Lisa Rowles is the Global People Director of HORIBA MIRA in the UK as well as being Global HR Strategy Leader for the parent company, HORIBA. She tells Lynda Ennis, Co-founder and CEO of Ennis & Co Group, that she is driven not by titles or kudos but by wanting to add genuine value.
Lynda Ennis: You’ve had an amazing, award-winning career in human resources, beginning as a recruitment consultant before joining MIRA, which was later acquired by HORIBA, and now holding dual senior leadership roles in the UK entity and the global organisation. Tell me about your journey.
Lisa Rowles: I knew from an early age that I wanted to work in business and with people. I chose to study for a general business management degree at Birmingham City University to keep my options as open as possible and chose to specialise in human resources towards the end of my course. After completing my studies, I walked around town with a copy of my CV, as you did in those days, and went into a recruitment company to broaden my search. Their response was that they had a vacancy themselves and were looking for someone with my type of background, so I agreed to join them. As part of my work, I was based on site at MIRA, which was then the Motor Industry Research Association, as a recruitment consultant and this led to me being asked by MIRA to join their in-house HR department.
Thirty years later, I am still working for the same company based at the same site but, during that time, I’ve been supported by some amazing leaders to take on a number of other external roles alongside my HORIBA MIRA work, each of which have equated to full-time jobs in their own right. This has allowed me to spread my skill set more broadly without having to leave.
LE: It’s interesting to hear about your concurrent external roles. One of the things that is coming through my conversations with leaders, and from my own experience as well, is the benefit of moving horizontally before going upwards to broaden your skill base. I imagine your external roles fulfilled a similar purpose.
LR: Absolutely. For me, I’ve always been a person who is motivated by adding value rather than the kudos of titles or moving up through their hierarchy. To add value, I always felt I needed to be one step ahead in terms of my understanding, particularly being a woman in a very male-dominated environment in the early days. Because I was working in a central professional role rather on the technology side, there was often an assumption that I was a bit of an admin function. I wanted to walk into a room knowing more than people thought I did and really hold my own in terms of my knowledge. To do that, I needed to get a broader skill set, and so I would read lots of technical journals on topics related to what I was recruiting for or supporting management from a consultancy perspective. I wanted to understand the technology, and I didn’t want to be caught out by not having enough knowledge.
LE: I guess that sense of curiosity goes back to your recruitment days. The best recruitment people are nosy because they need to know about the area they are recruiting for to be able to ask the right questions.
LR: That’s right, but I think I also had a genuine curiosity, and I wanted to pay people respect by showing an interest in what they did. Acquiring a very broad knowledge outside my specific specialism was a key thing for me, and so a lot of the external positions that I’ve held have been about gaining that broader awareness. It’s also added value to the organisation, so it works both ways.
LE: You’ve had an amazing career rising through the ranks of MIRA. Alongside the ‘day job’ of Global People Director at HORIBA MIRA in the UK, you are also the GLOBAL HR Strategy Leader for the HORIBA parent company. How do you balance your different roles?
LR: Well, that’s a question I get asked a lot. I wear quite a few different hats now because I also run a small coffee roasting business after training to be a professional coffee roaster in 2017.
In terms of my corporate roles, I know this is something that a lot of leaders say, but the only way I can do it is with amazing people around me because I simply can’t be everywhere. HORIBA has 48 companies in 28 countries, so I need to have great people who feel confident and trusted to do their stuff. It’s not a question of just delegating tasks to people. It’s about making sure they are in a great place in their careers, and if that means developing them to enable them to achieve that, then I will invest my time in doing that.
I’ve got better over the years at deciding between what I’ve been asked to do and what I think is going to add most value. I’m working for a Japanese parent company while being headquartered at a UK-based organisation for my other job. Obviously, they have different styles, and the diversity is a positive thing. But sometimes I have to say to people that while I understand why they might want to do something, it isn’t going to add the most value. I have to choose the things I’m going to focus on to bring the most benefit to the most people.
One of the challenges is that I’m working across different cultures that work at a different pace with different hierarchical structures. I have to remember which one I’m working with on any day and make sure I don’t move too quickly if I want to take people with me. For example, if I’m working in a particular country that is earlier in the journey on something, I may have to slow down and be adaptable.
LE: We are in an industry where everyone is now obsessing about the future dominance of China but people are finding it difficult to adapt to the Chinese way of working. As someone who works across multiple countries, what advice would you give to leaders in terms of adapting to new working cultures?
LR: As someone with a leadership role with a global scope, it took me a little while to realise that it is sometimes better for leaders to be quiet and listen rather than just dive in. I see a lot of people coming up through their leadership journey where they feel they’ve got to have something to say on every issue. Actually, the Western way of always being confident and trying to say something of value is the opposite to how a lot of our Eastern cultures work.
In our training, we talk about having a golf or rugby approach. The Japanese style is the golf approach. The four of you tee off together but you let each member of the team take their turn without interruption. The rugby mentality is that everyone wants to win as a team and they’ve all got the right intention, but it’s going to be a bit rough and messy and they might interrupt each other along the way.
I think to be able to sit in a genuinely multinational meeting, whether in-person or on a video conference call, you have to appreciate and respect the fact that if someone is very quiet, it doesn’t mean they haven’t got a lot to say. It may just be that their style and culture is different. This is something that I’ve had to coach with some of my more junior UK colleagues.
LE: Reflecting on your experience and looking at today’s industry, do the same kind of career pathways exist, or do you feel that emerging leaders are more focused on moving up vertically instead of horizontally?
LR: In certain parts of the industry, I see a trend of younger generations assuming that the only way to progress is to keep jumping upwards. However, there is also a recognition among some of our youngest people that by broadening their knowledge, they will progress naturally, and it isn’t just about getting to the next grade. People who are beginning their careers or changing careers need to be curious about things outside their current role, and I do a lot of coaching with youngsters about the need to look more broadly. That is how you broaden your network as well and improve your chances of being spotted for different opportunities. If you’re seen to be curious, the opportunities will follow. If you remain on a single, narrow track, you’ll only get to the next stage when people feel you are ready but you’ll never bring anything else to the party.
In terms of your specific question, I do feel that the career pathways still exist within the industry, but we have to accept that people move around a lot more than they used to. That’s OK as long as they’re doing it for the right reason. I don’t like to see people jumping from job to job just for the sake of it. There’s no substance in that approach, and while it may work in the short term, it often leads to setbacks when the foundations for long-term success aren’t in place.
Breadth of knowledge and breadth of experience is what people need to focus on rather than just chasing the dream.
LE: Do you think enough is being done to help mid-career people progress to leadership roles? My observation is there isn’t necessarily sufficient investment in development and training while, on the other side of the coin, there is a reluctance among younger people to make the sacrifices and put in the hard yards that previous generations used to do to progress their careers. What’s your perception?
LR: That’s a great question, and funnily enough I’m currently working with some very senior leaders in the global organisation to get them thinking not about their immediate succession plans at top management level but the steps after that. When I talk to them about who they think should be the next person for a senior role, I ask them who’s the next person behind them. I often get the reaction. that it doesn’t matter at the moment, but it is key to future success to ensure we don’t have a leadership gap in the future.
The level of skills that we now need in senior and global leadership roles is so broad that we’ve just run our first global leadership programme for the global business, which we developed in-house with external executive coaches. The men and women on the programme are typically senior commercial or senior technical people in a local entity, so they’re not ready for the top level of the succession plan but the next one after that.
Getting the senior leaders to embrace the urgency and importance of this has been demonstrated through the initial investment and they can support this high priority programme with great role model behaviours.
LE: You were leading Group HR for MIRA in 2015 when the Japanese company HORIBA acquired the business. Can you talk through some of the challenges that you had to manage, including the cultural integration, and how you approached it?
LR: When we went out to look for investment in the business, we were seeking organisations that were going to cherish the knowledge and the people that we had, and what we were trying to achieve as a business. We were also conscious that our business structure meant we could easily be pulled part, with some bits sold and some bits kept, in a private equity-type scenario. We already had links with HORIBA, which is now our parent company, and we knew that they were very people-focused and driven by very similar values in terms of people being at the centre of the organisation. Although they are typically a products business and we are a consultancy, they had the same ethos.
I spent a lot of time talking to them as a potential purchasers before the acquisition to look at where the similarities were. We already had a very engaged workforce who had a lot of trust in the management, even though people were worried about going into ownership for the first time. Having had a lot of due-diligence meetings with HORIBA, I was able to talk to our teams about their people practices and reassure them that they were similar to MIRA from a cultural perspective.
Although people were worried, I’m proud to say that out of a workforce of 400-500, no-one jumped ship due to the sale. We put a huge effort into our internal communications right through the process and did everything we could to be completely open. We worked closely with union reps, we established a staff information and consultation committee, we posted FAQs on the intranet and we held forums for team members to ask any questions they wanted. People could also just drop in to the HR department if they were worried about something.
Because we had previously had good and open internal communications about why we needed investment, the sale to HORIBA MIRA was really just an evolution of what we’d been talking about over the years. We had reached a stage where we would either stagnate or, worst case scenario, not survive in our current form. The sale was the opportunity to shoot for the stars.
LE: During the sale process and the huge internal communications effort that you’ve described, tell me about your leadership style in making sure everything went to plan.
LR: There came a point in my career when I realised that I didn’t need to know everything, but I needed a lot of really good people who do. As a leader, you need people within the various teams who know their stuff and are able to give you the necessary bandwidth. So, in terms of us becoming part of HORIBA MIRA, the operational HR team, union, management team and the senior management team were all doing their bit. My role was to make sure those parts worked together. We had amazing experts who were fully involved and engaged in the project to the extent that if something unexpected came up, we knew we could deal with it.
LE: Reflecting on your career, have there been any pivotal moments or decisions that have shaped your leadership style?
LR: I’m sure everyone would say yes to that. About 10 or 15 years ago, one of the extra roles that I agreed to do in addition to my HORIBA MIRA responsibilities was to sit on the external panel of a trade body in the defence security sector. I was approached by one of the committee members and asked if I would take over as chair of the board of the company. I remember laughing. This was a membership trade organisation, representing all the companies in the UK that were involved in defence work and the main interface with the MoD. I just couldn’t understand why they would want me, with my limited experience of defence, but the person who approached me said he really wanted me to do it. This was a pivotal moment because, through his explanation of why they wanted me and his lovely coaching, it made me realise that you don’t have to know everything to be a leader. You just need great people with you. When I protested that I didn’t know enough about defence, he replied, ‘But I do, and I’ll be your vice-chair.’ It really brought home to me that if you’ve got people you really trust who have got your back, you really don’t need to know everything. If you have a great relationship with the people you’re working with, you can figure it out. What he didn’t have in terms of business management experience, I did. Together, we got things done and actually changed the structure of the company.
Another pivotal moment was when we had a very tricky HR issue in China about 15 years ago. I remember having a conversation with Declan Allen, who is now Managing Director of HORIBA MIRA, who was Chief Operating Officer at the time, about me flying out to our China office to manage a complex HR issue. Declan has told me that due to the large number of high priority items for me at the time it was only worth the time and expense of me flying out if I could achieve a successful outcome within the visit. I had a successful trip and closed the issue – it was not a significant task. I’ve never had such a strong sense of ‘I’m going to achieve this and prove that I can do it’. The challenge had been laid down and it made me realise that if you set your stall out, it puts you in a completely different mindset about achieving success. I remember saying, almost rebelliously, that I would do what was asked, and off I went to China. A week later, I flew back to the UK, walked into the office and was able to say, ‘Job done. Anything else?’ I was chuffed to bits that I’d been able to resolve what were very big challenges. This was a pivotal moment of empowerment and created significant trust in an inspiring leadership relationship.
LE: You’ve won a lot of awards as an executive in the automotive industry. What does this recognition mean to you, and how do you see it influencing the next generation of female leaders in automotive?
LR: As someone who has always been driven by wanting to add value, I’ve been bowled over by the recognition, though I consider the awards to be as much for the people I work with as for me. I can’t do my role on my own. That would be impossible. What also delights me is the recognition for my profession. Over the years, I’ve heard Human Resources being described as a back-office function, a support function or an admin function but my institutional fellowship is the equivalent of an engineering fellowship, and winning an award is a recognition of the importance of my role.
For me, I always feel that an award comes with some small print on the back that says it should be used for the power of good, that it comes with a responsibility to do something positive with it. Otherwise, what’s the point? So, I’ve been trying to use my success as a platform. For example, in a few weeks’ time, I’m going to India, where there are about 500 HORIBA people in various locations. I’ve got one session with early-career female colleagues to talk to them about what inclusion means to them and how I can support them to overcome any barriers to progress. A few days later I have a session with the country’s senior management team to talk about DE&I and what more can be done to support diversity in all its forms.
LE: Who have been your most significant mentors or inspirations in your career?
LR: When I first joined HORIBA MIRA in the mid-90s, the MD was John Wood. He was a proper gentleman – a lovely, lovely guy who cared so much about people. During my time as a recruitment consultant, I had encountered a lot of business leaders with big and not very attractive egos but what I learned from John is that you could lead a company successfully by looking after the people. He was genuinely trustworthy and commanded huge amounts of respect, even when he had to make some tough decisions.
Declan, my current MD, has the same focus on people. He’s an amazing coach, and we prioritise time to consider and drive our strategy for supporting and engaging our people – with the ‘Best Team’ being the bedrock of our company game plan. Over the last few years, we have developed our company culture to achieve ‘Great Employer’ status through our employee net promoted score. Declan and John have instilled in me the philosophy that people come before everything else. If they have personal stuff going on, that comes before the work stuff. My role is not just about the function of managing people. It’s about seeing everyone as an individual, which has informed a lot of the activity I’ve done in terms of diversity. I want people to have the ability to be their authentic selves.
