LORD STEPHEN K. GREEN ON LEADING & CALLING IN THE MARKETPLACE*

Stephen Green joined The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) in 1982.   In 1998, he was appointed to the Board of HSBC Holdings plc.  He became Group Chief Executive in 2003 and Group Chairman 2006. HSBC is one of the world's largest and most international banks. He retired from HSBC in December 2010.  Lord Green served as a Trustee of the British Museum, and as a non-executive director of BASF.se until 2010. He is Chairman of the Natural History Museum, Chairman of the International Advisory Council of the British Chambers of Commerce and is a member of the House of Lords European Union Select Committee. He chairs a charitable foundation which mobilises support for the work of the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Anglican Communion. Stephen Green has written four books – Serving God? Serving Mammon? [1996] Good Value, Choosing a Better Life in Business [2009], Reluctant Meister - How Germany's Past is Shaping its European Future [2014] and The European Identity – Historical and Cultural Realities We Cannot Deny [2015].  The Wall Street Journal endorsed his book Good Value saying, Stephen Green is in a universe of one:  the only chairman of a major international bank who is also an ordained minister of the Church of England.”  

*This blog is Part I of three posts based on an interview by Dr. Richard J. Goossen with Lord Stephen Green on February 8, 2016.  Lord Green will be the afternoon keynote speaker at the Entreprneurial Leaders Conference, Toronto, November 16, 2016.

R – For many years you were an executive leader in a very large financial institution, an ordained priest and an author--how did you balance those activities?

S – I have never been a full time priest.  I have never run a parish and never taken a full time job in the church.  It was never part of my perception of what I was called to do. The executive leader - that was a journey that I found myself taking more out of serendipity—at least at the time it seemed that way—than out of conscious planning. I began my career in the British civil service, and left after a few years for management consultancy. Why did I leave the civil service? Because I found myself bored and unstretched. I wrote out of the blue to McKinsey & Company saying, here am I and these are the things that I have done - which included a spell at MIT in Boston on a fellowship, which broadened my horizons hugely. McKinsey invited me for an interview - and I ended up working for them.  That was an important turning point in my life because I guess I could have easily stayed in the British civil service for the rest of my career.

After a few years I went from consulting (I don't think I ever saw myself as making an entire career in consulting) to the Bank [HSBC] in Hong Kong.  I signed a contract for two years.  I thought that I would be doing it for at least four - on the basis that you don’t do anything that's worth doing just for two years. It ended up being 28 years. The connecting thread in all this was that I had always been interested in developing countries - emerging markets, as they later came to be called.  In McKinsey I did a lot of work in developing country environments and then of course the Bank is quintessentially an emerging market bank. I and my family lived in Hong Kong for 12 years. So there is a connecting thread, but I can’t claim that it was a carefully planned career strategy.

R – I don’t imagine that there has been another Chairman and CEO of HSBC who has been an ordained priest.  How did people react?

S – In the Church of England the notion of a non-stipendary minister is quite well established. There are a small number of people in reasonably senior executive positions in that situation. In banks I can’t think of any other, but it is not completely strange. How did it happen?  I found my encouragement to explore this route coming from within, but also from some friends and mentors.  For a while I was quite active in the church [Church of England] when I first came back from Hong Kong.  We settled in London and in the local parish church I was taking services every couple of weeks.  Now I do it less often (partly because I am away more).  So it became a part of life. I was ordained in Hong Kong in 1988: it is not a step I ever regretted. In part because of this role, I found myself wanting to write. The first book I wrote was in 1996 called, Serving God? Serving Mammon?” This book was an attempt to explore what it meant to be a Christian and working in the financial services.  Whilst you don’t have to be an ordained priest to write that kind of a book, I think the training you get to become an ordained priest is relevant and to some extent being a priest gave me the challenge to write it.

R – What takes up your time on a daily basis these days?

S – At this stage of my life I am theoretically retired.  In fact, I have retired twice, once from the Bank and once from my Government position as Trade Minister.  I no longer travel incessantly as I did in both those careers, and I suppose I would describe myself as agreeably busy - and certainly in a very varied way. But at this stage of life, as at any other, I ought to be challenging myself as to whether what I am doing is indeed doing what I am being called to do. I chair the Natural History Museum in London - which is a marvellous privilege.  I also sit on the European Union Select Committee in the House of Lords - whose subject matter is for obvious reasons both fascinating and topical. I chair a couple of charities, one for the Archbishop of Canterbury.  I do a certain amount of public speaking, typically with respect to two books that I have recently written:  Reluctant Meister - How Germany's Past is Shaping its European Future (2014) and The European Identity – Historical and Cultural Realities We Cannot Deny (2015).

R – What is your calling?

S -- I would have probably answered that differently at different stages of my life. As a student, I wondered whether I was called to full time clerical ministry: but I ended up spending 28 years as a banker and then three years as trade minister in the British government.  I believe that that was a calling.  I think Christians should always expect to have a specific calling, meaning that they perceive that are doing what they are called by God to do using the gifts that they have been given.  That doesn’t mean being in full time church ministry.  

I think there are two important manifestations of calling.  Firstly, you have to be able to tell yourself that what you are doing is going to be making some form of a contribution to the common good, to social well-being.  That goes for whatever you are doing, whether you are a clergy person, doctor, teacher or banker.  For me, it was important that I be able to say to myself whilst in the financial services sector that I am doing what I am called to do, that I can see why I am being called to do that and that I can see how it is making a difference.  

Secondly, I think that there are obvious challenges for how you comport yourself in terms of ethical codes.  How do you handle issues, all the way from the obvious to the subtle but profoundly important?  How do you manage expenses? How do you deal with other people?  Do you lie to other people? Are you being honest with people for whom you are responsible about how they are doing at work?  Are you being honest with clients? Are you, in general, being challenged in the spirit by such questions each day? That is part of what it means to say that you have a calling. That should be true for bankers as much as it is true for people who are in what are sometimes called “the caring professions" (which is a phrase that I rather object to because it implies that other kinds of professions are typically uncaring.  I don’t accept that.)

R – How have you been entrepreneurial and innovative, whether in work or in your church involvement?

S – I am not entrepreneurial in the conventional sense.  I have never started a company. I have never started a business.  My career has always been either in large corporates or in government.  I started my career in the British civil service, went into the private sector in consulting and then into banking - then did three years as a governed minister, so that in some sense the wheel turned full circle. So I have been in those kinds of domains rather than being a self-made entrepreneur.  I know a number of people who have done extraordinarily well in entrepreneurship and have compelling entrepreneurial gifts. I admire them hugely - from afar!

Having said that I believe that I have gifts that have to do with helping organizations to evolve and change both strategically and managerially. One of the things I am really proud of is some work we did recently in the Church of England for the Archbishops of Canterbury and of York.  The work involved establishing a new approach to two things:  one, the training and development of people in senior leadership positions; and the other, the process for identifying people that are in mid-career and in time may be called to senior leadership positions and supporting them appropriately.  We have put in place a set of arrangements and processes and the church has put some significant investment into tailored programmes - including from business school providers - for bishops.  This has been going for about 18 months - and needs to keep going for about 20-30 years! It has begun outstandingly well and it is a real pleasure to see the way it is unfolding.  That is certainly innovative in the church context. There are both similarities and important differences between the church as an organism and corporates - or indeed the secular world more generally. So there are lessons which I think the church does need to learn about leadership over the next generation - but they are subtle lessons: it is not a question of simplistic and naive imitation.