Nowadays, of course, there’s a lot more consultation and discussion, but in the end someone has to take the final decision – and that’s me. Sometimes you feel nervous putting your signature to a multi-million dollar agreement. If I’ve got it wrong – well, I prefer not to think about that. But, of course, I’ve only reached the position I’m in because I’m not over-cautious by nature. I have been accused of being reckless – for example, when I took the bold step of cutting all our top-of-the-range prices by 30% last November. I was proved right on that one. To an outsider, my decisions may sometimes look rash, but you can be sure I’ve only reached them after carefully weighing up all the pros and cons. I have a duty to the shareholders not to behave in an imprudent way with their investment. You have to ask yourself again and again: am I being prudent? Or is this course of action basically foolhardy? And, of course, the other side of the coin is that I wouldn’t be doing anyone any favours by completely avoiding justifiable risks that carry the possibility of sizeable returns.

I think it’s what comes with responsibility. Sometimes it feels like the whole of my daily working life is filled with risk – but that’s because I have quite a lot of freedom to make decisions. For example, I can decide exactly what deal I offer potential clients on price or discounts. That means I don’t always know for sure that I’ve got it right. Sometimes I put the phone down and immediately I’m wondering how sensible that was. In many ways, the biggest risk I face in my work is the risk of wasting time. As they say, time is money – it’s actually my income. If you think you’ve got a good potential lead, you can spend days following up, and then the whole thing can just collapse and you end up with nothing. So to some degree you have to be cautious about deciding which leads to follow up

I think most people think mainly of health and safety issues, but it’s not only that. My responsibility covers all areas of risk within an organization – financial, legal, environmental, technological. When I discover a potential problem, my job is to assess the severity of the loss that could result from it – maybe in equipment or time or knowledge, or even human life – and put a financial value on that. I also calculate the probability of that risk actually happening. I can then decide which risks need immediate attention, and which ones are manageable. In many cases you can find ways to completely avoid the risk. For example, if you determine that a staircase is potentially dangerous – you close it down and repair it. But, outside of safety issues, avoidance isn’t always the most prudent course of action. If you went to the CEO and advised him to avoid every risk, you’re probably gonna get a deeply sceptical response. A totally risk-averse company is never going to make much progress.