Grainger has women in its three top roles. It’s nothing to do with quotas, and everything to do with simply finding the best person for the job. Samantha McClary speaks to Vanessa Simms, Helen Gordon and Margaret Ford about getting ahead in a male-dominated industry. Portraits by Jon Enoch
When Vanessa Simms joined the board of Grainger as finance director in February, the appointment made the residential landlord the only company in the FTSE 250 to have a trio of women holding the three most powerful positions.
Helen Gordon had joined as chief executive a month previously, moving from Royal Bank of Scotland where she had been in charge of managing its £38bn of bad debt, while Baroness Ford took over as permanent chairman in March 2015, having been on the board for more than seven years.
It would have been an easy PR sell: Look how great and diverse we are as a company. Three women in leading positions – four, actually, if you include Belinda Richards, Grainger’s senior independent director – in an industry dominated by men.
But there was a conscious decision not to work that angle. It was never about gender.
“It was less about the personalities and more about the change that was going to happen in the business,” says Gordon. “I felt it was very important that we didn’t make too much of it. We didn’t want to bring attention to that so much as bring attention to the change in Grainger.”
But, it did of course catch people’s attention because property – and business in general – is still dominated by men (see box).
So Ford, Gordon and Simms agreed to exclusively sit down with the members of Estates Gazette’s REWIRE women’s network and share their knowledge and advice on making your mark in business.
If you start setting quotas, you start designing what a board should look like – the age, size, gender and race. It should be about having the best people
“A fund manager asked me a couple of weeks ago, ‘Margaret, you all seem to be women? How did that happen?’ I said it was really, really straight forward. We just hired the best people,” says Ford. “I didn’t set out when I became chairman to start some kind of commune. What I set out to do, knowing the scale of the change we are making at Grainger, was to hire some very special people.”
Perhaps it is just coincidence that those special people are all women, or perhaps more and more women are showing – and showcasing – the traits that make them those special hires.
Just look at politics. By the end of the year it could be Theresa May, Hillary Clinton and Angela Merkel running the show in the UK, US and Germany respectively. They, like Ford, Gordon and Simms, are three intelligent, driven, unapologetic women who have risen to positions of power because they are the best candidates for the job.
At Grainger, the job is transforming a 104-year-old company that has been focused most strongly on capital into one that is focussed entirely on income.
Ford says the change in strategy was always on the cards. Andrew Cunningham, Gordon’s predecessor, had already figured out that the future for the company was in the private rented sector. What the company needed, however, was a new chief executive that got it too.
“One of the exam questions I gave to the four shortlisted candidates was, ‘Come and give us your take on what the new strategy should be,’” says Ford. “When Helen came in, I couldn’t stop smiling because it was exactly the same analysis and broadly identical conclusions. Without detailed knowledge of the business, she had absolutely nailed it. It was a great coming together of what the board was thinking and what a fresh, incoming, bright chief executive was thinking.”
And it is because of that marriage of minds that Grainger now has three women in its three most powerful positions. Nothing to do with quotas or gender.
In fact, the mere mention of the word quota elicits a quiet, yet audible, groan from the trio.
“If you start to put quotas on boards, it almost undermines the quality because there is this impression that you are there through a quota rather than actually being the best you can be at what you do,” says Simms. “If you start setting quotas, you start designing what a board looks like – the age, the size, the gender and race. It should be about having the best people.”
Gordon agrees, recounting the story of getting her first non-executive board role and overhearing another non-exec saying, “They’ll be recruiting a woman.”
“That was 15 years ago. I was so cross,” says Gordon. “I subsequently heard that he’d applied,” she adds with a smile.
Make your presence felt. Ask the first question. There is no point being a shrinking violet
“I thought when I started my career 30 years ago, I wouldn’t still be having this conversation,” Ford says. “I thought it would be fixed. I thought there was this whole generation of people coming though that have wives who worked, aspirations for their daughters… that life would all be fine. But it is not entirely fine at all. Would quotas mean fewer good women? No. I think that any woman who gets to that point would be good de facto, but I would never want to feel I was there because I was making up a number or because they had created a slot for me.”
Ford, Gordon and Simms clearly created their own slots on the various boards on which they have sat, through intelligence, self-belief and good old-fashioned hard work. But what advice would they give to the next generation of female business leaders?
“Be the first to speak in a discussion,” says Ford, “because if you don’t, you’ll get lost. If you want to have your voice heard, pipe up. Make your presence felt. You need to own the space a lot more. You’ve got to get in there and spread yourself out. Ask the first question. There is no point being a shrinking violet.
“Property is such a fantastic career for women,” she adds. “I can’t believe the opportunities I’ve been given.”
Gordon agrees: “As a junior member of the team, you may have an immediate line manager who doesn’t recognise your talent, but you can have senior members that do spot it. Don’t be frightened of shining a light on the really good stuff you are doing.”
She likes to test the abilities of people by pulling together teams for a deal and seeing how they cope. “I call it the teabag moment,” says Gordon. “You never know how strong people are until you put them in hot water. If they are in the thick of a deal and are really performing, you never forget.”
“The important thing for any line manager is to work with people,” adds Simms. “I have never been one to march in and demand pay rises or promotions, I’ve just had the view to be the best you can be and be comfortable in that space. If someone doesn’t believe in you, then I would give up on them and move on. I don’t hesitate to do the right thing for my career.”
“The best piece of advice I’ve given to people is don’t work for morons,” says Ford. “If you are working for people who don’t recognise your talent and are not open to developing you and providing opportunities, go and work for someone who does.”
And when you see people perform, make sure their peers – and their bosses – know about it, says Gordon, recounting a tale of when an associate at a law firm provided an especially good service. “I phoned up the senior partner and said we had just had the most amazing service, that this person had sacrificed a whole lot for us but that I was not sure we could carry on using the firm because we usually only work with partners,” she says. “That person was a partner next time round.”
So, if you do want to succeed, you know who to impress.
Helen Gordon, chief executive
Prior to joining Grainger, Gordon spent four years trying to revive the property market by dealing with £38bn of distressed real estate at Royal Bank of Scotland. Before that, she ran the main life fund at Legal & General for eight years. She was group property director at Railtrack and for 10 years was managing director of John Laing Developments.
Top tip
“Be authentic. Don’t adopt a style that has got nothing to do with you. If you are authentic in your style then you will feel comfortable and you will feel confident.”
Vanessa Simms, finance director
Simms began her career at Porsche, where she trained as an accountant and got her first taste of working in a male-dominated industry (see Diary, p102). Prior to Grainger she worked at Unite Students and at industrial REIT SEGRO, which she joined around the time it acquired rival Brixton, just before the recession hit.
Top tip
“Always seek lots of advice and listen to lots of advice, but don’t assume everyone else is right. Make up your own mind.”
Margaret Ford, chairman
Ford sees herself principally as an entrepreneur, having created, built up and subsequently sold four businesses over 20 years. She has served as a non-executive director for more than two decades, in government and private organisations, principally but not exclusively in property. Alongside Grainger, she currently serves on the boards of SEGRO, Taylor Wimpey and Scottish Television. She counts selling the Millennium Dome – now known as the O2 – to Anschutz Entertainment Group and creating the physical legacy from the 2012 Olympics as career highlights.
Top tip
“I’m a huge believer in being alive to opportunities. Have your antennae permanently on. I never planned a damn thing, it just happened, but it happened because I was alert to opportunities.”
Grainger transformed
A new future for the 104-year old business was unveiled this year with a focus on developing and buying £850m of PRS assets over the next four years.
“Grainger did everything in-house,” says chief executive Helen Gordon. “We developed, we had an equity release business, we had a business in Germany.”
The group sold its equity release business to Turbo Group Holdings for £355m in January and its German business to Heitman in February for €124m (£94m).
It is now focused on total returns from its core regulated rented stock and PRS.
Women on boards
This year’s Female FTSE Report, published by Cranfield School of Management, City University London and Queen Mary University London last week, shows that the overall percentage of women on the FTSE boards has increased to 26% on FTSE 100 and to 20.4% on the FTSE 250 boards.
However, just five FTSE 250 companies have 50% female boards, including Grainger, while 15 still have all-male boards.
Progress among executive ranks and in the executive pipeline is very slow, with female executive directorships standing at 9.7% in the FTSE 100 and just 5.6% in the FTSE 250.
• To join Estates Gazette’s rewire, e-mail samantha.mcclary@estatesgazette.com
SEE ALSO:
• Rewire: giving women in property a voice
