James Perry

speaker

571 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 27 Jul

James Perry’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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James Reed: all about business · 89. The business decision you'll thank yourself for in 5 years | James Perry · 27 Jul 2026 podcast

Yeah, and it was a wonderful introduction to business.

You know, I learned I was in the marketing department.

I started as brand manager for other boxed chocolates and I got to the heights of Cadbury's Roses and then Cadbury's Dairy Milk.

But it was a really good introduction to the whole business.

extent of the business um manufacturing marketing sales and logistics and um where were you working where was this so it was in bourneville that's just near birmingham it's just just on just a suburb of birmingham now yeah um but a beautiful place a sort of model village built by the cabri family um there were no pubs because of course temperance the temperance values persisted

But whilst I was there, the thing that really formed me was that it underwent a program called Managing for Shareholder Value, which is where the Cadbury family essentially surrendered control of the business to the city.

It was listed.

And the prevailing ideology at the time of the city was that the purpose of business was to maximize its profits.

And there was an extent to which the great Quaker values of the business were getting in the way of that.

And so whilst I was there, there was a sort of pretty

ruthless wind blew through the business, which was essentially focusing everybody in it on driving more chocolate sales or higher margins.

So it was floated, I think, in the 1980s.

My history might not be completely accurate, but it was floated at some point.

But during the 1990s the family effectively leadership handed over to City Right city.

It was a fundamental and very deliberate change.

It was perfectly rational.

It was perfectly reasonable.

If you follow the prevailing ideology, which is the prevailing ideology, which says that the purpose of this business is to generate prosperity, profits are a proxy for prosperity, and therefore anything that gets in the way of those profits is unwelcome and needs to be removed.

They had.

We can talk about measurement.

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