Ben Page is Managing Director of MORI and he admits that he’s obsessed.
I’m obsessed about my job. I’m obsessed about doing it well. My thinking about jobs is this: You should either do what you’re really good at, or what you love, or do something that’s really well paid. Ideally, all three. I think I do what I’m good at.
Ben has been at MORI for over 18 years. Right now, trust is a big issue in his line of work.
That whole thing about trust and Blair is hugely overblown. He’s completely spent his stock of trust over Iraq but it does look at this stage that Labour will have a reasonable size majority.
Ben says what he does is "a cross between science and art". "If it’s interesting, it’s wrong," he says. "So if Express readers are suddenly saying they’re keen on immigration it’s probably wrong."
As a teenager, he actually practiced magic to earn extra money, although he is unsure about whether he learned to transfer his skills.
Conjuring doesn’t really work with statistics but being a magician gave me the confidence to stand up and talk to large groups of people.
Ben’s office is situated near London’s Borough market and although he has his own huge office desk and leather office chair in a beautifully designed very spacious office he normally likes to sit outside Southwark Cathedral in a make shift office chair using the café table as his office desk to work.
When he does get to spend time at his own spacious office desk he says he feels hugely privileged to his own private space.
But I’m fairly boisterous so you don’t really want me in the next cubicle. Anyone sat near my office desk wouldn’t be able to hear themselves think! It’s a good job I have my own office really.
Even when he’s not working, he’s always being asked to predict what will happen next.
There are two trends that will definitely happen. Global warming will occur. We’re all going to be much older. On these islands now, there are more people over 65 than under 16.
You make your own luck in work. My work life balance is a pact with the devil. Being in the right place is being where your clients are. I’m invited to a lot of things and a go to a lot of them. Launches, seminars, debates.
While he’s often asked to predict the future of business, he admits that they are struggling at MORI.
We have all these fantasies at MORI about the paperless office but my office desk is strewn with paper, print outs and there are magazines all over my computer desk. The paper is a bit like Japanese bindweed. I’m not very tidy.
So what would make the ideal work space?
An American tycoon’s office with a laptop that rises up out of the office desk. Or the kind of office that Tyler Brulee [founder of Wallpaper magazine] would have with neat filing cabinets and gleaming oak and leather office furniture. Pristine looking. But it’s never going to happen.
