Michael Hockney (Board of Governors)
Position: Chief Executive, D&AD
Short vita: Michael Hockney was educated at Beechenhurst and King Edward School. He read History, Political Thought and Economics at Manchester University and then undertook post-graduate studies at Manchester and the London School of Economics.
He began his career in strategy planning at J Walter Thompson and was trained as a qualitative and quantitative research practitioner.
In 1975 he joined the strategy and communications consultancy BMP, becoming a member of the Executive Board in 1981 and was responsible for client management. Among other clients, he advised the Home Office for ten years on crime prevention and police recruitment, the Royal Bank of Scotland on its merger with Williams & Glyn’s and Channel Four prior to and after its launch. He was a member of the team that prepared BMP plc for its successful floatation on the London stock market.
In 1987 he founded BDDH Group and was Group Chairman and Managing Director. During that period the company achieved plc status, delivered billings in excess of £60 million and featured consistently at or near the top of the annual survey of industry sector financial performance. He advised the Co-operative Bank on its strategic development, laying the foundations for the commercial success it currently enjoys and the Health Education Authority, HMSO and Meridian Television among other clients.
For ten years, from 1984 to 1993 he chaired the UK Advertising Effectiveness Awards.
In 1993 he joined the auction house, Christies, as a member of the International Management Board with responsibility for marketing and strategy.
He then worked in management consultancy specialising in change management.
From 1995 to 1999 he was engaged by the Ministry of Defence as adviser to the Adjutant General, the Deputy Commander-in-Chief HQ Land Command, the Assistant Chief of the General Staff and the Director of Corporate Communications on a variety of non-operational issues concerning the British Army.
These included: retention, recruiting, relationships with the UK’s education establishment, public perceptions, the officer career, Reserve Forces’ recruiting and retention and the Army’s human resources strategy.
He was a non-executive member of the Adjutant General’s Management Board from 1996 to 1998. He sat on a number of Army committees and working parties. In 1998-9 he led a six-month business analysis and change management programme for the Army’s £4 billion Personnel and Training Command, involving the Adjutant General and his 2* and 1* staff.
From mid-1999 to late-2001 Michael was engaged, on an interim management basis, as Executive Director at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales with a brief to engineer a programme of change driven by members’ needs against a backcloth of the globalisation of the accountancy profession, the competitive threat from other accountancy bodies and the UK’s emerging regional economic structure.
From late 2001 to early 2003 he was adviser to an international company and successfully delivered an acquisition and merger.
In June 2003 Michael was appointed Chief Executive of D&AD, the international professional association and educational charity for creative practitioners. In 2007 he stepped down from this position.
He holds the fellowships of three professional institutions and has lectured on business management, strategy development and communications at universities and business schools and at the Police Staff College. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Outside his professional work he is a trustee of the Army Benevolent Fund and chairs the ABF’s Development Committee. He was a trustee and board member of Christian Aid from 1996-2002. He was a governor of the Army Foundation College from 1999 to 2004. He is a board member of the English Chamber Orchestra. In May 2004 he stood down after four years as Deputy Chairman of the Council of the Royal School of Church Music and sixteen years on the Council and in June 2004 received the RSCM’s highest honour, its Fellowship the FRSCM.
He was for over twenty years Organist and Choir Master of a London Church with a voluntary choir of over forty voices.
He has been a co-opted member of the RFCA for Greater London since 1999.
From 2001-3 he was a member of a working party established under the Minister for the Armed Forces’ Veterans Initiative.
In 2004 he was elected to the Nikaeans and in 2005 was admitted as a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Musicians.
He was non-executive director of BCMG from 1996 to July 2005 when the company was successfully sold to Thomson Intermedia. He has acted as a mentor to a company Chief Executive.
His interests include Worcester porcelain of the Flight and Barr factory, the Georgian House 1760-1820, fine and applied art of the same period, church music, baroque opera and French wine. He pays the organ and harpsichord. He is a member of the Athenaeum, where he has served on the General and Executive Committees, and, best of all, the Wine Committee!
He is married to a doctor with a practice in Barnes and lives in Twickenham and Dorset.
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