w w w.london.edu/ bsr82 Issue 1 - 2014 © london busIness sCHool

All of this means that my days are extremely varied. I sometimes, but not often, have lunch, and frequently it’ll be a working lunch. Typical activities in the day would be an executive meeting such as with my own executive board which I chair. Ten there are some internal meetings and other activities including giving advice to the Minister.

Out of the ofce, I might be speaking at a conference or visiting a particular business to have a chat. I do a fair bit of work over cofee – Melbourne is one of the cofee centres of the world so I have brought that habit with me.

I try and do a lot of one- on-one work. I’m a people person, so I try and do a lot of work by building strong relationships. If you’re a civil servant, your job is actually to serve. Now, it’s a bit like customer relations; you can’t actually serve someone or deliver to someone unless you understand and know what they want, how they want it, and so on.

I tell the staf my role is to make all their jobs easier. Tere’s only one of me and 800 of them, so all I really focus on is how to make it easier for each of them to do their jobs; and having senior relationships around government, business and the broader community is one of the key ways I do that.

I try and work pretty hard through the week and then protect the weekends. I live in London at weekends, where my wife is based, so go back there on Friday and return on Sunday evening or frst thing Monday morning.

I leave the ofce when it closes at six o’clock, head home and then I might do another hour or two of work. Tere are often also business dinners to go to. But, I think I do have some sort of balance between work and the rest of my life.

BUSINESS STRATEGY REVIEW

My dayTerry A’Hearn is Chief Executive of the Northern Ireland Environment

Agency. He opens his diary for Business Strategy Review

The environment agency in Northern Ireland looks after everything

from pollution control to marine environment, climate change, threatened species and historic castles and buildings.

I had a similar role in Victoria in Australia. But it was nowhere near as wide a remit as the organisation I now work for. We run 800-year- old castles and I come from a country where there are no buildings older than about 220 years, so it’s completely new.

When I took over in November 2012, I set some very specifc learning goals for the frst four months. I went around and presented to all of the 800 staf and told them that that’s what I would be doing, and those learning objectives were very much about listening and learning about the organisation and its context.

Now I am settled in, my weeks have an unpredictable but more familiar shape. I spend a fair bit of time at the Stormont parliamentary building, especially on Monday or Tuesday, when I might have to go up and see the Minister. We’re based in an old gas works on the edge of the central city in one of the old buildings that’s been redeveloped as a business park. In Belfast I have staf in four diferent ofces, and there is more staf around the rest of the province.

I try to get into the ofce about 7am when the building

opens. My assistants tend to get there between 7 and 7:30. So a few people start trickling in pretty early.

Some civil servants will spend a lot of time in the ofce. For them that’s appropriate. My approach is that the impacts on the environment and heritage come from business and the community. Tey’re the ones who use it and rely on it, who can look after it or who can damage it. Our job is actually to help them.

I have told my two assistants that if I’m physically in my ofce more than two of the fve days, then I’m not doing the job the way I want to do it. I try to get out and deal directly with staf on the ground. I spend a lot of time with businesses in particular, and also broader environment groups, community groups and local councils.

What we are trying to do in Northern Ireland is create the frst environment agency in the world that can really break through and bring the environment and the economy together. Everyone talks about the win-win potential, but we are actually trying to do it on the ground in practice. As part of this, our new mission for the organisation is to create prosperity and wellbeing through environment and heritage excellence.

“We are trying to break

through and bring the

environment and the

economy together”

Wide ranging

Environment agency

head Terry A’Hearn

has very varied days

Terry A’Hearn completed the Senior

Executive Programme at London

Business School in 2010

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