The new head of the bosses' organisation has worked there since 1982. And that's just as well, he says, because with pressure on industry to deliver jobs, this is no time for a novice
John Cridland looks like the archetypal number two. Quietly spoken, neatly suited, unflamboyant in manner but a stickler for detail, he would be every chief executive's choice of a second in command. Which is exactly what he was for a decade at the Confederation of British Industry, acting as the backup first for Digby Jones and then Richard Lambert.
But in February, the number two got the top job. In a break with tradition that will give hope to loyal deputies everywhere, Britain's best known employers' organisation looked to one of its own to be its new director general. And not just any insider either: Cridland has been at its Centre Point headquarters ever since he left Cambridge with a history degree in 1982.
"I really wanted the top job and I am tickled pink to have got it," Cridland says on a tour of hi-tech manufacturing firms in Cambridgeshire and Essex. "I am the 10th DG and the first ever to have been appointed from inside. I have broken the mold."
Not much is known about the bosses' boss. He likes swimming, curling up with a history book if he gets a spare half hour at the end of the day, and is a big fan of British films of the 1940s. He reels off the names of his favourite Powell and Pressburger films – The Red Shoes, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Black Narcissus – and describes with relish a recent visit to Pinewood Studios to see Britain's creative industries at work.
The last three CBI director generals have, he says, all been different. First, there was the cerebral Adair Turner, appointed when the bosses wanted someone they thought could speak to New Labour. Then there was Jones, the plain-talking Midlander who took a more robust approach when the organisation's relationship with the Blair government soured.
Finally, there was Lambert, the former Financial Times editor and ex-member of the Bank of England's monetary policy committee, described by Cridland as a great interpreter of policy. The new DG says his aim is to synthesise the best of each of them.
Super-salesman
So how is he finding the transition from being a backroom boy to a job he says is about being a super-salesman? "I have grown into it. I started as a policy analyst. I get an intellectual kick out of developing policies but being a salesman is the external-facing bit of my job. I've needed to become more of a salesman, but how you do it is a matter of personal choice. I do it on the basis of product knowledge."
Cridland is determined to be his own man. After almost three decades at the CBI, he knows if something is bugging his members and is comfortable listening to concerns about the government's immigration policy in Duxford and the implications of spending cuts for a company in Basildon that supplies the Ministry of Defence.
Just occasionally, there is a faint echo of CBI director generals past – as when he uses a classic Digby Jones phrase to explain why the CBI chose him. "There is a sense of urgency about what we need to do to make Plan A work, to ensure that the private sector steps up to the plate and does it this year and next year. It wasn't the time to go on a new journey. The first time I saw George Osborne, he said: 'I need the CBI to help me deliver a growth agenda on budget day.' I didn't have three months to get to know business. It was delivery from day one."
North and south
Much of Cridland's time is spent out and about meeting CBI members, but he says he sees little evidence of a north-south divide. "In the CBI, the commonality is more apparent than the differences. Membership is biased towards the most successful companies. The further north you go, you find that the ones left are remarkably resilient. If they have survived up until now, they are pretty damned impressive companies."
Cridland's five-year contract will see the 50-year-old through until just after the scheduled date of the next general election. "When I hang up my spurs six months after the next general election, I want a real demonstrable improvement in the standing of business in society. At the moment, businesspeople are about as popular as estate agents. That's not a good space to be in."
His explanation for the low esteem is that business has been at the sharp end of globalisation, often being forced to make "hard choices" to remain competitive. "To its local communities, business seems and feels as if it is less engaged."
And what about remuneration? "It's a factor. Business has to show high levels of remuneration are payment for results. Its not payment separate from the achievement of senior executives."
Cridland looks with respect and some envy at Germany's Mittelstand, the network of medium-sized companies that form the bedrock of industrial strength in Europe's biggest economy. Government policy, he suggests, has been too dominated by the needs of Britain's big firms, which have easy access to Whitehall, and by the desire to promote start-ups. Helping the "forgotten middle" is, he says, less sexy but vital if the government is to deliver on its growth strategy and rebalance the economy.
Cridland states, repeatedly, that he is not talking about "picking winners" – a taboo phrase – but about tackling the issues that stifle growth. "Sometimes a company needs money in the form of up-front cash; sometimes it needs launch aid; sometimes it needs a road to be [widened] or it needs a skills academy.
"We have to focus on the middle. More than half the jobs created in the last 10 years were in medium-sized companies: 12,000 companies created more than 1 million jobs. In 2000, the UK had 4.4% of global exports and Germany had 9%. By 2010, Britain's share of global exports had fallen to 2.2% but Germany's was still 9%. In a decade we halved, but they held their share. Something is not right there."
CV
Age 50
Education Boston Grammar School and Christ's College, Cambridge
Career 1982, joined CBI as policy adviser, moving up to become director of environmental affairs and human resources policy; 2000-2010, deputy director general; February 2011, director general
Family Married, two children
Interests Indian history, swimming, British films of the 1940s