Dr Matt Perkins became the CEO of Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) in January 2007. This was Matt’s first CEO position and also his first experience of working in the space industry. Striving to be the best leader he can be, he became a member of Footdown’s Esher Fifteen in November 2007.
SSTL is a highly innovative and disruptive space company, started 25 years ago by Professor Sir Martin Sweeting, a former PhD student at Surrey University. Sweeting “thought he could do something with small spacecraft at low cost” and subsequently proved he could. As a consequence, “space is more accessible now”.
Matt was both thrilled and daunted by the opportunity to become CEO of a space company: “As a child I was woken up to watch the first moon landing so, when asked would I like to work for a company that makes spacecraft, I thought of course I would, that would be great.”
When Matt took over as CEO, in January 2007, he assumed responsibility for what was then a business of 180 people with a requirement to deliver growth. To do this he had: “to be accepted into an environment which was very young and dynamic, even though the company was 22 years old.” It was a well-established company “with a very strong view of itself and where it was going, and what made it important. Without Footdown it would have been a much more demanding and difficult process than it has been.”
Finding Footdown
Matt found Footdown after looking in some detail at other leadership mentoring groups. He liked enough of what he saw of peer group learning to widen his search for the right group and quickly homed in on Footdown. “I thought, this has got something different about it. It was focussed on leadership, which was the key thing that I wanted to do more of. Choosing Footdown was a very simple decision.”
What made Footdown different? What is the focus of the other groups?
“It (the focus of the other groups) was more general business problems. How do I get more profit out of this? How do I expand in that area? Rather than, (in Footdown’s case) how do you make yourself a better leader? How do you motivate the team better? How do you find the solutions that are going to get the buy-in that you need to be successful?”
Has Matt lead SSTL successfully?
That Matt has taken the leadership lessons – learned during nearly 4 years of being a Footdown member – and applied them successfully is self-evident. Since Matt took over in January 2007, the company has grown from 180 employees to 350, turnover has increased to £82 million last year and is projected to continue this growth this year. And, in the kind of deal the owners of medium sized companies can usually only dream of, the company was sold two years ago to EADS Astrium, the massive European space company. EADS Astrium’s management has committed that SSTL will continue doing what it’s the best in the world at, being innovative in the space industry.
Being an endearingly modest and self-effacing man Matt is unwilling to take credit for SSTL’s outstanding success: “What the company has done is a fantastic achievement. There’s no one person you can pick out to say they’ve done a fantastic job, except for the founder…. he’s created a company that has gone on to do great things. But ultimately it’s the people in the company that make us successful. My job is to steer it in a particular direction, to make sure we don’t lose anything that’s important, that we take advantage of the available opportunities and we have a clear view of where we want to go and people that want to follow that view.
What part has Footdown played in SSTL’s success?
Matt is in no doubt that it was the continuing support of his Footdown group, the Esher Fifteen, that enabled him to lead the company to achieve so much. “I probably wouldn’t still be here if I hadn’t come to Footdown. The stresses and strains of the job, without that additional level of support and guidance from an independent group could possibly have been enough for me to say ‘this isn’t for me’. Footdown’s support always made it come down to ‘it’s a challenge, do you like a challenge or don’t you?’ Well yes I do actually. ‘So just get on and do it!’”
“I thought once I’ve got settled in the company, once I’m comfortable with what I’m doing, why will I need it (Footdown)? …Well the answer is you never get comfortable. There are always new challenges.”
So what are some of the ways that being a member has helped you to lead SSTL so successfully?
First of all, during the sale of the company two years ago: “Just having people to whom I could say ‘this is the position, this is what we’re trying to do, has anyone got any ideas of how to make it work better or are there any other options we should be thinking about? Should we float on the stock market? Should we take private equity? Should we be a trade sale?’ Just going through that process and getting advice from another group of people was really valuable and useful.”
And more recently: “I did a strategy presentation to our newest board member and I’d had a group meeting on the previous day. For 90 minutes I presented the material and the group told me what I’d got wrong which was fantastic. When I sat down and talked it through with the new board member, the questions he threw at me were questions I’d already had to answer.“
“So for me it’s a really valuable experience. It’s certainly easy to quantify the benefit. If it wasn’t I wouldn’t still be doing it.”
“One of the other things that Footdown helps me with is gaining an understanding of the most important things about SSTL. What are the things I have to preserve and what are the things I can change over time for the company to grow and be successful? At SSTL we have a culture which is unique and an approach to the space industry that is disruptive, and these are things we have to preserve at all costs.
How has being a member of Footdown helped you to home in on the areas you can change, and those you must preserve?
“The best example I can give you is an Esher Fifteen meeting we had earlier this year where Roger Harrup asked a simple question: ‘what’s the purpose of your business?’ I thought I knew the answer but didn’t know it from our shareholder’s perspective. That set me thinking and I asked my owners who said ‘we want you to be innovative and we want you to take a bearable level of risk to do new things.’ We do that already, that’s just normal practice for us. Our reason for being is to give 350 people the opportunity to deliver something into space and get involved with something that appears really challenging and exotic. We’ve got 350 space enthusiasts working in the company. They work here because in 5 years they’ll work on at least 2 or 3 missions that will go into orbit.
Prompted by Roger Harrup’s question Matt and his team thought long and hard about how to reconcile what the EADS Astrium owners think the purpose is with what SSTL thinks it is. “We came to the conclusion that, at a minimum, we have to fulfil the owner’s expectations but ultimately we have to show that SSTL can stand alone and behave in the way it needs to, and attract the people it needs to, in order to deliver on where we think it should be.
In common with many good leaders, Matt recognises the importance of having a strong, shared vision for the company: “SSTL’s vision is changing the economics of space, and that’s exactly what we are doing.”
You’ve singled out Roger Harrup, how about the other Footdown speakers?
“Oh brilliant! Colour Works was really good.” (We look at his blocks.) “I’m blue, but the order of the rest of them is completely determined by the job I have to do and just learning that has been really useful. You can change the way you behave and the way you think, based on the requirements of the role. My next dominant colour is green – I have to keep 350 people happy and motivated to work at SSTL., I’m not overly directive (red) because I have a great team who know more about space than I do so I encourage them to be directive. I’m not overly extrovert (yellow) either. I showed it to my wife and she said ‘yes that’s you exactly’.
“There’s the cardiac coherence activity with Alan Watkins that was really interesting. I’ve used that breathing technique to calm myself a number of times in meetings and it’s very powerful. Nigel Risner is very effective at asking awkward questions and challenging you. It works for learning more about yourself and how to cope with the stress of being challenged. I’ve enjoyed every one of the talks that we’d had from the various speakers.”
Trust is one of the recurring themes from interviews with other Footdown members. Is that true for you too?
“It’s great just knowing there’s a group of people that I can go to, raise any issue, be completely exposed, trust them to be supportive and they have been in every single case. I’d relocated from Yorkshire and didn’t know many people in the area so who could I go and ask advice from? Finding a group that provides that support was extremely important. “The effect of knowing there’s a group who want you to be successful, who want you to find a way to come up with the right decision and want to help to make sure you do is highly empowering.”
How about the group’s leader, James Dubois?
“Having James as the group’s leader is fantastic. The one to one meetings we have are excellent and very focussed. He keep saying ‘why haven’t you done what you said you were going to do?’ which is exactly what I need. I get too many requirements on my time and prioritising them is one of the biggest challenges I have. James makes sure I’ve got my objectives sorted out for the year and keeps asking me what progress I’m making against them. The Goalscape tool is ideal for tracking them; I use it all the time. It’s a really simple, visual way of seeing everything I’m supposed to be doing and so when I see James we can talk about ‘so that was one of your objectives what progress have you made in the last month?’
What have you done differently as a result of being a member?
“Probably the most important change is better balancing of my work and personal life. My goals for the year now include work, family and personal objectives. This has resulted in me doing more activities I enjoy as well as delivering my work objectives. Doing more things with my family has been great fun and really important to me.
“My involvement with Footdown has helped me develop my approach to be more people oriented. My mind is focused on questions like have we got the right people, do they know where they’re going, why they’re going there, how are they going to be successful, how are they going to enjoy working here? My goal is simple, I want to make SSTL the best place to work. When we achieve that we will easily attract and retain the best people.
”I meet every new employee and discuss this approach and our core values with them. I feel that this brings people together, making them want to be part of something, knowing that they should expect to see certain behaviours from me. I’ve learned from Footdown that how I behave (as a leader) will impact every single person in the company. SSTL’s four core values are: openness and honesty, commitment, team spirit and valuing each other. They’re also my core values and I have to show this is the case by the way I behave. Everyone that works here knows that if I don’t behave appropriately they have to come and tell me and I have to respond positively.”
Finally, what would you say to other leaders thinking about joining a group?
“The value you can get from membership of Footdown far outweighs the cost. You will improve your business more quickly than you expect, you’ll improve your home life more quickly than you expect, you’ll be a more effective better leader more quickly than you expect, and for me, that will result in your company being a better company.”