How Henry Engelhardt Built a Billion-Pound Business Without Following the Rulebook

This exclusive interview with Henry Engelhardt was conducted by Jack Hayes of The Motivational Speakers Agency.

Henry Engelhardt is a celebrated business leader and visionary, best known for founding and leading Admiral Group into a major FTSE-listed success story. Under his stewardship, Admiral became a powerhouse in motor insurance, employing thousands and reaching millions of customers — all while maintaining its reputation for innovation, purpose and culture.

Now as CEO Emeritus, author and mentor, Henry continues to shape the future of leadership by sharing the lessons learned from his remarkable entrepreneurial journey.

In this exclusive interview with Inspirational Leadership Speakers Agency, Henry Engelhardt opens up about building cultures of innovation, the real ingredients of entrepreneurial success, and how CEOs can push their organisations to thrive in times of change.

Q1. Innovation has become a defining factor for business survival. From your experience, what should companies focus on when building a culture of innovation and empowering teams to think differently?

Henry Engelhardt: “I mean, why — what is culture in the first place? And when you say build it, what does it mean? And I have thought a lot about this, and at the end of the day culture, and pretty much everything you do, is there for a business to achieve a better economic outcome.

“Because without that better or good economic outcome, eventually the business goes out of business. And then what good is it, and what good is your culture if you’re out of business? I don’t care how great your culture is — it’s not going to be very great.

“So, all cultures must work. They must help, either in the short term or long term, or both, to create that better outcome.

“Now, to create a more innovative culture, you’ve got to let people try things, you’ve got to let people fail. And I do hear people say, you know, “We embrace failure.” Rubbish. Nobody embraces failure. It happens, we accept it, and we move on. We learn from it, but nobody wants to fail. Nobody goes into an idea going, “Oh don’t worry, this one will fail.” Why would you do that? It doesn’t make any sense.

“So, I don’t like the idea that people embrace failure. We accept it, we tolerate it, we move on. It’s the only way you set up those building blocks of improvement, sometimes.

“In fact, one of the companies I’m involved with was doing a kind of purpose statement, and part of it was a very interesting word. And the word was resiliency. Why is that interesting? Because resiliency implies you were flat on your face and got back up.

“Yeah, it means you were resilient. You fell and you rose. And that’s really quite interesting — to be resilient as part of your culture. And that does, I think, help foster innovation.

“And then there are specific ways to foster innovation. What I like to do is push people to the extremes. You know, it’s not about — let’s say your staff attrition rate is 22. If I said, could we get it down to 20 and a half? Yeah, we can do a little of this and a little of that, and tweak this and that. We can nibble at it and get it down there. Fine, yeah.

“But if I said to you, your attrition rate has to go down to five percent or there are no bonuses for anybody in the company this year — whoa. That’s going to force you to innovate, because you can’t nibble at the edges and move from 22 to 5. You’ve got to explore everything that goes into that attrition rate and figure out which things to change and rebuild and improve, etc., to make it work.

“And that’s the kind of push that I like to give. You know, if you push to the extremes, you get people to examine every aspect of something.

“So, I was doing a little teaching the other day, and I gave an example. I said, look, let’s be crazy — how can I run an 8-second 100 metres? How can I leave Usain Bolt in the dust, right? And you might start by saying it’s impossible, nobody can run 8 seconds, not even Usain Bolt, and you’re certainly not going to be able to run 8 seconds, etc.

“But then you start to think — well, how can I do it? What if I had turbocharged gym shoes, or inflatable trousers, helium-inflated trousers where every step I took was 20 metres? Yeah, maybe I could do it then.

“It forces you to think of crazy possibilities. And sometimes those crazy possibilities aren’t so crazy. And here was the irony on this one: about two weeks after I just made this up, just to make my point, I pick up an article in the paper talking about turbocharged gym shoes. Somebody had already thought about it, and they’d been working on it.

“So, to foster innovation you’ve got to let people go. You cannot micromanage them; you cannot manage by putting them down all the time. You have to free people up to not be afraid.

“Teams, teams, teams — always, in everything you do. It’s the team, the team, the team. Because the power of the team is invariably greater than the power of any single individual. And that works for everything you do — whether it’s innovating or making decisions or whatever it might be, you work within teams.”

Q2. You’ve often spoken about “secret sauce” in leadership. What personal qualities do you think shaped your entrepreneurial journey and contributed to your success?

Henry Engelhardt: “I think I’m okay at a lot of things. And that’s what I’m good at — I’m good at a lot, you know, I’m okay at many things.

“I talked again, when I do talk to people, I explain — I went to a good high school, and I was in the upper part of my class but not the top of my class. I went to a good university, I did pretty well, I was in the upper part of my class, but I wasn’t top of my class. I went to a very strong MBA programme, I didn’t make the Dean’s List, and yet I turned out all right. I did pretty well, yeah.

“It’s not necessarily about being great at any single thing. It’s about a lot of things that go together. There’s no formula for being successful, for being a good leader, or a great leader, or a great manager. There’s no formula. If there was, we’d all just take out the formula, we’d read it and say, “Okay, two parts pepper, a dash of salt, and there I am, a great manager.” It doesn’t work that way.

“So, everybody has their own secret sauce to be successful and great. I’m pretty good with people, I’m pretty good with numbers, I’m pretty good with strategy. I can think through things. I see, I learn a lot — I’ve learned from every job I’ve been in, and I started working when I was 13.

“And I learned more and more from every experience. I treat every experience as a learning experience, and I can give you some great examples of things you learn that you say, how can I apply that to this problem? How can I see what that person did and channel it to something completely different?

“So, all of those things add up, and they’ve added up to helping me be the success that I’ve been able to become.

“Amazing. That’s quite reassuring in a way as well — there’s no formula. You know, you could be an introvert, you could be an extrovert, you can fail as an extrovert, you can fail as an introvert. There is no formula. Everybody’s different, everything they do is different, everybody they manage is different, every project is different. It would be too easy if there was a formula.”

Q3. Founding Admiral was a defining moment in your career. What is the single most important piece of advice you’d give to young entrepreneurs starting out today?

Henry Engelhardt: “You don’t have to have the greatest idea. You don’t have to be the best at implementation. But you either better have a great idea or be great at implementation — or good at both.

“Don’t be afraid to change your idea. Some of the best entrepreneurs I know have seen what they were doing wasn’t going to work, so they pivoted, and they’ve gone on. One in particular has gone on to do something really well, another is still struggling with the new idea — that business was hit hard during Covid at the time.

“It’s hard. What advice would you give? There’s no formula, because the other side of it is, you know, don’t give up. So, pivot and don’t give up — two great pieces of advice.

“It’s really, really hard, but I would say, think about it — you have to do things differently. Something has to be different. You can’t do things as everybody’s been doing them, or is doing them, and expect to succeed.

“Whether it’s an internal difference or a customer-facing difference or something, something has to be different. And you need to know what that is and how you can make that difference into a good business.”