The Deloitte partner is responsible for relationship management and business development in public sector corporate finance. She has also chaired the Women in IT Forum and has served on the Lambeth council advisory board. Before joining Deloitte in 2006, George spent nearly 20 years at IBM
When I was at school the careers adviser told me that I should be a fireman. I have no idea why. I thought I might be a dentist but my parents had to explain to me kindly that to be a dentist you had to be good at maths and science, and I probably wasn't going to go down that route.
I read English at Oxford University and later did a master's in broadcasting at Boston University. I specialised in cable television and satellite. My only thought process was that cable TV was big in the US in the early 1980s and I thought that if I could train there I could bring skills back to UK and I'd be at the forefront of this burgeoning and exciting industry.
When I joined a consultancy as a general management consultant my mother,
who was a teacher, was concerned about me not having a profession. "What are you going to fall back on?" she asked.
I thought I would be able to sell. Mars and IBM had the best sales training courses and I applied for both. I decided it would be more interesting selling computers than it would be selling Mars bars. I didn't ever sell a lot of computers because I went to IBM when it was getting into services.
IBM liked to have rounded leaders so I moved from sales to HR and worked in the UK, Europe and the US. Later I moved into business process re-engineering; designing new recruitment and staffing processes.
I lost my job in HR but it made me less arrogant and more humble. I had a boss I didn't get on with. I didn't deal with it well and although I felt like a victim I don't think it was all one way. The boss who fired me expected me to leave the company, but I wanted to stay and applied for another role. Moving to a new job working with the public sector within IBM was a great transition and I stayed there until moving to Deloitte in 2006.
A lot of people have failure in their career or make mistakes and have setbacks. How you deal with them is really important, especially if you are going to be a leader.
I am fascinated and intellectually challenged by how the public sector works: the huge scale of the things it has to do, every single day, just to keep operations going let alone to do all the new things.
It is important to have the right networks. Losing my job really highlighted the deficiencies in my profile and my capability. I started to think about what network I had, who I knew and who knew me, and began building an external profile. I work with the British Computer Society and I have led a variety of activities around women
in the IT sector.
Sadly the number of women in IT is still going down. The pay gap is wider than in other sectors and we have problems with very low numbers of girls taking up maths and science subjects, which you need at both GCSE and A level.
I think people like working with me. I am very collaborative and I like to see people working in teams. I am extremely transparent and I like to put together strategies through consultation with my team.
I don't suffer fools gladly and I am quite happy to have confrontations. I know where I want to take the business and I do like to go at a pace. Once a decision has been made I want to get on with it. I know I have the support of my team, but I will drive them hard.
You have to understand numbers, regardless of the business you
are running, and you must be able to demonstrate that you are getting the performance you need or that you can put remedial actions in place if you are not.
I know I am not very good at listening although I have worked hard at it. Years ago somebody said that if you find you are talking too much, write things down, so I always have a notebook with me and I do take copious amounts of notes. But I know that I still talk too much.
I am interested in serving on a public sector board as a non-executive director. I hope that my experience will be of benefit to a public sector organisation at some point.
