The science and engineering sector is full of global companies with thousands upon thousands of employees.
These companies are really important — they do things that are foundational to the world around them. The CEOs, COOs, Presidents, Vice Presidents, Directors, etc., are very important people, making very important decisions daily.
Important people making important decisions, leading important companies. Surely, the Financial Times would do anything to interview those people, right?
Wrong!
And while that may feel a little unfair, especially if your engineering team is building revolutionary things, it comes down to one brutally overlooked truth: most CEOs forget that journalists want stories, not stats.
You might have merged with another company, you’ve grown the business, you’ve kept the ship on course despite the economic weather. These are all notable — and good for you — but they aren’t stories, because they don’t have drama, conflict, human fallibility, and lessons learned.
OK, with that little home-truth out of the way, here’s what you and your executive team need to know if you actually do want to be in the FT.
A problem solved is not a story told
Engineering is about elegant solutions. Journalism is about messy problems.
Your team may have built a billion-dollar product in three years, but if the story is just “we made some smart hires and worked hard,” no journalist’s going to bite. The challenge is just as, if not more important than the outcome.
The FT is not asking “how big is your ARR?” They’re asking, “what real-world complexity did you confront, and how did it almost break you?”
Even AI can’t save a boring story
You can’t feed a string of quarterly results into ChatGPT and get a compelling pitch. If there’s no tension, no turning point, no personality, there’s no media value. Think more “how I handled losing 40% of my staff overnight” and less “how we split-test our onboarding funnel.”
The best stories have a dip
Think of every boy-meets-girl movie you’ve ever seen. They always break up before reuniting, right?
Prepare to have your mind blown, it’s not just a rom-com trope, all stories follow this format. Yes, all of them. The Matrix has it. Beowulf has it. Even Norbit has it.
(We covered this in our How to get CEO profile opportunities blog, if you want to find out more.)
It’s understandable that CEOs want to tell the positive parts of their stories and omit the negative, but the negative is what makes it a story and not an advert.
Vulnerability. Setbacks. Doubt. Change. That moment the founder almost quit. The market shift no one saw coming. The technical failure that became the breakthrough feature. That’s the compelling stuff that will score a profile in the FT.
Engineer your narrative
B2B engineering is all about products and consultation, so it’s very easy to forget the personal. But even in the B2B world, your personal brand and your personal charisma are incredibly important. Journalists don’t care about your investment track record nearly as much as they care about your personal qualities, how you got to where you are, and how you face challenges, both professional and personal.
So, if you’re a business leader from the likes of ABB, IMI, Jacobs, or AECOM, rest assured that you are very important, what you do really matters, and it’s really interesting. But, to secure a profiling opportunity in the Financial Times, you need a good story to tell. And that’s something we can help with.
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Written by Mike Newby, Client Services Director (STEM) at Definition.