It's a career of two halves

Graham Westley took his football skills to the boardroom - and back again, writes Roger Trapp

So many managers on both sides of the Atlantic draw on sport for inspiration and motivation that it would not be surprising if Graham Westley and his family business, the J&D Organisation, became a case study.

Not only is Mr Westley a former professional footballer who has made the transition to business, but he also has a weekly opportunity to test the links between the two fields through his role as manager of Kingstonians, a non-league club.

Still only 28, Mr Westley claims not to have fully appreciated the links until he took up his role at Kingston a few months ago. And while he is the first to admit that team sports have a lot to offer business he thinks the benefits flow in both directions.

Pointing out that his business experience has enabled him to introduce a more professional style of management to the club, he adds that sport's clear focus on results, both short-term in relation to the next match and long-term with regard to the season and beyond, can help business. "Since I got involved with football I have made results much more visible," he says. "All the people in the company are far more competitive."

Though Mr Westley insists that football management is a hobby taken up when a broken leg stopped him playing over the winter, and separate from the company, there is also a commercial incentive to the Kingstonian involvement. Claiming that there is huge potential at the club, he is drawing up plans for a Newcastle-style drawing together of the various sports that take place at and around the site.

In the meantime he has already made a mark in what he has done at J&D, a business that he joined at the age of 19 after an injury put his career on hold.

Founded in the 1940s by his grandfather, the company developed into a supplier of a wide range of services to building contractors. Generally clearing up behind builders, it carried out everything from basic plumbing to window cleaning.

But though Mr Westley was frustrated by the fact that neither his grandfather nor his father had much interest in expanding a company that gave them a comfortable living, he claims that the business could be regarded as being ahead of many bigger organisations in two important and related respects; its focus on customer service meant that when a contractor wanted something done it was done irrespective of the timescale and the inconvenience and the fact that the staff were "jacks of all trades" rather than specialists and so were able to turn their hands to almost any task.

These two factors became the foundation for the expansion plan initiated when he was finally given the reins at the turn of the decade.

Apart from starting - but not finishing - an accountancy course, Mr Westley has had no formal education since he left his west London public school at the age of 16 to join Queens Park Rangers as an apprentice. But he insists that he is open-minded and committed to the concept of "stakeholder management", which involves satisfying customers, suppliers and employees through finding out what they want.

He has expanded the company hugely since taking over. Periods of rapid growth have been followed by phases of consolidation but turnover is up from pounds 1m in 1991 to about pounds 20m, while the number of employees has leaped from 50 to 700.

More importantly perhaps, the business now takes in various forms of facilities management under the overall name of The AimIta (for Attitude is more Important than ability) Corporation, and is poised for growth in new markets. One aspect being developed is a venture with Daley Thompson, the Olympic champion, to assess the sporting potential of schoolchildren. Another way in which, as Mr Westley says, "the business world has given to the world of sport".