Leadership Quote by Lord Robertson

There is a studied modesty in the way Lord Robertson frames this as something that merely “happened” to him: “I was asked.” In one clause, responsibility is diluted, status is affirmed, and the move is made to look less like a career pivot and more like a civic summons. That passive construction is doing heavy lifting. It signals propriety (he didn’t chase the role), while reminding the listener that institutions still come calling for people with his kind of gravitas.

The key word is “recovery,” a term borrowed from national crisis language and applied to a telecom firm. For a diplomat, that’s not accidental. It recasts corporate turnaround as public service, inviting audiences to see Cable and Wireless as a “great British company” with symbolic value, not just a balance sheet problem. The national adjective isn’t decorative; it’s a shield against the suspicion that a former high-profile public figure is simply cashing in. “Great British” turns private restructuring into a quasi-patriotic project.

Then comes the corporate reassurance: “delighted,” “new,” “very talented management.” This is investor and stakeholder language, designed to convey momentum without promising specifics. It’s also a soft assertion of legitimacy: if the management is “talented,” then his presence is not a rescue mission for incompetents but an endorsement of a credible team.

Context matters: this kind of statement typically appears when a public servant crosses into the private sector, where optics are half the job. The intent is to normalize that crossing, presenting it as continuity of duty rather than a change of allegiance.