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TRAFFORD BUSINESS connect
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February/March 2015
Phil Jones :At Managing Director of Brother UK, and President of Forever Manchester, Phil Jones, gave us an exclusive interview on his unique management style at one of the biggest retail brands in the world - Brother - plus how his two roles at Brother UK and Forever Manchester are mutually aligned. In previous editions of Trafford Business Connect we have covered events with Forever Manchester – one of our principal charity partners – and have featured reports on speeches by their President Phil Jones. Our last edition featured a report on the Forever Manchester initiative ‘RESET’ – a credible business model for corporate citizenship that supported the very communities enlightened businesses were located in. Phil briefly touched on the relationship forward thinking commerce had with their local communities, and its to this backdrop that Trafford Business Connect caught up with him at the Forever Manchester offices in the heart of City Centre Manchester.
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My ultimate wish is to encourage every single business within Greater Manchester to make a contribution to the community we know as Greater Manchester.
We started the interview by asking “How much autonomy
does Brother UK enjoy from Japanese parent Brother Group?” “I’m lucky I enjoy quite a lot of freedom. Brother have always had a good footprint as an International company in putting local leaders in charge of its International operations. This leads to a ‘Think Global, Act Local’ mentality. “Brother is a large International business, and there are many global strategic elements to the business that I am handed down and need to deploy locally. But of course my job as local leader is to ensure that strategy can get deployed in a local manner, specifically in a way that the UK can connect with and understand. “When I see this situation not working is where International
companies get it wrong by trying to push an International language into a domestic marketplace. People then don’t think there’s a cultural fit. So my job is to interpret that International language into the British culture and to ensure it communicates effectively and achieves all relevant expectations.”
“What is CS B2015, and how does it fit in with your ‘Global Vision 21’?” “When you are a very large International business and particularly Japanese, the bias is towards a long-term orientation covering 10 or 20 year periods. It is interesting to compare this with the equivalent UK bias towards a short-term orientation which can be as short as planning for the next quarter. “CS B2015 is as it suggests a staging cycle that forms part of a long term vision for the business known as GV21. This is ultimately about growing our business to such a size that we are a company that independently can stand on its own at all times. Fundamentally to not be a target for takeover, and also remain financially independent as a manufacturer on a global scale. This acts as a unifying cause within the global group, and ensures things are kept simple within all the diverse cultures and markets across the globe. I think this is an excellent lesson for either a start-up, fast growing or International business - keeping it simple, and have a unifying cause at all times.”
“In terms of branding, ‘At Your Side’ has been a consistent message for decades. How does this tie in with your long-term views on Brother UK?” “At Your Side is a branding message of two parts. It is perceived internally that we are supportive and ‘at the side’ of our colleagues. Two words sum this
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up – Team, which stands for ‘Together Everyone Achieves More’, and the second is Pride – ‘Personal Responsibility In Delivering Excellence’. So, when we take pride in how our contribution works within a team, we deliver ‘At Your Side’. “That leads to the second part of the message, which is the role our product technology takes in growing our business.”
“I always thought this was just in relation to a consumer perspective?” “It’s actually a philosophy that over arches both how a product functions in relation to a customer and how we actually function as a business in service to that customer.”
“How has the Global slowdown in emerging markets, particularly China as one of your principal manufacturers, affected Brother as an International business?” “In actual fact we are doing really well. Brother is a very clever business. If you look ‘under the bonnet’ you can see it has spread its risk across multiple continents, multiple currencies, multiple manufacturing bases, and multiple product categories. So what that does is have this effect where marginal movements in any one particular area doesn’t have a major impact across the bigger group.”
“During the Forever Manchester RESET event recently, you referred to the concept of Corporate Citizenship. How does this sit with Brother UK, and also does it have relevance for the International Brother Group as a whole?” “Any large International business has a range of local officers who offer different ideologies from the more conservative to the enlightened, of which I see myself. As a Japanese company the bias is naturally conservative – observe first, then act later. Now, going back to my earlier point about the different bias between the UK and Japanese business, we tend to be short-term orientated and much more potential based, where in Japan they are risk-adverse and long-term
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