Story: Fran Belbin
(This is a fuller version of an article originally appearing in our August 2013 issue)
Sir George Buckley retired this year as Chairman, President and Chief Executive of American company 3M, who manufacture a wide range of products but perhaps most famously Scotch Tape and post-it notes.
George was the only British CEO of a Fortune 500 company – and he was born and brought up in Pitsmoor. The Messenger caught up with him when he visited to deliver the annual Sheffield Management Lecture.
What are your recollections of Pitsmoor?
I was born in 1947 in my grandmother's house at 78 Macro Street, a road that ran between Pitsmoor Road and Woodside Lane, parallel to the Manchester railway line. She was poor, my grandfather had died in 1942 and she was crippled with terrible leg ulcers, so she turned her house into a rooming house, with itinerant lodgers coming through all the time. I lived there with my mother and father but they split up when I was four months old and I was given to one of these itinerant lodging families, who raised me until I was 11. I remember we lived in my grandmother's house for quite a while, several years anyway, till my foster parents managed to get rental accommodation somewhere else, in a back to back, one up one down, on Spital Street. My foster mother died when I was 8, my foster father still looked after me but he worked seven days a week, at a steel company on the bottom end of Rutland Road. Then, when I was 11, my mother said “I want my son back”. It was pretty traumatic for me, because I didn't really know this woman very well, and she'd remarried so there was a stepfather now that I didn't know, who was a tough character.
I went to a school for physically handicapped children over in the Newbould Lane / Clarkehouse Road area, so I caught a couple of buses to get to school. There'd been a lot of bombing in the area so when I was a young boy we played on bomb sites, digging through the rubble, seeing what we could find. A bit later I remember I had one pair of shoes that had cardboard in till I could afford some more. I was actually beaten and raped as a child. So it was a very tough upbringing. But it was hard for everybody – family members had been killed, nobody had any money, there was nothing to go round, neighbours helped out – that's what would happen in those days.
My grandmother had certain rules; for example you should never buy anything on hire purchase, if you couldn't afford to pay for something five times over then you shouldn't buy it. She had an attitude that if you can stand you can go to work, you will never speak until spoken to, children should be seen and not heard. She used a lot of phrases also that my mother used and that I still use to this day – “ask no questions, get told no lies” – all those sorts of things that become part of who you are. It was very formative, I don't look back on it with any trepidation. You might say, “Well you're successful so you shouldn't feel sorry for yourself” but I never did.
And you left school with no qualifications?
I was 15 and I got a job as an apprentice electrician for NG Baileys. I actually worked on this college [Sheffield Hallam University, formerly Sheffield Technical College], and I had a bit of an epiphany. There was an electrician, I don't even know his name, I only worked with him that one day, and he said to me, “George, do you realise why we're putting in heavier cables for the power and lighting?” And I said, “Well sort of, they use more electricity.” And he said, “Yes, but let me show you ohms and how to calculate the power” He used a chalkboard to show me, but I was completely lost, I thought “Oh my word if I don't do something about this I'm going to be in trouble.” So the following day I asked for day release, though they wouldn't let me start till I was sixteen. I went to Granville College for five years, one day and one night a week for three years and one day and two nights for two years. I never missed a class and I think I was top of every subject in every class, because I was really motivated.
Where did that motivation come from?
Some of it was initially fear, some of it was shame, I had an inferiority complex. I was concerned that unless I worked very hard I'd never be able to overcome it, so that drive was my way of compensating for it. And I had a dream of being an engineer from many many years before, I was probably about three. I remember it was a rainy day, I was not at school yet, there was only my grandmother and me in the kitchen and I was playing. There was a lady came into my grandmother's kitchen, she had a scarf round her head and tied underneath her chin, as you used to see in those days. And she was talking to my grandmother, and then she turned to me, she obviously didn't know me, and she said “Who's this young man?” And of course I wouldn't dare answer with my grandmother there, my grandmother said, “This is George.” “Oh hello George, and what are you going to be when you grow up?” My grandmother said, “He's going to be an electrical engineer.” I've no idea where she got this idea from! I don't think she'd had electricity in her house for more than five or six years, but she obviously knew it was the future, a good thing to do.
You've retired from 3M but you've taken on more work?
I've been approached to do a lot of different things and I'm now Chairman of Smiths Group Engineering because I know them from previous experience and I like the people there. I'm still figuring out if it's the right thing to do. There's no problem in retirement of filling the time, it's making the time fulfilling that's important. I do some charitable work and I advise a couple of start-up companies who are not very experienced. It's been very busy, busier than I expected! But if you're lucky like I was, there's enormous fulfilment comes from working. The people you work with, the friends you make, that become a kind of extended family; the battles you fight together, the challenges you overcome – they're wonderful things and I think incredibly fulfilling for people. So I don't think I would ever want to give up work fully. I love fishing, but if I did it every day it would be like going to work every day. So I think you have to get everything in balance, what I call the “baby bear” solution: not too hot, not too cold, not too sweet, not too salty, not too hard, not too soft. I'm looking for the baby bear solution.
Any advice to share from your working life?
For young people, it's a combination of education and hard work. And a great rule of leadership is to stretch people, allow them to see where their real potential lies. Creative genes can be developed and released, though it's dependent on confidence, it's certainly dependent on the environment. What I've found in life is that if you take an employee and nurture, encourage and inspire them, give them a task, give them a dream, in a very large number of cases they will achieve it. I suspect there are a lot more creative juices in people than they imagine.