Three veteran figures are putting together plans for a start-up company that will provide mentors for senior managers in the ad business.
Lyndy Payne, Caroline Marland and Wendy Braverman will launch the company, called Potential Squared, in January 2001.
The company is based on the proposition that the fast-changing nature of the communications industry has produced a new breed of managing directors, chairmen and chief executives who can find themselves isolated while facing new demands.
In return for an introductory fee and a payment of about pounds 25,000 a year, the mentor would work with the manager for roughly one day a month. Mentors will be prominent figures from advertising, media and client backgrounds.
Citing examples of world personalities who have enjoyed the benefits of a trusted adviser, such as Jesse Jackson whose mentor was Dr Martin Luther King, Payne explained: 'We will introduce an outside mentor, matched to the director in terms of relevant experience and temperament. The mentor will provide understanding, strength and unemotional advice on a regular basis, as well as in times of panic and emergency.'
Payne added: 'Often managers have got where they are by talent and hard work but with little training for the job, little experience of managing large companies or dealing with parent companies and shareholders.'
Payne has been working on a variety of industry projects since leaving the Advertising Agency Register, which she founded in 1975.
Marland, dubbed the 'first lady of Fleet Street', was the first women to become the managing director of a national newspaper in Britain. She left Guardian Newspapers this summer, after 25 years. Marland is a non-executive director of the People's Lottery and Arcadia. She sits on the Newspaper Panel of the Competition Commission and is a member of the IOD council.
Braverman has built and will continue to run her own headhunting business, Wendy Braverman Associates.
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