The new voice of small businesses in the UK is a North East-based business growth expert who fine-tuned her communications skills as a prison watchdog. However, she isn't averse to kicking back and relaxing with a walk on the beach, a spot of bell-ringing or even a few minutes with a chainsaw. John Hill meets Lucy Armstrong.
LUCY Armstrong vividly remembers how she ended up in prison nearly 15 years ago. She is now a voice for small businesses in Whitehall, Westminster and Brussels as the new chair of the CBI’s national SME council. However, this business growth expert honed her communication skills in a fairly unusual location.
After a work-shadowing session ended with a few drinks in the pub, the 28-year-old Armstrong was encouraged to either become a magistrate or sign up to an Independent Monitoring Board, acting as a watchdog for prisons.
Not wishing to “stand in judgement against a fellow man”, she picked the IMB.
She says: “You were part-voyeur, part-human rights monitor. You were responsible for the physical well-being of a prisoner, from eating the food to checking the drains and meeting with the governor. You sent annual reports to the justice secretary, and spoke to people in solitary every week.
“I was petrified on my first day in a prison. We were all looking at the tops of our shoes. I looked up and made contact with one chap – I will be forever grateful to him – and said, ‘I’m scared and I don’t know how to talk to you’. He said, ‘I feel the same’. At that point we realised we were all humans and just had labels for each other.”
Armstrong was involved in the IMB from 1996 until two years ago, most recently at Northumberland youth offenders’ institute Castington. While it seems a million miles away from her day job as chief executive of business development organisation The Alchemists, she says the experience had a profound effect on how she communicates.
She says: “It’s an extreme but amazing crucible for learning interpersonal skills. I remember having to ask the staff one Saturday if I could see one prisoner but not tell them why.
“I also had to ask them to protect me, because the prisoner had repeatedly stated his sentence had been miscalculated and I knew what I was going to say wasn’t what he wanted to hear.
“I needed to communicate that information in a way that wouldn’t provoke a violent reaction, and then the staff would have to deal with his behaviour after I left. That’s a very complicated set of issues, but are not dissimilar to issues you deal with in business.
“Imagine you need to have a delicate conversation with an entrepreneur about the fact their child won’t be taking over the business, a fact they know deep down but have never said out loud.
“It all boils down to relationships and communication. Business is about human beings working together. The nuances about what the organisation is trying to do will affect the culture, but at its heart it’s about human relationships based on trust, openness and respect.”
Armstrong’s interest in people has driven her through much of her career, which started in venture capital with 3i and currently sees her advising businesses on growth at a critical point in their development.
She says: “I didn’t know what a business was when I started, and it was new and exciting to explore. I still get a thrill out of being able to walk around a factory.”
Armstrong’s family left Manchester days after her birth, and she spent her formative years in Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire.
Her family’s roots were in Teesside, so visits to relatives in the North East were common. However, she didn’t live here until her first job after Oxford University in 1989.
She says: “It was a complete accident. My parents were teachers and I was determined not to do that. When I went to college, a friend of mine wanted to find out about the City course.
“I was adamant I was not going to be an investment banker. I said it was immoral. She said maybe I should do venture capital instead, and I didn’t know what that meant so I just said ‘yes’.
“Later when I was looking into a job at Unilever there was a tiny advert for 3i next to it. I went to work-shadow and they asked me to go to the selection panel.
“We were given a profit and loss account and a balance sheet for a company and had to go in and decide if we wanted to invest. I’d never seen a balance sheet before, so I just went in and told them their company was very interesting and asked them to tell me about it.
“You absolutely need to analyse, and things such as the business plan are tools by which you can form judgements, but at the end of the day you’re backing people.”
It is this understanding Armstrong is keen to take with her into her CBI role.
She says: “I’ll be trying to get politicians to understand businesses don’t do linear development. Some businesses at year zero can be very sophisticated while some at 50 can be small, parochial businesses.
“Companies like Benfield, Vertu, Peacocks Medical Group and Ringtons have social felicity, and belong to their communities. They’re normally family businesses and they think several generations ahead. The more time we spend helping businesses like that, the quicker we’ll rebuild the economy.
“I will be focusing on the growth agenda and access to finance. A lot of businesses, particularly more innovative businesses, make the mistake of having short-term finance for long-term goals. You don’t take out a mortgage to buy groceries or buy a house on a credit card but sometimes that’s what businesses do.”
At 3i, Armstrong was an investment executive, meeting businesses and structuring deals. She moved to a job managing mergers and acquisitions for Courtaulds Textiles in 1996, a position that took her to far-flung locations such as the Philippines and required her to make some tough announcements.
She says: “Sadly, I had the responsibility of shutting some operations down. I’ve found staff know the state of their business, and if you treat them with respect you can hold your head up high.
“When you’ve sat in front of a person and made them redundant, you will know how well it’s gone because they’ll tell you and you’ll feel it. It’s important that you feel it.
“I’ve made people redundant and been made redundant myself. The guy who made me redundant at my next job at Tyzack did it appallingly because he was embarrassed.”
Her move to executive recruitment company Tyzack came in 1998, as she tired of a life of constant travel. She says: “There was one time when I was meant to have people around for dinner, but found myself delayed abroad and couldn’t come home until the Saturday. So they had the party anyway, in my house and with the food I’d bought. It was about then I realised I wanted a life.”
Her job at Tyzack was to sit down with companies to identify the type of person they needed to fill a senior role, and then go about the process of finding one. Her headhunting career lasted until 2003.
The lure of being in the North East and using all of her skills then drew her to The Alchemists, and she took up the role of chief executive.
The organisation matches experienced entrepreneurs with high-growth mid-corporate businesses to boost the company’s growth.
She says: “If you know what decisions are being made, rather than making all the decisions, you can unlock more potential.
“The leader’s job is to encourage people to do their job well. It’s not to run the marathon but to run up and down the line telling people to put their trainers on and get ready to go.
“If you’re a successful business, you don’t need help exactly because you don’t have problems, but that’s the time you have an opportunity to change. Businesses leaders need to have an emotional willingness to change. They need to understand it will be difficult for them, but the business will be better for it. If they think it’s everyone else’s issue, they haven’t got a hope in hell.”