Gordon Watson

At the age of 21, Gordon Watson left Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU) with his FCII and headed for New York to work in the largest global insurance company at the time.

He has since worked and lived in Kenya, Dubai, London, Tokyo, Seoul and now in Hong Kong, holding senior roles in leading global insurance organisations.

Gordon was in his thirties when he was appointed as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of a formerly bankrupt life insurance company in Japan.

He didn’t speak a word of Japanese when he walked into his first meeting with the leadership team and realised that most were 20 years older than him and did not speak English.

Gambling with creativity

Gordon said: “It was obvious they were rather shocked a young gaijin [a foreigner] had been made CEO, not an older Japanese man.”

It was an American International Company (AIG) and former chairman “Hank Greenberg was notoriously impatient,” Gordon said.

He added: “The company was in a bit of a mess and needed a total transformation. I knew I had to do something soon, there was no time to wait. So, I asked my executive committee to draw a self-portrait of themselves and then advised them I will take them offsite for five days to teach them to draw professionally.”

They weren’t expecting to be tasked to draw and thought Gordon was “crazy” when he opened the five-day session by asking them to draw a professional Picasso drawing.

“They were reluctant to try and advised me that I had not taught them anything yet. I said that was true and asked them to turn a Picasso drawing example upside down and draw it. After an hour, I asked them to stop and turn the drawing back the correct way.

They were shocked to see how good their drawings were and I explained it was because they were drawing what was there and not what they thought was there. If it had been the correct way up, they would try too hard to make it look like Picasso’s, while upside down they did not, they just drew lines.

Similar to business, you need to address the facts as they are and not what you perceive the facts to be, and this was a large learning curve for them.”

After the session, they drew a self-portrait again, and Gordon said: “The difference in standard was remarkable. I placed the before and after portraits outside the Board room for all to see, especially the younger staff. It was to show we could transform the conservative management team in only a few days to draw almost like professionals, which aided their belief that we could transform the company, and we did.”

His gamble worked as the company became hugely successful with high engagement scores and eventually sold at a large multiple.