Interview: Dean Forbes, the CEO masterminding €2bn exits

Edited Q&A

How do you choose your next CEO role?

Dean: The thing I've come to learn that I enjoy – and where I've had the most success – is finding companies that have got a good product, have a good team or operate in a good market with good upside potential – but have maybe lost their way a little bit.

So, when I'm looking for the next CEO role, I'm looking for a business that has those dynamics, but also might be in a bit of a downturn. Part of turning that company around is what I find most energising, and motivates me.

What do you think is the key to driving growth in business?

Dean: You have to be planned and intentional. Once a company gets beyond a certain size, it can no longer rely on hustle and bustle.

Growth starts with a good product and proposition. It is accelerated when we know who our customers are or should be, the issue we're resolving for them, and then, most importantly, what our right to win is – there are often others with similar products and propositions out there.

If you understand and plan around that with good intention, and then activate a team behind that, growth often follows.

How do you convince your investors to buy into your ideas and vision?

Dean: In any situation with multiple stakeholders, the job of convincing people has to start with solid foundations, solid logic and rationale, and good merit. That's the foundation of any proposition.

Then it comes down to communication, because there have been good ideas that didn't get activated because they were poorly articulated.

One of the things I've learned when trying to bring stakeholders along is that it's a good investment to understand their concerns, or likely concerns, but also their style and communication preferences. Some people love data and information and want to see the depth of research. Some want to understand the energy and motivation you have for the idea: Are you going to be committed to this? Are you really going to be driven by this?

Some people want to receive information well in advance of a decision and have time to reflect and consider. Others are happy in the moment.

What have you learned from being a leader after a buyout?

Dean: Employees that become part of your company as a result of an acquisition are naturally cynical – maybe a bit anxious and concerned. They've come from an environment they knew and understood into one they probably don't.

I've learned to act with super-high integrity and do what we say we're going to do. Sometimes those things are good, positive, progressive things for those acquired employees. But sometimes we have to shrink or change organisations, which can be difficult for employees. As long as we're communicating what we're going to do, and we do what we said we would, after a time, employees can start to trust us, and some of that anxiety and scepticism goes away.

The second thing is the culture. Whenever you combine two sets of [corporate] DNA, there's a risk of rejection, failure and incompatibility. You have to spend time working on both sides so the DNA correlation can be successful. That again comes back to communication – how we show up, how we practice the things we said we were going to do and are important to us, and how we help others assimilate into our new environment.

How different is the integration of cultures when you are acquired by a private equity firm?

Dean: When you're acquired by private equity firms, the cultural norms, the practices and the processes that were used to run and scale the business largely remain unchanged. We probably change a few things, but we don't change a lot. Otherwise, what was the rationale for the financial investor acquiring that business if they wanted to turn it into a totally different one? In that situation, we get a higher degree of continuity, and a higher degree of consistency.

When we're acquired by a strategic [partner], it has its own culture, practices, systems, processes and brand. So, a lot more changes are on the table. We have to do much more work in this situation to help the integration than when working with a financial sponsor. As a result, those deals have more risk.

What guides your own personal investment decisions?

Dean: When it comes to personal investing, we have two main dimensions we think about.

With high-value investments, we're looking for a five-year payback worth at least two and a half times our money. We've got lots of opportunities to deploy capital to get that profile of return. So investing in a smaller scale-up business has to carry a higher likely return for it to be more attractive than some of the more certain and traditional opportunities that we have.

Then we've got what we call community investing, where it’s more about supporting an early-stage entrepreneur to get them and their business to the next stage. That is much more about fulfilling our responsibility and obligation to help others up the social-mobility ladder. There we want two things. We want to see people progress in themselves and their business. And if we can get our money back to redeploy it in another similar business or founder, then that's a success for us.

What can organisations do to support underrepresented talent?

Dean: I always come back to three points.

The first is how we look for that talent. I've seen well-intended searches look for under-represented talent in the pools and places where they are less likely to be and simply ask those people doing the searches to include some proportion of underrepresented people, so the first phase of the search looks more balanced. That, to me, isn't a good way to find underrepresented talent, because they're simply less present in those places.

An example would be when we say we're going to lower the educational threshold for applicants. That doesn't mean you're getting to some of the best and strongest talent, it just means lowering the possible bar to entry. So, being more thoughtful and creative about where you look for talent is the first thing.

The second thing is understanding that if you hire underrepresented people, they're less likely to have grown up in environments that are similar to yours. They're less likely to have deep corporate experience or be familiar with corporate norms, especially if they're a bit younger. We have to do more to make them welcome, help them succeed and find their position in what is likely to be a new environment and structure for them.

The third thing is, to be considerate of what position the underrepresented talent might be coming into the workplace from, and why that might be different to the rest of the workplace. There are statistics that show early-stage Afro-Caribbean professionals have a disproportionately high obligation to support extended family financially than their White counterparts. So, two professionals making the same salary per year may not be in the same financial situation at all. When we see a person with a higher financial burden because they're supporting a broader family, more sensitive to salary increases and bonuses and immediate reward for work, it could be coming from that.

That's an example of understanding the sensitivities of a more diverse workforce than if we shop for talent that's coming through more traditional means, where they are well-educated with their first few years in the blue-chip corporate environment. Of course those people will assimilate much better than if we look more creatively.