

Fish sees the role of the board to prepare the company for the longer term, to take a strategic view. 'Companies go through these inflection points, where change happens rapidly. The board needs the skills and foresight to be able to identify and prepare for these so that the company is poised to be able to exploit the opportunities, and not be threatened by them.'
That is where the 'hardcore' business skills come in.

But there another, and too often forgotten role, he says. 'Unlocking the talent in the board is a crucial part of the chairman's job,' he says. 'and asking the right questions is key. When you are 18 years old you have all the answers.
With experience you come to realise that it is more important to have the right questions to guide and challenge the thought process. It is actually quite a soft skill, and it is hard to learn. Another large part of your job as chairman is helping the CEO, mentoring him, being there for him or her. 'That being said, you don't want a situation where it all gets too cosy with the CEO; close enough to get the job done, not so close that the share-holders' interests get forgotten.' And lastly, 'the chairman is a key interface between the investors and the board', Mike says.

Mike is now launching a new venture with fellow Chairman's Network member and former HP colleague, Bob Apollo, to bring this learning to a new generation of high-potential companies. 'Many companies fail to deliver their true potential' believes Mike 'and the most common reason is their inability to deliver revenue growth as planned. Vision and execution are crucial - first making certain that they reflect what the customer actually needs, and then ensuring that the key processes can be scaled up faster - moving from the 'hand-to-hand sales combat' that characterizes most early sales initiatives to a scalable, repeatable business model.'
The concept is already arousing a lot of interest amongst the investor and entrepreneur community, as well as in larger businesses. According to Mike, 'The key lies in getting the whole organization aligned around a more accurate understanding of three customer characteristics: a) the problem they face, b) the shared pain that makes them an attractive target group, and c) their buying process'.

By asking the right questions as part of a structured methodology, and helping his clients to come up with the right answers, Mike expects to accelerate the growth of a new generation of companies.

Ben Rooney is a freelance business journalist. Ben can be contacted at ben@benrooney.com