Hosted by John Jeffcock, CEO of Winmark and author of The Suite Spot
The Suite Spot interview with Justine Campbell
In today’s turbulent business environment, the General Counsel (GC) is key to managing risk. But how do Chief Legal Officers build their business acumen and skills to deliver effectively alongside the rest of the Executive Team?
In this episode of The Suite Spot, we talk with the Group GC & Company Secretary of National Grid, Justine Campbell, about the challenges she has faced on her career journey and the key decisions she has made along the way.
Justine shares some insights for those seeking to pursue an in-house legal career, including:
- How the support of the CEO and others can make the difference when facing challenge or self-doubt
- How moving organisations is good for career growth as long as your new challenge builds on what you have done before
- The importance of looking outside the organisation and your role, using networks to understand how others have tackled similar challenges.
LEADERSHIP LESSONS AND CAREER ADVICE FROM
Justine Campbell, Group General Counsel & Company Secretary at National Grid. Previously at Telefonica, Vodafone and Centrica.
TRANSCRIPT
John Jeffcock (JJ) Hello and welcome to the Winmark ‘The Suite Spot’ interview series where we explore how to reach, lead and deliver a C-Suite role today. I’m delighted to be joined by Justine Campbell, who is the Group GC of National Grid. Welcome Justine.
Justine Campbell (JC) Thank you very much, John.
JJ Can I start by asking about when you were a child, you were brought up in Ireland. Is that right?
JC I was, yes. Irish and proud of my EU passport, which is quite a nice thing. Let’s not get political, but I’m happy about that.
JJ And when you were a child, what did you want to be?
JC I probably wanted to be a singer of some sort so if X Factor had been around in the 1970s, I would have been very keen to audition! I did actually do a lot of singing at school. I was keen on potentially even training to be an opera singer, but I don’t know if I was ever going to be good enough. But you know, I remember having a discussion with my mother about it and she said to me, look, if you really want to go for it, go for it. But you could do something else and then you could just have it as a hobby on the side.
I decided to take the safe route cause I figured there was about a 0.001% chance of me ever become a very successful opera singer – but I could probably be a reasonably OK lawyer. So, I went for the safe route and became a lawyer and since then have been done very little singing at all. So that bit slightly fell apart, but anyway!
JJ And then did you read Law at university?
JC Yes, I did. I went to Trinity College Dublin and I studied the law.
JJ And you decided at that point to become a lawyer?
JC Well, I think I kind of fell into it. I mean I it was a bit of an unplanned journey. So, I went to study law, but that was just because it was a very highly regarded degree. It was a four-year degree which was also appealed to me quite a lot, not because of the amount of studying, but being at university for four years seemed to be a good idea. And then I think I just fell into it because after that you get channelled quite easily into private practice. I had a lot of friends who were coming to the UK to do their training and I was fortunate enough to secure training over here. It seemed like a great opportunity, so I ended up doing that.
JJ And you joined a Magic Circle firm? Is that right?
JC Yes, I joined Freshfields which was great. It was kind of a funny story because when I turned up for my interview they actually had the wrong CV. There was somebody else with my exact name who was also being interviewed and they had the wrong CV! So, the meeting got off to a pretty bad start, but then it became quite funny. Luckily I was offered a job and she wasn’t!
I really enjoyed Freshfields. I mean, it was hard work, very hard work, but it was a great environment cause there 28 of us who started together and it’s like an extension of university, but you have a great built-in social life.
JJ Could you summarise your career in a minute?
JC So I was at Freshfields for a number of years and then thought, actually I want to see what it’s like working in-house because private practice had slightly lost its allure. I think I probably knew I wanted a family, so I thought, I’m not sure going for partnership is for me. So, I joined BT which was a great transition because it had a really big legal department and I was a specialist at that point. I was a competition lawyer and I’d spent time in Brussels with Freshfields and I wanted to continue doing that kind of work.
They were heavily regulated, had a dedicated competition regulatory team, so I was able to join that team and then merge into being an in-house lawyer in quite a gentle way which was nice. They then de-merged their mobile business O2 – I went with O2 and became head of competition law there. I stayed there a number of years, and ended up finally, after they were taken over by Telefonica, as the European General Counsel for Telefonica and I stayed there for a couple more years, then I left to go to Vodafone. I was there for five years and then went for a total change of industry, but again a regulated industry, which is what I like. I went to Centrica and ended up there as Group General Counsel & Company Secretary, and then a couple of years ago joined National Grid as General Counsel & Company Secretary.
So, a pretty linear legal role, although through it I’ve done various different bits of specialisms with bigger teams and I’ve worked in both head office and in the operating company which I think has been really helpful to understand the different parts of businesses. And I’ve done other bits along the way like security, public affairs and risk, quite a few different things along the way.
“I don't like to particularly rely on other people, but sometimes you need to. I think sometimes it's quite an important thing to do to just ask for a bit of support in organizations and good leaders will always give it to you if they can. So it made me reflect quite a lot on the importance of leadership and the importance of feeling that you can, as they say, bring your whole self to work and rely on other people a bit.”
JJ And have there been any decisions that you have made along that path that have been key to your progress?
JC I think there’s probably been one really pivotal moment and that was when I had my first child, so that was between BT and O2. I was pregnant when I was at BT and I was going to go and work for the then General Counsel of O2, pre the demerger. He said to me, I’d like you to come and run this team for me. And I said, well, actually I’m going to be going on maternity leave quite soon, so I don’t know what I’m going to do. And he said, why don’t you come back and just see how it goes, come back part-time.
The reason it was so important was because I was quite clear that I didn’t want to work full time, but I didn’t really know what to do and he backed me. He said just give it a go, give it a try. I think if it weren’t for that moment of kind of forcing me to hang in, I might have stopped completely and that would have been entirely different life journey, but it wouldn’t have been a great career move. I wouldn’t have been having this conversation with you now put it like that.
JJ And in your career have you ever had a guide, a mentor or key influencer who’s been encouraging you?
JC Yeah so that’s probably that individual. If anyone ever asks me, I always point to him and that’s Philip Bramwell, who was the General Counsel of O2 and then the General counsel of BAE Systems. He just retired earlier this year, after a very long and illustrious career. He was a great support because, as I said, he didn’t put me under pressure to come back at all but he said to me – I’d rather have you than somebody else, I’d rather have you part time.
He made me feel confident in a way that I just wasn’t at all. He made me feel that I could make it work, and then he really helped to make it work. As a leader, and you know he’s a man of a certain generation, he’s been an incredible help and aid, to women in particular, trying to rebalance the workforce to make sure diversity in his teams was really strong – way before it became a mandatory thing! I owe him a great deal in terms of my career.
JJ And have you ever had a moment of crisis in your career?
JC Many crises every week, that’s the nature of the game when you are a lawyer! I think probably the biggest crisis I ever had was a more of a personal crisis where one of my children became ill. She’s fine now, but about five years ago she was really ill and my husband and I thought, what are we going to do?
Long story short, it was the first time I think I ever asked for help or sort of shared that sort of stuff with somebody at work. I was the Deputy General Counsel at Centrica and very much on the trajectory to being the Group GC. I spoke to the CEO and I spoke to a couple of people. They were incredibly supportive and the CEO just said to me, take a bit of time off, see what you need to do. We’ll find someone, we’ll make it work, we don’t want you to go. I was saying, I have to stop, I have to resign. I just can’t be here and be with her.
They helped me to stay and were really, really supportive. And that was really important to me as well at the time. Somebody else again who helped by stepping in and helping you to think and to have more confidence in yourself, which is quite a nice thing to feel.
JJ And how long were you out for, out of interest?
JC I only took about four to six weeks off, then my husband stepped back from his career at that point, and he took quite a few months out. He was very supportive too, and it’s interesting because we’re very independent people. We’re both kind of self-starters and I don’t like to particularly rely on other people, but sometimes you need to.
I think sometimes it’s quite an important thing to do to just ask for a bit of support in organizations and good leaders will always give it to you if they can. So it made me reflect quite a lot on the importance of that leadership and the importance of feeling that you can, as they say, bring your whole self to work and rely on other people a bit.
JJ You’ve changed organisations a few times. What have been your drivers or motivations for those changes?
JC OK. If I look back and I describe it, I think people will go, gosh, it’s very well planned and I think, OK well, hindsight is a wonderful thing. There’s been a little bit of planning or aspiration in there, and then a little bit, or quite a lot of, good luck – when an opportunity comes along and you take it.
The bit that was planned was BT – that was a deliberate move. I was a regulatory competition lawyer, I wanted somewhere where I could still leverage those skills. And then the move from O2, after the Telefonica acquisition, into Vodafone was because I’d done head office. So I’ve been very much part of the PLC. And then I wanted to be in the operating company just to kind of really understand the business because it is different and people who’ve worked in very big organizations where there’s multiple business units or lines of business, you know that it’s quite different being in the business as opposed to being at the PLC headquarters. And so I deliberately shifted there for that reason.
And then I shifted industry and again, I come back to Phillip who I talked to about the offer I’d had from Centrica. He said, if you don’t make the move you may always be regarded as a telecoms lawyer and that’s fine but remember, as a lawyer you are not boxed in by the industry that you work in. It’s quite good to demonstrate that you can go and do something else.
And I thought that is good advice, a utility like British Gas, Centrica, has got the same concept of regulatory controls, etc. I thought, I can bring some of my experience to it, but I can also stretch myself quite a lot by moving and that’s always been my guide when I’ve moved. Can I bring something I? Is it a terrifying leap or is it more of a gentle leap? And when it’s a gentle leap and I can bring something, I’m comfortable but it’s also got to be interesting and challenging so it’s a bit of a mix. I’ve moved on that basis a few times. Basically, the way I look at it is, every move has got to add something new but build on what you’ve done before. That makes sense.
“Keep looking outwards, don't look down all the time at what you're doing or what your company is doing. Keep your antennae up for what's going on externally. What's the next big thing? What should you be looking for? It helps you to plan your career. It helps you to think about where you might want to go next. It helps you to get on top of important issues that the business you're working in might need to know about.”
JJ You mentioned that you learned a lot in the operating unit – what was different about that to the headquarters?
JC There were a few things, but the pace is typically faster, it’s sort of higher volume, lower value. Without wishing to be generic, there’s a lot more stuff going on. You’ve got to be on top of it. You’ve also got to actually understand the business in a much more granular way. So you’ve really got to understand where the money is coming from, what are your cost bases, what are you earning? What are your margins? It’s a lot more real and the work of the GC, particularly as a lawyer and now particularly as the group GC/Co Sec, is much more strategic, big transactional stuff, board level conversations. What’s your financing? What’s your Investor Relations? It’s a very different role but I think both are incredibly valuable. I think some people are better suited to one than the other as well, it’s quite good to see what you might like. Some people get their energy from being right in the business and I know a number of people, particularly in Vodafone, who moved into the business afterwards and did various other jobs from having been in the legal team, which is a great opportunity if you can take it and you want to do it so. Different horses for courses.
JJ How do you stay up to date? How do you keep developing your skills and knowledge?
JC We’re inundated with technical updates, aren’t we? As a lawyer you get every law firm under the sun trying to send you stuff and that’s one of the challenges. It’s really hard to filter through what’s important but I think networks are really useful. Conferences can be, but it depends. Things like what you do at Winmark is really good. Trying to get a sense of what’s going on outside is really important and building a network of colleagues in other companies who are doing things differently, who’ve got different experiences just sharing their advice and getting their input. I think it’s just incredibly useful. Yeah, that’s what I do.
JJ And when you made a move into the Exco, how did it feel? Was it actually different or not?
JC The first executive committee I ever joined was when Telefonica bought O2 and the General Counsel left. We became a regional division of Telefonica, which was then the listed entity in Spain, but actually all the structures around the executive committee stayed the same, it was at the time a very cohesive team and everything was run very professionally. The structure around those meetings was very similar to what it had been for the executive committee that had run O2.
What I would say is the first time I did it, I was incredibly lacking in confidence and very desperate to prove that I was up to the job – imposter syndrome multiplied by 1000 – and I was so busy proving that I was good enough to do the job that I forgot to clock one really important thing, which is when you join a group like the executive committee, the key thing is that they assume you can do the job what they want to know is can they work with you? Can you actually add value to the conversation? Will you be a collegiate team player? Will you actually have their back when the ‘you know what’ hits the fan? Will you identify the big risk areas as opposed to the piddly things that somebody else should be getting on with? It’s that sort of stuff that that takes a bit of time. I joined the executive committee at Centrica, which was a much easier transition because I knew everybody. And then by the time I came here to National Grid, I was very relaxed in that position. But to me, the fundamental thing is building the relationships, understanding what everybody else’s role is, what they think your role is, how you fit in. How you build relationships one-to-one but also how you create that kind of team atmosphere. How you can lean in and be part of the team, but also as the lawyer, you’ve also got to hold them to account, but that’s part of being a good team player when you’re running a big company.
So, it’s much more the softer stuff that I focus on now and sorry I totally didn’t answer your question because you said what was different. What I thought was that I had to be the best lawyer in the company. My colleagues around the table like the HR director, the finance director, the business unit leads, they don’t know if I’m vaguely competent or brilliant, they just think, she’s the chief lawyer so she must know what she’s talking about. And actually what they want to know is, can they work with me?
JJ And when you reflect on your career is there anything you would do differently?
JC Not really. If I were 20 years younger, I might try and go into a business for a while and see if I could run something – either an operational role or a business role. I think that would be fun, and I’d love to see if I could do it. I think you could learn a huge amount from that sort of experience and bring it back because the more exposure you have to business colleagues, it really helps you to put your legal advice or your compliance advice or risk or whatever into context. If you’re not careful you can operate in isolation in an advisory role and it’s important to understand where your bit fits in.
JJ How did the pandemic impact your leadership style at all? Have you changed the way you lead your team?
JC I guess like everybody, we adapted to Teams and all of that stuff and worked online. I’ve always been really chilled about where, where people work. I think if you’re running an in-house team and you want to attract the best talent to join your team, you can’t offer the big bucks that you can offer if you’re a Magic Circle firm, but you can offer flexibility, quality of life as well as really interesting work. It has always been kind of an irrelevance to me where people are, so that didn’t particularly change.
The one thing I think it did do was it brought us together. You know, the irony of being further apart and yet brought together because we were able to connect on a weekly basis check in, much more on the human level. It probably made me really think about my colleagues as individual people with their own individual circumstances at home, because I remember a couple of times one of my colleagues would be on the phone and would have small children in the background trying to deal with stuff. I was very fortunate as my kids are older, so they were all teenagers on their own Teams in their own rooms whereas I know my colleagues with smaller children or maybe elderly parents or people that they had to look after – the pressure that they were under was severe and you don’t know any of that when you don’t see, but when you literally see into their house you suddenly recognize that actually they’re under very different pressures and it makes you realize that we’ve all got these hidden pressures. So, it probably humanized me more as a leader in some ways.
JJ If you met someone starting out on the legal career, what advice would you give them?
JC I think I’d probably give them three pieces of advice. The first one is, if you get offered a different experience, if you get offered to do a project role or to change teams or do a secondment, most of the time you should take it because it’s going to increase the tools in your toolbox. There are so many times I see great lawyers and they think the thing to do is just to keep going, doing the best that they can do and being brilliant at one area and you just think if you just expand it a bit, you could probably have a broader career and have more opportunities. So, I would say take different opportunities.
And I think I would also say keep looking outwards, don’t look down all the time at what you’re doing or what your company is doing. Keep your antennae up for what’s going on externally. What’s the next big thing? What should you be looking for? It helps you to plan your career a bit. It helps you to think about where you might want to go next. It helps you to get on top of important issues that the business you’re working in might need to know about.
The 3rd really important point is networking. There are a lot of lawyers who don’t network and I think the phrase is associated with what PR people do, or what politicians do. It is really just building relationships, helping other people and then they can help you. You can really share learnings and experiences – it’s incredibly helpful. I would say don’t underestimate the value that it can bring to your career and just generally to your life because you meet really interesting people as well. So I would say build your networks.
JJ Justine thank you very much for joining us today on The Suite Spot interview. Really great to hear from you and thank you for your wise words and wisdom which we are most grateful for.
JC Well, thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure. Thanks, John.
