Investors in history
Many of the gongs, industry awards and competitions that
businesses, especially SME's, can enter are a waste of time, energy and money.
MD Claire and I were talking about why this should be. I attended a recent
event where the presenters were encouraging business delegates to make a
commitment to the Investors in People (IIP) Standard.
IIP had a role when it was launched 20 years ago. In those days there were
regional and national celebrations for organisations that met the Standard. You
could display the IIP logo on your headed notepaper, and yes, we did it too.
But now the Standard is cumbersome, some say unintelligible but certainly
irrelevant, despite the underlying content, to the needs of 95% of SME's today.
Methods of internal and external communication have now emerged, and continue
to emerge, that are just about the only way that small businesses can develop
and sustain competitive advantage.
Claire hit the nail on the head. She said "Unless a business has a very
specific need for external accreditation, it should concentrate on feedback
from the people that really matter: colleagues, staff, stakeholders and
customers."
And you don't need a blue badge on the wall to do that.
Money doesn’t talk..........
We have worked with many people who have made a lot of money
in business, and some who have inherited family prosperity to invest in or
develop a business. But it is this perception and the reality of wealth that can
give rise to all sorts of dysfunctional relationships.
I couldn’t understand why two members of the senior management
team were not included in the 360 degree appraisals that we were planning. The
Managing Director replied that two of them “don’t like you”. Now this business
has several blue chip clients in the oil industry and regards itself as the
market leader in its sphere of expertise. I had questioned this.
So Dave replied that one of his directors Jill, was a
personal friend who had been with the company for twenty years. He said that
she thought my approach was “too abrasive”.
“And what about the other?” the finance director, I enquired.
“Ah, well” Dave said. “I would hate to lose Suzanne because she looks after my
personal finances as well as those of the business.”
So I said “What do you mean lose, we are only looking at
what each member of your board can do to improve their performance in order to
improve the performance of your business?”
A genuine danger to any business is where hidden agendas,
duplicity and politics are rife at the top. In these cases, Bob Dylan is right
when he sings “Money doesn’t talk ........ it swears.”
No hiding place
It is quite common for Managing Directors to invite you into
their business to improve both sales and profit.... until they find out what
they personally need to do to enhance business performance.
Paula asked me in to her organisation for just that reason. As
a national vegetarian food distributor it was increasingly hard to deliver
certain outcomes with both key income streams and certain gross margins in
decline. As usual we started our work with the Senior Management Team and it
required a level of openness and honesty to actually agree what the Bull’s Eye
for this client was to be for the next three years.
During early discussions it was already clear that some directors
had different ideas from each other about the best way forward. So I invited
them to tell me who had personal responsibility for each of the eight segments
on the Kidson Diagnostic Wheel. Again there was disagreement and lack of
clarity.
Without any director appraisals no one knew what they needed
to do either individually or collectively to change the business model. The
upshot was that I chose to appraise each of the directors in turn, at the same
time in order to determine exactly who did what. On the due date for the work
the MD not only refused to agree that she had any development points but then promptly
invited me to leave the building.
The problem for Paula is that the work we have already done
in the space of two half days has exposed the fault lines in her own leadership
and management style. She can now deny it, she can cover it up or she can try
to forget it, but the fact is that the jugular issues we uncovered will not go
away, and they could well get worse.
Grow and grow
As the children get bigger, and the twenty somethings turn
into thirty somethings, we wouldn’t be human if occasional thoughts didn’t turn
to our own mortality. But it doesn’t have to be like that with the business.
So many family businesses can take off and fly through
successive generations. One engineering company dad said to me recently, “Well
I am so lucky to have my son David and daughter in law Jane to carry the
business on.“ I replied, “Yes John, and they are so lucky to have such magnificent
parents that started this business 35 years ago.”
Another seventy plus parent who founded a nursery that now
employs one hundred people said, “I’m just the delivery driver here, you need
to talk to Jessica, if you can catch her!” And the mother of a long standing
retail business said, and she is eighty this year, “I just come in and open the
post.”
But all these people actually do so much more with their
presence, their experience and their wisdom. And as far as the business is
concerned senior players are continuing to add more and more value, providing
that they themselves want to carry on learning and developing, providing that
they know how and when to hand over the reins.
I am facilitating the appraisals of some seventy year old directors
today. So never mind all the siblings, let’s hear it for the elder statespeople
that are still in there, doing the business.
Anger
When the directors of a business cannot seem to agree on the
Bull’s Eye for their business, the single most common reason is a lack of trust
between them.
The finance director was red with rage as she denounced her
colleague, director of marketing, in front of me, for half baked ideas. “You
bring projects to the table that might sound interesting, but you have nothing
on paper, nothing on projected sales and PBT, nothing on cash flow
implications.”
Silent, open, hostility.
Then Amanda spat her reply “And if it was left to you and
your ability to have any new ideas at all, we wouldn’t even have a business.
You are just a bean counter!”
When you share your tacit knowledge with a colleague, however
this happens, it will always result in business reward.
Even if this means a parting of the ways.
One night stand
Some leaders are excellent
at relating to some people in some situations but not good with others. How can
this be? Surely we are either good at engaging with people or not?
MD Mandy was in
trouble with her own people. Despite running a successful and growing business,
the staff survey feedback talked about remoteness, inability to focus and being
distracted from core business. Yet if this was true how come the same person
had grown the business so well from a standing start?
I had experienced
several instances of the same thing in various organisations recently so what
is it all about? Part of the answer is that it is one thing to sell your
product and service to a whole succession of customers or clients. It's a kind
of formula we can all learn: we can turn on the charm, give it charisma overload
and win the order, time and time again.
But try the same
approach with colleagues and staff, the same people that you have known and
seen day after day, week after week, maybe for years, and it simply doesn't
work.
In addition, there
are some colleagues and staff that you instinctively and intuitively like and
respect. There will be others where it feels like hard work every day, every
time you have a transaction with them.
So if you are
struggling to relate to some of the business people in your life, ask yourself
whether you are doing all the work that is required for a committed
relationship between two people.
Or are you simply
going through the motions of a one night stand?
The Line
The older I get and the more clients I work with, the less I
think I understand about any of them. There is a kind of invisible line between
every client / supplier relationship, especially on the service side of things.
A solicitor client was rehearsing a talk he is giving soon
about commercial property. The purpose of the presentation is to help members
of the audience prepare and deal with some of the mechanics of the transaction
so that they can avoid unnecessary fees. “But surely,” I said, “there are people
who do not want to deal with title deeds, due diligence and banks? They just
want the result.” “You are missing the point.” he replied.
Yesterday another client surprised me with the strength of the
criticism she levelled at their company accountant.
She said “This bloke wants to flog me all sorts of add on packages that will
help me manage my business better. I don’t want all that. I told him to go and
manage his own business better.”
And this invisible line moves all the time. I got a call
from someone I haven’t worked with for ten years this week and she told me exactly
what she wanted. I said that there are better people out there for this than me.
She just replied, “Tim, you are the man; we have not considered anyone else.”
One could argue that the product side of business is largely
transactional, but there is no doubt that the service side of things, between
the right people, can be transformational.
With each and every client you just have to try and know
where the line is.........
