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Introducing John Deane
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An introduction to John Deane
John Deane is Chief Executive of Scottish Life, part of the UK's largest mutual life and pensions company, the Royal London Group. John joined Royal London in April 2007 from Old Mutual plc where he played a significant part in the successful acquisition of Skandia. He is also a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries.
A bit more about John ...
John's role is hugely demanding but he still manages to find time to relax.
His interests outside of work include cycling, running, golf, theatre, chess and reading when he gets the time.
His favourite holiday destination is South Africa.
He also enjoys French food and would recommend "Cafe St Honore" in Edinburgh.
And finally, we asked John if he was to write his own epitaph what would it be?
I enjoyed it!
Born and brought up in Cambridge, John is 51, married to Allison and has 3 children – Jake 17, Alinka 15 and Jago 10.
We asked John to consider his key highlights from his 28 years spent in the financial services market, and to share some of his thoughts and insights about creating a successful financial services brand.
Tell us a bit about the key highlights of your career to date.
It has to be seeing the progress that we have made over the last 3 years.
Can you share some of your thoughts on what you think makes for a successful business?
Just do the simple things well. When I joined the business 3 years ago we had a lot of work to do. But in the 3 years that I've been here, Scottish Life has come a long way.
We've focused heavily on our service, our investment proposition, our communication and the launch of good products, our Pensions Portfolio with its Income Release capability being one of these. To achieve good results in these areas we need to focus on doing the simple things well, something which I believe Scottish Life can do and is doing.
It's not about having the best strategy it’s about having people who are focused on executing it in the best way possible, whatever it is.
In business, a lot of people don't move forward because they're scared of being wrong. It shouldn't just be about being right or wrong. It should be about getting the right information to make the decisions you need to make, and learning from the mistakes you make along the way. Life is not risk free and we do not make good returns without taking controlled risks.
For us as a business, it's about getting rid of the fear of always having to be right. I believe we're well on the way to implementing that culture shift within Scottish Life and it's helping to revitalise the organisation.
Can you provide an example of a business (any sector) which you like or respect?
John Lewis is a shining example of a well run, well managed business that has stood the test of time. It's a mutual (like our business) whose internal mission is to be run for the benefit of its employees. It's really customer focused and has some really strong customer and employee principles which I think are an example to many companies.
If you could have met one person from history who would that be and why? What one question would you like to ask him?
The Duke of Wellington - he didn't just lead led an army he led a country. He succeeded in an extremely difficult political era and won the battle of Waterloo with what he thought were inadequate resources.
He's also famous for saying that if you are going to pick a battle you need to pick the time and the place. So the obvious question to me is, at Waterloo, against such a great opponent as Napoleon, did he practice what he preached and is this the reason why he prevailed? I'd like to understand what his thinking was there.
What is your favourite sporting memory?
My favourite sporting memory has to be being at Cardiff to see Ireland winning the Grand Slam.
Can businesses learn anything from successful sports people or teams?
Yes, I think so. England's Rugby World Cup victory in 2003 was probably the best example of bringing together some pretty powerful lessons learnt in business and applying them to sport.
Clive Woodward gave every member of the England World Cup squad a manual when they joined up. It covered how he expected them to behave, the policies of the organisation and the procedures he expected them to follow. It also acted as the contract they were signing up to, not just to him and the rugby board, but actually to each other.
In effect he set up a framework for the expectations of people and their behaviours. He took some elements of that from Jim Collins' book "Good to Great".
Personally, I'm not really one for reading management books - they are often written by people who clearly didn't manage anything - but Jim Collins' looks at people who have turned good businesses into great, successful businesses.
They talk about not looking at what you've got, but focusing on where you need to get to and to stop worrying about small changes. Look at the big picture and how you're going to get there.
And what are the key lessons here?
Two lessons come from the World Cup squad – (1) setting the behaviour patterns and (2) huge amounts of preparation. Clive Woodward had a very clear view of preparation and what was required in design and execution.
But what he also had was the time to be successful. While people look at the final cup being the winning result, success wasn't instant. Initially the team lost a few games but they learnt from their mistakes and used them to help build a winning formula.
I think you can take lessons from this in the business sense - don't be scared to take a defeat. Take it on the chin and learn and move on - that's what sport tells you.
I see real relevance for our industry with RDR. There is no doubt that the impact on the industry will be very large and widespread. We are going to have to look at our processes and systems in detail to make sure we are ready. For IFAs who do not currently sell any of their business on a fee basis now is the time to start preparing their organisations for the change. There will be knocks and many things to learn on the way. At Scottish Life, over 90% of our individual business is issued on a Financial Adviser's Fee basis and we are ready to share that experience and take our place at the front of the industry in supporting this change.
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