Edge Forum

Paul Preston has worked at Unilever for forty-five years, having joined the company straight after leaving school at 15. Paul is one of our most inspirational and supportive role models and has been working with the Edge Learner Forum over the last few months. He invited forum members to the stunning Unilever building in London to share his remarkable story of success. His advice to young people is ‘Never lost sight of who you are; compete where you know you have strengths.’

 
How would you describe your educational experience?

Pretty horrible. I went to a grammar school where you came out and became either a doctor or a teacher. I left when I was fifteen, but would have left at thirteen if I could have.

What was the reaction from people around you, like your parents?

My parents were upset and horrified – you know, I’d got into a grammar school, a good school, so it was a shock to leave. My mum sort of understood it, but my dad was cross with me at the time… but he had to admit I ended up being pretty successful in the end.

At the age of fifteen or sixteen I just wanted to be a tennis player. I hadn’t really thought properly about bills or anything like that and I wasn’t conscious that wasn’t the right decision at sixteen. I left school without qualifications, which was pretty dumb actually, but I just thought – why would I ever need a GCSE in Latin? At the age of 15, 16, 17, I never thought about what anyone else might be thinking – I wasn’t trying to let them down, I just couldn’t see any relevance to my learning when I could be earning money.

At school you’re told what you’re bad at. But you can use the bad things in a good way – I later discovered I had a good mind to become an accountant. It wasn’ t that I was good at maths; I just had a good mind for numbers and business, so that set me off on my career.

 Then I started to come up against people who had been to uni and good schools, and I was now at the same level as them when they came in. I was considered by management to be a very slow starter. I was bumping up against these uni-leavers and it irritated me. I saw how I had missed out on university life and now I’m glad my daughter has gone on to have a university life. I missed out on the enjoyment of education – I’d only known it as a memory test, whereas university teaches you in a different way.

How did you block out the fact you were up against these people who’d been to uni and had qualifications? Did it worry you?

Yes it did. That feeling of being slightly inferior, that I’d missed out on this ‘club’. I worked in a department that was made entirely up of university graduates – and me. 50% of the conversation they had went over my head.

It was hard at first, but then I started to take the piss out of them! I decided that I wasn’t doing the work any worse than they were and I started to use the experiences I had had to my own benefit, because I did have experiences they didn’t have. I could actually use my life experiences to work. You’re on a losing wicket if you try to compete by playing their game. So play a different game. I just went on being me. Never lose sight of who you are; compete where you know you have strengths. So my advice on dealing with these people is to keep a sense of humour; play your own game; and never feel inferior.

I have actually done a lot better than a lot of those other people. Someone once said to me: ‘You haven’t changed in 30 years, Paul.’ And at first I thought ‘that’s not very nice!’ But I realised she meant it as a compliment. ‘Thirty years on you’re still Paul.’ Remember who you are and where you come from. There are some people who will be better at certain things, but that shouldn’t stop you from trying. I’m never going to beat Tiger Woods in a game of golf – I aspire to! – but that doesn’t stop me from trying. Remember who you are and be yourself – don’t try and be someone else.

If you were in school now, do you think you would have stayed on until you were 18?

If I was in school now I’d probably have been excluded. Not for being violent or anything like that, but a fault in me is that I speak out about things. The stupid thing is that when you do that you become a voice of sanity. I work with groups of professionals at the absolute top of their game – the reason they appreciate me is because I speak out, I say if I don’t understand. Some people just shut up. Yes, I would have been excluded. I needed praise, praise is important to me.

My worst nightmare is that my daughter becomes a teacher. Teachers always gave me detentions and said to me you must do better, change your attitude, it’s wrong, so it would have been my worst nightmare if I had to carry on in education until I was 18. If it was still like it was when I went, or like some of you have described to me, I’d do everything in my power not to go. So I thought that if there was some way to put my energy into being part of the team that shapes what learning might look like, I’d like to be involved in changing it. The big test would be in 2013 if you ask me that question again and I said YES, I would stay in education if it is like this.

What are you going to do now?

Now I want to do things that give me a buzz, what I’m good at. It’s not for money anymore; I want to do something I’m really interested in. I’m good with people and I believe people can do extraordinary things. There are such great skills in this room among you, hidden talents. One thing I want to do over the next few years is help people recognise their potential.

Would you have gone to university to do accountancy, if you could do it again?

If I could do it again I think uni would be great. You get a completely different way of teaching and learning.

I would have done things in those years that I never got another chance to do. Once you’re in your career you can do qualifications with the company, but you’re on the career path by then – which is fun, it’s engaging, but it’s bloody hard work. It sounds glamorous and it is, travelling and moving to different houses, but there are lots of downsides. Being set on your career path is different from reading for the sake of reading.

Do you think it is possible to become a businessman without qualifications?

Well I’m sure Alan Sugar hasn’t been to university. I never used to admit it but it has become more difficult to get into business. I wouldn’t even get into Unilever today without them. But that doesn’t mean you couldn’t get into smaller businesses or start your own company. One thing is emerging as people talk about diversity – people are thinking that if you only get people in from Oxbridge, you are missing out on a huge amount of people. It’s like the school inspections by Edge Instead versus Ofsted – that’s different thinking. I just wonder if companies are starting to think whether they are taking in much too narrow a band of people. In my last job I was working on understanding what we are calling the ‘War for Talent’ – how can you get the best leaders? They have to come from a wide band of places. Who would have though Barack Obama would have become the President of America?! The 44^th president of the States is going to bring us in a new direction. It’s not to do with his colour; I think he is just coming from a totally different place.

How does it make you feel to know that Unilever doesn’t take people from a wide spectrum?

It makes me angry.

Don’t get mad, get even!

I have tried to play the game. Now I have a chance to start influencing people, for example, looking at the War For Talent – one of the things I would like to do is see how I can get some of your good ideas into Unilever, those different ideas and say ‘hang on – we can do things differently’. Strangely you can do these things better from the outside than the inside. I’m not going to get mad – I’m going to get even!