"It's all to do with creating the right environment for success. If you understand the sector and have a long view on strategy, then giving your team the space and understanding to succeed is all you really need to do"

David Butler believes that his rather Zen outlook on corporate communications stems from the Sociology & Philosophy degree he read at the University of Kent in the 1970s. “Actually, perhaps it’s from further back than that – perhaps it’s from learning Greek at school,” he says. Without a sense of perspective, Butler believes, his comms role would be much harder.

“Age and experience, of course, also have something to do with it,” he says. “I’ve been in the working world for 35 years, so if I wasn’t mastering it by now, I’d want firing. I’ve also had the privilege of working in many different organisations, which means I’ve seen what works well for motivating people – and what doesn’t.”

As director of corporate affairs and IT at Grainger PLC,the UK’s largest listed residential property business, Butler oversees two separate teams that work in the communications and IT functions, looking after £2.4 billion worth of properties in the UK and Germany. However, he started his career in quite a different arena. Whilst at university, he took a part time job as a refuse collector – not the most orthodox path toward corporate communications.

“I needed the money, frankly! And then when I graduated, I took on a job at Cleanaway. There weren’t many people applying with experience in waste management,” he says. Butler stayed at Cleanaway for 13 years, working his way up from graduate trainee through roles in operations, finance, strategy and IT.
In terms of an insight into corporate structure, Butler feels his time at Cleanaway was invaluable. “We also managed to have triplets,” he adds, “and I did an MBA at London Business School, part-time and from distance. It seemed like it was a good idea to balance what was going on with my career with some more intellectual development.”

In 1990, he moved to Liberty International PLC (now, following a 2010 demerger, known as Capital Shopping Centres) as head of IT. “I worked all over the country for Liberty, organising their IT systems – right down to being there when new centres opened and making sure the doors worked properly. After five years, I was made redundant, then took on the same role at Kingsbury Group.”
 

Butler’s new job at the furniture retailers was, he says, really about managing supply chains. “At Kingsbury, and in fact at any furniture retail outlet, there’s a huge amount of stock, and it can’t all be out on the floor simultaneously,” he recalls. “We put systems in place that tried to standardise how things were sold, and that enabled us to predict demand.” Clearly, he was already considering how a company’s corporate strategy affected its day-to-day operations – and his next move consolidated that.
 

In 1997, he took on a role at The Co-operative Group at a tricky time for the mutual business. “The IT department I headed up numbered around 180 people when I started – and when I left, it was down to 11,” says Butler. “The business had a lot of problems and I oversaw the outsourcing of much of its IT functions, as well as tech strategy. It did give me a lot of insight into large scale corporate strategies, though, as well as working with management and non-exec boards. But after about three years, there was really no longer a role for me.”
 

A stint in IT strategy and architecture at insurers AMP followed: “In 2002, they said to me, ‘How would you like a proper job in corporate strategy?’” He said yes, and proceeded to oversee the company’s corporate affairs through a period of major transition, as it prepared to demerge its British businesses and concentrate on the Australian and New Zealand markets. “Sadly I never got a job over there – but I did get to fly back and forth a lot. Trying to set long-term corporate strategy for the business was interesting: it’s pretty difficult to make money from life insurance, so my job involved designing a business architecture that allowed for efficient management of the company’s existing clients, and the selling of investment products to new clients.”
 

As the company retrenched, and the realisation dawned that he’d worked for other people’s companies for some 26 years since leaving university, Butler decided to set up his own strategy consultancy, LMS Consultants Ltd. With a team of three, LMS specialised in property, financial services, and retail, drawing on Butler’s previous roles. “It was a great experience,” he says, “which led to a lot of long-term relationships with clients, such as Prudential. It was also my first venture into online comms, through working on websites for clients and other digital properties, which was very useful.
 

“By 2008/2009, however, it had stopped being a full-time concern.” Butler had begun working with Grainger by that point on a consultancy basis, and the state of the world economy meant that going back into a salaried job was attractive. He’s candid on the subject, saying, “I suppose I’m a restless sod, really. I spent the first 13 years of my career at one company, and ever since then I’ve worked in organisations for much shorter periods of time. I like the intellectual stimulation of changing environments, and I thought there was a huge amount of potential at Grainger – I really thought I could bring something to the company.”
 

Since joining Grainger as director of corporate affairs in February 2009, Butler has built a team around him that he’s eager to credit. “They really push me all the way to think through the company’s strategy and its communications. So it’s been great to create a role for the team in the company and to get recognition for it.”
He’s also ventured back into IT recently, returning to the function in which he started his professional life.

“Given my history in IT, Grainger knew I’d be a safe pair of hands. I think that previously, IT managers in company haven’t been give a lot of freedom,” he says, “whereas I’m happy to provide them with space and understanding. I can go down to the technical level, but I believe that corporate success comes from the right environment, and from giving people the direction and space they need.”
Having confidence in the teams under your command is a must for corporate communications professionals everywhere, and Butler is no exception. Grainger owns £2.4 billion of residential property in total, with around 80% of that located in the UK.The rest is in Germany, providing a whole new set of comms challenges for Butler and his comms function.
 

“Our business is predominantly UK based – there’s a team of around ten people in Germany. And in a way, it’s difficult to cover both sets of interests,” he says. His No.2, Kurt Mueller, is the direct liaision with the German team, ensuring their representation when it comes to strategy and comms, but this doesn’t always eliminate mistakes. “Although our operations board includes the German directors, and meets once a month to discuss corporate affairs, we don’t get it right 100% of the time,” he admits. “Human resources issues are, for example, particularly difficult.”
 

The German branch of Grainger has a substantial focus on rental properties, meaning it plays a particular role in the company’s broader strategy, which is split in the UK between residential (mostly owned) assets, retirement solutions assets, and develoment activities. “Essentially, property comms have to be territory-specific,” says Butler, “so it comes back to giving the comms teams freedom to operate as they think best.”
 

Butler is also involved with talking to Grainger’s investment partners. The company manages large residential funds, so Butler makes sure that its investor relations are tailored to the various assets, and tie in to the overall comms strategy, and works on the company’s annual report.
 

As a member of the FTSE 250, there are comms challenges faced by Butler that are specific to listed companies. “For a start, we have to be more careful than non-listed companies in the same sector,” he says, “because it’s a much more regulated environment. And Bridgewater Equity Release, a home reversion provider operated by Grainger, is authorised and regulated by the FSA, so we’re very conscious that we’re bound by those strictures.”
 

Another element to being a listed company is related to volume. “We are obliged,” says Butler, “to communicate a lot more than we perhaps would otherwise. There’s a constant need to tell the stories of our clients and our customers to our investors. And the third point, I would say, is that we’re involved in much more public discussion” – which, naturally, requires careful communications strategising.
 

“Grainger aspires to thought leadership, so from a comms point of view, if there are issues in the residential sector then we want to be involved in the debates. It’s even one of our straplines,” Butler says, referring to the ‘Grainger equals residential’ messaging. “Whether it’s older people living in properties that are too large for them, or graduates trying to get onto the housing ladder, the company needs to be seen as a touchpoint for discussions about residential property.”
 

The company will celebrate its centenary in 2012, having been established in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in 1912 by the Dickinson Family. Butler says that Grainger’s comms efforts for the year will largely focus on stimulating debates about residency: “We’re carrying out various surveys – some nationwide, some more local. In Newcastle, there’s a particular one about access to housing for young people. Trends are showing that within the next 15 years, there will be more people renting than there are owning now.
 

His job also takes in a public affairs role - Butler moonlights, it seems, as something of a lobbyist. Grainger provides submissions to the government on various consultation papers about housing, part of its desire to be involved in the nation’s discussions on the topic. “Well, you can’t divorce the two notions of renting and owning,” he says, “but the more government investment there is in building residential properties, the more housing there will be available to those who currently don’t have ready access to it.”
 

When I comment that taking in investor relations, talking to government, dividing time and resources between the UK and Germany, celebrating the company’s centenary, and managing the IT team (as well as maintaining a season ticket for the Leicester Tigers, his rugby team and a source of huge enthusiasm) seems to be a very big job, Butler both agrees and disagrees. “It is big, but it also gives me the freedom to do things that are interesting to me. Really, surrounding yourself with good people is key – they then do all the work, and all I need to do is provide support as and when required. But also, because there are so many things to do, the important thing is to just avoid the stuff that isn’t necessary.” A deceptively simple task – but one that David Butler is currently managing expertly