STEADY BUSINESS IN A RAPIDLY CHANGING SOCIETY

Henrietta Brealey, CEO of the Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce

Henrietta Brealey, the youngest CEO to be appointed by the Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce, started with the Chamber as an intern and is a big believer in the vision and power of the organisation to positively impact business and people. Becoming CEO just after COVID, Henrietta has driven a 3-year transformation project to strengthen the Chamber’s ability to support its members, innovate, and connect on a global scale.

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Transcription
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Dom: Hello, I'm Dom Wetherall, your host of the F5 podcast brought to you by Intercity.

Today I'm really lucky to be joined by Henrietta Brealey.

Henrietta is the CEO of the Chamber, Birmingham Chamber of Commerce and is also the youngest CEO to ever be appointed for the Greater Birmingham Chamber of Commerce.

Welcome Henrietta.

Henrietta: Hello, great to be here Dom.

Dom: Could you tell us a little bit about your journey, your career, early career and then where you are now?

Henrietta: Oh yeah, of course.

So I always say I pretty much grew up in the Chamber.

When I was at university I wanted to be an actress but it's not really the kind of thing you tell people and get taken seriously for.

So I was like maybe I'll pretend I want to be a lawyer as like a serious growing up job.

Anyway, I sort of worked through a bit figuring out it wasn't really for me and was doing the what do I want to do, who do I want to be and I ended up on this absolutely fantastic thing called the Uprising Leadership Program which used to be active in Birmingham.

Unfortunately I don't think it exists anymore but it brought together cohorts, potential young leaders to teach them how to understand and access power for the good of communities.

All about social action and how you as an individual can drive positive change in the world around you.

It was absolutely brilliant, got introduced to this world called policy and campaigning, did not know that was a job, like that you could do that sort of thing.

Had an absolutely brilliant mentor, Mark Reeves, who until recently was one of the most senior editors at Reach PLC who helps me sort of understand what careers look like in that space and critically introduced me to former manager at the chamber, Katie Teasdale.

I started off as an intern, £10 a day, two days a week in between my other jobs in the summer, worked through policy, left briefly to work for the National Housing Federation, became director of policy in 2015 and then chief executive about three years ago.

So I've sort of worked up through the business at the chamber, it's been an interesting journey.

Dom: Wow, what an incredible journey as well.

So what's that been like in the three years?

Henrietta: It's been an interesting three years too, I think it's fair to say, but everyone, it was sort of year one was coming out of Covid, what does normal look like?

You know you probably remember it well, we were all trying to figure out what do people want to do?

Do they want to be together in person?

What's the future of the office and working together?

As a chamber so much of what we do is connecting people together.

We do about 200 events a year and just the first year was figuring out how to do first Covid safe events and then how to sort of figure out what long term the business community wanted and needed in terms of that delivery of a core service.

So a lot of that was business as usual, what does that look like in year one?

Then in year two we started to get much more into what's the strategic future for the chamber?

We've got back to what new normal looks like, done a lot of work on people, culture, policies, processes, what does this now look like in terms of our strategic future?

So spent a lot of time talking to stakeholders, staff, with every single individual in the organisation, about 80 of us in total at the chamber, boards in particular, absolutely brilliant on this and developed up our three-year business plan and strategy.

So we're currently heading into year three of that which is a nice place to be but we've done a lot of transformation, key projects and investments along the way.

Dom: As the youngest CEO of the Greater Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, what were your drivers to get into that role?

Henrietta: Oh, so actually a lot of it was, it was interesting.

So I was, I was 29 when I was applying for the role and part of me was going probably not quite ready for this am I?

You know maybe I'm a bit too young, maybe there was someone else out there who'll be a chief executive who'd be perfect for the chamber and I could learn so much from them, it'll be fantastic.

But just in case I'm the best person for the role I'm going to throw my hat into the room because it's not really a job that it's easy to understand externally.

You know people see perhaps a lot of the external stakeholder engagement role of the chamber but we're an independent not-for-profit, the sort of business side and running it as a business, one with sort of social purpose and a very clear mission and vision but very much a commercial entity that needs to be driven like a business as we're an independent not-for-profit but not funded by anyone.

It's all sort of either crowdsourced income generated from memberships, so crowdsourced business support or commercial services.

So there's that internal side plus then that external representing the business community giving a voice to the business community role and that's something I've fully understood having worked through sort of every stage in the business.

So with that I thought let's just give it a go, let's see what happens.

It's something I've done quite a lot in my career and here we go I got the job.

Dom: What was it you wanted to achieve by taking on that role?

Henrietta: I wanted to make sure it continued to progress as an organisation because like I say it can look like a role where actually it's something that's more focused on just that external whereas that internal driving the business, internal developing the business, making sure we continue to adapt and a fit for the future was very much what I wanted to make sure we continue to progress.

Dom: And do you think your experience in previous roles supported how you thought you could deliver that?

Henrietta: Yeah absolutely it was, like I say it's they're unusual organisations chambers and having worked up right from the start it was that sort of fundamental understanding of what it is that we do, our core purpose and how we can continue to evolve, adapt and continue to support the business community.

Dom: It's really inspiring obviously that we just covered off that piece of you know questioning am I right for this role, am I ready that's that is truly inspiring and I'm talking from self sort of my own experience of you know things like imposter syndrome and things like that when you put yourself and you think I'm going to push myself and stretch myself it's really inspiring to sort of hear that.

Henrietta: Definitely I always say to I do quite a lot of mentoring now having benefited from having mentors myself, I'm always keen to support as many people as I can and I always say it's not your job to tell you that you're not ready if you think something's interesting if you look at it and go I'd like to do that one day then apply why not you know worst case scenario you don't get the role when you may get feedback on how you can develop or as I found when I've continually applied for things that I'm probably a bit too young for but heck why not you might get this and then have to figure it out as you go.

Dom: As a woman leading in predominantly male environments what advice would you give to other women in business and in tech in general those looking to gain in leadership roles?

Henrietta: So interestingly the chamber network is actually surprisingly female dominated so within my organisation we're a majority female exec across the chamber network we're all independent organisations chambers but as you can imagine work together as a network actually the split of gender with chief execs is pretty even there's a lot of really strong female leaders across the network but there have definitely been times in my career where I've been either the only woman in the room or otherwise felt a little bit out of place, so you know early on I was co-opted onto our SMT within the chamber as the only woman in the room actually not senior or a manager I was still quite junior in our policy team and that was a sort of that interesting experience of sort of making sure you still get heard so again I've done lots of say stakeholder roundtables or events with particular industries where leaders in those industries are disproportionately male and again I've been either the only woman in the room or one of a small handful of women in the room.

But for the most part for me it's been being young so I was 25 when I became director of policy for the chamber probably looked about 17 I had braces it was an amazing look I would get asked by people if I was doing work experience.

Dom: You'll benefit from that now right?

Henrietta: Yeah now I love it I got ID'd for buying some alcohol free wine the other day.

Dom: I can only dream of that I can only dream.

Henrietta: Yeah in those it's the little things that make you realize that perhaps you do look a little bit different to people in the room and I really appreciate my experience it was just my age that's a that's a really minor point of difference and there were people who whether it's due to their ethnicity due to sort of disability whatever it might be may even feel more out of place in certain situations so I know for me it was only a tiny thing but there were times where I definitely felt it.

You know when you're at a senior level networking event you're really struggling to keep people's attention because they've probably taken one look at you and gone why am I going to talk to the new grad I'm going to go find some useful contacts or even just the simple thing of I'm going to have more in common with people who look more like they're at my stage in their life or in their career so those little things you know I had situations with say stakeholder round tables where I'd be there trying to come into the discussion and the chair would just sort of keep scooting past me and I'd be like ‘why am I not being sort of noticed is it me is it something that I'm doing’.

But I had a brilliant colleague absolutely fabulous colleague who I was catching up with one day at a senior level event and folks were sort of coming up introducing themselves um three or four times folks came over to chat move on as you do at networking events and all of a sudden my colleague turned around to me went Henrietta this has really pissed me off every single person who's come to talk to us has introduced themselves to me and you've had to force yourself into the conversation to introduce yourself even though technically you were the more senior of the two of us and it's just because as he said he was a middle-aged man um and looked more like a senior leader and I was a very young looking woman he got his own reason for being very sensitive to bias really brilliant advocate that guy but it was one of those moments where I went oh okay it's not me I'm not doing something horribly wrong it's just that experience of looking a little bit different.

So if you've had that, to any listeners who have had that, if you've been the only woman in the room you've been the youngest in the room you look a little bit different to the room it can be quite easy to shrink within yourself um and the advice is do the opposite and even if you don't feel it keep being confident if you're having to introduce yourself because you're not being speaker too directly do it anyway if you're in a discussion at a senior management team meeting and you're not even a senior manager make sure your voice is heard you're you're there because you've got something to contribute sort of trust yourself trust your expertise.

And critically I'd say find your mentors and advocates within the organisation find those senior leaders that you're going actually I want to be where they are one day or I want to learn how they do what they do and ask them can I grab a coffee would you be happy to mentor me it's the most complimentary thing in the universe being asked to mentor someone um and actually that's how you can build those relationships with senior folks who when you're not in the room will be able to advocate for you too.

Dom: It's fantastic advice thank you for sharing that um just back on you know there's some great programs and initiatives women in tech being one something that Intercity are heavily involved in and promote and support but I think there's that this stat of um it's over um so we've seen women in tech increase roles increasing opportunities increasing fantastic but there's that following stat that over 50 are leaving technical industry within 10 to 20 years of their career which is double the rate of men so what's your thoughts on that or what are your thoughts on how tech businesses can support that better in terms of building the right environment and cultures?

Henrietta: It's such an interesting one because tech's not alone in that you speak to say those in the construction engineering sector and many say similar they're really focused on building entrance into the industry building that pipeline but still find that they're not getting that same level of retention and what might be causing that might be different for every organization you know the first thing is talk to people find out is there something about your culture that perhaps makes women feel like they can't progress in your organisation.

I’m a big fan of your people managers are your culture so that piece of how you train your people managers the people that staff will be engaging with day to day to ensure that your environment feels and is inclusive to people of all different genders so that sort of piece of could be different for every organisation something that comes up a lot is the sort of quotes leaky pipeline so i've had some really really good meetings for folks to understand why it is that perhaps gender diversity and more junior level roles seems to be going really well and then you sort of hit a sort of point in career progression where like you say you don't get the same number of women applying for the more senior roles or you get women leaving the organization and generally when i ask what age range are the individuals that that is happening to i get there oh they're normally between sort of you know early 30s early 40s.

It's about that point that you get to that level of career progression and the question then is well what's happening in a lot of women's lives at that time and the answer in a lot of cases is caring responsibilities child care in particular of course we'd love to be living in a much more equal society where expectation is 50/50 but still very much there is more expectation on women to take on more of the child care and actually if you look at that and go could we create more flexible environment that actually supports both men and women in progressing while not feeling like they're missing out on being a good parent is there anything about sort of organisational culture that makes it look like that does it look like senior managers are sort of in the office between 8 a.m and 8 p.m and don't spend time with their families because that could be something that is really impacting people wanting to progress.

Can you break down perhaps some of the stereotypes that progressing will mean that you can't be present and you can't be there to look after those around you and then like I say greater flexibility and greater role modeling of that supports men who as well as women because men also want to be there with their families and do want to be part of that journey so that's something that's a really important piece of looking at is that part of the issue and is there something there around caring responsibilities and creating the right environment that can make a big difference too.

Dom: Thank you back to the the chamber of commerce what are the objectives of the Greater Birmingham chamber of commerce and what's the strategy to make them happen?

Henrietta:y Yeah so we're here to unleash the potential of Greater Birmingham’s businesses and we're on a mission to connect support and grow businesses to make that happen so we help businesses with just about everything from finding their customers, growing their profiles, growing their networks locally through to trading internationally with a lot along the way on peer learning innovation support and representing businesses as a voice of business and behind the scenes like so we're an independent organisation so like any business you need that clear strategy that I spoke about earlier so um are we've built our strategy around five themes and ambitions.

I'll just summarize as customer, culture, community, commercial and core and core for us topically for today's podcast um is sort of physical premises yes but also digital architecture. It's that very much those sort of core systems processes environment that we need to succeed so we've been working through that three-year plan of key investments across achieving excellence in each of those areas to support driving the business.

Dom: Can you tell me a bit more about the phased approach for the for the chamber in terms of its tech transformation and how it benefits your colleagues the businesses you work with the people you support?

Henrietta: Yeah of course um so I think like a lot of mid-sized businesses the pandemic was a bit of an eye opener yeah having to send everyone to work from home uh when we were at that point primarily still on all on-site servers mostly desktops rather than laptops very sort of uh outdated approach to tech shall we say that we sort of made do and mend with for many many years um it was a real life eye opener into how much we needed to change and quickly so the team did an amazing job sort of getting us through the sort of lockdown and uh complete with that work from home period and then when we were all back in the office it was the right what do we need to do to move this forward?

Stage one was all about resilience it was all about getting our systems to where they needed to be we had a lot of outdated systems you know 20 year old finance system that didn't really talk to anything else um sort of like I say all the on-site servers we weren't even on office 365 so it was that core phase of right resilience let get us to a really good place, beef up security get us to essential points on uh on our core areas.

The next phase then was about how do we improve the customer digital experience but also improve efficiency internally so improving our data architecture improving the way systems talking to each other and critically replacing what was lots of different systems so email marketing event platform website all sorts of different areas separate systems that didn't talk to each other so you know email marketing that didn't talk to CRM with one simple system purchased from a provider that specialise in membership organisations so actually really understand what it is that we're looking to do um and that fully integrates again with CRM so we can get much better at how we understand how our members are engaging with us and we've been much more targeted focused and effective in how we're engaging and with that came that sort of member platform so again our members can be much more effective in using their benefits online um simple things like a sort of login section and much more personalisation through that so that's was the second phase.
We're now into phase three um which is firstly making absolutely optimal use of everything we now have so we've got lots of internal programs around greater automation of particular communications targeting of particular communications um and the sort of next phase in developing that sort of core member facing offer as well as some of that internal efficiencies piece we've also under the steer of our fabulous board um got an internal group looking at ai in digitalisation more broadly so members of staff drawn from across our different chamber teams who are developing their awareness and understanding they're never going to be experts they're never going to be sort of ai consultants.

But I think it's critical as an organisation to have that essential knowledge of what potentially advances in technology could do for us and then working through identifying those areas that they look at and go why do we do it like that that's so admin heavy that's so repetitive that process there's got to be a better way of doing this so that we can build it into our next phase of digital transformation fantastic and what do you feel that the impact's been at that to this point to date so there's lots of change that's happened there and change management is a thing that can happen we have to advance there's cyber risks there's collaboration communication all those things that we need to meet.

Dom: What's the impact on the business been?

Henrietta: Oh it's been fantastic it's not been easy getting total adoption like you say it's a piece of culture change as much as anything else when you're asking folks to work in a slightly different way to the way that they have been and sort of trust the technology more rather than the manual work around and that's a continual process you know we're still continually working through there's more we can do here there's better ways of doing this and sort of building our team's confidence and using those new systems but already the impact we're seeing first on how our customers are engaging with us and how our members are using the sort of new online platform and sort of increases in event bookings increases in engagement content increase in subscribers to newsletters some sort of core metrics that we look at.

But also our ability to then track how our members are and aren't engaging we've got much more sophisticated in being able to look at that engagement are our members utilising their benefits each quarter because that will obviously be a good good model to look at for propensity to renew if they've used it they're more likely to they haven't have a strategy then right exactly and we can then be more targeted of hey you know we see that you haven't utilised your benefits at this quarter how can we best engage it what are your priorities how can we best fit up to that so it's been a big improvement there's still a long way to go i will hasten to add i'm not going to pretend that we're sort of you know some sort of totally tech-versus business now we're still working on that journey but already there's been big improvements.

Dom: It's great to hear that that was the user-centric benefit as well as how that ties into the data that you're able to to now track and inform the strategy moving forward which will ultimately support your growth which is which is great to hear. What benefits do you see for businesses to join there at the local chamber of commerce?

Henrietta: Yeah it's pretty varied we work with everyone from startups to multinationals but the way you'd sort of summarise it at a high level is it is that increasing profile and accessing networks whether that's through introductions for a higher level of members or through our news channels across all levels of membership it's quite a noisy world I think it's fair to say and one of the questions we answer is how do you cut through how do you find the right people how do you get your brand in front of the right people within the regions that profile and networks piece is really key.

 There's also a lot on best practice and peer learning whether that's sort of understanding opportunities to trade internationally, innovation supports our core campaigns around things such as digital transformation um we do a lot around transition to net zero leadership and management best practice all sorts of different areas all working for and with our members on that sort of peer learning and best practice sharing for instance even at startup level we have a startup and small business academy to help those right at the early stage whereas perhaps those say in the later stage of their business they may be more interested in how they influence the environment around them which is another key area that we work on.

It's that piece of representing businesses views communicating with stakeholders and looking to create the best possible environment for businesses to grow in the region.

Dom: With the UK and Europe's political atmosphere ever changing how do businesses protect themselves?

Henrietta: Oh it's an interesting one isn't it um I keep saying it'd be lovely to have a boring year eventually at some point a boring normal year that's all we all need we're not going to get it are we definitely not um yeah it does feel like we've we've just moved over the last few years it's been crisis response crisis response.

You know we had Brexit response, COVID pandemic response, energy crisis, labour market shortages and now we know the geopolitical environment is probably the most fraught it's been for quite some time and it's a fascinating year when you look at elections globally as well so all sorts of change on the horizon um and the the answer is really it's it's core business practice isn't it control your controllables um and if you fail to plan you plan to fail so having that sort of vision strategy direction the things that as an organisation you know are going to help you continue to develop keep moving forward and being live to opportunities because within any sort of challenge there's always opportunity for well-run businesses to sort of continue growing and developing so that sort of control the controllables keep focused on the plan and don't let sort of the reactive environment we've got into sort of seep into the way of doing business.

Dom: Great advice Henrietta, I've got one final question for you that we ask all our guests um if there was if there was someone else that you could see on our podcast someone that's inspired you influenced you with that human side of tech in mind who is it you'd recommend?

Henrietta: Oh I've got two for you um so first would be actually your Chief Executive Charlie Blakemore, who i think just perfectly epitomizes the combination of human and tech we're very lucky at the chamber that Charlie's one of our non-executive directors and I’ve certainly learned a lot from him and he's been brilliant at that sort of constructive challenge and steer on some of that digital journey for us so definitely Charlie.

Dom: I agree we're very lucky to be working with Charlie.

Henrietta: Fantastic I'm sure you've got him in your sights for a future podcast. The other i'd suggest is probably if you if you could get him Ben Francis at Gymshark what they've been doing is an organisation that is scaled so rapidly around identifying customer trends data understanding sort of how the environment's involving and how they need to keep adapting their product offering it's really really interesting particularly as i say how they've scaled so quickly so would be a good guest for a future podcast.

Dom: It sure would thank you very much Henrietta thank you for joining us it's been fantastic to hear about your journey your career and your journey to be the CEO of the Greater Birmingham Chamber of Commerce and all the fantastic work that the Chamber are doing as well with the local community and businesses thank you very much for joining us.

Henrietta: Thank you very much for having me along!