Name: Dave Barber
Job title: Managing director
Tell us a bit about yourself
I’ve been married to Jane for 27 years. We have two daughters, Olivia 23 and Lucy 19, one now living and working in Manchester and the youngest away at university. I enjoy watching sport, although as a Leeds United fan I’m not enjoying it too much at the moment. Dodgy knees mean I don’t actually play much sport these days but I do enjoy cycling with my friends, preferably mountain bike or gravel but will also do road. My wife doesn’t really understand why I need a sixth bike, but you do need two per discipline! I love travel and hope to be doing much more soon.
Describe your job to a five-year-old
Telling other people what to do!
What do you like most about your job?
Telling other people what to do. ????
How did you get here?
From an 18 year old trainee accountant at the Gas Board to Managing Director of Ideal Standard UK in 40 short years…
I’ve had an interesting career spanning 40 years that has taken me to five continents and started out as an 18 year old trainee accountant at the North Eastern Gas Board based in Leeds. I was there during the time it transitioned from a nationalised industry to becoming a PLC (British Gas) in one of the first big privatisations of the early 1980s. I spent three years there learning the basics and attending day release at Leeds Polytechnic, studying for my accountancy qualification.
I then moved to a company called Provident Financial Group PLC who were a financial services and loan company based in Bradford. Their main business was advancing small loans that were repaid on a weekly basis and I recall being sent up from head office to Glasgow to see how the branches operate and going around door to door collecting repayments from some of the most deprived areas of the city… a real eye opener for young trainee accountant!
So, I spent about three years at Provident where I completed my exams and became a qualified accountant and then, as I had always wanted to travel, I left and spent the next 18 months back packing around the world. I had an amazing time and returned to the UK with great memories (although some were a bit hazy!) but no money, so ended up back home in Hull at my mum’s.
My next job was in Immingham on the south bank of the river Humber working for a shipping company as a Divisional Accountant before moving back across the river to take my first Finance Director role at an industrial laundry. I then moved on to a division of an electronics business called Westinghouse Electric Company, first as Finance Director and then as Managing Director, and this gave me my first overseas business trip which was to the US. The business focussed on CCTV and access controls systems and developed one of the first ANPR (automatic number plate recognition) systems. Westinghouse decided to dispose of this UK division, so I got my first involvement in acquisitions and disposals, and I was offered the role as the FD in the acquiring company. I decided not to take this and opted for the small redundancy package and chose to blow it, along with some savings, on a 10-week whistle-stop round the world trip with my wife, all this pre children! You can see a theme developing here of work – travel – work – travel – work.
On returning I took a role, initially as divisional Finance Director at Fenners, a global business headquartered in Hull, which makes, among other things, conveyor belts for the mining industry. I did several finance roles there including VP Finance for their US business, which involved moving to Charlotte, North Carolina for six months with my family. We now had our first daughter who was just three months old when we moved out. Other roles and assignments saw me visiting Australia, China, South Africa, India and numerous trips to the US and Canada. My final role there was as European Finance Director, splitting my time between the UK and a newly acquired business in the Netherlands.
By now our second (and final I hope!) daughter had arrived and so I needed to travel a bit less so I moved from Fenners to take up the role as Finance Director, soon to become Managing Director, of Edwards Logistics which was a part of American Standard, and so the second 20-year section of my career began.
After about three years I moved on to the “main bathroom business” and became Finance Director of Ideal Standard UK. The next few years were spent as the UK Finance Director interspersed with a number of European regional finance roles, including two years as European Commercial Business Partner and also in 2015 a year as Interim UK Managing Director.
And finally, just as we entered Covid Lockdown 1.0 in March 2020, I took over as Managing Director of UK and Ireland, and the rest as they say is history!
As career advice, in general but also here at Ideal Standard, I would say careers are not built overnight, be prepared to take different roles, grab opportunities when they come along, build a network not just in your own function or own country and be persistent – I first did the MD role as interim in 2015 before getting in properly in 2020.
So, in what seems like a flash my own 40 year career is drawing to close, but hopefully not an end to the adventures as I will now have the time to continue on the third chapter of the travel story, more of which can be read in the article about my retirement.
What motivates you?
I refer to it as “the bottom right hand corner” by which I mean the profit number on a P&L and even after 40 years I still get a kick every month about hitting “the bottom right hand corner”.
Also, of course, one of the greatest motivations and rewards is seeing people you have worked with grow and develop in their own roles and careers.
If you could swap jobs with anyone, who would it be?
David Attenborough of course, because of the travel and animals.
Your favourite song lyric or line from a film
“I can eat 50 eggs” Paul Newman from the film Cool Hand Luke…it’s a long story why.
Your favourite app?
Ordinance Survey maps… has saved me a few long detours home when I have got lost on my mountain bike
Biggest facepalm moment at work?
When at British Gas, one of the jobs was processing time sheets to create billing documents and there was box to tick to suppress an invoice being raised for certain activities. Anyway one of the time sheets was for some of the labourers working at one of the senior directors houses and I was meant to tick the box, but I forgot, and ended up being hauled in front of my boss asking why i had raised an invoice to the director for gardening work.