Interviewee Name: Shirley Adrain, COO
Company Name: Asia Pacific Technology at Societe Generale
Website: http://www.societegenerale.com
Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.
Shirley Adrain: I’m a mom and wife and I’ve got a career in investment banking information technology. In addition to that I sing, paint, cook and try to keep fit.
Avil Beckford: What’s a typical day like for you?
Shirley Adrain: I get up quite early and get into work by 8 o’clock. I don’t get to see my daughter because she doesn’t get up until 8:30 am. I do quite a bit of work before my team arrives after 9 am. Then I have a pretty busy day with meetings, meeting people, doing work and I basically never know what’s coming from one day to the next. I deal with crises in my job as Chief Operating Office, so there are basic things that I need to get done and there are things that come up which makes life exciting and I feel like I’ve lived a year in every week that I work. I try to do some exercise which I’m struggling to fit in at the moment and I usually leave the office just after 7 pm. It takes me 10 minutes to get home and then I just like to relax, see my husband and get something to eat. I just started a new job so I’m still developing a typical day.
Avil Beckford: How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?
Shirley Adrain: I focus on doing things I love. I make sure I spend as much time as possible doing things I enjoy. I plan everything and I make lists and make sure that I cover every thing on my list. For me it’s important to keeps thing under control.
Avil Beckford: If you had to start over from scratch, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?
Shirley Adrain: I would have focused more on my strengths and found out what my strengths were earlier. I’m not worried about having all the skills that people around me have. I am focusing on what I am good at and not so much on what I’m not good at.
Avil Beckford: What's the most important business or other discovery you've made in the past year?
Shirley Adrain: I went back to work after a long absence. I had my daughter two-and-half years ago and I was quite worried about how I would adapt, and what I would have forgotten, and whether it was the right thing to go back to work, but I discovered that it was like I had never taken any time off at all. I went straight back into it and am enjoying it. I think I wasted time worrying about something that didn’t become a reality. I guess I learned that it’s actually not that hard to go back to work after we’ve had children. I think we think it’s going to be worse than it’s going to be and convince ourselves that we can never do a high flying role again when actually if you had the skills to do it once you can do it again.
Avil Beckford: What are the three threats to your business, your success, and how are you handling them?
Shirley Adrain:
- Personally, dealing with a different culture, I work for a French bank and I’m Scottish.
- Being true to my strengths and not reinventing myself around an organization.
- Maintaining a proper work-life balance.
How I’m handling them is I’m learning about different cultures and that’s definitely going to take quite a bit of time, but it’s fun learning. Being true to my strengths is probably the easiest one because I just have to keep focused and make sure I’m doing the right things. Maintaining a proper work-life balance is taking a bit of time but I’m convinced that I’ll get there, I’ve got a plan on that and I expect in the next few weeks to get things under control.
Avil Beckford: What’s unique about the service that you provide?
Shirley Adrain: What’s unique about my role is that my focus is on people and harnessing the talent in an organization, so it’s very much about employee engagement. While not unique, it’s normally not the key focus of the COO, the COO is usually focused on rolling out standards and procedures and that’s where I’m slightly different.
Avil Beckford: Describe a major business or other challenge you had and how you resolved it. What kind of lessons did you learn in the process?
Shirley Adrain: A major challenge I had was after 9/11, the end of 2001 I was made redundant. That was a huge shock to me because I was doing quite well at work and I thought only low performers would be chosen for redundancy. But I quickly realized that I had finished a project and was waiting on a new project to work on that I was not critical to the business, so I was an obvious choice for redundancy. That was a bit of a shock and it almost felt like a divorce, but I decided to look on the bright side, which I always try to do.
I was also determined to get a better job than I’d had before, so I created a plan and timetabled my plan to keep me focused so I had specific things that I did every day. It actually took me a whole year to get another job but it turned out to be a really good move for me in my career, and I also learned not to define myself based on my job. And I appreciated the other things that make me happy in life, and the way I contribute and it’s not all about work.
Avil Beckford: Tell me about your big break and who gave you.
Shirley Adrain: My biggest break was the first time I really got some help because I’m quite independent. I think I got through life by doing what I wanted to do and doing it by myself. But when I was about 28 years old, I got some help and that was when a boss offered me a role on Wall Street in the 1990s. I had been looking for something more challenging to do and he offered me a role to set-up a team working on the trading floor. I had never been to the US before so it was quite a big move for me but I turned up there not quite knowing what it was going to be like, but I absolutely loved it. I think it probably took my career to a different level knowing that I could do something like that and it was quite an exciting thing to go on my own and live in another country and do a bit of a different role. I think that gave me a level of confidence, and it really propelled my career.
Avil Beckford: Describe one of your biggest failures. What lessons did you learn, and how did it contribute to a greater success?
Shirley Adrain: I took on a new job and it wasn’t what was described in the job spec which obviously can happen. I hadn’t asked enough questions and didn’t do enough probing and it turned out not to be the right job for me. It was quite a struggle and the way the business set up wasn’t really effective to make my role a success. It was managing a large IT project and there wasn’t a huge amount I could do in the role. I tried to change the way the business was structured but I couldn’t succeed while I was in that role. But what I did do was talk to my boss and say it was a struggle and he gave me some other interesting things to do, some side projects that got me going. After 18 months, a particular project that I was on went live and I managed to move on to something else and I managed over time to influence how the business was being run so it was operating more effectively.
The experience made me appreciate that before you start a job you have to do a lot of research and when you get inside, and when you find yourself in a sticky situation you have to grit your teeth and see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Avil Beckford: What’s one of the toughest decisions you’ve had to make and how did it impact your life?
Shirley Adrain: Leaving a relationship actually. I was in a nice, comfortable relationship and we had a house together. It was all quite cozy but I realized that my horizons had expanded and it wasn’t the right relationship for me and everyone else was convinced that it was. It was a big move to leave that relationship when everybody around me was saying, “No, you’ve made the wrong decision.” That was quite tough but I had to have courage in my convictions. I had to keep convincing myself that I was going to meet Mr. Right. It took a really long time after leaving that relationship, but it happened in the end. It was about not giving up hope that eventually I would meet that perfect man.
Avil Beckford: What are three events that helped to shape your life?
Shirley Adrain:
- Losing my university funding the second year: During my second year at university they took away my grant, and my parents couldn’t afford to send me to university, so I either had to leave university or find a way around it. I got myself a job in a restaurant and I worked 35 hours in a week doing split shifts, working weekends and evenings and that allowed me to fund myself through two degrees back-to-back. That was a big thing for me and that’s when I became completely independent.
- Moving into investment banking from working in industry: I think I was really struggling working in London, working in an industry not making much money and it was very much about surviving month-to-month. I decided this wasn’t what I wanted to do and I wanted a more challenging job. So, I managed to get myself a job in investment banking in IT and I learned so much working for JP Morgan. It was very tough for the first six months moving into that high-powered environment with such talented people. I struggled for the first six months but I grew in confidence and I really enjoyed it. It was a tough but character building move.
- Giving birth as an older mom: I was nearly 40 when I have birth and I’d given up by then that I was going to have kids. I managed it and what surprised me is that I’m quite relaxed about the whole motherhood thing and it’s been quite a lot easier and more fun than what people will say, but I’ve actually really enjoyed it.
Avil Beckford: What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?
Shirley Adrain: Singing at my own wedding. I sing classically and have sung at friend’s weddings and I’ve gone to friends’ weddings where there was a singer and I always thought I’d like to do that at my own wedding. And then when I was getting married I spoke to the vicar and he said, “You wouldn’t sing at your own wedding, nobody does that.” And my friends and parents said that, “You can’t sing at your own wedding, someone else has to sing, you have enough stress at the wedding you can’t do it.” And I thought about it for a while but it was something I wanted to do. I wanted to sing a beautiful song to my husband, a classical song, and I wanted to do it in the church. So I just practiced, and practiced and practiced and kept it quiet to my family until the wedding rehearsal, and I just had to keep the confidence up. I practiced a lot the morning of the wedding to do it, but I’m really glad that I did it. It’s something that I can look back on, and it was a nice thing to have done. And it made the day a bit more unique.
Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?
Shirley Adrain: I’ve had a lot of great mentors. I think it is really important to have a mentor to give you confidence in yourself, and to remind you of what your strengths are, and keep you going in difficult times. I’ve had a lot of support from mentors and I would recommend to everybody that they find at least one good mentor.
Avil Beckford: What’s one core message you received from your mentors?
Shirley Adrain: I would say that it’s act as if it were impossible to fail, and then you won’t let failure become your reality. So you just assume that you’re going to succeed and it is much better, and if you act like it’s impossible to fail you are going to succeed.
Avil Beckford: An invisible mentor is a unique leader you can learn things from by observing them from afar, in the capacity of an Invisible Mentor, what is one piece of advice that you would give to readers?
Shirley Adrain: Work out what your strengths are, ask people if you are not sure, and focus on continually developing them. Find the job that you love, something that you are passionate about. I think that’s the important thing to focus on.
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