Stephen Kelly
speaker
621 appearances
3 recordings
2 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 10 Jul
Stephen Kelly’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 2.
Appearances
Because that's the genesis.
I kind of grew up in the world of US technology and spent 10 years with a startup company at the time called Oracle.
the 80s and 90s and that was how to build global growth companies but then I had to do a number of restructures and again probably the US model was pretty focused and very on point in the UK when I came back to government my interest was could I actually apply the playbooks of what I learned in the US when I came back to the UK I did that in a public company called micro focus and
And then the intellectual challenge, my curiosity, was tweaked by thinking, could those same sort of business practices, the tone at the top, the strategies, be employed in one of the oldest institutions in the world, the British Civil Service?
And it was the case.
So coming directly back to your question, it was the case that on the sort of restructuring agenda, we called it the reform agenda, was very focused on making sure the good people stuck around.
So a lot of obviously the process, you know, inevitably when you're losing colleagues and in the first couple of months, actually there was a lot of, you know, retirement parties and leaving parties and all those sort of things.
It does set the tone within the company and the culture and very important to me is a vibrant culture within all the sort of responsibilities I've had.
So we had to actually personally put our arms around the shoulder of the most talented people
And actually during a time of major change, major restructuring, it is a great time for opportunity because people want to take it on more responsibility.
So the best people actually rose to the top.
No, nothing's easy, Steph.
Nothing actually, wow, I've been in business for 45 years, nothing that you build of substantial value is easy to do unless you win the lottery or something.
I don't do the lottery.
It's a lot of hard work.
I think the start point, you've got to have a vision for what Britain wanted to be.
And then you've got to have a plan.
We had a very clear vision.
And we used to, you know, honestly, with any institution, particularly like people who have been in the civil service 20, 30 years, they become institutionalized.
And sometimes, I hate to say this, but in big companies, it's the same.
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