Transforming organisations

Great Expectations

2011-11-22T03:57:00.000-08:00

There is a lot of loose talk around customer care or
customer experience. Lots of business people talk about it but few organisations
actually deliver excellence consistently, over time.

At Pearl Lake Leisure Park in Herefordshire, Glenn Jones and
his team have been working hard in this area over many years. They have tried
to look at just about everything they do from a customer perspective.
This beautiful venue is primarily for holiday homes, but
touring caravans and campers are also welcome.

One day a honeymoon couple arrived, but shortly after erecting their
flimsy little tent, the skies opened and prolonged rainfall meant that the new
visitors were soon cold and very wet. Glenn and the team simply re housed the
couple into one of the superb new holiday homes for the duration of their stay.
All their kit was cleaned and dried by the team........

As Managing Director, Glenn is never, ever satisfied that he
is doing enough for his customers. Perhaps that is the reason he has taken his
2001 Customer Survey score of 80% to a staggering 91% in 2011. Let’s listen to how he does
it.

Below the water line

2011-09-29T05:24:00.000-07:00

In any business there are always jugular issues, below the water line things, that if left unresolved to the satisfaction of all parties, will sink the ship.

Twenty five years ago our Relate counsellor said, “You’ve come here today because your relationship is in some kind of ditch. Well, after a few meetings with me you will both climb out of the ditch. If you climb out on the same side you will go off and have another go at your marriage. If you climb out on opposite sides, there will be a parting of the ways.” I looked across at my first wife; she nodded her assent and so we went for it.

It’s exactly the same in the Boardroom. I’ve had many situations over the years where, during this process of self discovery that we call the Growth Cycle, one or more parties have stormed out of the room in a highly charged emotional, verbal and sometimes physical state.

Eventually, no matter how upset they may be, the best option for both themselves and their business, is to return to the table and face the issue that caused the problem in the first place. And yes, they will find out which side of the ditch they and their colleagues are on.

And that is a result for all concerned.

Value

2011-09-18T00:23:00.000-07:00

The demands of business are such that we can so easily lose sight of our values, or even worse, forget what it is that really matters to us.

Back in 1955 a well meaning uncle gave me a copy of Mr Crabtree Goes Fishing by Bernard Venables. It is a paperback of cartoon sketches showing Mr Crabtree and his young son Peter fishing for various species during the different seasons of the year.

I read that book so many times as I grew up that the pages eventually disintegrated and fell out; my favourite fish became the perch. When I was 28 and looking for a place to live the words on page 95 of the book kept flashing across my mind, even in the middle of the night ....”if you want to catch really big perch ....fish the River Wye at Hereford.”

So one day in 1977 I visited the place, walked over the old Wye Bridge by the Cathedral, down the bank and scooped out a handful of water to drink. In that moment I determined to spend the rest of my life living in this lovely city. Two weeks later I arrived with nowhere to live, no work and very little money.

And now, thirty four years on, it is great when a client postpones a meeting at short notice; I can be on the river in under six minutes.

Someone once said to me “You know the price of everything, but the value of nothing” They may have been right, the book cost five shillings, but how do you put a value on that?

Engaged to be......

2011-08-30T02:44:00.000-07:00

It seems that there is more pressure than ever from people and organisations that want to engage with us, in one way or another, all the time.

It is easy to see why this could be when cars, banks, hotel rooms and even beer could be seen to be more or less all the same, whatever the branding says. How else do we differentiate our product and /or our service without the relationship element?

Lucy Kelloway, who writes for the Financial Times is all for this development; she claims that certain professionals, especially those that work random hours, need to be more flexible on holiday. This means taking your smart phones, laptop and mobile internet along with your bucket and spade. She has invented a new word to go with it; we need to go on "worlidays" now, spending at least some time every day in touch with our business.

But I don't see it that way. Having just spent twenty one days in a tent somewhere in deepest France without a Blackberry or a 'to do' list, the engagement was with French people, the language, the countryside, the food and the wine.

The key thing here, for all of us, is to choose if we can, with whom, how and when we engage.

Fishes and wishes

2011-08-22T02:48:00.000-07:00

A holiday break is a great time to review one’s life, to think about the things that are working for you and the things that could be better. For many of us it is that often elusive balance between work, family, hobbies and community.
I was on a lake recently and fished hard for six hours without seeing or hearing a solitary fish. I consoled myself with the thought that next day I had been invited to fish a well stocked commercial fishery. That day was spent catching or dropping fish of all shapes, colours and sizes on every single cast for the entire visit.
On reflection I am not sure which was the least pleasant experience – having too little, or having too much.
I meet business people all the time that want to set themselves extremely ambitious Bull’s Eyes. Often it is the older ones that have this irresistible urge to turn a lifetime of hard work into a more tangible and evident symbol of success. A chap in his sixties told me “I’ve always dreamed of driving the grandchildren round town in a Rolls Royce.”
When we do not have enough it is not a good place to be. But there is often a high price to pay for having more than enough. And is it worth it?

Natural causes

2011-08-22T02:36:00.000-07:00

No matter how you or I may want to run our business, there are some natural laws that, sooner or later, whether we like it or not, simply have to be obeyed.
I was asked to work with a family business recently where the issues were not so much with the business model or the quality of the products or services. It was all to do with the feuding and rivalry between the two sisters and the brother that had inherited the business from their father. With father having passed away recently it seemed to me like the leadership of some forty staff was in freefall.
Despite being equal shareholders, one of the sisters wanted to correspond with me directly but without copying in her sibling directors. I replied to her very first email and copied the other two in. Indignantly she replied that the business wouldn’t have any problems “if the other two would just listen to me”.
The more open and honest transactions can be in business the better it is for the organisation itself and for the relationships between the people running the business.
In family businesses it may mean trying to change the habits of a lifetime but everyone will be a winner in the end.

Nonsense and social media

2011-06-02T05:50:00.000-07:00

Point
The problem for those businesses that are preoccupied with all the various social media options is that a lot of activity is not actually a route to market, but more of a dead end street.

Story
I know someone who offers professional services in the HR field. Paula really does spend a lot of time and energy working at the many social media strings on her bow. She blogs on a regular basis and these blogs are available on her website. She is active on Linked In and has joined a variety of groups where there are frequent online discussions. This person spends a good deal of time on Twitter; she follows a lot of people although not many people follow her.

Paula is a PowerNetworker member of Ecademy and attends some of their events in London; she goes to various breakfast meetings and a number of other face to face activities where people swap business cards. She enters everyone’s business cards details on her Outlook contacts. She’s recently set up a small room at home all kitted out to do podcasts.

Now Paula has been working at this business for some five years in conjunction with various associates; people that she has met on the way. She does no customer surveys, she has no facilitated appraisal and she has no testimonials. I asked her if she was making any money. The answer was “no”.

Application
Any service provider needs to offer high quality content to clients and customers; you have to be able make an immediate difference to their businesses and / or their lives.

Secondly you have to be excellent at building relationships with people that want to work with your particular expertise. There will be plenty of people that don’t and that is fine too.

These two points are more important to a growing business than all the social media put together.

Down and up

2011-04-28T08:56:00.000-07:00

There’s so much in the media about all the 40/50 somethings that are out of work, but it’s a great place to be if you know what to do about it.

We know lots of these people that are now in the market place and there has never been a better time to set up and run a business from home. The single most important thing to do is to find out what particular expertise you would like to take to market. It never ceases to amaze me how many people do not know the answer to the question: “What is it that makes you special?” It may be the journey of a lifetime to find the exact answer, but we don’t need to be that precise. At this stage we are just finding out where the direction of the business is likely to be.

Secondly we have to start developing great relationships with colleagues, (and this could be the person you sleep with) stakeholders and ultimately customers and or clients. We have to get closer than ever before to these people – we are looking for people that are on a similar journey towards excellence that we need to be on. And excellence is all around us when we look for it.

We need to get over a lack of regular money. There are different ways of looking at money in this context. We sometimes have to start to think differently, do things differently and behave differently. The battery hen gets regular feed, but now you are about to metamorphose into a free range chicken with all the liberation and excitement that means for many. It might be the first time in your life that you are in a position to determine the work life parameters for yourself and your family.

And what could be better than that?

Finding your level

2011-04-27T08:57:00.000-07:00

We aspire to excellence; we have to in this global economic climate. So we work hard, we do the learning, we do the personal development, get the results and maybe some publicity and ......and then.......someone notices.

I remember Dr Taylor. When I was a boy he worked as a GP in a surgery on a local council estate. He was a very well spoken, tall and dignified man. People said he was a wonderful doctor and that he could relate to, and help literally anybody that walked through his door.
The local press reported that he had won awards for his work and that he had been invited to form part of a practice in Harley Street. The press insisted that Dr Taylor was interviewed at length; he was asked about this new opportunity in London. He smiled, he was very patient with the reporters who asked all sorts of questions. Finally Dr Taylor was asked how he would enjoy the commuting, every day from Redhill in Surrey to London Victoria and then the tube. It was then that he replied that he was not going to do any commuting. And there was silence in the room.

He added quietly, “Thank you for inviting me to discuss this recognition, and I am grateful for the awards, but I intend to stay here in Merstham, working as a GP on the council estate until I retire.”

So yes, we do indeed have to continue to try and get better at what we do. But that doesn’t have to mean pastures new. We can carry on doing what we do, where we are, right now.

In House

2011-04-22T01:12:00.000-07:00

The world is so complex that there will always be limits to the knowledge we have, but there may be no limit to the knowledge we need.

I was interviewing the MD of an award winning internet / retail business that has doubled its High Street presence in the last couple of years.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJFC8_yu5hg

I asked about the advice he would give to the many people out there that are looking to set up a similar business model. He replied that he had chosen to take the necessary expertise in house; he has people on the payroll that know how to create, develop and run an internet business. The alternative he added is to use external support, but these people are not and can not be up to speed with what is actually going on, on a day to day basis. This means there is always expensive ‘catch up’ time to pay.

So what do we do? Well it depends on your business model, it depends on how often you need the expertise. I prefer to ‘pay as you go’ because there is no day to day requirement for support in our business.

We make a list of internet based things we would like advice on over a period of weeks and then have a day’s worth with our adviser.

Simplicity

2011-04-14T05:06:00.000-07:00

In a world where complexity seems to advance upon us from many sides, there is genuine value in simplicity

As if it is not sufficiently challenging to conduct the internal affairs of a business. From outside we may also need to consider political and economic factors. Some businesses are subject to regulatory and legislative controls; yet others need to be aware of social and environmental considerations. And all of us are trying in one way or another, to work with the sheer speed and intensity of technological developments.

So simplicity when we look for it, and when we find it, can feel like a breath of fresh air. Innovation and creativity are sources of simplicity; sometimes we can find quicker, simpler and more effective ways of doing things. For example:
* our dentist no longer phones to remind us, she now sends an auto text with the date and time of the appointment
* some organisations understand that people learn in three different ways, so they make sure that all communications with and between people are made visually (seeing), auditorily (hearing) and kinaesthetically (feeling).
* other organisations recognise that a superb route to market is for a talented speaker, speaking to potential customers, is one of the fastest and most direct ways of creating new business.
* openness, honesty and transparency is the way to develop great relationships with colleagues, staff, stakeholders and customers. The better the quality of these relationships, the better will be the performance of the business.

Simplicity, like excellence, is all around us if we look for it.

I

2011-03-27T03:02:00.001-07:00

There is no doubt that a lot of the best leaders have a strong ‘first position’. This becomes apparent almost as soon as you initially meet them: they start most of their sentences with the word ‘I’.

I have worked with several of these leaders recently and it is quite common to find that ‘I position’ leaders reach, sooner or later, a glass ceiling with their business growth. Often they cannot understand this. After all, ‘first position’ although they almost certainly don’t recognise it as such, is how they built the business for the last 20 or 30 years. They say “Well it’s always worked before, so why shouldn’t it work now.”

And the answer is that charismatic ‘first position’ leaders are great at starting businesses; their strong, hands on approach works. It works until the number of people they have to manage suddenly becomes too large. What is that number? It could be six or sixty; it all depends on the leader and on the type of business.
When this is explained, they say “Well, what do I do?” The answer is always the same. “If you want to grow your business you will need to grow a management team. To do that you will need to change how you think, change what you do and change how you behave.”

These leaders then fall into two camps. The first are those that cannot do this. They may lack the self esteem necessary to make the changes, they may never have trusted others sufficiently or they may simply feel safer staying exactly where they are.

The second group change in a split second. It is as if they have seen the light; suddenly it is all about openness, honesty and transparency. Staff are often amazed, staggered even, at this transition.

How do I know when it’s working? These leaders start most of their sentences with the word ‘we’.

‘Til anger do us part

2011-02-27T00:23:00.000-08:00

Sometimes in business, relationships with colleagues, staff, stakeholders or customers just end in frustration and disappointment.

I’ve had problems working with, relating to or even understanding website people over the years. It is often nobody’s fault as such, because looked at objectively, both parties run successful businesses with some great clients. it’s just the way things work out, or don’t work out, in this particular relationship.

What I have learned after 26 years of working with hundreds of clients is three things:
• Every client totally different and it is important to strike up a rapport and an empathy that they are comfortable with
• Mutual trust and respect are an essential ingredient of the relationship
• Any implied or explicit personal criticism of the client, whether justified or not, is probably the fastest way to end the relationship

This business world often requires us to meet and engage with more people than ever before. The link with the vast majority of these people is comparatively easy to break. However if there is another dimension, like you sleep with them or they happen to be your brother........

Well that’s another blog.

The moving feast

2011-02-06T04:28:00.000-08:00

Although it is absolutely true that we do now have to get closer than ever before to colleagues, staff, stakeholders and customers, this does not have to be a life sentence.

Some years ago I worked with the Board of a fast growing £40 million pound company with two husband and wife couples as equal shareholders. I’d been working with them for some ten years as we all watched the business continue to grow rapidly.
One day I was on a training course myself and the presenter made such an impact on me that I telephoned my client at the morning coffee break, to say that I had just met their new business adviser. Mark told me I was mad, but I insisted that we set up a dinner at a hotel where the four directors would meet my successor.

The six of us subsequently had a couple of further strategy meetings, but that was the last practical involvement I had with that company. I still know the directors; in fact we all went out for a curry together just before Christmas.

So yes, in the business context, we do have to get closer to all sorts of people than ever before, but the relationship is always evolving in one way or another simply because time and circumstance are never the same.

Closer

2011-01-21T04:10:00.000-08:00

There is no doubt that we are all being asked to get closer to all sorts of people than ever before. But it's not easy.

The first group of people we need to get closer to are our colleagues. We have to discuss, maybe debate but finally sign off the Bull's Eye because that is what determines who we are, what we want to be and how we are to conduct the journey. To do this we all have to be open and honest with each other.

Secondly we need to get closer than ever before to our staff and stakeholders because these people are fundamental to enhancing the performance of our business. We have to lead, inspire and motivate and we do that by our behaviour, day in day out, week in week out.

When we have started to do the work with the first three groups of people we are ready to get closer to customers. But not before. I meet very many business leaders that are keen to get the customer / client bit right, but are not prepared to put the time and energy into their relationships with colleagues, staff and stakeholders first. It doesn’t work that way.

So make sure you realize this is both a sequential and a cyclical process. It always starts with colleagues. Staff and stakeholders are next and then you are ready to develop great relationships with customers.

But all this comes with a health warning because some people just don't want to play. And in all fairness why should a perfectly normal law abiding citizen suddenly want to get closer to a bunch of human beings they just used to work with?

Good question and I don't know the answer. What I do know is that emotional and interpersonal intelligence will be a large part of what differentiates us in the market places of the future. Effective contemporary communication is one of the last remaining opportunities for all of us to develop and sustain competitive advantage.

So we had better get used to it.

Competition

2011-01-09T23:26:00.000-08:00

Most businesses benefit from competition in the long term. Benefit that is or cease trading.

I work for different businesses that are actually competitors in the same category. People say how can you do that, surely that's a conflict of interest? However although the products and service may be similar, the people are absolutely unique. And since competitive advantage derives from innovation and creativity it follows that any two organizations are effectively travelling on their journey in parallel.

So what's to stop one company copying the ideas of another? Well nothing at all but in the knowledge world it's not much use being a follower. We are all constantly looking for new ways to surprise and delight our customers. By the time someone copies us we should be well on our way to our next new idea!

So competition is all good from this perspective. It has nothing to do with the state of the market, but everything to do with the state of your mind.

The interface

2010-12-20T02:46:00.000-08:00

In this knowledge world we all need to know more about the interface we have with all the ‘experts’ we choose to use in our business and in our lives.

It used to be so much more of a ‘parent – child’ relationship, “doctors orders” and all that. But now we know that doctors are just as fallible as each and every one of us. This means we want to know more about the tablets, the what, the why, the when and the how. In the surgery last week the doctor said “I will prescribe these antibiotics for your virus.” So I said to her, “What about the warfarin?” “Ah,” she replied, “I had forgotten about that.”

So she looked up a reference book and altered my warfarin dose. I then turn up for a blood test a week later and the nurse says. “Well, it is a golden rule that you never take any warfarin on the day you start your antibiotics.” Now I am not especially bothered about all this – we all have to live in the real world where we all make mistakes.

I have to deliver half a dozen Finance for the Non Finance Manager workshops in the New Year. And it’s exactly the same principle. The delegates, business leaders, need to get a handle on the subject because if they don’t, the relationship with their accountant will inevitably be ‘Parent – Child’. You look after me – you tell me what to do – you make all the decisions.

Actually, the best results are usually obtained when we move into ‘adult – adult’ with our advisers. That way we share responsibility for what we decide.

Transactional or what?

2010-11-13T09:59:00.000-08:00

Business relationships are polarising. There are times when we just want the outcome, but we don’t want the engagement. There are other times when in order to get the outcome, we have to do the engagement.

I went into a Lush outlet in Newcastle the other day for the first time. The immediate thing I noticed was an almost overwhelming perfume or scent, but it was not and could not be distinctive, because of the range of products displayed. Secondly, the vast array of colour everywhere made an immediate positive impact on my senses. I like colours.

Thirdly was the extraordinary attentiveness of the staff. They were extremely keen on asking all sorts of ‘open’ questions that did indeed elicit information from me. But as I left the shop empty handed, I did not feel comfortable that these three strangers, in the space of ten minutes, knew how many daughters I had, the name of my wife and the colour of her hair, where I was from and whether I use after shave or not.

In a world where what we do with people can be seen simplistically as transactional or transformational, I think that when buying soap I would prefer the former, rather than the latter.

We need to know, in our relationships, where this is all going. As far as using our time and our energy, it is vital to get the difference.

Happiness

2010-11-04T07:08:00.000-07:00

The happiest people I know are the ones that have a Bull’s Eye for their business life that is in alignment with the Bull’s Eye for their personal life.

I was speaking to a business audience in Warwick recently when one delegate asked how I go about finding that happiness.
Well at work, what makes people happy is being able to deploy the synergy that exists between their professional expertise and their human traits. It doesn’t matter whether you are a great accountant, a wizard at IT, a marketing maverick or an engineer ‘exceptionelle’.

Whatever you are, there is your personality, the way you deploy your four types of energy, your preference for being reactive or proactive with the 168 hours per week at your disposal. There is your behaviour, your intelligence, the way you think, your experience and knowing the difference between complexity and simplicity.
It is this combination that makes the unique and special contribution that you bring to your work. It’s a feeling that you are being the best you can be, almost that you have found what you are meant to be doing on this planet.
If this can be aligned with whatever is going on at home, then many people would say that this is their version of ‘living the dream’.

And why not indeed?

Hot air

2010-10-24T05:34:00.001-07:00

You can step out carefully every working morning hoping to be the very best you can, and still there are banana skins that leave you stretched out on your back.

I was speaking to a group of business people at Warwick Racecourse last week. There were about sixty in the room so I was all wired up. It was about halfway through the second session of the morning and I had set the delegates an exercise so I nipped out to the Cloakroom.

On my return I was astonished to see the room in uproar with people waving at me, laughing and generally in high spirits. I mean, inviting them to discuss one key strength that will help them hit their Bull’s Eye does not normally get this intensity of reaction.

One of the Event Team came towards me at pace before I re entered the room; she whispered that my visit to the WC, complete with very noisy hand dryer, had been broadcast on the AV system. As a speaker you try to empathise with your audience, but I would never have guessed what had happened if it hadn’t been for the kind and thoughtful intervention of the Event Planner.

Just another reminder only we can determine to try to be successful, but that we cannot do it alone.

Twice the size

2010-10-23T02:59:00.000-07:00

In a world where we are exhorted to get CLOSER to colleagues, staff, stakeholders and customers – the ‘transparency’ thing, we can come so very easily unstuck.

I was walking through town one day last month when the Chair of a local mail order group stopped me to say that she wasn’t sure whether her son, one of her divisional MD’s, could join the Herefordshire Directors Forum. I replied that this is no problem and that we would probably be starting another group in the New Year and that might work for him.

The Chair went on, “Yes, he’s twice the size this year.” Now I know Steve fairly well and I would have said that he is already what the clinicians call obese. Twice the size in a year would make him physically enormous. So I was just about to reply, “Well I am really sorry to hear that, is this a medical problem do you think?” when Helen continued, “it’s been a great twelve months and our new CRM system has worked a treat.”

I shut my mouth like a clam, stared hard at the space over her head and stammered something about yes how important the right technology is.
A very close shave. I think we need to realise that the closer we get to people that might once have been ‘merely’ business acquaintances, the chances are that we will make mistakes and we will tend to polarise people into those that like us for being what we are, and those that don’t.

That’s OK isn’t it?

Dad, can I buy you a pint?

2010-10-17T20:28:00.000-07:00

Preparing the next generation for the challenging world of work is not always easy and obstacles can arise from the most surprising of sources.

My boy is in his second year at the local sixth form that is ranked about fourth in the UK. I imagine this ranking is due in no small measure to the A level grades it achieves.

A few weeks ago, at around the time plenty of students were visiting universities around the country, Ali had the chance to work on a Game Fair show with his Saturday employer. This meant camping out for three nights, loading and unloading a lorry, (twice) preparing the stand, dealing with the public, handling cash and so on.
On Monday morning I received a call from the college wanting to know where he was on Friday. I prevaricated for a minute or two but the voice on the other end was fairly insistent so I told the college exactly what Ali was doing over weekend.

The female caller was not impressed, so I added that there are plenty of young people up and down the country with a fistful of grade ‘A’ A levels and a degree to match – but they don’t have any work. I reassured her that the next time an excellent work experience opportunity arises we will be advising him to take it.

Ali will still get his grades next Spring, but most importantly, having turned 18 by then he will be able to turn to me and say, “Dad, can I buy you a pint?”

Enough

2010-10-17T04:12:00.000-07:00

A lot of us feel compelled to push on, and on and on. More salary, more sales, more profit, bigger house, better car................

But it doesn’t have to be like that. I met someone last Spring who asked whether I knew what ‘enough’ is. I didn’t understand the question, so he explained that everyone has an ‘enough’ position, but that hardly anyone knows what it is.

We were talking about my diary in May when it was only half full. He said, “So what?” I replied that I like having a full diary. He asked why and then invited me to get over it and go fishing or take Sharon away for a few days. So I did and the more I thought about ‘enough’ the more options I felt I had.

Crazy thing is that once you find out what ‘enough’ is, you suddenly find that you have more than enough.

But at least you have a choice.

Blackbirds and lobworms

2010-10-08T04:52:00.000-07:00

An American sage said to me at the convention in San Diego “I’ll see you next year Tim, and the only difference between us will be the people we have met and the books we have read these last twelve months.”

Sadly Charlie Jones passed away in the intervening period but I am convinced his sentiments are right. When I think of some of the amazing people I have worked with this last twelve months alone. I am not even sure whether I know what impact they have had on my life; sometimes it is latent, bubbling away only to surface some time in future. It’s the same with books and I am indebted to Paul Halsey, MD of Purity Brewing Co. not just for our working relationship, but for introducing me to EATING THE BIG FISH, How Challenger Brands Can Compete Against Brand Leaders. It’s brilliantly written but more importantly, so much of the learning it contains applies to so many businesses.

My job is to eat the book and then regurgitate it in a form and texture that enables particular clients to swallow the bits they need to grow. Blackbirds do the same with great big lobworms.

Make sure you have someone or maybe several people that do the same for crucial knowledge areas of your business.

Stakeholder job

2010-09-13T22:59:00.000-07:00

Stakeholders are as important to the success of a business as the directors, and sometimes even more so.

A third generation family business in the midlands that is still successful in manufacturing components for the auto industry has the usual array of external support.

There is an accountant who has been a friend of the family for twenty years; in fact she is Godmother to the daughter of one of the directors. The web designer went to school with the son of the Managing Director who works in sales; the two ‘boys’ continue to be good friends and still socialize together. Transport is outsourced and the chap that organizes all the logistics side of the business is the brother in law of one of the girls in credit control.

Well this is all very cozy, but none of the three stakeholders is up to speed with what the company needs now. The world is changing so fast that what may have worked five years ago or even two years ago, may not work today.

Successful business today demands more than relationships that are primarily based upon family or friendship ties.

Drifting apart

2010-09-13T22:41:00.000-07:00

It is absolutely no surprise that relationships between people at the top of organizations are sometimes under almost intolerable pressure. But it doesn’t have to be like that.

You don’t need Tony Blair’s memoirs to tell you how he and Gordon Brown got on, or didn’t, for so many years. It was all so apparent to anyone who saw them together. But politics is played by different rules to many successful business organizations. I know two female entrepreneurs that set up a fashion business together some years ago. It was all excitement and buzz and money making to begin with, but as the company grew, much more prosaic aspects had to be addressed.

If the business was to continue to grow, the owners had to factor in more regular and effective planning, monthly management accounts and appraisals. This is the antithesis of the flair and charisma that started the business.

Probably the most important thing of all is for the two drivers of the business to meet, discuss and resolve both short and long term issues on a regular basis.

And it is my job to make sure this happens.

Humpty Dumpty

2010-08-24T03:35:00.000-07:00

When you discover, all of a sudden, that the Key Change Project for your business is actually ‘culture’ it can come as a shock.

Working in Sheffield with a cutlery manufacturer and his team, we had a room in a hotel with the usual muffins, coffee and buffet lunch. It didn’t really come alive until mid afternoon. But then some members of the senior team felt it was time to open up with the Chair and Managing Director. It wasn’t rude or brutal but it was very forthright, others would say critical.

Some people think that this approach will only “open a can of worms”. Rest assured that without opening the can, there is almost no chance of using this work to develop and sustain competitive advantage.

The two senior people were taken aback; they had no idea about the content or strength of feeling from members of their team. And at the end of the day when the three of us were sitting together, the Managing Director turned to me and said, “I feel as if my business is in pieces on the floor”.

That is quite a common reaction, but just like Humpty Dumpty we can always put the pieces together again.

The appraisal

2010-08-19T00:00:00.000-07:00

The MD’s appraisal is always the most important appraisal of all, but it needs to be conducted by a trusted outside adviser.

The board of an advertising agency were telling me how tough it is out there. Consensus is that advertising doesn’t work anymore; the banks aren’t lending; the internet is altering all the rules and so on. All these things, and lots more besides, are happening outside the business, yet the MD is carrying on more or less, inside the business, as he has done for years. What is that about?

Well, in fairness it can be very much because it is not always easy for any of us to change quick enough to deal effectively with the external operating environment. Especially whilst trying to deliver on business performance targets. However the business must be flexible and always ready to respond to the external demands of the market place.

This means that the workforce also need to have a similar mindset, but it always starts with the MD. Common sense really isn’t it?

Away day

2010-08-18T23:27:00.000-07:00

It is as if our day to day work is conducted inside an invisible bubble. All our thoughts, feelings and actions happen, and bounce back, inside this bubble.

We know this because we get the same feelings every time we think about that same difficult and still unresolved and people issue; we know it because when the thought of our new website design pops into our head we have the same sequence of thoughts playing out; we know it because we haven’t done the appraisals scheduled for last month.

It feels as if we are treading wet sand on all these things; just not making any progress on important business issues; we are just going round in circles. And the way to alter this vicious cycle into a virtuous cycle is simple. You have to get out of your normal working environment. It may be a weekend away with your partner; it may be taking the staff paint balling or it could be the senior team locked away in a hotel for a day of ‘blue sky’ thinking.

Now we are not claiming that just going away will resolve all the challenges you face, but what it certainly will do is give you a fresh perspective. We find this is the first step towards improved decisions.

Fee follows value, until....

2010-08-10T04:38:00.000-07:00

Many business owners believe that the fee or price they are able to charge for their goods and services follows value. In other words, if you give more value you can justifiably charge more. However when your business becomes a ‘brand’, then the lines cross and at that point, value follows fee.

I said to the optometrist that I need some sunglasses for fishing. I am looking to spend about £25. The man says “Well, these Polaroid’s are what you need to spot the fish.” I figure the price could now be nearer £40.

The optometrist says, “These wraparounds will give you better fish spotting vision because they cut the sun out altogether.” I’m thinking that the price must now be £50 or more.

Then he says, “Why don’t you take these bi-focal, polarised, wraparounds away for the weekend. You can use these for tying hooks so you don’t have to change your glasses every five minutes.”

On the drive out to the river I find that I don’t need two pairs of glasses, one for the sun and one for the map, in the car either. Amazing. So I go back to the practice the following week and get a pair. Price £120.

When we develop genuine expertise that is of value to customers or clients, then fee or price becomes less and less important in our decision to buy.

In the moment

2010-05-16T01:03:00.000-07:00

There is a lot of emphasis on business to be planning, or doing strategy days, working ‘on the business rather than in it’. But wow! let’s celebrate the great days we all have being in the business.

Sharon and I have a partnership together with associates, and we have had the privilege of being with eleven businesses these last two weeks, in addition to working with two of our Hereford director forums in that time as well.

On Wednesday morning we were writing up a Bull’s Eye day report for an engineering business – I translate my writing off the flipchart, Sharon formats. Before lunch we were putting together a business plan from data supplied by the three partners of a vetinary practice. Quick lunch and then a ten mile drive through the beautiful Herefordshire countryside, in two cars, to work with the ten person management team of a superb local food company with five outlets.

Sharon did the first hour on management development topics and I then chaired their management meeting. Sharon meanwhile motored back home to prepare supper for Dave, Managing Director of a cider making company. The superb pork in cider meal was made from ingredients supplied by both clients.

I got back at six, had a one to one with Dave for a couple of hours, then the three of us ate before walking down to the finest pub in the county, which happens to be another client.

At ten o’clock you can look back on a wonderful day like that and think “Yes! This is what I am supposed to be doing on this planet!"

The happiest leaders...

2010-05-01T23:07:00.000-07:00

The happiest leaders we know are those where their business Bull's Eye is in alignment with their personal Bull's Eye.

Many of us can see how easy it is to spend time and energy on the business; and if something needs sorting, as it invariably does, then we are the ones to do it. After all, that's our job isn't it?

What actually goes out the window is the time and energy we spend on the other areas of our life. We don't show up for the parents evening; the round of golf on Sunday gets cancelled and the meal out we scheduled with our partner will just have to be postponed. Again.And as this pattern repeats itself time after time after time, we vaguely look for the light at the end of the tunnel. We promise that it will get better, but the reality is we have no idea exactly how that will happen.

This is why we are doing more and more Bull's Eye sessions for business leaders with other key family members present, like partners for example. And these may be partners who don't even work in the business.

The truth is that you can never put a Bull's Eye for your business together, designed to develop and sustain competitive advantage, without incorporating the main aspects of your personal life as well.

Two for the price of one

2010-04-18T02:15:00.000-07:00

Nearly all products and services can be sold in more innovative and creative ways, so why are we so precious about how we used to do things?

Maybe it was the supermarkets that taught us to ‘buy one and get one free’. Whoever it was, whenever we see an offer like that, most of us stop and think about it.

But now many organisations are recognising that repricing means business. Solicitors are doing it, optometrists are doing it, butchers and dental practices are doing it.

The essence of all these schemes is the win : win concept. The provider gets business they may not otherwise have had; the customer or client gets a better price or more for less.

It doesn’t seem to work with commodities like petrol where it seems I have to pay £1.25 per litre whether I like it or not, but it works for us and it may work for you too.

Opportunity

2010-04-11T04:38:00.000-07:00

Many businesses are looking for more or bigger or better opportunities to trade.

I was meeting a potential new client last month at a typical rural Herefordshire venue which is actually a very successful farm diversification project employing ten people.

He had suggested 1000 Monday morning and when I arrived a notice said ‘Closed on Mondays’. Whilst strolling round the deserted car park waiting for my contact I noticed an empty craft workshop. Anyone wishing to rent was invited to ring James on the number.

Now I remember James from twenty years ago. He and his wife Joanna attended my Finance and Business Planning course when they were starting this very farm project back in 1990. So I rang the number, explained that I was waiting to meet someone and asked where else we could go for a coffee nearby.

James said he’d come out to see me because he remembered the course. I said he’d lost some weight and he said that he was fitter than ever, and that he needed to be now his two sons were heading up the business!

The sons are nearly forty years old now and since our conversation, one of them has signed up for our Herefordshire Directors Forum.

I just wonder how many satisfied clients / customers we all have known these last twenty years or so that we have almost totally forgotten about.

What an opportunity.

Hold your position, stay on your feet and keep it simple

2010-04-04T02:45:00.000-07:00

Wisdom that can transform business leaders and their organisations can come from anyone, anywhere and at any time.

The pundits on Match of the Day, a BBC programme that plays football matches and then analyses them, provided the latest example.

They were analysing the recent performances of the former England football captain, John Terry when Alan Hansen shared the following. He said that when he played for the Liverpool Championship winning teams, everyone had a bad patch at one stage or another. It was accepted and management encouraged players with three pieces of advice.

The first was to hold your position because poor form can be linked to loss of confidence; when we lose our confidence we can easily be drawn out of position. Secondly, stay on your feet. During a barren period, loss of form goes with loss of confidence and that goes with falling over. Several video clips showed John Terry doing just that in situations where he would normally dominate.

And finally, if we are panicked or traumatised, the tendency is to over compensate, to over complicate. The answer is to keep it simple. Keep on doing the simple things well.

A local company director also saw the programme and rang to tell me that he suddenly knew how to steer the company away from the rocks.

Hold your position (in the market), stay on your feet (when there are so many that want to knock you over) and keep it simple (carry on delivering in your particular area of expertise)

Great stuff Alan.

2010-04-04T01:43:00.000-07:00

Mentors and coaches

I meet quite a lot of senior business people that are more or less dissatisfied with their mentor or coach.

One CEO said recently, “I’ve been with her for two years and she doesn’t tell me anything I don’t know already.”

Another female executive said, “It’s useful to get an outside perspective but I don’t feel that it is improving my performance as such.”

And then at an executive group forum in London last week someone said, “Well it hasn’t worked for me so far; in any case how do you go about finding a coach in the first place?”

As someone who has two, the first thing I would say is that it is important to know where you want to be. The more clearly you can describe what you want to be doing in three years time – I call this the Bull’s Eye period – then the easier it is to find someone to help you on the journey. In simple terms you look for someone who is already where you want to be.

Secondly, and this is an apparent contradiction, none of us really know where life’s journey is taking us. Therefore if we are open to personal growth and development, we need to leave a little space for the unexpected encounter, the crazy conversation, the observation from someone else that causes bells to ring in the back of our mind.
That’s why I’m seeing a female practitioner in Harley Street next week.

Poop! Poop!

2010-02-28T01:30:00.000-08:00

All executive group workshops are looking at how to take cost out of the business, whether these are fixed or variable.

Sharon and I were co - facilitating one of our groups on this subject last week and at supper time when we all break for half an hour, the topic of birthdays arose. I took the opportunity to share the fact that I had a booked time away at Broadway.

After all, we are 50 and 60 years old respectively this month so I thought I’d do the decent thing and celebrate for 24 hours in rural Worcestershire. The quaint old English Crown and Trumpet pub were doing a special offer on midweek accommodation; with the meal all in I figured that £200 plus VAT should cover it.

But one of the delegates, Heidi, Managing Director of Wye Valley Media had heard the word Broadway from her position at the back of the room. “Broadway” she squealed loudly. “Wow!” She went on, “you’ll be able to do a show!”

For a split second my brain said that there weren’t likely to be any shows in Broadway on a wet Monday in March. But another member of the group shouted “You MUST go to Greenwich Village” and then another voice chimed in about “boat trips round the Statue of Liberty”

I held up my hands in protest. There had been a misunderstanding. I glanced furtively across at Sharon, but it was too late. She was standing there, eyes wide, looking for all the world like Toad of Toad Hall after he had seen his first motor car.

Cutting costs? We fly out on 18th March.

Poop, poop.

The takeaway

2010-02-22T05:11:00.000-08:00

You never know when the stuff you use in your day job may be useful elsewhere.

I was in town collecting a meal on Saturday evening but they were running late.

There were two disruptive couples aged about thirty already waiting on the sofas. They were shouting, singing and one woman was climbing on top of, presumably her partner. The second female said she wanted me to sit next to her and she pulled me down to announce that they were all from Leicester. I said what a nice place it is and that I was working there next week. Her male partner asked what I did.

I replied that I speak on helping businesses so he advised that if I got a proper trade I wouldn’t have to travel round “spouting bullshit”. He started wagging his finger at me and invited me to say just one thing that would help his business.

So I asked his name and what he did. “Painter and decorator.” His wife added that everyone is always very complimentary about his work. I congratulated Nick on this and by now the other couple had calmed down and were listening to the conversation. I asked if he had a card and the second lady said he wouldn’t do anything like that. I asked about a website and the men laughed but one of the females said she had tried to do one for him.

I gave Nick my business card and said that he needed to be able to do the same in this world. They all went quiet and one woman asked “How do you get someone to have the confidence to believe in themselves?”

I said that this was a great question. But just then Sharif arrived with my food.

So I turned to Nick and reminded him that he had asked for one piece of advice. “I want you to listen to what your customers are saying to you, but above all I want you to listen to people that love you and start to take some of their advice.“

I wished them luck and started home. After a few yards someone came running up behind me. It was Nick who put his arms round my shoulders, hugged me to him and said “Thank you.”

Love at first sight

2010-02-14T00:48:00.000-08:00

Contemporary marketing techniques can sometimes make an impact beyond our expectations.

All businesses need to be marketing all of the time, even when they are being successful. This is because both time and circumstance can change any business model in a split second.

Imagine an arrow that represents your contemporary marketing strategy. Well two of the most powerful ways of honing the tip, the bit that penetrates, are speaking and blogging. If you are authentic and relevant when people hear you or read you, the result can be an instant booking or engagement request.

Then, and this may seem strange, these things come in all shapes and sizes, you have to decide whether you want the work or not.

The couple

2010-02-07T00:25:00.000-08:00

For SME’s including family businesses, the most powerful and groundbreaking work to generate business success often requires not just the MD, but his or her partner as well.

In one third generation business recently it was clear from the outset that the female MD was very wary of involving her husband. Yet it is at the very first meeting, when you use someone from outside, it is at the very first meeting that the ground rules for openness, honesty and transparency are discussed. After all, her partner was, and is a key player in the management team.

When you clarify the direction of any organisation, the starting point, it is always necessary to involve all the senior players. These are the people that have any form of executive responsibility, whatever label you choose to give them.

If clarity of direction is the place to start, the next stepping stone is to develop trust between colleagues. And yes, those colleagues may well be husband and wife. Indeed a key part of developing high levels of trust between colleagues is the externally facilitated 360 degree appraisal of each member of the senior team, starting with the MD.

In this business that would have meant husband being part of the group that appraised his wife.

This was a very short consultancy assignment. In fact I haven’t seen or heard from anyone in the company since that first exploratory meeting.

Of course I know who I am, don’t I?

2010-01-30T02:38:00.000-08:00

Current business conditions are causing all sorts of leaders to fundamentally reassess where they stand and what they are doing with their lives.

I work with a couple in their early fifties who have been trading in the food industry for twenty years. When I asked whether they envisaged one or two of their children joining the family business, the reply was, “Oh my God, I wouldn’t wish that on any on anyone, let alone my own children.” My next question was, “Well the Government want us all to work ‘til we are eighty five now, so do you fancy another thirty years of this?”

This led on to the value of the business and whether it could be sold and how much they would be able to walk away with. One said “At least the goodwill must be worth a fortune.” I asked why it would be worth anything since any goodwill is totally down to the proprietors themselves and once they leave, the goodwill is on the same train.

So they asked about all their unique recipes they have developed over the years Surely they have a value? Most of the good ones have been published in one form or another. This means that any tacit knowledge that was used to create them immediately become explicit knowledge on publication. Explicit knowledge, although most business leaders do not understand this point, is virtually valueless.

So then I asked whether they need to work at all. There is a lifestyle that they enjoy and that could not be sustained without the business. It’s all they know.

So we are back to the business. We are back to the three eternal truths of any business: the need to clarify direction, (the Bull’s Eye) develop trust, (getting CLOSER to people) and enhance performance (personal and professional development)

I’ve had a dozen or more sessions like this in the last few months. It’s the stuff going on subconsciously that ultimately determines the outcome, for all of us.

The learning and development myth

2010-01-24T13:32:00.000-08:00

The mantra of ‘learning for life’ translates into lots of wasted time and energy for many busy executives.

At a three day convention recently I asked one CEO what sort of value she was expecting from the event. “No idea,” she smiled, “my HR director said that this would be good for me.” She followed the comment with “I try and get 15 days professional development in each year.”

Sometime before Christmas I was invited to sit in on a CEO ‘mastermind group’ in the midlands. These are half a dozen leaders from different parts of the country that meet every two months or so to discuss best practice in innovation and creativity for their sector. One couldn’t make it, two were an hour late and a fourth had to leave early for another meeting in London.

The only structure I could see was they all passed some kind of business book around which each promised to read before the next meeting. Why on earth any CEO would want to read a random book that someone else has chosen beats me.

Then there are the CEO’s that are sort of ‘guru groupies’. If the object of their admiration is speaking or running a workshop more or less anywhere in the world, then they will be there. It may be a round trip of a few days and cost several thousand pounds, but hey, its Anthony Robbins or Nido Qubein. The fact that all their material is copiously available, online, in any format you want is neither here nor there.

Now there may well be some merit in all of these activities. But let’s not fool ourselves. Call it a break from the office, call it a chance to meet up with old and new business contacts, call it a holiday if you want.

But please, please do not call it focussed personal and professional development.

All hyped up

2010-01-21T02:56:00.000-08:00

Well it is clear that if we are not all blogging, Twittering, spend the requisite number of hours per week on Linked In, scrabbling to enter every conceivable business card on Outlook, manicuring our entry on Facebook.....then we are very much second class citizens.

Do you not feel this pressure to conform? To be like everyone else? Do you not meet these people, they pop up everywhere, that are already doing something new on yet another free download, that really you should have known about? Never mind that you are running a business, but whatever else you are, it is clear to everyone within earshot that you certainly are not up to speed on social media.

But actually there is no conformity, because as yet there are no experts. There are plenty of people out there telling you what you should be doing, plenty more that can tell you how to do bits of it. But no one can formulate a strategy that will necessarily work for you or your business.

Some nine months ago a client asked why there is no director development provision in our county. I couldn’t answer, but when several people asked the same question I picked up the phone one day in April 09 and invited 15 MD’s to join a group. Twelve agreed and a new group started meeting monthly in May, a second group formed itself in October and we now have a third group.

So how did this happen? Well, they are people I met at a breakfast club, people I meet in the Barrels, my local pub, people who advertise in local publications, people who have heard about the venture by talking to their contacts.

All a bit old fashioned really isn’t it? But it works. Make sure you do not become a slave to all the people who know how to spend your resources of time, energy and money better than you.

2010? - bring it on!

2009-12-13T03:58:00.000-08:00

There is so much excitement out there from so many of the businesses I have been fortunate enough to work with this past month or so. The common denominator is without doubt the attitude, demeanour and determination of the lady or the guy at the top. Without exception.

With one group we were looking at the need for new, contemporary marketing strategies, no matter what business you run. It was agreed that change to market places, customer needs and competitor activity is so fast that the Board have to really embrace the trends. In fact the Managing Director of a garden centre and nursery said “We have to look at external factors first – the political, the regulatory, the economic, the social, the technological, the legislative and the environmental.”

He went on that “We must look at our business from the outside in, rather than from the inside out, before putting our 2010 marketing spend into the breach. That is how we will maximise value.”

Another who runs an award winning brewery said that “For us it is all about a living, dynamic brand that people can and want to believe in.” And yet a third owner said that she and her team are re writing their business model to make it fit for purpose in 2010. So I go into work and my staff may look at me and wonder whether they will have a job next week? after Christmas? next summer? And in tough times it is my job to believe in the answer. “Emphatically yes, there may be even more jobs by then.”

Everything we do and everything we say, every day, matters.

Right up close

2009-12-07T02:22:00.000-08:00

There is no doubt that we all have to get CLOSER to our customers or clients than ever before because that’s what differentiation boils down to.

Was a time when you could deliver the training or consultancy and just be satisfied to have done a solid days work. Not anymore. Trainers, consultants and speakers are ten a penny and most of their material is available to anyone online.

The differentiation is you, me, the human being, naked.

So recently a long standing client invited me to get involved in a political issue. I politely declined because I tend to avoid politics wherever possible. But the issue wouldn’t go away so I researched the pros and anti views. My client is pro and I, after due consideration, am anti. He wants to talk about it.

I have another long standing client who recently discovered that I fish. It’s the same sort of fishing he does and so he has suggested a day out together. Trouble is I am an introvert and so one of the reasons I fish is to put a bit of distance between me and the business world, just for a few hours. A days fishing with a client for me is a day’s work.

So I do believe that we have to get CLOSER to clients. And this does mean transparency; there will be no hiding place. I guess that the more transparent we are, clients will polarise. Some will like us for being the way we are, and others won’t.

I can live with that.

Hidden Treasure

2009-11-27T01:40:00.000-08:00

The amount of talent already on the payroll of organisations almost always exceeds the amount that is deployed.

Much of my work recently has been to do with drilling down to find how existing people in organisations can do things differently, think differently or behave differently. In other words how do we get more value from colleagues and staff without necessarily asking people to work longer or harder? The results are extraordinary.

Working in the drinks industry, Managing Director Dave was simply not doing the job. He is unpredictable, turns up late for internal meetings, hates reviewing the operating statements and dislikes managing people. Dave is absolutely brilliant at sales and contemporary marketing. His Operating Director Sophie is quiet. She is methodical, hardworking and enormously respected by everyone in the business for what she does.

The outcome of Boards facilitated appraisals was profound but suffice to say that Dave is being redeployed into the area he loves. Sophie is now chairing all senior meetings with tremendous success and all these changes and others have been fed back to the workforce together with a revised Bull’s Eye.

When the top people really do believe that they serve the business, then anything is possible.

LOL

2009-11-26T01:10:00.001-08:00

If our business message is all about content, the presentation experts recommend that we lighten it up with a bit of humour.

Part of my contemporary marketing effort is that I speak. It’s nearly all content but I don’t tell jokes. So I am out there, practising getting laughs. Seriously. It’s one of the development points from my last appraisal.

So last week we were invited to a fundraising dinner for the Special Air Services (SAS) Association in Hereford. The keynote speaker was none other than the celebrated English 1966 World Cup Final goal scorer and winner, Martin Peters.

Somewhere between the soup and the main course I was quietly mulling over the Thierry Henry affair. A deliberate handball went unnoticed by the referee and Ireland were eliminated from the 2010 World Cup. The incident made national news headlines all round the globe and it seemed at one stage that the match might even be replayed.

So just before our guest took the platform I approached the top table. “Excuse me Mr Peters,” I said, “ in view of the furore surrounding the Thierry Henry scandal, I wonder whether you think that the 1966 World Cup Final should be replayed?”

Well I thought it was funny. But there was a stunned silence, a look of incredulity on the face of the star man. He shot a glance at his host for the evening, a local bank manager. Then they both turned to look at me with utter contempt. In unison, as if they had been practising the line together for months they spat, “BUT IT WAS OVER THE LINE!!”

Laugh out loud? (LOL) I don’t think so.

Positive Politics

2009-11-06T02:55:00.001-08:00

Many people including me have spent an entire lifetime fundamentally unable to understand how politics works. Yet nobody disputes the fact that we have to have politics like food, water and air.

There was a discussion on Radio Five Live this week about the extraordinary Formula One racing season that recently culminated with Jenson Button becoming World Champion. Scandal followed scandal all year long apparently and just when it seemed there couldn’t be anything to top the last scandal, there was.

“Was politics good for the sport?” asked one commentator. Overwhelmingly “Yes” was the answer because the ensuing media scrum raised the profile of Formula One racing tenfold agreed the pundits.

So maybe it is the same in business? But I still can’t see how someone can say one thing with absolute conviction one day, only to say the opposite with equal conviction some time later.

Perhaps it’s just time and circumstance at work, and they change everything.

Promises, promises

2009-11-01T06:41:00.001-08:00

Trust is an absolutely crucial ingredient when a business wants to develop and sustain competitive advantage.

Talking and listening are the important skills here because the directors have to be able to talk about, and listen to, anything that could conceivably have an impact on the organisation.

There are things that individual and collective members of a Board will always talk about, probably to excess, and these are often ‘business as usual’ issues.

There are things that the Board will occasionally talk about such as, depending on the nature of the business, contemporary marketing strategies.

And there are things the Board will never talk about, if it can possibly be avoided. This third category is invariably to do with jugular people issues, often specifically to do with members of the Board themselves.

The real deal here is down to people doing what they say they will do. And if they can’t do that, then they need to talk about it.

It’s that simple.

Danger signs

2009-10-25T02:37:00.000-07:00

When any member of your senior team is effectively ring fencing their area of responsibility so that no one else really knows what is going on, that is a weakness.

I took a call from MD Emily a couple of weeks ago. She told me about her long standing finance manager John. “He is good at his job,” she said, “but now the company is growing so quickly I want him to get an assistant so that he can leave the ‘grunt work’ behind and concentrate more on strategy.”

“So what’s the problem?” I asked. “Well,” she said, “at his last appraisal he told me that he enjoyed the basics, reconciling the sales and purchase ledger, handling cash and so on. He doesn’t want an assistant yet he complains about all the work he has to take home each week.”

“So why don’t you appoint someone over John, someone that can take you forward more effectively?” “Oh, John would have to leave,” she replied. “So what? “ I said.

The fact is that there are some jugular areas of the business that require genuine openness and transparency between the top team members. You may be too close to your own business to recognise the symptoms, but when someone’s personal agenda overrides the needs of the business, there will be trouble down the line.

Sort it now.

First position

2009-10-18T03:07:00.000-07:00

No matter how hard we try we can often only see our business and ourselves from first position. It takes usually someone else to make a point or two that can help us on our journey.

I’ve been writing blogs now for some three years and people often comment in one way or another. This week one female reader wrote:

“You write well and I always enjoyed reading your mailings. What has stood out for me recently is a sense of disillusionment, cynicism and irritation. And I was rather surprised as it wasn't something I'd noticed in your previous postings which had felt encouraging, optimistic, insightful in a positive way.”

So I went back over the last few months writing and part of my reply was:

“It all feels good at this end Lynn, just had a week in Italy, done lots of fishing recently. The only thing I can think of to match your analysis is that if I had one mentor, one ‘guru’ that I would aspire to be like, it is Alan Weiss http://www.summitconsulting.com And he is brutal. He is a brilliant speaker and consultant and I agree with just about everything he says, writes and does.

So yes I am trying to toughen up my act with clients, bureaus and time wasters, ‘cos I am now 60 and there isn’t time to mess about with idiots or well meaning buffoons. This does not mean that I don’t care or can’t find time and energy for people that need help, it just means that I am perhaps more discriminating, more assertive, more needing to make a difference where difference is needed.”

So, thank you Lynn, and everyone that writes because it is always helpful to get a ‘second position’ perspective on what we do. First position is not enough.

Saying it

2009-10-18T02:26:00.000-07:00

It is extremely positive for your business if you are able to give fulsome and generous praise verbally, whilst maintaining eye contact, whenever you feel it is deserved, to whoever it may concern.

Working on just such an exercise with an executive group recently only three out of twelve felt able to do this readily. Some leaders told me that they just “can’t do it” because they find it difficult to put the right words together or they feel embarrassed about allowing ‘emotion’ to show. “I mean,” said one, “I’m not sure how I would handle the reply.”

The business model requires us to clarify direction, develop trust and finally enhance performance. It works in that sequence. There are four groups of people where we are continuously looking to encourage great relationships. These are our colleagues, our staff, our stakeholders and our customers.

You develop great relationships by being able to acknowledge superb performance in others. It takes proper self esteem to do it properly, sincerely and effectively. It takes practice. But the pay off is much bigger than that.

When you can do this with praise, you can also do it with constructive criticism. The top leaders are able to do both.

On the journey

2009-09-27T00:58:00.000-07:00

If any one of your team doesn’t want to be on the flight path towards the Bull’s Eye, then it is best for all concerned if they get off. Successful organisations are trying to ignite the passion, harness the commitment and spread the enthusiasm of everyone on the payroll. Of course it’s a tall order but then so is the excellence that we all have to be aspiring towards. This is how we differentiate ourselves from everyone else.

I was talking with a sous chef in a London restaurant recently. Essentially the gist of what he was saying is that he wanted it to be like it was twenty years ago. “We invented dishes to order then. It was fun, it was spontaneous. Now I feel like I am on a production line.”

Then there is the talented stylist I met whilst conducting a Staff Survey that is building his empire so blatantly, but who has not the slightest interest in developing the skill, knowledge or attitude of his team of ten.

Another business lady, closer to home, who has been feuding with her Managing Director for four years said, “Well of course I want the Sales Director’s job but my three children have to come first.”

Four years indeed. What kind of slack is there in a business that can incinerate so much time, energy and ultimately, money?

Great expectations

2009-09-20T04:00:00.000-07:00

Developing the personal brand of the Managing Director in alignment with the Bull’s Eye for their organisation is always something to be encouraged, but you can pay a price.

In an executive group forum we were discussing what makes each and every one of us special. What particular talent is it that each leader uses to bring most benefit to their business. The Managing Director of an extremely successful brewery, for example, said that he has visited all six hundred customers personally, “because our Bull’s Eye statement of excellence says we always try to offer outstanding personal service”.

Yet another, who retails both online and offline, cited the quality of her analysis and critical decision making ability. “Analysis first, people second” she said.

However another client who has been very successful in becoming the figurehead of his business went on to say “I sometimes find it hard enough to live up to my own expectations of myself, let alone other peoples”. We were talking about both the local and the national high profile he has created for himself and for his business and he added, “I get asked to do so many things that are of absolutely no value to my business and I just can’t fit them all in”.

And at the Abergavenny Food Fair yesterday I watched celebrity chef Cyrus Todiwala being followed round by a BBC camera crew pretty much all day long.

So ‘know what you want’ is still the key to getting both your business and your personal life in alignment.

Mind the gap

2009-09-16T01:24:00.000-07:00

So many organisations have a void between what the directors are hoping to achieve and what the managers are capable of, or are able to achieve. This gives rise to frustration and stress for all concerned.

The opportunity to join everything up or put the jigsaw pieces together is one not to be missed, but it usually takes a trusted outsider to do it. The reason this sort of thing happens is not hard to find. It is simply the fact that time and circumstance are changing every minute of every day of every week for all of us, no matter whether we work in the public, the private or the not for profit sectors.

This means that our original position on the business, the one we set out in a business plan last month or the one we spoke about at the company away day in the Spring, is out of date.
We can only see our business from the inside out, but very often time and circumstance impact our business from the outside in.

Business Plans and Away Days are OK things to have but the real driver of the business is the Monthly (Weekly?) Senior Team meeting where a professional chair determines three things:
1) What are we going to do?
2) Who will take responsibility for doing it?
3) When will it be done by?

The bullet point Action Plan from these meetings is the starting point for each months meeting. This is the dynamic, exciting, live part of your operation.

Do it like this and you will soon see where the gaps are in your business.

The addiction

2009-09-06T07:37:00.000-07:00

The business can be, is or may become an addiction for anyone. However, many of us are capable of more than just one addiction. Maybe they go hand in hand.

There is a leader near here that almost lives for his horses – it is the race meeting above all else that excites every fibre in his body. A lady CEO has the most amazing collection of dolls from around the world – everywhere she goes it is essential to buy one. Someone else always brings very expensive dark chocolate to the Board meetings which she is unable to share.

Tobacco is an easy one and so is our liking for too much sweet or convenience food. Erratic travel, impromptu meetings and variable hotels make it easy to justify our habits, to ourselves at least. Another leader secretly nurtures the day when he could be by the sea where he could sail the ocean waves every single day. A CEO based in Gloucester watches a Premiership football match every weekend, alternating between two grounds each week in the North West, 150 miles away.

Everything is created twice. First we imagine it, then next we do it. So addictions are interesting because of the amount of dreaming time, thinking time and mental energy they absorb every day of every week of our lives. Try asking a real ale fanatic his favourite tipple or a Classic FM devotee her favourite composer. You will see the face change, the eyes light up, we give our addiction away in a split second.

One thing is for sure. If we decide to drop an addiction for whatever reason, it will leave a hole or a vacuum in our life. There will suddenly be more time, more energy and usually more money, to spend elsewhere.

If you share your addiction with a partner at home, like a couple of bottles of wine every night for example, then it will be a joint challenge.

Or maybe it will be a joint opportunity.

Hope

2009-08-31T01:30:00.000-07:00

One or two of the people I have worked with these last six months have come within the tiniest whisker of throwing their businesses in. Premises, stock, staff, the lot. They had got to the point where it all seemed meaningless, extremely painful and that, as one said, “anything would be better than this reality.”

Sometime in June my middle daughter Jenny gave me a book called Mans Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.

In the text he says that “To live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.” And in this extraordinary account of his four debilitating years in Auschwitz, Frankl certainly had to make some sense of it all because, as he says, for those prisoners that could make no sense, for those that lost any reason to live, they were very soon, in a matter of days, one way or another, dead.

Frankl went on to quote Nietzsche, the German philosopher who said that “He that has a ‘why’ to live, can bear almost any ‘how’."

So for some of the business people working with what feels like unbearable pressure, day in day out, week in week out, it may well be worth standing back and taking a long hard look at the big picture. Maybe do this exercise with a trusted outsider.

But if you can dig deep enough and really find out why you are doing it, why you will carry on doing it, then it is said, as providence kicks in, that hope springs eternal.

Lost for words

2009-08-25T10:37:00.000-07:00

Part of the success of leaders in the business of business is the ability to react effectively to the situation and to the people issues in real time, as they actually happen.

We are fortunate to live close the beautiful river Wye as it sweeps down from the Black Mountains of Wales. On an informal basis I look after the Bartonsham Meadows stretch, which means that I occasionally collect rubbish from the banks that people leave or which is washed down river in the floods.

I have one sack for paper and another for metal and plastic. One sunny day in August I walked past the farm where I could see a man drinking from a can. As I approached he could see what I was doing as I made my way along the bank towards him. As I got nearer I saw maybe four or five empties in the grass where he stood.

What I couldn’t see was his partner, and presumably, their toddler in a scruffy pushchair by the water’s edge. The child was restless and what remained of a chocolate ice cream was smeared over its face and clothes.

I smiled at the family, commented on the weather and asked if he could please take his tins home with him.

He looked at me quizzically. “I work on the garbage for the Council,” he said. “We get paid for what we collect,” he said tossing another can onto the ground. “I lose my job,” he went on, “and who’s gonna feed the babby?” He stared at me.

I had no reply.

Marketing for suckers

2009-08-19T03:36:00.000-07:00

Each and every business today needs to use effective, and that means modern, marketing techniques to differentiate itself from the competition.

We recently needed a break. We are old enough and ugly enough to know that however much you enjoy your work, you need to occasionally stop and ‘sharpen the saw’.

One Tuesday in August we went online to find something for the Friday. Almost immediately we spotted Warner’s three day weekends, but you had to be over twenty one. “Brilliant marketing” I exclaimed. “Over twenty one? No kids! No teenagers! Oh, bring it on.”

So Friday morning we threw some luggage into the car, gave the children their written instructions: no booze, no smoking, no more than two friends round, no sex, no sleepovers but please feed the fish. We waved them a cheery goodbye and off we galloped to Bodelwyddan Castle, North Wales.

Checking in before me was an old chap supported by a Zimmer frame and I was patient and courteous for the necessary twenty minutes or so. Towards the completion of his registration I was aware of a light tugging at my elbow. The gentleman behind wanted to share with me the fact that he would be 90 years old in October. I felt the need for a drink even though it was still quite early in the day. But everywhere I turned, looking for the bar, were these antiseptic gels mounted on stands with big red lettering warnings. At dinner we were advised that you keep the table, and your new neighbours for the duration of the stay. Halfway through the starter I was aware that an elderly lady on my left was looking at me. I smiled and looked away but not before I noticed that she was dribbling her soup down her front.

I leaned forward to Sharon and whispered I’ve got to get out. I want to go back to Hereford. “Impossible,” she said, “we’ve already paid. It did say ‘no kids’.”

Back home three days later and it was the children’s turn to give us a cheery wave together with a polite enquiry about our weekend. My answer was brief and to the point. Alistair, our seventeen year old could not disguise a smirk as he hissed “Suckers.”

2009-08-03T04:13:00.001-07:00

Pot Noodle

2009-08-02T13:16:00.000-07:00

This networking online and offline is forcing us all to make and break relationships faster than ever before. It’s a whole new focus for many of us but the more we know about what makes us special, the easier it is to find out what makes other people special.

So you open the pot and pour on hot water and stir. In a matter of seconds you have an instant meal. And it’s very good for all that – it’s tasty – it hits the spot – you would not turn your nose up if you hadn’t eaten for a week. So how does this work in relationships?

Well you find out what your special talent is, the thing that you can do better than anyone else in the world. And then you take it to market. It doesn’t matter how you take it to market. You may be a speaker, you may be a trainer, you may be a writer or even a coach or you may be all those things. Very many people are but they don’t realise they are.

And then one day you are busy doing your stuff and somebody walks up to you and says “Wow, I just love what you are doing. Come and do some of that in my world.”

And initially you are stunned. What about the ‘rule of seven’ where you have to ‘touch’ people seven times before a productive relationship can start? Well you can forget about all that once you have found out what makes you special.

Then things simply happen faster.

Free Range Chicken

2009-08-02T02:58:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of people setting up their own business for the very first time, often in the service sector. After spending 20 or 30 years as a Battery Hen, it can suddenly seem daunting in the extreme to be a Free Range Chicken.

One of the standard pieces of advice I offer to these people is to look very carefully at exactly how they take their expertise to market.

I recently met the CEO of an Acute Hospital Trust over dinner. He told me that he had heard great things about my leadership work. He wanted me to meet his HR director. The appointment was made but after ten minutes with the HR director, he asked me why I was there.

In the last few months I had diarised appointments with the CEO’s of three Chambers of Commerce to discuss a project that would benefit them hugely. Each appointment was cancelled at short notice with the promise of a rearrangement. I have heard nothing since.

We were tendering for some leadership work with a local Council. We spent two days on the proposal with a valued associate. We were told two months later that they had eight applicants and they took the lowest bid.

Another public sector body in Birmingham asked for a detailed tender document of thirty pages. Two weeks later they sent another form asking us to evaluate the quality of the original tender document.

I celebrate 25 years as a Free Range Chicken soon, but for all these ‘start up’ people I meet there is one piece of advice. Watch out for idiots, watch out for people that have absolutely no idea about the value of time, especially your time.

If I was a cricketer......

2009-07-27T05:51:00.001-07:00

It is so important to know who you are and what makes you tick in business. Self awareness is more crucial than ever in a knowledge world.

I was upstairs watching my wife painting our sixteen year olds bedroom wall. Alistair was spread out on the sofa doing something on his ipod, glancing up occasionally at Sky Sports news on television and texting his friends at the T4 concert. I opened my mouth to ask if it is necessary to be using all this electricity at one time. But I closed it because I had heard the answer many times before.

England had just taken another Australian wicket and then our boy said “If I was a cricketer I would like to be a boundary fielder. You do the odd spectacular catch, you can doze for most of the time and you can chat to the crowd when you feel like it.”

That just about sums up the boy perfectly. Sharon carried on painting, I carried on gardening and Ali, he carried on flicking his ipod, nodding at the TV and texting his mates.

The father, the son and the great opportunity

2009-07-19T23:50:00.000-07:00

There is absolutely no doubt that a father and son combo in business can be a fabulous formula for success. But just one thing has to happen first.

We were in the living room, father, mother, son and daughter. The business like many in this rural part of the country is a third generation, family, agriculture sector – mainly crops and some stock. Grandfather had been killed in World War Two so dad had been brought up on the farm by an assortment of relatives. He had learned everything the hard way with little in the way of formal education. Yet here we were, 60 years on, wondering what to do with a multi million pound business and two children, in their twenties, that are half in it and half out of it, depending on the day of the week.

Parent relating to Child is the inevitable axis for communication from the very earliest of days. Even if it is “Make sure you look right, and then left, and then right again before you cross the road.”

But one day the pattern has to shift from Parent Child to Adult Adult. There will be a jugular issue that father wants to do one way and son or daughter wants to do the other. And there will be many other little tests on the way to this defining moment that hardly anyone will have noticed, because that is the way it has always been.

The wise father will know when it is time to move over, when it is time for the next generation to move into pole position.

In the moment

2009-07-02T13:48:00.000-07:00

The vast majority of successful business executives I meet have not the faintest idea about the difference between explicit knowledge that is going down in value, and tacit knowledge that is going up.

I speak for a number of Executive groups both in the UK and overseas. They are all into the idea of developing knowledge in one way or another and one of them came up with the idea of a ‘wisdom bank’. Trouble is that in a world where you can download and digest the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica why does anyone need a ‘wisdom bank’. The answer is that they don’t because banks are full of explicit knowledge – anything that can be read or downloaded or copied. In other words it’s history. And of course history has a value but why pay for it when there are so many other sources of similar knowledge?

I attended a weekend retreat with a very eminent speaker and he was busy preparing a website containing just about everything that any aspiring speaker could wish to know, except of course, tacit knowledge. He said that people would pay for this and I begged to differ. During the workshop I was presenting my keynote when Paul stopped me in full flow. He said “It’s your arm.” I asked what was wrong with my arm. He replied that “When you are depicting the flight path of the Bull’s Eye it goes from bottom left to upper right as you see it, but you have to depict it as your right to their left for the audience.”

Now that is pure tacit knowledge, you wont find it on any website, and you can’t put a price on it.

Cringe

2009-07-01T01:31:00.000-07:00

It can be useful to just take a moment. Think of just one word that describes most closely how you remember or feel about the formative first twenty-five years of your life.

We did this with an Executive Group recently. They discussed it in pairs for a few minutes and then fed back on each other’s word. Someone said that ‘contentment’ sprang to mind – her childhood had been happy and relaxed with loving parents and two brothers.

Another said that ‘fear’ was the word. As an immigrant child of the sixties dropped into an inner city area, Rohan said that despite caring parents he reported that there was plenty to be afraid about.

And then someone said ‘fun’ because although Jane had not been brought up by her real parents she described the care and support she received as unconditional love.

One of the delegates took quite some time to find his word and the process seemed to upset him. Nonetheless he offered to share it anyway. The word was ‘cringe’.

It is interesting to speculate on the complex drivers inside each and every one of us. I find that it is so very rarely ‘money’ alone.

The Striker

2009-06-22T22:53:00.000-07:00

If every Managing Director in the land knew how to add most value to their business, and then got on with it, this would be worth a full 1% to the GNP of the UK.

“Don’t you just hate ordinary days?” A business owner complained to me.

“Oh, I just don’t like the ‘grunt work’ part of the job.” he continued. “All the forms, the rules and the legislation we have to follow get worse and worse. I just want to concentrate on the front of house, the sales and the marketing.”

“I hate being at a desk. I do my emails, most of them anyway, out on the road these days”

Dave was really getting into his stride now. “That’s where I play my best football. Up front. I’m a striker!” he exclaimed. And he raised his fist as if, for all the world, he had just scored the winning goal in a Cup Final.

“And that’s where I add most value to this business.” He spat the words out as if there was an argument about it.

And it was the most important thing he said.

No change given

2009-06-15T04:02:00.000-07:00

Managing the business of change for business people is never going to go away. It is as if we all construct our own mental map of the world and then try to stick to it come what may.

There are some things we fight tooth and nail to keep the same even though we know that change is inevitable – like ageing. There are some things that we are totally indifferent to, irrespective of the change we can see and hear and feel right in front of our noses.

And then there are things we fight tooth and nail to change even though the outcome is uncertain and the odds against our success appear insurmountable.

So there seem to be three types of change battling remorselessly against three eternal truths, things that never change, like honesty, trust and excellence.

And the struggle between the three types of change and the three eternal truths will never be won.

And that is because there are nine billion maps of the world.

Happiness

2009-06-09T02:40:00.000-07:00

The very happiest business people we meet are those that are clearest about what they want, in control of what they are doing and above all, they are really enjoying the journey. We see this same formula working time and time and time again.

Last week we needed a bolt hole somewhere in mid Wales to hide away for a few days in order to do more words on our latest book. Online, our usual retreats were scoring around 65% from their recent customers but The Guidfa Hotel, a place that we had not heard of before, was scoring 90% plus from their last forty visitors. Wow! Surely something special?

We opted for Cordon Bleu chef Anne to cook us supper and the four courses including a champagne sorbet, were outstanding. The decor, the lounge, the whole atmosphere was welcoming yet professional. Nearly twenty years ago Anne and Tony had rescued this formerly “sad, lonely and abandoned” country house in the middle of nowhere. And very gradually, each year they have tried to make it better, make everything better.

And of course we meet a number of unhappy business people that are not getting what they want, are out control and they are most certainly not enjoying the journey. Our job is in fact to make unhappy business people happy.

Don’t think we’ll get much work from Anne and Tony.

Dark chocolate, gin and cigarettes

2009-06-07T01:44:00.000-07:00

Some top business people are so full of passion and energy and enthusiasm for the business that they carry on planning, plotting and persuading oblivious to health risks, and any advice from family and friends.

Business is just another drug at this stage and for addicts there is nothing quite like the thrill of opening a new unit, finding a different market or signing another deal. You can dress it all up to look like providing for the family, or pension security or leaving a legacy for the local community. And indeed all of these things and more may form part of the motivation behind some driven individuals.

Late last year one of my clients attended the funeral of a colourful business colleague. This chap was larger than life in so many ways and he was both working and fishing with friends right up until the day he died. James was very well known within his industry and his passing was marked by a large gathering one grey day in the north of England. The Order of Service was suitably decorated with photos of the great man on the river he loved, holding a cane rod in one hand and sporting a fresh run salmon with the other. He looked young in the picture and I was prompted to ask how old he was.

Fifty nine sounded a bit young, so I asked how he died. And the reply could have been to do with his prodigious working schedule but the answer was, “A diet of dark chocolate, gin and cigarettes probably.”

What a way to go.

Newspapers, newsmakers?

2009-06-02T02:43:00.000-07:00

There was a time when newspapers in particular and the media in general merely reported the news. Not anymore. The vast majority of business people I have researched believe that the news media want to make the news for us wherever and whenever possible.

And why are they doing this? Why are they behaving in this way? The consensus is that the internet ensures that news supply vastly exceeds demand. Many new media outlets are emerging and many traditional players face oblivion.

The danger for leaders in business is that when the media succeeds in attracting our attention then that is where our energy will surely follow. And it doesn’t matter whether the media are talking about global warming, oil supplies, nuclear proliferation, the economy, MP’s expenses, soil erosion or cuckoos becoming extinct, the spin will invariably be depressing 90% of the time. And even if the figure isn’t 90%, that is how it feels to most of us most of the time.

But if we are running a business our first priority on a Monday morning may be to inspire our people, or launch a new product or a new service, or explore some new technology initiative in an uncertain world. We need all the enthusiasm, passion and energy for these tasks that we can muster. The very last thing any of us need is anything that effectively undermines our efforts.

It makes sense to abandon any of the media that have a negative effect on you and your business efforts whether it is a newspaper, BBC news or Twitter.

Lots of business people recommend Terry Wogan to start the day.

The perch

2009-05-24T03:25:00.000-07:00

Some Managing Directors try everything under the sun to get a break, even a short one, from the business but they never quite make it.

Somehow, what’s going on at work manages to infiltrate every waking, and much of their sleeping hours too. Alcohol sometimes helps but may not be a positive long term strategy; exercise doesn’t always hit the spot or frequently isn’t possible. Family time can be of use but equally it can be a hindrance. A little dose of ‘me time’ is usually the answer.

So during his appraisal he confessed that his work life balance was shot to pieces; he said that he once had a hobby but that he hadn’t fished since he was a child.

We drove out to a beautiful natural lake that nestles in the Black Mountains of Wales; it doesn’t see a soul for weeks on end. All the way there he talked about the business, the marketing issues, the cash flow problems, the people stuff, but in the space of a split second, his world was transformed.

He was fishing a worm under a bright red float just as he had done as a boy forty years ago. The scarlet dot on the water bobbed, then it slid sideways and stopped. I told him to wait until the float went under the surface which it eventually did. Suddenly he was captivated as the rod was bent almost double as a fish fought and dived and battled for its freedom.

For a moment it looked as if he had lost the fish in a patch of lilies. We saw the brilliant vermillion fins, the deep green back of the fish and the vertical blue stripes, the massively erect and proud dorsal fin as the perch turned in one final dash away.

And a moment or two later, as he drew the fish gently over the landing net, he was actually a million miles away from any of the business cares or concerns that he had ever had.

Reel time

2009-05-24T03:24:00.000-07:00

Many people in business are having to look at trying to sell new products and services to existing customers and markets, or existing products and services to new customers and markets. And sometimes I hear them asking wearily whether the end will justify the means.

The dawn had just broken on the lake. It was a crystal fresh morning with not a breath of air, nor the slightest wisp of a cloud. I was intrigued by the battery of four fishing rods all arranged identically and each with an electronic bite alarm that bleeps and flashes when a fish takes. The owner of the kit was apparently asleep in his ‘bivvy’ but the computer screen hanging inside would tell him which rod to attend to.

His modern baitrunner reels allow line to taken with no resistance and the braided hair rig on the hook ensured that most fish would be hooked by the time he got up to reel them in. Even the bait was encased in soluble poly something that allows free offerings to be found by the unsuspecting fish.

By the time I packed up it had been a magical spring morning with a pair of kingfishers hurtling across the water with their express train whistles, herons fishing in the margins and the sound of the near extinct cuckoo calling from a distant copse.

The man with the technology caught five glorious olive green tench whilst I had caught nothing. Driving back across the park I wondered whether I need to ‘up my game’ in line with this new knowledge world. Or do I carry on fishing with much of the same kit I had fifty years ago. The technology question and the answer is absolutely 100% clear for every single one of us in business.

A hobby however is different.

On the knives

2009-05-16T22:53:00.000-07:00

Lots of today’s great family businesses started by making the product, selling it and distributing it. Just like that.

In the knowledge world it is an entirely different paradigm that will take these businesses to the next phase of growth. I was working with a third generation meat and butchery business last week where they have several elements to the group.

When dad was given his chance by his father some 35 years ago the only piece of advice he was given was: “You stay on the knives son”. It was very much about how many animals you killed each week, preparing the cuts and putting them on the slab for customers.

In those days 85% of the cost of the product was raw materials and labour. If you purchase a Marks and Spencer precooked, frozen lamb mousaka today, 85% of the cost is in the research and development, the process and the packaging.

Staying “on the knives” for the Managing Director today would be one of the fastest ways of cutting out any prospect for future growth.

Home and away

2009-05-16T22:49:00.000-07:00

There has never been a better time to revisit your business and personal Bull’s Eye but when you do, there are surprises in store for sure!

I’ve been a free range chicken for twenty five years now and when you are self employed or in partnership pecking away, you may find a juicy slug on Monday, nothing on Tuesday, a fat lobworm on Wednesday and nothing again on Thursday. That’s just how it is.

Some four years ago, although there has always been plenty of work in the West Midlands region where I live, I fancied trying my luck further afield, nationally and even internationally. It may be mixing metaphors but when you have played for Hereford United for a period it feels like an exciting challenge to see whether you might be able to get a run out with Manchester United. And the fact is that I now do enjoy working away.

But recently some local clients had approached me to suggest that I might like to do some stuff in my own back yard once more in Hereford. At first this felt a bit like going out with an old girlfriend. After all, the recent strategy had been to explore pastures new. Anyway three Mondays ago I made fifteen phone calls and amazingly twelve Managing Directors of local businesses signed up to our Herefordshire Directors Forum.

We start tonight and as I prepare all the files, each with the client company logo on, the prospects for this ten session event is just about as exciting and fun and challenging as it could be.

Enjoy the journey.

Indian Warriors

2009-05-04T04:14:00.000-07:00

The great football managers have just a few things in common but one of them is the ability to spot and develop talent from young people at an early age.

I have a daughter who was seventeen on Thursday and eighteen on Friday 1st May. The theme of her party was 'Indian Warriors' and her parents were told there would be fifty females arriving between 630 and 730 to "get ready". The barbeque and drinks needed to be served from 730 onwards and they would leave the house at about nine to walk into town for the dancing, pubbing and clubbing. And by the way, eight of the girls would be stopping over. "Should be back about three" we were advised. Unknown to us, Ursula had published the full itinerary for her guests on Facebook, complete with timings.

So the barbeque was duly cooked and the females turned up in extraordinary costumes, many of them so devoid of material but complete with fake tan. My daughter finally appeared with a massive head dress adorned with a full range of bright coloured feathers. There could be no doubt who was eighteen that night.

Noise levels were increasing with music and laughter and excitement but I couldn't work out how Ursula was going to get these people together for the march into an unsuspecting Hereford city. Suddenly she produced a whistle and with one loud blast there was silence. "Right everybody, we are off in five minutes" she announced. The music resumed, finishing touches were being put to make up and face paints everywhere.

And five minutes later there was a second blast on the whistle and the entire throng filed out of the house and garden and were gone into the night.

So if we are looking for leaders of the future in our youngsters, organisational ability, self confidence and the ability to manage people are not bad places to start.

Using great relationships

2009-04-26T02:17:00.000-07:00

We need a strategy for developing great relationships where synergy, innovation and creativity between ourselves and others really can lead to business situations where one and one makes three or even four.

The first step has to be to do with getting out more. We need to choose the right ‘events’ both online and offline. It may be better spending two hours on Linked In for instance, than two hours at a breakfast meeting. We need to be relaxed, trying to get to know people gradually rather than ramming ourselves down their throat from the word go.

The second step is that we have to be clear about our own externally validated expertise. The words that we use to describe this expertise are absolutely essential because they convey our confidence, our sense of purpose and the benefits that we are offering to others. The sharper this particular arrow the more penetration we will have in the market place.

The third and final step has to be that we are the person we would like to do business with. I’m not talking about talent or personality or knowledge. I am talking about the things we look for in a business relationship with others. It does not matter what these values are because they are unique to everyone; this is not a judgement call.

But if for example, you value people that are open, honest, straightforward and transparent in the way that they behave, then that is the way you have to behave too!

No one can expect or deserve great relationships if they say they want one thing from others, when they themselves are at variance with this.

Slapper straps

2009-04-13T08:25:00.000-07:00

With the sheer speed of change in this business world we are being forced to make new meaningful relationships with people we don’t even know. And at the same time, we need to make decisions about other people that we are not so confident about.

And because this state is so immediate – I mean how many people reading this, have a pile or several piles of business cards in their office that have been more or less processed? – we need some way of trying to sort potential and actual relationships out.

When I was eight there was a school assembly where the headmaster told a story amounting to “You can’t tell a sausage by its skin” and the moral in the story is absolutely right, but then how do you tell a sausage? Well I reckon that one good way is to watch what people do, rather than pay too much attention to what they say.

We know a business couple from some consultancy work that I have been doing. They are about our age and the senior partner in the practice is well known both locally and nationally. He writes a lot, Chairs a professional body, speaks at conventions and so on. After having met socially a couple of times and noticing how much we appeared to have in common, I suggested they come and stay one weekend. We could do the mountain walks, Hay on Wye bookshops and various other local delights. They sounded pleased and we gave them a couple of dates, three months hence. After a month, I emailed to see if they had decided which weekend to take. They were still “sorting their diaries”. Another month went by and we hadn’t heard anything. With just a couple of weeks left before the first option date we had heard nothing. So we assumed..................well what do you assume?

I think the moral of this story is that we are all finding it difficult to build relationships under pressure. You’ll win some and you’ll lose some too.

All dried up

2009-04-13T08:23:00.000-07:00

Now I’ve notched up a couple of hundred blogs these last three years I frequently get asked how best to do it.

For me, I experience something, think about it, try to turn that event into something that might have value for others and then I write it down. Usually on paper first.

It doesn’t always happen that simply. There are occasions, even when you are in your favourite blogging spot, having had lots of exposure to good raw material, and nothing actually happens. You sit in front of a blank piece of paper. A myriad of thoughts go through your head, but they don’t connect up; it’s like a kaleidoscope of colour but without any pattern. And even when you shake the glass, it still doesn’t add up to anything.

Blogging is only one way of developing brand, some prefer Twitter, others do podcasts, yet others spend their time on Linked In. Some do a bit of everything.

So there is no definitive answer on how best to proceed other than try things and see what works for you. And since it is also hard to evaluate these activities, because they do not always lead directly to fresh or enhanced income streams, it is important to enjoy the journey, to enjoy doing it for its own sake.

Goodbye John Humphries, goodbye Hamish McRae

2009-04-09T06:56:00.000-07:00

The news media can seriously damage our mental health both at work and at home.

For many years we have turned Radio Four on at ten p.m. and let it run through World Service at 1a.m. and then back to Radio Four at 0530 and on until getting up time. But the fact is that 90 % of stories chosen by the news programme producers are depressing in one way or another. That is not all. The vast majority of the listening public can do absolutely nothing to make a material difference to the reported situation.

So in addition to starting each working day feeling more or less depressed, that is accompanied by an overwhelming sense of impotence. There is a third angle. We heard the latest crisis feature about the NHS one morning last week. At nine I had an appointment with my local GP, so I grabbed the Independent newspaper from the porch floor, and on the walk round, it was only natural to wonder how they are faring. Yet the care and service and support I received was second to none. So in the back of my mind is some kind of confusion between what I heard about doctors' surgeries on the radio and what I had actually just experienced.

In the Waiting Room, I had time to absorb the screaming headline on my paper about the imminent catastrophe facing the City of London, the wealth it creates and the jobs it sustains. The supporting article was not for the squeamish.

Now I was with a client at 0930 and part of my job is working with business clients to help develop and sustain competitive advantage. My demeanour, attitude and approach are crucial. So why do I want to start the day like I do, like I have done for twenty years? The answer is that I don't anymore, so Radio Four News is no more and I have cancelled the Independent.

It is more important than ever to be the driving force behind your own business model, rather than an unwitting participant in someone else's.

Getting out more

2009-03-29T02:50:00.000-07:00

Many business people realise the need to get out more in the current climate, but it is just time wasted if you are not absolutely certain of where your expertise lies.

The ‘Rule of 7’ discussed last week is a great attitude to have when you are at an event because it takes the pressure off you. It is not about selling yourself in any overt manner but rather more about exploring a relationship with someone you have just met to see where it will lead. You can relax and take a genuine interest in the person in front of you.

But when your turn comes and it’s time to say what you or your company does, then the words you use are absolutely vital. They can be as powerful, sharp and slick as the point of a tungsten steel tipped arrow. Alternatively, the words you use can be as casual, slipshod and unfocussed as a soggy sponge.

Get your words right or you might as well stay at home.

Seven times

2009-03-27T08:41:00.000-07:00

Some people think that when things get tough you do more marketing. The truth is however that you need to do appropriate marketing through good times and bad.

A few years ago I met a lady called Julia who taught me about the Rule of 7. She said that for most business relationships to flourish you need to “touch” someone seven times. She went on, “It could be face to face, it could be a telephone call, it could be an email or a text” Her general point was that you need to touch someone seven times before the relationship can move to the point where you start to do business together. We both agreed that there can occasionally be love at first sight.

Of course at any time during the process, one or other of you may make the decision about whether to move things on or not. And so it was with Julia that after a couple of meetings and a phone call we haven’t been in touch since.

In London yesterday I attended a conference focussed on doing business in the EU. I had first met the CEO two years ago in Coventry. I asked to speak for him at that first meeting but heard nothing afterwards. Several emails and another meeting later I felt no further forward. Yesterday was different. He asked for a proposal.

Your marketing needs to be the consistent, regular, application of time, energy and money over time, whatever the economy is doing.

The Hidden Agenda

2009-03-24T08:57:00.000-07:00

If the CEO has something up his or her sleeve that is not immediately apparent from all the business planning and strategy work, then watch out for trouble.

Working with a plc before Christmas it was the man at the top that had heard me speak to an IOD conference about Clarity of Direction and the Bull’s Eye. So I had been brought into repeat the presentation but to apply it to his directors and senior management team. With nine separate divisions all working in different but related aspects of the pharmaceutical industry it rapidly became clear that no one had much idea what any of the other divisions actually did or how they contributed to the Bull’s Eye for the group as a whole.

This puzzled me for a while because all 200 employees are based on the same site. So during the afternoon we broke into nine separate groups with three or four people on each table. It was only when the focus arrived at the CEO’s table that he disclosed his personal ambition for the company that was a complete surprise to almost everyone in the room.

In fact his statement was so radical that it would mean the closure, restructure and maybe renewal of all the divisions. No wonder he wanted me in there, but there is now so much more work to be done.

Without Clarity of Direction in any organisation then levels of trust between colleagues, staff stakeholders and ultimately customers are low.

And then you can forget about developing and sustaining competitive advantage.

Bob Dylan on time

2009-03-15T00:58:00.000-07:00

Many business leaders are reporting the need to be working harder to achieve the same results as a year or two ago. If this is true for the rest of us then we all need to look more clinically at who we are, and what we want to achieve with the time available.

Some people like master mind groups where all sorts of things can be discussed with the objective of moving participants onwards and upwards. I’ve tried a few but they don’t work for me – I prefer to go direct to experts and pay for the specific expertise that I need, when I need it.

Blogging and article writing can be done with a view to stimulate discussion, analysis and further engagement with people. Bob Dylan was interviewed about his song writing process. He replied that he just observed, thought about it, wrote a song, sung it and then moved on to the next life experience. Once I’ve written a blog, comments are welcome, but essentially I too am moving on to something else.

Client engagement can be a convoluted relationship fest with the adviser consciously or otherwise trying to take root, trying to become an indispensible part of the client’s operation, maybe collecting a handful of non exec directorships on the way. For me, that is an anathema; I just want to get in there, sort out the problems, give them the tools to do it themselves next time and then be on my way.

Helping others that we meet on the journey is all part of our purpose on this earth. It gives me a good feeling to put time aside to meet up with someone, anyone that I perceive I can help. It’s a no strings attached engagement purely designed to help people as I myself have been helped.

So above all else in the 168 hours per week available, we have to find ourselves, then get on and be ourselves. After all, who else could we be?

Director development

2009-03-08T03:29:00.000-07:00

The most powerful way to develop trust at the top of organisations starts with the externally facilitated 360 degree appraisal of the Managing Director.

The four of us had been in session for some two hours and Charles had already got two really powerful personal development points that linked directly to the Bull's Eye for his company. Rohit and Diana, two of the co directors had been sceptical that this approach would indeed help transform business performance but on the day they really were up for it. Openness, honesty, humility, those are the main requirements for this work.

Right at the end I asked if either had anything else they would like to add or to ask. You are only ever looking for two or three development points for any one person. But Rohit shifted uneasily, he coughed, so I repeated my question. Rohit replied that he was full of admiration for Charles, the way he leads some two thousand employees and always from the front, but...... And his voice trailed away. Charles knew something was coming but he had no idea what it was and I noticed him stiffen.Then Rohit almost pleaded, "I just wish you would listen more".

The Managing Director, in post for some twenty years, had never been spoken to like this before, but it was true. In Board Meetings he would always speak first on any issue. This meant that several of the others round the table didn't say a word, all meeting long.Charles stared out of the window, his shoulders dropped and he said quietly, "I guess that my wife and children would say the same"

And in that split second we all knew that Charles' behaviour would change for ever.

Legacy

2009-03-03T09:34:00.000-08:00

So many people running organisations are in a unique and privileged position to leave a lasting legacy for those with whom they come into contact.

There are some wonderful long established family businesses along the English border with Wales and I had the sad occasion of attending a funeral this week at Lyonshall. For a small village country church it was overflowing with people wishing to pay their last respects to David. There must have been three or four hundred in attendance.

One of David’s young sons James, read a poem and then paid a powerful and moving testament to his father. He recalled a kind and gentle man who never spoke ill of anyone but who was always ready to help and nurture other people. He spoke of a loving, caring and compassionate person and everyone in the congregation, who had worked with or known David would have agreed with this view.

Sometimes people get so battered and beaten by an uncertain and unforgiving world, that their real gifts, their specialness is all but smothered and sometimes even destroyed.

I guess that the trick for all of us is try and live the legacy each day, come what may, however difficult and challenging our lives become.

Just like David Burgoyne did.

Excellence

2009-03-02T09:11:00.000-08:00

When you look for it, excellence is all around us in all sorts of things that people do.
I was speaking at an Academy for Chief Executives forum in Corby last week. We worked through a three stage model that starts with how to 'clarify direction', a crucial need for all organisations to address. We had then moved on 'develop trust', the imperative of how to get closer to colleagues, staff, stakeholders and ultimately, customers.
Finally we were working on how to 'improve performance' by identifying unique tacit knowledge, sharing it and eventually striving for relationships where one and one makes three or even four.
As part of this exercise I ask what it is that makes the people in the room special, what do they above all else, bring to the party? This question is often met with a blank stare from some. Aware of the super atmosphere in the room as we approached the lunch break I asked the group what made, Peter, the Group Chair so special. Peter looked down at the floor and there was much banter and good natured ribaldry.
And then in the silence that followed, Nicola said, "Peter cares more about his members than he cares about himself. And he does it in spadefuls".
Now that really is special.

Paralysis

2009-02-22T05:30:00.000-08:00

I know business people that are caught, like rabbits in a headlight, right now.

It is something to do with the sheer speed of the downturn. Business-as-Usual just isn’t for many. And if we have staff, stock, and premises then cash flow, depending on the business, is almost certainly a challenge.

Meanwhile savings invested in pension schemes and endowment policies are being decimated. And if you didn’t read the very small print, financial institutions can impose draconian penalties at will. Very few of us read the small print when we signed. And if we did we didn’t believe the actions would be invoked.

The paralysis can be in our heads. Our bodies can move but the outputs from our thinking are just fixed somehow. Ideas and thoughts occur but they are not joined up; they are like the bits in a minestrone soup that someone keeps stirring. Nothing seems to break the loop.

It’s other people that can break the loop: people that are honest, open and trustworthy.

It’s nice if you like them as well.

Always

2009-02-16T09:06:00.000-08:00

Losing a £40m contract overnight can be a shock, especially if its half your business. In one split second it can turn a leader inside out.

My client always preferred to relate and communicate with the individual members of his senior management team (SMT) on a one to one basis. He would avoid regular monthly management meetings with all the team. If any such meetings were called he would always decide who should attend and who should not; full management information, including the financials, would not be available either.

Leaders that behave this way do it because they know they are in absolute control. It’s one on one and whatever style or manner they adopt they can always face down their employee, even if he/she is a director. They know there is no one else in the room to challenge or contradict their views.

The downside of this approach is always the same. The SMT is fragmented and dysfunctional. You pay a small fortune to attract high talent to the business but then you treat them like children so, the intelligent ones, they leave. The serious issues are not debated or discussed in open forum and therefore it is always the leader’s views that prevail. The concept of the SMT working as a team with all the benefits of synergy, innovation and creativity are totally and utterly lost.

Why do leaders behave like this? There is always another agenda.

It can be anything – emotional insecurity, tax evasion, lifestyle issues, inability to trust, poor choice of colleagues. Whatever it is, the prognosis for the patient is not good and it may be terminal.

Voices

2009-02-16T08:55:00.000-08:00

We all have these voices that kick in, usually at moments of extremity. It’s the ones that start
when we have had a bad day, a bad week, or a bad even longer that can, if they are allowed, do the damage.

It’s grim enough that we have been told our working week has been cut, or that we have lost our job, or to realise that we left a good job only to find there is nothing out there to replace it. All these things happen and then the voices put the boot in and try to make things even worse.

“Surely you could have seen that your hours would be cut without just waiting for it to happen”
“The writing was on the wall for your job months ago, why didn’t you start looking for something last September?”
“Oh well, that was really stupid to walk out of well paid work with no job to go to. That is your own fault!”

So we have to teach these voices a lesson, we have to quieten them down. One good way is to change our immediate paradigm by going out for a long walk, by visiting a favourite gallery or by calling in some favours from trusted friends. And then when we are in a more resourceful frame of mind, we plan strategy for recovery, we write down all the specific things that we are going to do and when we are going to do them. It can always help to have a little support from people we know that are trustworthy.

Sometimes we just have to ask.

Constants and variables

2009-02-03T08:37:00.000-08:00

Some things need to be there all the time. The clearer you are as an individual or as an organisation about where you want be, the more likely you are to get there. This is direction. On the journey, the more trustworthy relationships that you have in all areas of your life, the better the chance of great performance. And this is a cycle, these things have to be revisited periodically. So, direction, trust and performance are constants; they are eternal truths in our lives.

However there are variables that distort the model and the two I’m thinking of are time and circumstance. It as if we are swimming in the sea all life long. And when good things happen it is so easy to be buoyant, ride the waves and cut effortlessly through the water. But as time and circumstance are always changing this will not last for long. We may lose a big order, watch a super member of staff leave to live abroad, worry about bad debts, Suddenly the swimming is not so easy and it can feel as if we are struggling to swim at all, being pulled under, drowning even.

And it seems that this push and pull of time and circumstance is always with us. So it is important not to be seduced, not to over react to the really good things that happen, because their impact is likely to be ephemeral. Equally it is crucial that the difficulties, the challenges and the toughness out there is not allowed to sink us.

So how do you stop it, how do you deal with troubles right now? The answer is to go back to the constants, the direction and the trustworthy relationships. You revisit direction and trust to see what performance you really want over the next few years.

And then you can start to swim again.

Serve somebody

2009-01-26T13:00:00.000-08:00

People in Boardrooms sometimes forget the fact that they serve the organisation. Without the organisation we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.

The director was keen to show me around. There were the ecologically friendly offices and factories, slogans about excellence peppering the walls and recently won quality standards in reception.

He was confident and self assured about the business. Why shouldn’t he be?
After all he had worked there for twenty years and so had most of the other five directors. And yes of course everyone had appraisals, how else would they have achieved the ‘people’ quality standard on the wall. How indeed?

“Everyone has appraisals” I was told, except that is, the directors. None of them had ever had any kind of appraisal, let alone an externally facilitated 360 degree appraisal.

That is why I had been invited in. They were intrigued by the concept. Intrigued and frightened. The company employs 300 people in a remote and rural location; there are not too many jobs around these parts. Especially for directors.

That is why I won’t be invited back.

The umbilical cord

2009-01-11T01:05:00.001-08:00

It is extraordinary how many of us are still attached to parental dictats long after they have ceased to have any value. And now after all your family members and mine have split up again to return to their lives after Christmas, how much stuff is left unresolved?

I remember a family wedding twenty years ago. I was recently divorced and my mother had decided to put my ex wife on the top table accompanied by my two daughters aged seven and five. My table was near the exit to the marquee.

It was quite a long day and sometime in the afternoon I realised the need to get back to Hereford where I had a date that evening. I walked up to the top table and bent down to advise my mother and she hissed, “Don’t be so silly Timothy, we haven’t even had the speeches yet! You sit down”

I turned round and walked out of the marquee and in that split second I knew that I had, after 40 years, cut the umbilical cord forever.

I work with a lot of family businesses and there are many people out there, some well over the age of forty, that still have some work to do in this area. Only when the cut is made do people really find themselves, to have the independence to do, think and behave in an authentic manner. Authenticity is key to business success.

The Christmas present

2008-12-27T05:01:00.001-08:00

If the Christmas experience is a cake made up of three pieces, past, present and future, I wonder where you spend most of your time and energy?

The businessman said to me, “Well Tim, what do you do when the phone stops ringing? I can remember,” he went on, “twenty years ago, we didn’t need to advertise, we didn’t even have a brochure. Customers just rang us, based on our reputation of course. After all, we are a third generation family business.” He added.

Christmas doesn’t give us much choice, reminiscences, memories and anecdotes, family influences, whoever we are with, push us all back down past tracks, for a while at least. And if we weren’t in the present for at least some of the time, then the Christmas meal could quickly become a thing of the past.

It doesn’t take long for this temporary pause in our life to move on through. Our everyday consciousness kicks back in so readily, that’s assuming that it ever left us.

The present is important and maybe the Christmas present of just forgetting about the future for a few days was a present indeed. But now, if we are in business, we need to be preoccupied with the future, with what is coming down the line.

The business lunch with no food

2008-12-07T01:53:00.000-08:00

It is important that we get much closer to customers than ever before, so that in a fast changing world we can try to respond to their needs.

I am driving to Winchester on Tuesday where I had arranged to meet a special client for lunch. At Swindon an accident has stopped the traffic. I ask my PA to ring Jane and they agree we will meet half an hour later than planned at the Black Boy pub. The yellow petrol light is flickering but I must get there for the new time of 1230.

Can’t believe that I may even miss this new deadline so I put on a cd to deflect my thoughts. It goes into the slot OK but the screen does not tilt back to vertical. That means I’ve lost my Satnav.

Sometime later my PA uses her Google map to talk me to the pub for 1225. I ask to see the menu but am told the pub does not do lunch on Tuesdays. I am waiting outside in the rain and Jane appears at 1230 precisely. She smiles, waves and parks. I tell her the news. Now Jane is a very attractive female and is clearly not used to being messed around by idiots.

We agree that I’ll follow her into town and eat there because she has another meeting at 1330. But now my petrol light is full on and she drives fast, round two full car parks where we must have been just a blur to the good folk of Winchester. Eventually we find a multi storey. Jane parks up by the entrance and I carry on up, round and round. It’s a Pay and Display. No coins, so I race back down, round and round to find Jane clicking her high heels impatiently by the entrance. She has no more coins so I jog back up and just lock the car.

I’m sweating now but Jane nonchalantly sweeps us into an adjacent hostelry. It’s 1310, we’ve got 20 minutes. We order two lamb burgers and at 1320 there is no sign of any staff. I find a waitress smoking outside and plead for faster service.

At 1325, the fire alarm goes. Everyone gets up and makes for the exit. I remember my credit card is behind the bar. I say to Jane, “You wait outside I’ll just get my cr....... but Jane is looking at her watch. Our time is up.

And so we shake hands. I’m finding it impossible to know what to say. So Jane says, ”Goodbye and thank you.” Then she is gone.

The misfit

2008-12-01T00:15:00.000-08:00

It is amazing how many people are playing the role of Managing Director, yet they are both unqualified to do the job and very unhappy in trying.

I met a chap recently. He has turned fifty yet he looks sixty. He was telling me about the stresses and strains of the job. He didn’t really enjoy chairing the Operational Management Meeting each month. “It always overruns,” he complained. He couldn’t get his head around the marketing strategy – somehow it just didn’t make sense to him. And as for the people management stuff– “just don’t even go there” he pleaded.

No, the only bit of the job that really appealed, the only thing that helped him out of bed each morning, was getting out and doing the job, face to face with customers. Just as he had done all through his professional training and development for over thirty years.

And when it’s like that, when it really isn’t going to get any better, and the tears have been shed, I put people like this out of their misery.

I sack them.

For all those in pain today

2008-11-02T00:43:00.000-07:00

Something Understood – presented by Jane Ray

BBC Radio Four has a programme called Something Understood and for all those who are struggling with the pain of the global financial crisis, its aftermath and the stuff that is coming down the line, there is some fabulous advice on all sorts of levels. Here is an extract from contributor Peter Hoskin:

“Often our call in life grows out of the compassion that we have built up because of our own woundedness. In that sense we can begin to see our woundedness as a gift, rather than a failure. It is out of our woundedness and our personal limitations that our healing gifts will come. Healing, praying, loving all go hand in hand.

Healing is loving. When we heal we love. When we love we heal.

Sometimes in our life we can try to solve a problem and there is a time for that, but sometimes just letting ourselves love again and be loved can solve many problems. When we get burned out it is not usually because we are doing too many things, but often because we are not letting ourselves be loved.”

Jane Ray, the presenter, went on to say :”When we let ourselves be loved we are perhaps building the threads of an invisible legacy in the memory of those we leave behind”

I hope that this is helpful.
The programme can be heard in full www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/religion/somethingunderstood.shtml

Experts

2008-09-28T05:38:00.000-07:00

Sometimes top people in organisations try to do it all by themselves.

I worked with an MD recently who has presided over four consecutive years’ losses. He had three ineffectual co directors and refused to listen or take advice from them or anyone else. He is one of those people that can speak strongly and authoritatively about things that he knows very little about, such as marketing strategy. He had recently masterminded a disastrous premises move, whilst at the same time allowing an almost total lack of financial control.

Nido Quebein, the author, speaker and consultant extraordinaire was speaking at a convention in Florida. One of the two and a half thousand delegates asked him the question, “If you had your time all over again, what would you do differently?”

He answered, “I would go to, and pay, experts sooner”

So why hadn’t my client actually gone to anyone before now? Well it could be due to a lack of self esteem, it could be a sort of “I know best” arrogance, or maybe he just didn’t trust anyone.

We all have to look for and develop relationships based upon trust if we are going to grow and develop.

Hot and cold

2008-09-06T03:44:00.001-07:00

When you speak as an expert in your field, you will tend to polarise the audience.

I was watching one of the top international speakers at a convention recently. This person is renowned for really inspiring business delegates. As the 45 minute keynote progressed I noticed one or two people with folded arms looking distinctly underwhelmed. At the opposite end of the scale, the majority of the audience were obviously hanging on every word.

When you are trying to understand a principle always use an easy example, my father used to say. So maybe this polarisation that is evident when watching most speakers, also happens with our potential customers, whatever the business is.

Some are not interested, whatever we do and some are indifferent to us. They could go either way. However there are others, for whatever reasons, tangible and intangible, that love us to bits.

Let’s really concentrate on finding these customers and love them too.

Chance is a fine thing

2008-08-23T23:32:00.001-07:00

You never know who you are going to meet. Every encounter can potentially lead to a business opportunity.
For this to be true for all of us we have to be:
1) Absolutely confident about the excellence of our products and / or service
2) Able to describe exactly how the excellence of the products and service make a massive difference to customers
3) Willing to communicate this confidence with passion and enthusiasm
Stretched out on a Cornish beach, waiting is some airport lounge, trekking along a Peruvian mountain ridge, sipping a pint in the local. No matter what you’re doing, make it happen this summer because it will soon be Autumn.