Fearless

i’d like to start today by saying a huge

thank you

for inviting me to participate in this

very special tedx event

alongside such amazing speakers such as

sarah adder

and wendy it’s a true honour

and delighted to be part of such a great

team of inspiring

and fearless women and you know it’s a

shame it’s not live

but i will certainly be following the

whole conversation afterwards even

though

this is recorded from here in stockholm

sweden

so my talk today is all about how

failure can make you fearless

and uh you know it’s not obvious

that failure helps one be fearless but

bear with me

because i as i reflected on my own life

story

i’ve realized a lot of it’s actually

through the failures that i’ve probably

learned the most

and learnt to be the fearless version of

myself that i now am

so first of all i should probably start

with helping you understand who i

am and and my background as you can hear

probably i’m from glasgow uh i was

um you know a clever kid that went to

what would nowadays be called an inner

city school

i was bullied for being clever and i was

bullied

because i didn’t live in social housing

my parents who were both factory workers

had you know stretched themselves to

their financial limits to buy a house

but that was unacceptable at the school

that i was at so

i was bullied my parents um

were very hard working but factory

workers as i said

they had a tough life uh my grandparents

lives were even tougher and both

both grandfathers were alcoholics and in

that context

um you know i i escaped a lot through

reading books

i escaped a lot through working really

hard at school but

by keeping my head down and the books

and uh and the the you know the the

aspiration

i i had from from some role models in

other parts of my family

made me want to move beyond that tough

experience and so i had aspirations to

go to university

to get a profession to get a

qualification but but sadly

my father was diagnosed with terminal

cancer in the summer before i was due to

go to university

we decided not to tell him that he was

going to die

so it wasn’t the right time for me to go

to university whilst we were trying to

pretend

that everything was okay so um

so all of those experiences whilst tough

uh

really made me who i am today

um you know first of all the bullying

helped me become tough but they all

also taught me to have empathy

the fact that we had limited financial

resources

taught me to have my own financial

independence

as quickly as i possibly could i

actually started working at 12 and had

two jobs by the age of 14.

the fact that i didn’t go to university

um taught me that i had to learn a

number of

other skills beyond just straight

academic skills

to be able uh to move on

and achieve in life and be able to to

move up the ladder and achieve so much

more than my parents ever could

and finally losing a parent at a young

age makes you realize that life can be

very short

and if life is too short you should

never stick anything too long

if it makes you unhappy as a result of

that

my motto in life is have a dream and

bravely make it happen

and uh and certainly uh there have been

uh many experiences in my life that

probably

this this starting point in my life has

made me

have the confidence or be brave enough

to take them on and so just let me take

you through

some of those most monumental uh

experiences

in my life as i said at the age of 12 i

was selling fresh cream around the doors

of glasgow

kept very many old men that lived in

their own happy on a saturday morning as

i was

delivering fresh curtains of cream to

them that was the equivalent of

a caddo uh or online amazon in these

days actually i was ahead of my time

clearly at 14 i was an avon lady

and after knocking on doors i finally

realized that actually

all my family members could sell so much

more for me

if if i outsourced it to them because

they worked in factories

i guess that was amazon again reselling

um at the age of 17 after

not going to university i joined the

scottish whiskey industry

and became their west of scotland

trainee accountant

of the year and spent five years with

them one day a week going to college but

learning to be in finance

in 1990 i then joined procter gamble and

that was the star of 20 years

um a great 20 years where there were

many

experiences but some of my bravest

movements um

was probably going to romania in the mid

90s

uh it was just after the fall of

ceausescu

we were trying to open up markets like

bulgaria and serbia

i had to fire the bulgarian distributor

for paying off the mafia

i had to find serbian distributors to

sell detergents and that was between the

bosnian and kosovan wars so the people

who were

meeting kind of dressed like warlords

after that probably one of the the more

braver moves was after 16 years very

successful in approaching gamble finance

i made a move into general management to

run protruding gamble’s newly acquired

well a hairdressing business

and so i got to know all of the

hairdressers and there’s lots of

celebrity hairdressers

across the uk and ireland so having been

an accountant

i was then in the hairdressing industry

which was

totally different but a great grounding

for becoming the ceo that i am today

after 20 years i then moved into to the

tmt sector so i was brave enough to

leave procter gamble after 20 years

and you know first virgin media ending

up here now in scandinavia

um during that time though um i started

to realize that you can

always pick your own bosses uh and i had

a couple of failures uh during that time

as well

one of them was because i just couldn’t

cope with an undermining boss

another one was when i didn’t get the

job that i really wanted which was to

become the cfo of manchester united

football team

and then another time was when you know

i had to walk away from my when i

realized i didn’t have the backing of my

major shareholder

but these were all life-forming

experiences for me

and as i look back if i hadn’t walked

away from the undermining boss

if i hadn’t failed to get the manchester

uh united role then i probably wouldn’t

be here in sweden today

having spent now almost seven years in a

variety

of some of the biggest telecoms

companies in the world

and in fact you know you know a lot of

people said

why are you going to sweden when you can

get a great role in the uk

but having thought about weekly

commuting between

windsor and manchester uh you know

stockholm became an even

easier uh and and more delightful weekly

commute

uh especially during covert times

because stockholm has actually been a

great place to be

so what are the insights and lessons we

can take away from my fearlessness but

also my failures

i think you know looking at

the concept of levelling up the need for

social mobility

the need to reduce the divides and the

inequality that now exists in society

we absolutely need to be role models to

the kids at the pure ends of society

we absolutely need to invest in

education

and teachers that not just give them

academic but actually teach them life

skills

give them hope give them aspiration and

we absolutely need to get the service

and hospitality sector back

up and running again because a lot of

those kids that’s the only place

that will learn financial independence

but they’ll also learn life skills

beyond school

and then finally from from a career

point of view

um what are the what are the insights

and lessons well i think first

you know pick your boss pick the

companies you choose if you can

so that you’re in an environment where

you can grow and develop and be

challenged and

and get some brave moves along the way

also make sure that you don’t put all of

your eggs in one basket

you know after 20 years at procter

gamble i

also started to put myself on on boards

i first of all started on a charity

board

then i ended up on the board of greg’s

the bakers

and now i’m on the board of british

telecom i’ve also taken up mad sport

things over the years like running the

london marathon or

or or doing some crazy bike rides

through vietnam and cambodia

they were all great distractions away

from when things were tough and when

i had moments of failure because then i

could focus on achieving something else

and then finally pick your partner

i have a great husband and we have a

great home environment that i go home to

every weekend and and i focus on during

weekends and holidays very much

um so finally i just want to say what’s

the lessons to be learned from all of

this

and what do i give to you um don’t view

failure

as failure view failure as an

opportunity for you to learn

and make yourself a more confident

braver version

of yourself and finally don’t always

pick the obvious candidates

because if if companies like procter

gamble and the scottish whiskey industry

had picked the most obvious candidates

they wouldn’t have chosen me

and maybe they would have missed out on

a lot so

be fearless and learn from failure