Everything with McLaren’s Ron Dennis CBE is an exercise in understated, functional perfection. From the cut of his suit to the way he answers a question, everything is done with careful thought and an eye to making things ‘just so’. Beyond the vast glass wall of his office in the Norman Foster-designed McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, Surrey, the view is of the acres of perfectly manicured grounds and the man-made lake that cools the building’s aerodynamics-testing wind tunnel. It’s all as Ron wants it. Although one does get the impression that if he could organise the wind to stop whipping up tiny waves on the lake and make it mirror-flat, he would consider that something of an improvement.
Life has been eventful for the now 62-year-old Ron Dennis. Since leaving school at 16 to become a mechanic, he has built one of the most successful Formula 1 teams in history, fighting it out with the likes of Ferrari for track dominance. Now Ferrari is in his sights again, except this time it’s in the showrooms, with the launch of McLaren Automotive as a fully-fledged car company and its first offering, the McLaren MP4-12C. There have been McLaren road cars before — the 240mph McLaren F1 was the ultimate 90s supercar and the McLaren Mercedes SLR is just finishing its production run — but these were brand extensions. The new car is an altogether different business — literally.
The McLaren MP4-12C is the first of a range of Ferrari, Lamborghini and Porsche-baiting high performance cars to be rolled out over the next 12 years. A new factory is about to be built next to the McLaren HQ with a production target of 4,000 cars per year.
Let’s start with the new car. How long has the project been going?
The concept of this vehicle, where it would sit in the market, was two years’ work of studying global brands, research into what McLaren meant as a brand, feasibility studies. Then we embarked on the design of the car three years ago and all the way along the advantages that we had then and still have now are that we hadn’t stepped on to the roundabout. Once we’ve made one car and then we have to make another and then we’re a car brand. So our product plan spans 12 years, and we will bring to the market a different variant or a different vehicle every year because that means we’ll stimulate the brand by refreshing it through different product offerings. There will be three different vehicles for the three different segments of the market and they will be in left- and right-hand drive with variants of each.
The car itself is a performance vehicle instead of a supercar. Performance means efficiency, low aerodynamics, drag, low weight, lowest CO2 output per horsepower of any car ever made. So it’s not an out and out performance at all costs vehicle, it’s an efficient performance vehicle, and those are the values we’ll drive into the other products whether they have superior performance or less performance they are going to be efficient and that’s our target.
Do you get involved in every detail, every aspect of a project like this?
I think my contribution to this programme is to support the objectives that come out of our think tank, our management group. Clearly you could have a strategy where you home grow all your experts. I thought that was wrong and we felt that we should go out and executive search the best people in their field, and we were looking for people who had flair and as part of their own ambition was to be part of something unique. I would doubt in my lifetime that we will be in excess of 6,000 cars a year and more likely to be around 4,000, which means you don’t need experts in high volume and distribution – you need boutique thinking from each individual person who occupies the key roles. No one individual determines the way we go but there needs to be, in specific areas at specific moments in time, clear leadership.
When it comes to the detail, my character is to jump in wanting to understand something and I do have an opinion, which is backed up by my managerial horsepower, about whether something looks right or doesn’t look right. How often have I had to use horsepower as opposed to persuasive powers? Well, I consider it a failure if I have to use my horsepower. I’m far more about trying to demonstrate why my opinion has validity and there are several examples where I have backed away from my point of view because you have to respect the expertise and competence that we’ve brought into the company. I am part of instilling the passion in all parts of our organisation. Determining and fostering and guarding the DNA of McLaren is my responsibility. There’s a way we do things no matter what company sits under the McLaren brand whether it’s electronics, or marketing, or racing or automotive. They might have different management, different shareholders but the DNA of the McLaren brand is consistent throughout all those companies.
McLaren was doing branding before it was a word…
Aren’t the brand values the corporate personality? If you are able to demonstrate either by example or by the application of logic a better way for the company to function, then the management should adopt that as a good practise. Take this building. I’m a great believer that everything has to be as perfect as it can be. There is nothing pleasant about being in a noisy environment, or a hot one, or a cold one. There is nothing pleasant about being in an environment where the smell is extreme, so if you start with those simple human senses you create a space that addresses those. It just makes eminent sense.
You’re known as a perfectionist…
I hate clutter. I can’t stand things that have been designed with parts that are superfluous to function. How often have you sat in a chair that looks great but is uncomfortable? How often do you see products that are a great bit of styling but are they functional? Like a Dyson vacuum cleaner. It’s got a good functionality, it’s got a great amount of styling in it, but do I really want to look inside and see the rubbish in it? I’d rather have a little light that illuminates and says “I’m full” or something. So when it comes to a car it should be devoid of all gimmicky things, it should be an elegant, timeless if possible design — the E Type Jaguar, the F1 McLaren, some other iconic cars, that’s what we strive for.
Where did your perfectionism come from?
Well, my mother was extremely fastidious in how she ran our home and it was the absolute seed corn for how I live my life – everything in its place, clean, organised, those were some pretty basic principles which I followed, not because I was told to do it, but because I found it far more practical with, for example, my homework piled in different subjects rather than all bunched together because it reduced the amount of time it took me to do my homework and you suddenly realise that efficiency is exactly that. Like the simple task of mowing the lawn. If you know that you’re going to pull out the lawnmower and it’s going to work and you’re going to spend ten minutes cleaning it to ensure it’s going to work perfectly the next time overall that is a completely logical way to go about it. Ultimately if you don’t go down that process the task becomes more and more time-consuming – the lawnmower gets rustier and rustier, you’ve not topped up the oil so at any moment it’s going to seize up etc. So that’s how I live my life. I know it’s somewhat difficult for people that are around me but it is me and it is I think a way that everybody in McLaren has adopted because it is so much more satisfying to work in an environment that we all look after.
When you started out as a teenage mechanic did you survey the scene and think, “I can do this better”?
I brought a different approach to motor racing over the years. If I walked down the pit lane there were 50 to 100 things that all started a McLaren, which either came out of my head or more often came out of an environment where we were always striving to make things better: the concept of pit wall displays, the whole way a team worked. People laughed when we created a new interior for the facilities in the pits, they thought we were barmy. In the evolution of Formula 1, McLaren really pioneered a lot of things and I’m fiercely proud of that.
McLaren is a global success story, but do you especially consider it to be a British success story?
Oh yes. We in Britain tend to have a history of pioneering technology. Carbon fibre was invented at the Royal Air Force establishment, 20 minutes from here. The innovative culture that Britain has is the reason why there are so many F1 teams based in the UK. My strong belief is that since we have seen the fragility of building a nation on service industry, where you become dependent, and the financial problems will impact on this country for at least 15 years, it’s a classic business case of having too much dependence on one sector. The future of UK industry is about technology, about brainpower, about motivating young people in science and technology because it is exciting. I see England needing to develop its version of Silicon Valley, not in semi-conductors but in a range of technologies. We are a technology-driven country. That doesn’t mean as an alternative to developing other commercial arms for UK Ltd. Financial services, insurance and even a level of self-sufficiency in terms of food — all these things can be complemented by an equal amount of industrial manufacturing in new technology.
Is this an exciting time to be an entrepreneur?
Yes, it really is. I thrive on opportunity and there’s a lot of opportunity. Being a good entrepreneur is managing risk and assessing risk. At the moment risk is extremely high because of the fragility of financial models. What we do know is that we absolutely believe that the sector of the car market we’re going for will not drop to a level where we can’t have a percentage of it that makes our programme viable. My safety net is that the percentage of the market we are targeting is incredibly small.
What makes a good partnership?
It’s about being on a journey to a specific destination, and that is a common goal. If you’ve got like-minded companies you’re on the journey together. And because the destination keeps moving, why would it not be logical? It’s safer to travel as a group rather than an individual. The only time it makes sense to vary that is when someone says or has a reason that their destination is slightly different and they peel off at a crossroads.
Was it difficult this year, not going to Formula 1 races?
No. I thought a lot about it in the latter stages of last year. There was a lot of euphoria in the aftermath of Brazil last year when Lewis [Hamilton] won the title and I thought, “Well, if I do stop now, I’ll be stopping having won.”
I then took the view that I’d like to see the way the new car was progressing with the new regulations. Wrongly as it happens. I was of the firm opinion that we had a competitive car and then over Christmas thought about it and then decided on the day we launched the car to announce that I was stopping.
You decided that day?
Yes I did, finally, which was a bit thoughtless really because it caught a few people out. I didn’t see it as a big deal though because I’d been telling people for ages that I was thinking about it and that I needed to step off the pit wall. My plan was to go to Australia for the first race of the season just to get a feel of what it would be like to be there in civilian clothes, watching what was going on.
At that time I was in the position of thinking with the production car company that I had a good economic model delivering into investors which would be very attractive and an easy sell, and suddenly we were in the midst of the recession. I thought if I’m going to stand in front of investors and ask them to invest £250m and that I would lead that company I couldn’t see how they would accept me then standing on a pit wall or being at a Grand Prix. And it wasn’t just about raising the money; it was about achieving planning permission for our new factory etc. It required a different mindset.
First of all I didn’t feel much coming back from Australia, in terms of missing it, secondly the company got embroiled in an issue which I had absolutely nothing to do with but I felt if I got involved it would be a shambles – you can’t have two people taking responsibility. There was a lot of thinking about whether I still wanted to be in that environment - an environment that had been changing over the years and had become one where I no longer felt comfortable. People ask me if I’d ever go into politics and I say never, because in politics the work finds the job. It’s 80 per cent talking about it and 20 per cent action. The concept of spending 80 per cent of your time manoeuvring and point-scoring and spending energy on that is so unattractive. Not only that, you’re constantly scrutinised and criticised no matter what you are doing. No matter how good you are at your job you’re going to make mistakes and if your mistakes are spun immediately into negative things… politicians age so fast, they have so much stress and for minimal commercial gain. It’s a very undesirable job.
What was that first weekend like when you didn’t go to the race?
I missed the beginning of the race on television. It didn’t bother me. I didn’t watch all the races this year. My original wish was to win the 2007 world championship and then stop. If we had won then it would have been better for me to stop then. In fact had I known how I’d react to not being there any more I would have done it earlier. But it was particularly special to win the championship in Brazil in 2008 and I don’t regret staying Formula 1 to achieve that. As team principal you aren’t exclusively responsible for everything, for success or failure, but you are were the buck stops.
By any standard you’re a wealthy man. What makes you get up in the morning?
I don’t think wealth tempers ambition. I’ve experimented with a lower workload and it doesn’t really appeal. I try to work out every day. I have never experienced endorphins. I dislike every minute of it but I know it makes me fitter and extends my life expectancy and in a similar way I know that maintaining my ambition stimulates my brain and makes me feel better than I feel if I’ve been on a beach for an extended period of time. I enjoy two weeks holiday but I don’t enjoy it after three or four weeks, and I start to feel very detached. I enjoy doing what I do. I’m an entrepreneur with very diverse interests. And when I relax I enjoy snow skiing, being on boats, scuba diving, anything to do with the sea. I love social things like shooting, golf. So squeezing it all in without having it impact on my ambition makes it more fun.
When you make time to relax do you engage with that fully or is your head still here?
There are some things that you have to plan that you can’t cancel without having an impact on someone else. Like if you’ve booked a foursome at golf you have to turn up or you leave three people upset. If you plan to go shooting you have to turn up. But you can shift a holiday four days to the right and it doesn’t really matter. I love the flexibility of being able to decide on a Thursday to go to the South of France for the weekend and a few hours later I’m there. But at the same time I wouldn’t do it if it had a negative impact on other things. I can plug and unplug as I need to but I am 24/7. I can only function like that. People don’t phone me if it’s unimportant, so I leave the phone on, but I know that if it doesn’t ring then there isn’t a problem and to me that is entirely logical. I can never understand people who turn their phone off. That would stress me out. If there’s a drama I want to know about it and if there isn’t a drama, the phone doesn’t go and I relax. It’s the mindset.
Was there a moment in your life when you decided to become an entrepreneur?
Yes, I had a road traffic accident that put me in hospital for a few days and the doctor said I shouldn’t do anything physical for a while, so when I went back to work they put me in the planning office, because I was always organised and structured and it went from there really. You build on your strengths, you work hard on your weaknesses and, if you keep your ambition and have the right values, you’re going to succeed.
Do you still try and learn new things about business?
Oh absolutely. I learnt from many, many management books over the years and you tend to develop a style that works for you. I keep learning and the last thing I learn will be how to die, that’s the approach I have to life. If you have a ‘know-it-all’ mindset then you’re a fool.
The speed of everything these days is so fast that if you stand still for a minute then you’ll be left behind, you have to keep up with it. I know very prominent businessmen at a social event and neither of us use Blackberrys or email and he’s running an organisation bigger than mine. I see so many problems caused. Used properly these things are a wonderful way to communicate. But right down to the hieroglyphic approach to texting and the bastardisation of the English language and what people are prepared to say in emails, back covering etc. I see the importance of ease of communication but I also see the dangers. I keep stressing to members of my own organisation that if they put out ill-conceived emails or badly thought through emails they are instigating a problem. Be mindful of the consequences.
Do you have big ambitions left?
I don’t see ambition as a series of boxes to tick. I see ambition as a more opportunistic thing. I don’t sit with a piece of paper and say “my ambition is…” Ambition is something that comes from opportunity. When it comes to the bigger strategic things I want McLaren Automotive to be very successful, I want McLaren to continue to be successful in Formula 1. I’m not a tick the box person and I’ve been very, very lucky.
I have had a wonderful life. I have three kids who excel in their academic achievements. The shared experiences with family and friends have been huge, some which I created the opportunity for, and if I were to look at the ‘happy-ometer”, I find myself very happy the vast majority of the time. When I am unhappy it can be extreme and I really struggle to pull myself out of it but those periods are few and far between. A bit of me says everything in the future is a bonus but that’s a bit morbid because it indicates the point at which you die. But in reality everything is a bonus for me because I’ve done so many things and those have come as the benefits of being reasonably competent in motorsport.
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