Men Who Make Godfrey
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Transport-18
Edward Liardet
IT is, perhaps, rather odd that the chairman and managing director of Simms Motor and Electronics Corporation, Ltd., should not be a major-general. Two of his near relatives are: his uncle, Sir Claude Liardet, " invented " the R.A.F. Regiment in World War II. Yet if his command is a purely civilian one, Godfrey Edward Liardet brings to it all the incisiveness and boldness that one looks for in a successful leader.
A Simms man nearly all his life (he was started by F. R. Simms himself in 1929), Mr. Liardet knows the . companY arid every facet of it intimately. He has .a powerfully instinctive urge to know what is going on and he likes to see things for himself. He is _perfectly happy to delegate resPensibility to other men—he chose them himself for a Particular job—but he knows that he is not wasting his time when he strolls through the works. There is always food for thought, and often-rcidin for improve
ment. . ,..
" John " Liardet was born in Liverpool in 1908, the son of an electrical engineer.He was educated at Liverpool College and on leaving school was attracted to marine engineering. There were, however, better prospects for an ambitious young man ashore and he joined the..Mersey Docks and Harbour Board in 1924. Five years later, he was .persuaded that Simms was looking for just. such a man and duly made the journey to London. His first commercial success was in persuading Simms that he was worth Ss. a week more than that inventive but not always
easy man was offering.
Starting in the toolroom and proceeding through each of the departments, Mr. Liardet was asked, one day in 1934, if he would care to represent the company in Edinburgh. He left that day. A year later he was appointed assistant sales manager: soon, the sales chair was his, though I doubt whether he had much time to sit in it By 1936 all the Simms manufacturing facilities were concentrated in new premises in Oak Lane, Finchley, and during the war the factory was busy producing electrical components for the Services. Mr. Liardet was appointed a director in 1943. At the end of hostilities there was a period when it seemed that the company had exhausted its energies. The inevitable run-down in production was not yet counterbalanced by new orders.
Mr. Liardet was appointed a joint managing director in 1950, but it cannot be said that all was sweetness and light until 1953, when he became chairman and managing director. Once in the chair, he was able to carry out a number of changes in the organization which had formulated in his mind in the past few years.
He thought the company, faced as it was by fierce competition, needed new blood and new ideas. Gradually he built up around him the kind of team he had visualized. He secured the return of John Ayres, who had been chief electrical designer and general works manager during the war. He found R. G. Sutton, now financial director, and C. H. Bradbury, the present technical director. • Other senior appointments were made among existing members of the staff. The formation of a happy, highly efficient executive body and the complete reorganization of their offices had the effect of turbocharging the business.
The Snowball Rolls
The time had come to expand and diversify their interests. The production of fuel-injection equipment and electrical components was going better than ever and Mr. Liardet looked around for fresh fields. In the next few years, many relatively small businesses were added to the fold, there to earn new prosperity as part of a group which had the money and experience to develop ideas.
With tireless energy and enthusiasm, the chairman sought opportunities, inculcating a great deal of his almost boyish zest into flagging enterprises and perhaps disheartened engineers. Today, the corporation embraces a dozen or so companies, all of which can assist each other and look to the parent company for help in research and selling. The new members include precision engineers, such as Horstman,. of Bath, Clearox Products, Ltd., plastics manufacturers, and N.S.F., Ltd., of Keighley, electronic component engineers, and other companies engaged in oil heating, ventilation and vacuum-ware manufacture.
During all this period of rapid expansion, Mr. Liardet probably worked harder than at any time in his life. He travelled widely, attempting to combine business with some rest. He saw sales and service establishments set up in nearly 70 overseas countries and he suffered the conflict of having a great deal to do at his head office with the urgent desire to visit' the newly acquired enterprises.
• He has always had the welfare of his employees very much at heart and has spent a great deal of time and thought on the more human angles of management. The Finchley works boasts a magnificent canteen-cum-ballroom-cum-theatre, but there are less obvious and not less important ways of winning loyalty, content and bigger production that have received equal attention.
Men like "John" Liardet don't 'have much leisure. He farms (profitably, at that) 200 acres near Essendon. He likes to fish in Devonshire, He enjoys a Rolls-Royce and an Aston-Martin. He is an active executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. He is a man whose strength and .charm lie essentially in the real enthusiasm
he derives from whatever he is doing. T.W.