Dr Chris Evans - My Biggest Mistake: Danger of delegating
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Dr Chris Evans has created 16 science-based companies with a total annual turnover of pounds 200m. He employs 1,700 people, and presides over more than 100 scientific publications and patents. His latest company, Merlin Ventures, is headed by Jeremy Curnock-Cook and a team from Rothschilds.
My biggest mistake was to believe I could hand over leadership of some of my new start-up companies to plausible chief executives, who would then continue my entrepreneurial themes and grow them in line with my original vision and ambitions. I was wrong. It wasn't obvious: you don't employ someone who's such a buffoon that you know within a month. But in time you find people building up an illusion - I tend to deal in reality.
What I hadn't budgeted for was the simple inability of many so-called high-flying CEOs to knuckle down and do the job properly. One of the first things you notice is that you're not selling enough of the product or services. There are some great excuses for why that's not being achieved. And you notice they feel comfortable building more and more structures - distribution structures and technical structures and international structures - and you realise, "This guy is not a doer; he isn't going to get into the customer's face and convince him to buy the product".
I have learnt a lot from this and have had to dig deep, literally roll my sleeves up as an entrepreneur and get back in there to help make a success of what I started and others had messed up. I was disappointed with the waste of my time and effort and investors' money in turning these businesses around, but at least that is now being achieved. Now, when it comes to the recruitment and interview process, I will grill them on various aspects; I will bring things right up front and make it very unappetising. If somebody says, "I don't like the sound of that" it's a good time to say goodbye.
It does mean that I set up far fewer companies: my rate of creation will be dictated by the availability of high-quality people. My aim is to ensure that fundamentally good companies created by myself and Merlin will never again be left alone without some positive supervision and motivation from myself and my team.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments