Go back in history far enough and you reach a time when groups, tribes were self-sufficient: hunter-gatherers eating meat and berries. As civilisation advanced, goods started to be traded between groups on a barter basis. Most of the goods were still consumed by the people that produced them. They had a desire to create good quality produce, both for their own consumption and for their trade. The growth of trade and commerce led to the invention of an advanced bartering system – money. Most people still consumed their own produce and traded the surplus. Mistress Goodchild was pleased to sell a few loaves in her village, particularly as everyone knew her loaves were the best.
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Raising The ROI
To lift the performance of your organization you must know where you are starting. We need to test where you are. Let me give you a thought experiment you can do in two minutes without moving from your chair. Imagine you are addressing the workforce to say that trading conditions are difficult, and profitability is down. How do you think your staff would react? Would they dismiss what you said as a preliminary to the next pay review? Or would they come back at you asking what needs to be done, how they can help?
Continue readingA Higher ROI
The Board, and the Chief Executive in particular, are aware that the shareholders would prefer a higher return on their investment, everything else being equal. The route to enhanced returns in the long term is through raising the operating profit from a given turnover. I’ve published much about ways to reduce input costs, overheads, and of the ideas behind making people more willing to work toward your goals. Improving people’s performance, in the long term, is a difficult management challenge. It is very easy to establish and incentivise SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound) goals and make people work toward them. Do you think you can create an incentive scheme that will cover all eventualities?
Continue readingTen Common Mistakes New Managers Make
Why don’t hospital porters with an excellent track record and ten years’ experience become orthopaedic surgeons? The answer…..being good at wheeling people to the Operating Theatre is not relevant experience to be a surgeon. Next question: why don’t brilliant salesmen (or whatever) with an excellent track record and ten years experiences become sales managers? The answer…..they do become sales managers even though the jobs are very different and require different skills. The manager is responsible, motivates and delivers the performance of his or her people. The skill of the manager is critical in delivering good performance. Anyone who has been through this terrible transition, from specialist to manager, without the proper training knows the mistakes. How many of these mistakes do you recognise?
Continue readingLet them eat cake
I contribute to discussions on LinkedIn. A recent discussion asked for opinions on the best strategy to develop engaged staff. Opinions poured in on successful practices so I thought I would add mine. My management style is one of pointing the way, not taking you blindfolded to the destination. I hope my words make you think and form your own questions rather than lay down a heavy tome of “facts”. I want to point you to learning. It’s a coaching style in the main. If I have learnt one thing, in my scientific research of people’s behaviour at work and 46 years of honing that knowledge, it is that what is obvious, is always more subtle and layered where people are concerned. I pitched into the discussion and described a successful action that helped to build the momentum of behaviour change and added to the excitement that something different was happening.
Continue readingManaging the survivors in 2021
The pandemic has wreaked havoc to business around the world with governments reacting by supporting their economies through various. and very costly, schemes. The decision makers discover that their organizations don’t need people in the office, and that more effective working practices come from working from home, possibly in a hybrid model. Job losses are reported even while there are one million vacancies: wrong skills, wrong time, wrong place again. The plight of the newly job free is widely understood. The condition of the survivors, the ones still at work, is my subject.
Continue readingThe Growing Organization
I wrote this article a long time ago. It’s about the management changes needed when growing an organization. As I thought about it, I realised there wasn’t one article but several – one for each stage of development. In 1972 Larry Greiner placed an article with this title in the Harvard Business Review. He wrote about the different management requirements as the organization grew. In fact, he went further and said the different skills needed at each stage, carried the seeds of their own destruction. As the organization succeeded and grew, the skills that made that possible poisoned the body corporate. Greiner illustrated it excellently in a diagram like this. Each phase has its own needs to create growth, but that management style eventually strangles growth.
Continue readingIt’s All Cash!
I did some consultancy work with a business that had been running for over a century. They had grown to be an SME and exported to the EU. The Owners/Joint MDs were aware of increasing price competition from the eastern reaches of the EU. They had invested substantial sums in processes, capital equipment and their people costs were lower. My Client had outgrown their site and were having problems with workflow. I started by investigating the workflow, not quite stopwatch in hand, but observing the flow.
Continue readingPeople Work For People They Like
People work for people they like, and respect, so go and say hello to them Note “like and respect” does not always mean “makes me happy”. People are very sensible about what needs to be done to keep an organization effective. It isn’t always possible to physically visit and meet employees. In that case do some one-to-one communication, by phone or video.
Continue readingThere is no standing still
In the world of business and increasingly in public organizations, 99% as good as the best is simply not good enough. Only the best is remembered and gets 80-90% of the business. All the rest scrabble for the 10%. World class performance is about having that small advantage and using it well, time after time. Not that I’m suggesting one small advantage will keep you in front for very long. Your advantage needs to be one that continually renews, expands and refreshes. No time to rest on your laurels, there is no standing still.
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