The generation game - with a common purpose
What do a hard-headed banker and his idealistic daughter have in common?
Banker Tim Murley is a man mainly concerned with the cold, hard numbers of the business world. But when members of his staff kept telling him what a positive experience they’d enjoyed on Common Purpose’s Matrix leadership development programme, he finally decided to test the waters himself.
Tim was so impressed with his own experience that when he heard about the organisation’s new programme, Frontrunner, for pre-career leaders, he encouraged his daughter, Rebecca, to apply.
“Matrix opened my eyes to my employer’s wider role in the community,” says Tim, the Managing Director of Intermediary and Specialist Banking for Abbey National plc, “And it changed the way I operate as a manager. Before the programme, I concentrated solely on day-to-day business, but the broader perspective that Common Purpose gave me changed my outlook. I began to see much more clearly how our organisation fitted into the wider community – and how that knowledge could also be good for business. Although Rebecca is a very different person to me, I knew that Common Purpose would be a great option for her too.”
Twenty-one-year-old Rebecca is a young person with a mission to inspire others. She has recently completed a degree in Philosophy and Linguistics at York University and is the first to admit that her focus is very different to that of her father. “I need to find work rewarding and satisfying in a different way to my Dad,” she says. “It’s a far more personal thing for me. I need to be able to see how my work is directly benefiting others – which is one of the reasons I've decided to go into teaching. Dad has a much more commercial approach – but that’s appropriate when you work in banking.”
Following her father’s recommendation, Rebecca recently attended Frontrunner – a four-day residential programme targeted at pre-career people who have already shown evidence of leadership skills in their schools in society and which aims to encourage them to continue campaigning for change in their future careers.
“I found Frontrunner to be really inspirational,” she says. “Hearing from so many people from so many different walks of life who had made positive changes made me think ‘yes, it can be done!’
“The participants and speakers I met were really passionate about their work which I found to be infectious. I want to take that kind of energy and bring it to teaching. To meet such interesting people who had all brought about positive change in their own ways was truly motivating. For example, hearing Madi Sharma - Managing Director of Original Eastern Foods - speak about Asian women’s rights and what she’d achieved in life made me want to get out there and inspire others in my own way.”
The network of friends Rebecca developed following the Frontrunner programme will, she believes, stay with her. “I’d never met so many like-minded people when it comes to the really important issues in life. We created tremendously strong links. For example, when the London bombings occurred in July, shortly after the programme, we were all on the phone and email checking on each other’s safety and discussing ways we could help out anyone who needed transport. That says it all for me.”
The Matrix programme made Tim think a lot more about what was going in the community. “I began to get myself involved in Abbey’s wider activities after the programme,” he says. “Amongst other things, I chaired an employee disability forum and became a member of the Corporate & Social Responsibility Steering Group. I also became a Vice-Patron of a charity that helps people affected by strokes. As I delved further into what was happening in the area in which I live and work, I was amazed at the sheer extent of the positive initiatives - particularly in the voluntary sector - that I previously had no idea about. And given the nature of my role at Abbey, this new, wider focus actually helped me to develop a better understanding of the people I was dealing with, which was beneficial for business too – so it was good news all round.”
Although Rebecca and Tim are very different in what they do, both acknowledge that there are similarities in the way in which they go about their work. “We’re both very methodical and open to different ways of achieving things,” says Rebecca, “we’re both keen to see things really happening, and we like to be kept busy, getting restless if we have nothing to do. So I think Common Purpose particularly lives up to its name where my Dad and I are concerned.”
“Common Purpose helped me lift my head up and look around me to see what is really going on,” says Tim. “I just knew that a similar experience would be absolutely ideal for Rebecca given her choice of career. I wasn’t wrong.”
