Grant Duncan - Looking Beyond the Car in Front: A Guide to Making the Right Career Choices at the Right Time

A well-written and highly useable take on how to take control of a career and maximise potential, illustrated by fascinating interviews with leading executives which bring this vividly to life.

William Eccleshare, Worldwide CEO of Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc

A practical and thoughtful career progression manual, rich in analysis, action-oriented advice and sound common sense.

Dame Cilla Snowball, Governor at Wellcome Trust, Director at Genome Research Ltd (Wellcome Sanger Institute), Non Executive Director Derwent London plc

A genuinely insightful guide to help people approach their career choices in a more proactive way, combining a playbook of techniques with the real-world journeys of senior executives.

Gavin Patterson, President and Chief Revenue Officer, Salesforce

A very practical and highly readable guide to career planning by a recognised leadership practitioner and thought-leader.

Stevie SpringCBE, Chairman of The British Council

How do you plot the best career path? How do you know youre heading in the right direction professionally? How do you effectively make a shift into a new industry about which you have little knowledge or experience? Looking Beyond the Car in Front, written by leading recruitment expert Grant Duncan, guides both senior and mid-career business executives in taking a more assertive and strategic longer-term approach to career choices. No other careers book includes insights from so many people who have steered their careers to the top of their professions.

The professional journey were on is typically the result of a mixture of hard work, good luck, and brainpower, but not always proactive choices and decisions. Drawing on 40 years experience of working with, talking to, and assessing executives with many different career journeys, the book offers an approach to set a longer-term mindset and a toolkit to help those who are thinking about their future career plans and, particularly, a career change. Grant has worked alongside some of the most successful business leaders, and the book offers unique insights from interviews with CEOs, successful entrepreneurs, and public and not-for-profit leaders from multiple sectors, including Roger Davis, Chairman of BUPA, Stevie Spring, Chairman of the British Council, Mind and Co-op NED, Stephen Carter, Informa plc Chair, Tim Davie, BBC Director General, and Alan Jope, Unilever plc CEO.

When following the car in front may seem the easiest, safest, and most rational course of action, it will not necessarily take you in the right direction. This book provides the perfect front-seat navigator in steering your next career move and for those supporting career development, including HR directors, coaches, and career management consultants.

Grant Duncan is Managing Director, Media, Entertainment, and Digital at global leadership advisory consultancy, Korn Ferry. He has 40 years of business experience gained in two professions. Grants first career saw him rise to leadership roles in a number of UK advertising agencies, latterly as CEO of Publicis. His second career has been in executive recruitment, initially at global executive search firm, Spencer Stuart, before joining Korn Ferry.

A GUIDE TO MAKING THE RIGHT CAREER CHOICES AT THE RIGHT TIME

GrantDuncan

First published 2022
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2022 Grant Duncan

The right of Grant Duncan to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book

ISBN: 978-1-032-13462-8 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-13463-5 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-003-22930-8 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003229308

Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC

To Sarah
My wife, my best friend, my navigator

Alan Jope

Amanda Mackenzie, OBE

Brent Hoberman, CBE

Caroline Hudack

Carrie Timms

Cecile Frot-Coutaz

Craig Mullaney

Dame Cilla Snowball, DBE

Dame Jayne-Anne Gadhia, DBE

Edgar Berger

Eve Williams

Gavin Patterson

Guy Laurence

Jeremy Haines

John Smith

Jonathan Lewis

Julietta Dexter

June Felix

Karen Blackett, OBE

Liv Garfield, CBE

Maria Kyriacou

Melanie Smith, CBE

MT Rainey, OBE

Nicola Mendelsohn, Baroness Mendelsohn, CBE

Oliver Snoddy

Rita Clifton, CBE

Roger Davis

Sir Peter Bazalgette

Sophie Adelman

Sophie Turner Laing, OBE

Stephen A. Carter, Baron Carter of Barnes, CBE

Stevie Spring, CBE

Tamara Ingram, OBE

Tim Davie, CBE

Toby Horry

Tristia Harrison

Val Gooding, CBE

William Eccleshare

Winnie Awa

Zillah Byng Thorne

Apparently, everybody has a book in them. In my case, it wasnt a potboiler or bodice-ripper. Instead, it was a business book, conceived and written during the Great Pandemic of 2020.

Despite being a business book, its quite autobiographical. The contents are a reflection of 40 years of my life spent in business, working initially in advertising and then as a headhunter. Its 30,000 or so words synthesise much of what Ive learnt during that time and for that I have to thank those people who had a profound influence on me.

For one, my father, born to a working-class family in the northeast of Scotland who, with a combination of natural intelligence, guile, charm, hard work, and at times, ruthlessness, escaped the narrow confines of a Scottish fishing village to become a successful international advertising executive, living and working in Asia, Latin America, and then London.

Somewhat to his disappointment, I also went into advertising but there learnt the art of adaptability and resilience, focusing on what really matters and how to get the best out of mercurial, brilliant people. From Nigel Clark, my boss at CDP, I learnt that you can be a respected leader as well as a nice guy, from Unilever executive Richard Rivers, how to think strategically, and from talented creative people like Robert Saville, Indra Sinha, and Tony Brignull, the art of sublime writing.

During my second career, I have learnt the science as well as the art of executive search in the gold standard cultures of Spencer Stuart and Korn Ferry.