Henry Engelhardt’s journey may have begun in Chicago, but the Admiral founder’s story is a very Square Mile one. He tells Jennifer Sieg his leadership secrets.
At 9 am on January 2 1993, Henry Engelhardt sold his first ever car insurance policy – and the entrepreneur hasn’t looked back since.
Now, according to Forbes, the energetic businessman and founder of the UK’s largest specialist car insurer Admiral Group is number 2,150 on the billionaires list, with an estimated net worth of $1.5bn (£1.2bn).
Despite being born and raised in the city of Chicago, with ambitions of becoming a professional baseball player, and studying journalism at University of Michigan, Engelhardt found himself a City of London man.
“I was hired by a managing agency at Lloyds of London to set up and run what’s become Admiral… we wrote the business plan, we got things sorted with Lloyds of London to be able to finance it and we pressed the go button,” he says.
It’s a journey he seems to cherish, because as I sit with the 66-year-old entrepreneur today, I find that it took much more than a good idea and business plan to grow Admiral from a small start-up to a £8.4bn FTSE 100 giant with over 10,000 employees.
Managing the puzzle pieces
Engelhardt stepped down from his role as Admiral’s chief executive in 2016 to give way for a younger management team, but it was far from a full departure.
The extroverted entrepreneur still spends much of his time mentoring those managers within (as well as outside) the company, sharing his views on what it takes to “be a better boss”.
Admiral has been named a ‘Great Place to Work’ for 23 years in a row.
I met every new starter that came into Admiral for 25 years. I talked to them and they talked to me but one of the things was I gave each and every one of them a jigsaw puzzle piece.
Henry Engelhardt
“I said don’t worry, I’m going to explain this and in the middle of my little talk, I said okay, who can tell me what the puzzle is based on looking at a single piece, and of course nobody could, and I said that’s the point, every piece is important to making the picture.
“We work together, we put all the pieces together, that’s the only way that we see that picture.”
It’s this effort that has helped Admiral go from strength to strength over the years, as Engelhardt says its “fabulous financial results” wouldn’t have been possible without “the team, the team, the team.”
“If people like what they do, they do it better,” he adds, with a smile.
Fighting off the growing pains
Most success stories take in their fair share of growing pains and Admiral’s was no different. But Engelhardt says if you understand how your role as founder will always evolve, you’ll surpass the setbacks.
“They used to call me a Jack Russell Terrier in the beginning, because I was nipping at everybody’s heels all the time,” Engelhardt laughs.
He adds: “There was no way that I could be like that when we grew to be 500 people.
“I was very conscious of that, so I recognized my job had to change, even if I was doing things that maybe I liked less.”
Unfortunately, there will never be a one-size-fits all solution when it comes to management, Engelhardt says.
“Management’s incredibly complex, if it was easy we’d all have a little formula, we’d have a little classified card in our wallet that says ‘here’s how you’d be a good manager ding, ding, ding, ding’ yeah… it’s not easy,” Engelhardt says.
CV
Name: Henry Engelhardt
Company: Admiral Group plc
Founded: 1993
Staff: circa 10,000
Title: CEO emeritus
Age: 66
Born: Chicago, Il USA
Lives: Cardiff, Wales
Studied: Journalism, radio/tv/film and later business.
Talents: Some
Motto: ‘If people like what they do, they’ll do it better’ and, ‘the power of the team is invariably greater than the power of any single individual’. Also known for saying ‘always take lunch’.
Most known for: Helping create a great place to work which, in turn, helped create a great financially successful company
First ambition: Baseball player
Favourite book: Have read too many great books to choose just one
Best piece of advice: When prioritisation is a challenge, look at the ultimate goal and ask yourself: what can I do that gets me to the goal most quickly?