About 15 years ago, frustrated by his inability to persuade his leaders at the time to use real language when communicating financial results, Apella's Andrew Brown tried to find other firms that offered inspiration.

Depressingly, he could only really find one. But what a one!

This CEO of a rising star of the FTSE250 (which would eventually become a FTSE50) had that year opened his CEO statement by saying that "it had been a difficult year which would require explanation and context, but he recognised that too many readers don't get beyond para three so here is a helpful list of six things you really need to know."

It was so refreshing.

A couple of years later he described the previous 12 months as "the year of the chameleon: quite useful in that they eat insects, but challenging and a bit fickle".

One year he said that high on his list of worries was the firm not achieving specific financial ratios but second was having a garage full of stuffed toys if a marketing campaign failed. Third, was his wife getting pregnant. He's also compared results to baked potatoes, pavlovas and seedless watermelons. He also liked quoting Dickens every now and again.

That CEO was Henry Engelhardt. He co-founded Admiral Insurance Group and now joins us on The Little Questions podcast alongside Apella Advisors partners Andrew Brown and Jenny Scott.

You can get in touch by emailing [email protected] and please consider leaving us a review. Find out more at apellaadvisors.com.

Andrew Brown, formerly Director of Communications and Public affairs at Ageas Insurance, Andrew has more than ten years' experience leading the corporate affairs functions for global, listed, multifaceted firms across a range of regulated and unregulated sectors. He has considerable experience in issues, crisis and change management as well as reputation sentiment analysis and insight. Formerly Director of Communications at Drax Group plc and Group Corporate Affairs Director at Regus plc. Email: [email protected]

Jenny Scott, former Executive Director of Communications at the Bank of England and co-lead for Bank wide strategy. Advisor to the Governor, sat on the Bank's executive committee and risk committee. Formerly economics and politics correspondent for the BBC and presenter of the Daily Politics. Trustee of Pro Bono Economics. Email: [email protected]

This podcast is produced by The Podcast Coach.