Logged In With…Dougal Paver
Logged In With …. Dougal Paver
Organisation: Paver Smith Employees: 38
Career highlights: Two management buyouts, one near-death experience and the pleasure of working with some great people along the way. If the rest of my career is as much fun then I’ll be more than happy. The only regrettable thing has been the almost complete absence of Everton open top bus tours during that time.
Who or what has been the biggest influence on your career? My mother and my first boss, in equal measure. Both were great mentors and always encouraged me to strive, to learn and, in their own ways, strike out on my own.
I made the leap to my own business when I was 29 and 12 years later there’s still only a smattering of grey hair.
What are your key responsibilities? I set the culture and tone of the business, so leadership and strategy get a lot of focus. Ensuring the team is happy, motivated and have the skills to perform really matters to me.
I drove through Investors in People status, the launch of our PR Training Academy and achieving our industry benchmark, the Consultancy Management Standard. Each has made us progressively better. We’re now up to our necks in ISO 14001, the environmental management standard.
When I’m not doing that, I’m selling.
What do you enjoy most and least about your role? I thrive on the constant variety and love the way we can get close to clients through great hospitality like climbing mountains and taking them fly fishing.
I’m not great on numbers and not getting back for 7pm to put the kids to bed is never good.
What are the biggest barriers to your organisation’s success? Sufficient working capital to drive through a higher-level learning agenda and more acquisitions. Other than that, I’m pretty happy with where we are. We’re managing to get through the recession in good nick and that’s how I’d like it to stay.
How well do you feel this region is placed to weather the recession? Averagely, or so it seems. My home town of Liverpool is having a good recession, whilst I can see from our base in Manchester that our cousins down the East Lancs are taking a bit more of a hit. Recent stories about the government’s long term commitment to the Eurofighter – with 20,000 Lancashire jobs at risk – is not very encouraging.
What more could be done to help? Long-term incentives to encourage investment in R&D, science and education at all levels is vital. We need to switch budget from unproductive expenditure on welfare and get it working for the country.
Frankly, we’ve been peeing billions up against the wall for years incentivising people not to work. It’s madness. The fact that we spend more on social welfare than we collect in income tax tells its own story.
How has technology changed your life in the last five years? Do you get the sense that you live in an utterly liberating age? I do as far as technology is concerned. Everything’s there, wherever you are, at the touch of a button and my productivity has shot up as a consequence.
It just enables you to be more in touch and to drive things forward more quickly, whilst building and sustaining a dialogue with wider groups of people more easily.
How has it changed/impacted on your business in the same period? We’re furiously productive and, by keeping a keen eye on innovation, we’ve been able to adapt new technologies quickly to our business to gain us some transitory advantage (until everyone catches up). Still, an advantage, no matter how short, can still be used to win you more business.
If you weren’t doing what you’re doing now, what alternative career would you chose and why? I’d be a gamekeeper on some wild Bowland fell, keeping Charlie fox in check and conserving a beautiful landscape so that birds like curlew, plover and hen harriers thrive. Burning the heather so that it sustains our wild grouse would be a highlight of the year.
Which sectors do you think will thrive/ struggle in the coming years? The winners will be those that either drive added value through innovation and service enhancement or strip out cost ruthlessly on the ‘lowest cost wins’ model. The losers will be all those businesses happily plodding along who don’t really compete effectively but who get by on diminishing networks or product utility.
What do you feel are the key skills/qualities needed to run a successful business in the 21st Century? An absolute focus on your team and their skills, productivity and general happiness. Your competitors can replicate everything you deploy in your business, but not your staff.
You simply can’t train them enough and one of the key things you can give them is an understanding that those who win are those who decide they want to win.
Which public figure do you admire most and why? Frank Field, the MP for Birkenhead. He’s a rare politician in that he shows real leadership: he’ll tell people what he thinks they need to hear rather than what they want to hear. No surprises: he’s all the more popular for it.
Who would you like to play you in a film of your life? Danny DeVito
