Rachel Murphy discusses the importance of knowing that new and different ventures often require out of the box thinking.
We are not a monolith. That is to say, that the 8bn or so people that inhabit this Earth make up a diverse and colourful tapestry that can be best described as unique. While we often have values, belief systems and ambitions that overlap, everyone on this planet is their own person and must carve out an identity for themselves.
Why then, when it comes to education and representation in the workplace do we adhere so easily to traditional systems and ways of doing things, even at the risk of excluding talented and skilled people from the workforce? Often starting as early as childhood, when it comes time to begin thinking about the future.
“I guess I struggled a little with formal education,” said Rachel Murphy, the founder of business consultancy and advice firm The Grafter. “I was diagnosed with ADHD much later in life and I found theoretical stuff, as I still do, hard work, so I guess school at the time that I was at it wasn’t as exciting as it would be today.”
Murphy has more than 25 years of experience under her belt across the public and private sectors in the UK, having served as the interim chief information officer for the Department of education and also having led the ‘patient facing transformation’ of the NHS. She also built and sold professional services company Difrent for £13.2m.
But Difrent wasn’t Murphy’s first company. When she was only 13 years old she not only established and ran her own car washing business, she also hired her friends to work alongside her. “If I look back, I was very entrepreneurial,” she said.
But it became clear down the line, that despite showing great aptitude for work in this area, the traditional next step, which was third level education, didn’t suit how her mind operated and called into the question the merits of standardised education as a one-size-fits-all doorway into the desired career.
Play to your strengths
She explained, back then qualifications in entrepreneurship didn’t really exist and the only other route, business studies, was to her, extremely dull and not geared towards what she wanted out of education. “You were learning about establishing a limited company and not actually running a business.
“So I didn’t go to uni and I know if I had done, I would have just got pissed and never earned a degree. I kind of realised relatively early on that consultancy was what I wanted to do.”
She elaborated, if the subjects that she was interested in were brought to life in a way that made sense and if she were given the opportunity to engage with innovative project-based work, then it might have been a different story. But back then, the traditional course as it was, wouldn’t have helped her advance personally or professionally.
She said, “If someone was to sort of say to me at 18, go and build a company, I’d have loved it. You know, that would have naturally [clicked]. I mean, I don’t know how successful it would have been, but it would have been much more real, instead of theory.”
But education, like almost everything, has changed with the times. Murphy noted when she was in school, business studies was extraordinarily rigid and didn’t include the topics that have since modernised it, such as how to develop your own business, or how to access important support and resources.
She recalled an amusing story in which she started at her first job, where they were still using dial up internet and computer systems were less advanced, meaning the sales director of the company would call out emails within the office. “I mean, now I feel ancient,” she laughed, “but that was the reality.”
Investing in yourself
In her 20s Murphy launched her first (post-carwash) company, which she eventually sold. She moved into consultancy, the space she had always wanted to be in, to gain the experience she knew was needed and fifteen years later, when she was more confident in her abilities, built and sold another organisation.
In that time, she undertook a multitude of roles and with that confidence and experience came the ability to better recognise how and where she might fit into an organisation, be it as its founder, its CEO or as the person behind the curtain who keeps the cogs moving.
“I was desperate in my young years to go up through the ranks and be an associate director and a director and I thought, I’m going to join a board. I’m going to be blown away by the magic that occurs. And then I joined my first board, and I thought, “Oh my God, what hell.”
But that is part of growing as an entrepreneur and a founder. Developing an understanding of what true leadership looks like and how your ambitions align with the trajectory in which the company is going.
At the Grafter, “I won’t be CEO in the next 12 months, because I don’t want to be”, she said, explaining that it is not her current goal, nor is it a position she thinks best suits her at the moment. “I would fully intend to bring in a CEO and I go and do what I’m brilliant at, not CEO and I think that’s the difference,” said Murphy.
A believer in servant leadership, that is a method by which you commit to the growth and development of your teams, rather than adherence to a more traditional hierarchy, Murphy stated that people often get in their own way by assuming that because they built something, surely they must be at the helm to lead it.
But there is always more than one way to lead and by better understanding how you can motivate a team comprised of individuals, you develop a style over time and represent your organisation, its employees and indeed yourself, in the right capacity.
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