Looking back on a long career, Andrew Ketteringham says clarity of purpose is the secret of success.

Perhaps there was a time when private, public and third sectors were very different. Having worked in all three it was certainly my impression when I worked for a large plc that the private sector was more ‘fleet of foot’ and more profit-orientated. Even in the best of times we were always cutting out cost so that profit this year would be greater than last. God bless the shareholders!

In the public sector I found that there were so many different influences on us that it was sometimes very difficult to steer a steady course. When I joined the voluntary sector I guess my first question was: “Is that really the budget?”

Three sectors

When I think more carefully about the differences between the three sectors in which I’ve worked it becomes clearer that there are more similarities than I first thought. Perhaps, today, even the PR budgets in the biggest companies are not what they were.

For almost 30 years my principal responsibility has been communications – media, PR and public affairs. I was formerly director of public affairs for what was then TSB plc, and subsequently held a similar role at the general Medical Council. Wherever I have worked I have sought to bring clarity and simplicity to our key messages. Without both, your target audiences will not understand what you are seeking to do. That’s pretty obvious and non-controversial – isn’t it? Well, no, it’s not.

When I’ve joined an organisation or when, for a short time, I worked in consultancy, my first task with a senior management team was to find out from them what the organisation’s key messages were.

In one I found that they believed there were 23 key messages. When I said that was too many they got it down to 17 – needless to say the organisation was finding itself in some difficulties at the time.

Seventeen is a long way from the four I think is the maximum. Four simple, one-or-two-sentence messages, with no sub-clauses, preferably no semi-colons and certainly no bullet points. When you manage that it is evidence of a clear focus and determination to succeed.

In many other respects also, the worlds of private, public and voluntary sectors have become similar, as the external environment, particularly the economy, has become more restrictive. In the job I am now leaving, at Alzheimer’s Society, I have used the experience I gained when working for one of the large banks. Today I have no shareholders, but the needs of our client base are growing and increasingly the resources I deploy have to be stretched further.

We rely upon a dedicated staff and we have to find ways of keeping that dedication and loyalty. That can be done in many ways, but one of the most important is maintaining our single-team focus – we’re one team because we share the same overall objective.

There’s nothing new in that idea either. Many successful companies have at their heart a single-mindedness about how they make their profit. That’s particularly true when economics and markets are difficult. When economies improve we hear more about diversification – in troubled times it’s more about sticking to your core task. Does that ring bells for us here in the voluntary sector?

Alignment

There was a time when public, private and voluntary sectors were very different, but just as globalisation has brought a strong alignment between the nations, so the realities of today’s economics have brought the three sectors much closer together.

There will come a time when the external environment improves but I wonder if those differences will emerge again to the same extent? Today the career paths of many more men and women will span at least two of the sectors. There will be many more, like me, who will want to enjoy all three.

Like me, they may well want to bring the knowledge, experience and practices of one sector to another and I hope that, also like me, they will find enormous job satisfaction in doing so. It’s a delight to be able to say that the job I have today is the most enjoyable I have ever had – even if I do complain sometimes about budgets.

Andrew Ketteringham steps down this month as director of external affairs at Alzheimer’s Society