Julian Spooner

Perhaps because Julian Spooner spent a couple of decades leading marketing in FMCG businesses, he always look at businesses from the point of view of the consumer or customer of the business. Really understanding what they need and want from their service or product is what rocks his boat. He can act as a sounding board and challenge to existing management thinking. Sometimes this can produce new ideas- often it produces greater clarity about which 2 or 3 key levers they need to pull to make the company accelerate. As a regional director for Diageo he had general management responsibility for over 20 companies in African and the Middle East; from this he worked out how to manage Boards at a distance, focusing only on the critical issues, providing some input and support and then getting out of the way as fast as possible.