Interview: Donald Emslie - Doing the business

Published on Thursday 17 September 2009 21:37

WHEN Donald Emslie stepped down from running SMG, he took a breather.

After all, the 52-year-old had been with the media group for 20 years in one capacity or another. "Everyone said take six months and get your head together. Around the same time, my wife, Sarah, and I both had illness in our families. I'm a great believer in things happening for a reason," he says, "and I'm not sure I would have been able to cope with everything that was thrown at me if I'd still been running SMG. It was fantastic to be able to say, 'My family is the most important thing right now.'

"Head-hunters didn't want to see me right away, either. They said come back at the start of 2008. It was the best advice, because when I went back I was much clearer what I wanted, and very clear that I wanted to develop a number of different interests rather than work full-time for one company."

Emslie also knew that he wanted to stay in Edinburgh, rather than consider a move to London. "Which, in reality, meant my media involvement was going to end, because there aren't too many opportunities for non-executive directors up here," he says.

Despite knowing Emslie for several years, I hadn't realised that his facility for turning his hand to a large, varied portfolio of work springs from an unlikely background. He initially trained to be a PE teacher, and this training has proven invaluable in the decades since.

Originally from Aberdeen, Emslie mainly grew up in Nairn from age ten onwards. He describes the kind of childhood that makes people of a certain age misty-eyed with nostalgia: "Nairn was a joy, a little seaside town where we enjoyed complete freedom," he recalls. "I'm the middle child, with a sister either side. During summer holidays you got on your bike, went to the beach, went to play football in the park – you had complete freedom. Even from Primary One, I'd make the 15-20 minute walk to school on my own. Everyone did. Mum and dad taking us to school was an alien concept, you felt embarrassed if they did."

He was a popular, sporty kid, and captain of Inverness High School. "I played rugby socially, but my main sport was freestyle swimming. I swam in the north of Scotland championships and the Scottish championships. At college I started playing water polo as my main sport and we played in the west of Scotland leagues and the national college leagues."

Having seen water polo played, I admit finding it tough picturing this soft-spoken gentleman behaving so aggressively. He laughs. "It is very physical and you had to cope with that, plus keep yourself afloat all the time as well!" Rather apt training for his professional life.

Emslie went to Jordanhill College of Education, where he developed the tools that have translated so effectively into business acumen. He says, "Most of my mates (at other universities] were only doing maybe nine or ten hours of lectures a week, whereas we were there nine-to-five, having lectures in psychology, philosophy, management, and so on, plus I did sports on top of that, as well as teaching practice.

"I came out of college having learned the psychology of how to coach people. That transfers wonderfully. If you read any management books now, they're all saying that the way to get the best performance out of people is about coaching, managing and rewarding.

"All the things I learned in college about lesson plans for the day, the week or the year, the plan of how to get students from A to B over the course of a term, all this long and short-term tactical planning about how to get the best out of people is absolutely transferable."

He is not surprised to see people such as the former World Cup-winning England rugby coach Sir Clive Woodward transformed into business mentors, and agrees when I suggest that ultimately, business is all about relationships.

"Yes. It's about people – customers and the people you employ to deliver that customer experience, whether that's a reader or a viewer or someone in the stands at Murrayfield, or visiting the Zoo, or at the Lyceum Theatre. It's how you manage your resources.

"You need a certain amount of money and infrastructure, but the thing that sets businesses apart is how they look after people."

Emslie's points of reference remind me that he's hardly been goofing off since leaving SMG.

He's a non-executive director on the boards of Scottish Water and Scottish Rugby and, for several years, has been chair of the Royal Lyceum. He's also on the board of Edinburgh Zoo and the Highland Wildlife Park at Kincraig.

But that's not all. One of the reasons for our talk is that, together with Peter Murphy, he launched Castle Management, which recently won planning permission for Phase One of what will be a 20 million development that aims to turn the Roxburghe Hotel & Golf Course into the first five-star destination in the Borders.

"I suppose the hotel business is my main job. I agree, it looks like I have a lot on my plate, but I've always sat on a lot of boards and I'm used to handling a lot of committees. I like the variety. But I also wanted something reasonably big to tackle over the next five to ten years.

"Peter was leaving Macdonald Hotels and we said there's got to be an opportunity here for a company that merges our skills; a management company that in principle, we thought, could manage hotels that got themselves into difficult situations this economic slowdown."

They assembled a team with myriad skills, who could be "airlifted" in on an as-needed basis, to carry out a top to bottom assessment and revamp. "We can do a financial review, an operational review, and offer recommendations, then come in with our people and put things right," he explains.

It's ironic that their first big client turned out to be the Duke of Roxburghe. "His is not an ailing asset, but the Duke wanted to develop the property, increase the size of the hotel, put in a spa, lodges on the grounds, and he wanted our help."

With enthusiasm, Emslie sells the place: "The hotel has a fantastic stable base of customers who come to fish or to shoot on the estate grounds. Over and above that, we've decided that we need this to become a bit of a jewel in the crown of Borders tourism, because it's a beautiful country house hotel just outside Kelso, and there is so much to do, such as walking, cycling, sightseeing, history tours of the Border towns. Plus Kelso has its own racecourse, Floors Castle holds events, and there's a championship golf course sitting alongside the Roxburghe."

The plan is to double the size of the hotel, add a spa, banqueting facilities and 60 lodges on the grounds, in the hope of attracting weddings and even more leisure guests.

Given that it's Castle Hotel Management's first high-profile venture, Emslie rightly admits: "We have to get this right. We can't make a mess of this."

Meanwhile, not to pick scabs, but with clear-eyed hindsight, what's his feeling now about the circumstances surrounding his departure from SMG?

Sounding truly mellow, he says: "Actually it was the easiest thing to do. It was a natural divide. I'd been running the TV business for seven years. I'd taken Scottish and Grampian together and re-branded them, put them in new studios in Aberdeen and Glasgow, launched the beginnings of digital strategy, and helped ITV through its first broadcast review.

"Then Andrew Flanagan left and I was given the task of stepping up into chief executive position. Everything arose about what are we going to do to resolve the debt. I put the businesses up for sale and there was a hugely intense period around potential takeover by Ulster. It was highly stimulating and a great education. And then the shareholders decided they wanted a new approach and new board. I said fine, it's time for me to go."

Yeah, but, I prod. He doesn't flinch. "But when you're running businesses at that level – I'd told so many people to go over the years, like all the directors who left from Grampian, and at The Herald. It's a natural process when new management comes in."

How does it feel, that first day when the alarm doesn't go off and you don't have to cross the country to sit behind a desk? "There was a sense of relief. I don't have the pressure of worrying about what's going to happen tomorrow or the strategy to the board and shareholders, worrying about the staff. I was happy to take time out after 22 years." But life's funny. Now that he works for himself, he's working harder than ever, juggling all his business ventures, plus being a husband, and father to two daughters in their twenties, from his first marriage.

"At SMG you knew you had to go in at 7 or 8am and finish at 7 or 8pm. It's a long day, sure, but now, there's always that temptation, even late at night, to go through to the office and check emails. Whereas once I'd left the SMG office, I'd left.

"The upside is that, yes, if I had no meetings in the diary for tomorrow and wanted to take the day off, I could. Or, if my daughter said, 'How do you fancy lunch?' I could say fine. So there are some real benefits, but you've got to be disciplined – you need to be disciplined about taking time off, as well as working.

"On balance, in my lifetime I don't think I could have expected to meet the people I've met and to have seen the things I've seen. I consider myself very fortunate."