WHAT brings a highflying Briton back from a fast-track career with a vast
American multi-national?
“I had done most of the major roles, and it was a very organised company with
proper succession planning, and I was slated as a possible future chief
executive,” says Harriet Green, “but there are not many Fortune 200
companies that choose the small British woman over the extremely capable
American guy.”
She relaxes for a second and laughs, then hunches back into her habitual mode
of delivery: her right leg beats out a twitchy flamenco, her hands twist
this way and that, her speech is stretched with impatient New York
inflections. Green, all bubbling energy and nervous drive, is a woman who
likes to be getting on with something.
So back to those reasons. She had married, she had a husband in Oxford, and
stepchildren she needed to see more of, and was exhausted after doing
500,000 air miles a year, running China and Asia for the giant electronics
distributor Arrow. She just needed to come home.
So here she is, a year or so later, running Premier Farnell, a rather
different distribution business but one with considerable ambitions. Green
was brought in to push the listed, Leeds-based firm beyond its European and
American heartland and improve its performance – you can bet she will
certainly get it noticed.
That’s because Gloucestershire-born Green, 46, is a pocket-sized dynamo.
Sitting in Premier Farnell’s modest London office by Green Park, with her
elfin features, assymetrical haircut, and sharply pointy boots, she looks
like a glamorous pixie who has accidentally slipped into a very grey world.
Premier Farnell, a distribution specialist that provides electronic components
to engineers, is not exactly glitzy. Unlike Arrow, which moves large
quantities of components to leading manufacturers, it specialises in
same-day or next-day deliveries of smaller orders for individual engineers
and repair experts. It has a turnover of £823m and 4,100 employees. Arrow
has sales of £6 billion and 12,000 employees.
Premier Farnell does, however, have prospects. Such high-service/low-volume
distribution is expected to grow, especially as the amount of electrical and
computerised innovation increases worldwide. It is also specialised enough
to mean the high-volume distributors leave it alone.
And some think the sector is distinctly undervalued. Fidelity became Premier
Farnell’s biggest investor two years ago, after its stockpicker Anthony
Bolton warmed to its potential. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hath-away snapped
up Premier Farnell’s American rival Mouser less than a year ago.
The sector is certainly ripe for consolidation. Premier Farnell, Mouser,
another American rival, Digi-Key, and a British company, Electrocomponents,
all have global ambitions. Electrocomponents, which has an Oxford base near
Green’s home, has long been linked to a possible tie-up with Premier Farnell.
In fact there is no shortage of speculation as to what could happen. Hence
Premier Farnell’s up-and-down share price. Green, the first woman boss in
the sector and one of the few nonengineers, just smiles when I ask her if
she is on the acquisition trail.
“My job is to show shareholders that we can grow the business properly. I’ve
already made quite a lot of changes to the management team.”
And until those settle down, and her changes work their way through, buying or
merging is not on her agenda, she says.
The business has been here before, of course. The original Farnell company
bought Ohio-based Premier in 1996 in a tie-up that promised to merge
European and American strengths. Instead, exposure to the American market
has proved a millstone to the group since the dotcom crash, and it has
regularly disappointed shareholders’ expectations.
Chairman Sir Peter Gershon hired Green last year to turn things round. He says
she was easily the best candidate, with sparkling communication skills. “She
also has significant experience of all the key markets we operate in, and a
deep understanding of the component distribution business,” he says.
This month Green proved his point, unveiling revenue figures that generated
upbeat coverage in the press. Premier Farnell is even improving its
performance in America, where the economy shows signs of slowing down.
With a new, three-pronged growth strategy – focusing on selling to electronic
design engineers, increasing the amount of business done over the internet,
and internationalising the group – Green wants to make Premier Farnell into
a truly global company.
China and India, in particular, are in her sights, simply because of the
hundreds of thousands of electronics engineers produced by their
universities. All of them, she argues, will need regular, reliable supplies
of components to go about their work. Premier Farnell just has to move
faster to catch the market.
“This is a very good distribution business,” says Green. “The infrastructure
is in very good shape, but what it didn’t have was a clear picture of the
world and how to carve a place in it.
“To be the best there is – to be No 1 – is very doable. You just have to come
up with a plan and deliver on it.”
That plan includes the promise to fund growth from the company’s own earnings.
“And let’s put this in context,” cuts in Green. “Premier Farnell has not
been a stock that has consistently delivered what it said. My job is to show
that the legacy of not performing well is in the past, and that the future
is built on the three legs of the new strategy.”
Most of all, she wants to uncouple the business from the American economic
cycle, and give the company a high-performance culture in which things get
done quickly – what she was used to when working in America and Asia.
“We have had five of the best quarters this company has had for a long time,
but we are not done . . . The whole organisation has to keep driving with
this and, when you are a mature-market western company, that is a constant
challenge.”
Some have already felt the sharpness of her pointy shoes – about a third of
the 100-strong senior-management team have gone and another third have
changed jobs since she arrived. But it’s hard not to be impressed by her
determination to make changes, and to charm the toughest critics.
She even asked Fidelity’s Bolton, one of London’s sharpest investors, if he
had any advice for her.
“He told me I needed to know my business, and that I must resist the
temptation that many new chief executives have to overcommit. Just do what
you say you will do, and over time this will be good.”
She knew it was good advice, she adds, because it reminded her of being a
teenager and helping her mother.
That is a clue to Green’s motivation. She ascribes much of her ambition to
losing her engineer father to a brain tumour when young. She then helped her
mother run the family. The eldest of three siblings, she learnt to organise
and lead at a young age.
“I was nine when Dad fell ill, and 13 when he died aged 45. Mum needed help
and some of my drive comes from that. You sort of hope he is going to
return, and you hope you have made the best use of your time.”
Brought up in a Cotswolds village and educated at the local grammar school,
Green read history at university and fell into electronics by chance, taking
a job at Office 2000 magazine through friends. There she alternated selling
advertising space with reviewing early wordprocessors and PCs. Then a job ad
in the short-lived Working Woman magazine caught her eye.
“It said a company was looking for women who had high integrity, were very
driven and wanted a career in electronics. I thought that was me.”
She joined Macro, a semiconductor distributor, as a trainee. By the age of 29
she was its UK managing director. She loved its mix of service and
logistics. “It suits my pacey, service-orientated make-up, much more like
checkers than chess.”
She took a big leap to join Arrow, helping it set up a European network. “The
first thing that struck me was that everything was faster,” she said.
Green spent 12 years at the American multinational, finishing as president,
Asia Pacific, after stints of working in Africa and America. The experience
left a mark. She still drawls “New Yark” like a New Yorker. Does she get
teased for her Americanisms?
“Yeah, my stepchildren tease me all the time. I do pick up accents, but
working in America was a powerful experience, then running 11 businesses
across Asia.”
More recently, selected to be among the Global Leaders of Tomorrow at Davos,
she bowled over delegates “with amazing energy and charm”, according to one
participant.
So does Britain seem small by comparison? “It is funny coming back,” she nods.
“I talk with optimism about China and India, and often I am a loneish voice.
I don’t think we are as outward-looking as the Americans or the Asians
themselves.”
She adds that she has found London a hard city to network in, too. You can
tell her connections are still abroad. She directs me to talk to Steve
Kaufman, the acclaimed former Arrow boss who now lectures at Harvard
Business School. He describes Green as one of a kind: “A world-class
communicator to customers, partners and employees, who instils incredible
loyalty.”
Arrow’s loss, he says, is Premier Farnell’s gain. “Her real trick,” adds
Kaufman, “is that she can exist on five hours’ sleep a night, so she gets
three more working hours in her day than the rest of us.”
And in America they still remember her. Only last month she won an American
“Stevie” award for women in business. Over here, most have never heard of
her, let alone her business. That, of course, may change.
HARRIET GREEN’S WORKING DAY
THE Premier Farnell boss wakes at 5am at her home in Oxford’s Summertown.
Harriet Green dresses, dons a rucksack and yomps to the station. “Flat
shoes, big coat, suit underneath, it’s real think time.”
She catches a train to London before 6am and is at her desk by 7.20. “Then I
am predominantly involved in strategy, internationalising and hiring and
developing talent. Every boss should be chief people officer.”
She tries to be home by 7pm. Three nights a week she is in charge of dinner.
She often takes calls till later. “My husband says the reason I run a global
company is so there’s always someone for me to talk to.”
VITAL STATISTICS
Born:December 12, 1961
Marital status:married, two stepchildren
School:Northleach Grammar, Gloucestershire
University:London
First job:trainee at a magazine
Salary package:£430,000 plus 120% bonus
Homes:Oxford, Thailand
Car:silver Jaguar XK
Favourite book:An Outline History of China, by Bai Shouyi
Favourite music:Shostakovich, Prince
Favourite film:The Lives of Others
Favourite gadget:‘rainmaker’ box that drowns out traffic and other
unwanted noise
Last holiday:Thailand
DOWNTIME
HARRIET GREEN relaxes by practising hatha yoga. “It calms me and gives me
balance. I do it every day, either early in the morning or at work during
lunchtime, and get very annoyed with myself if I haven’t. I keep a yoga mat
in the office cupboard.”
She is also a voracious reader, taking her collection of 2,000 books around
the world to her various job postings. “They are the only things that have
travelled with me. I am an absolutely avid reader – I love history in
particular. Books were a place to hide for me when I was young and my dad
was ill.”
