Category: Leadership & Management

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Are you up for the next challenge?

 

When you take on a new role or a new responsibility, or you are giving a presentation or making a speech, you should be a little apprehensive.

If it is really new and you have not done it before, why wouldn’t you be apprehensive?

There’s a difference between being apprehensive and paralysed by fear!

If you are paralysed be fear (as many are by the thought of public speaking) that can be overcome. Practice, practice and practice again – ideally in front of an audience, but even practising to the dog will help! There are also plenty of people to help with presentation and/or public speaking skills.

If you are apprehensive that’s a good thing. We all need to be a little on edge, a little more aware of giving of our best. Can you imagine an athlete on the starting line being totally relaxed?

You can control your apprehension through preparation and be envisaging the outcome. What’s the worst that could happen, and why would it? Often just picturing that is enough to cut through the tension and help you do a better job.

All these same thoughts and feeling apply to the team member to whom you just gave a new role or responsibility or who is taking on a pitch to a new prospect.

It’s your job, as the business leader, to help them do their job and part of that may be to help them reduce the fear level. You can guide or coach them, you can help them practice and they will then do a better job.

A session preparing for a pitch for new business is a classic example. The team making the pitch will benefit from as much research as they can do, and benefit again from a rehearsal where other team members throw up possible objections or challenges. Imagine how confident the sales person feels if the real objection is one they have already rehearsed?

 

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It’s not about the numbers

 

If you are successful in reducing your day to day responsibilities so that you have an empty diary occasionally, you may be wondering what next – what to do with all this free time!

The temptation is to dive back into the detail but that’s to be avoided.

The job and duty of the business leader is to provide direction and to enable other members of the team.

Providing direction is partly about having a good idea where you want the business to be in six months or more – the vision – but in my experience, most leaders have that.

The missing piece is communication.

Circumstances change and the business environment changes. When that happens it’s time to communicate your vision again – and this is where many people fail. You have discussed the position with your closest advisers and adjusted your strategy, but have you told the team?

Taking Brexit as a recent example have you reconsidered your strategy and have you told the team – even if the strategy is no change.

The other part of being a leader is the enabling of the team.

Enabling others to take on responsibilities and tasks is extremely satisfying, especially when they are not sure they are capable!

This too is about communication. You have to be very clear on the required outcome, offer support and be approachable for the team.

In short, you cannot over-communicate but you most certainly can under communicate.

Keep an eye on the numbers but always remember that they are the result of the efforts of the team. Improve the effectiveness of the team and the numbers will show the
result.

 

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Where are you investing?

 

Some time ago I visited the London Eye. It gives you a unique view of the capital.

I’d expected the attraction to be really busy – and it was! We had a voucher, but no one seemed to know to which desk we were supposed to go to redeem it. Eventually, I found the right desk and we took the ride and the obligatory photos.

Customer service was very poor – not enough staff, not enough signage and not enough training for the staff that were there.

On that same trip, we had lunch at a restaurant run by a Michelin-starred chef. Service was first class and the food was excellent, but for me, the whole experience was tainted when the bill arrived with service included and space for an extra gratuity!

I asked the waiter to take off the service charge so that I could choose how much to tip, but his immediate reaction was to tell me that I should have complained earlier!

I struggled to get him to understand that I was happy with the service but wanted to determine for myself how much I thought it was worth.

Both experiences were excellent, but both were let down by the customer service and I would not recommend either.

Both businesses have invested heavily – Wikipedia tells me the London Eye cost £70m and I don’t think there is such a thing as a low-cost rental in Chelsea – but both have lost sight of the need to delight every customer.

If you run customer satisfaction surveys, perhaps the most important customers are those who used to buy from you but no longer do so. Find out what changed – just as you would with a team member leaving, you would do an exit interview. You may be surprised to find it was something really small that caused the change.

A satisfied customer is only one poor experience away from being dissatisfied. Are you investing enough in customer service, or just focused on the internal workings of your business?

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Leadership is service

I’ve often seen the challenging situation where the leader of a business or an organisation has lost the respect and belief of those who are supposed to be following.

Rarely is that anything to do with the followers!

Many leaders seem to think that to lead, you have to make all the decisions.

The trouble with making all the decisions yourself is that you don’t allow anyone else to have a say. You might as well employ trained monkeys (or robots) to do the job because it doesn’t really require a brain.

Sometimes with this goes the ego piece:

If I am going to make all the decisions, I should get all the glory – after all, I am the one doing all the hard work, right?

Now I am sure no one really thinks this explicitly, but is it there somewhere? Is there a grain of truth?

If you listen to the language of many great leaders, they show a different mindset. They will talk about empowering people, about building great teams and enabling projects. It’s not about them, it is about the organisation and the people in the organisation.

Those who lead our countries and our armed forces refer to themselves as “serving” and for me, that’s a great place to start.

Extending the military analogy, the commander in chief doesn’t tell his subordinates how to take the enemy target. That’s for the junior commanders to work out and for the front line troops to execute.

Think of your role as a leader as one of service, not control. Your job as a director is not to direct people to do things but to point out (direct) the path the organisation should take. How the team get to the objective isn’t your concern – it is your job to make sure they know what the objective is!

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It’s time to make yourself redundant!

The percentages vary but everyone involved in buying and selling businesses knows that the vast majority (75% – 80%) of businesses that try to sell fail to do so. One common reason is that the owner is too involved in the day to day operation of the business – take the owner away and there is no business left.

If you would like to be promoted from your current role your boss can easily have a similar problem. “How can I promote X, they are the only person who can do that job?”

The answer in both cases is very simple – make yourself redundant!

A good starting point is to look at your diary or even better your “to do” list and create a list of those things that only you can do. That doesn’t mean only you in the sense of there’s no one else in the business who can do it, it means only you with your particular set of skills and experience can do it.

There should not be many items on the only-me list.

Take the remainder of the to-do list and delegate (or dump) each item.

When you delegate something, talk about the result you want and try using language like

“Let me know what you need to achieve this?”

That helps the person taking on the responsibility recognise that help is available and it is OK to ask!

If you can’t delegate it internally, can you outsource it? Sites like Odesk and Fiverr connect an army of contractors to potential customers and many of them are available at very low hourly rates.

The items that appear more difficult to delegate may require some further thought. Can you break them down into steps, and delegate some of the steps? Perhaps some can be solved by training?

Now take a look at the only-me list. What’s on there that you really cannot apply the same process? Yes, it may take time – I have forgotten how many times I’ve been told “I can’t train someone – I don’t have the time!”

Your objective is to come to work, look at your diary and think “Great, now what shall I do today?”

The answer to that is “work on the business, not in the business”

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Sometimes we get it wrong

Sometimes we get it wrong and when we do there isn’t much choice we have to go and apologise.

It might be that you jumped a little too hastily at somebody when they gave you some bad news, but if you don’t apologise the following day or even earlier if you can you create a sense of resentment and a real problem for the future

They say it takes a big man (or a big woman) to apologise but actually, I think you just need to be honest. Say “I made a mistake” and move on.

You’ll have the respect of the other person – they will respect your openness and will tell everybody else. Your reputation won’t be damaged by that momentary slip of your attention or that unwarranted reaction. Your reputation will be enhanced by the recognition from your team that you are big enough to say

“Sorry guys I got that one wrong”

If you don’t admit the mistake the team know that you made a mistake they know that you reacted hastily and your reputation is diminished. The level of trust the team will give you is reduced and if you’re not careful the team will stop sharing with you and you will lose out.

There’s no protection or face saving in hiding from the facts.There’s no point pretending to the customer that everything will be fine when you know the delivery will be late or the project will overrun. They won’t thank you for avoiding the issue and giving them a nasty surprise.

In the same vein, if something has gone wrong with your department or your area of responsibility, tell the boss – sooner rather than later.

Honesty really is the best policy

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It can be lonely at the top

The more responsibility you have in whatever field, the fewer people you can share with.

If you are leading a business, the people in that business look to you for advice and guidance. You are supposed to have the answers – because if you haven’t got them, who has?

In the workplace, you are bound up with all the emotion that comes with leading a team.

You’ll be feeling responsible for the team, and for the business.

That can make your position a lonely place. You can’t talk about your problems to your colleagues, your customers, your suppliers or your service providers – all the people you come into contact with on a daily basis. Some business leaders are lucky enough to have an understanding partner, who will at least listen!

There are two strategies to deploy to help you avoid the worst effects of this trap.

Firstly, surround yourself with trusted advisors. These are people you must be able to trust and discuss issues with, and who can bring dispassionate objectivity to bear on your problems. They could be independent business advisors (I know one of them!) or perhaps other business leaders who operate in a different sector. There are many peer groups to facilitate such support.

Secondly, be more open with your colleagues at work. There’s nothing wrong with being human, and indeed if you are more open you will build stronger relationships with the people around you. The stronger those relationships, the greater the trust and honesty will be and the easier you will find things.

There will always be those areas where you cannot discuss the issues, but they are probably far fewer than you think they are. Just make sure you are not spreading loads of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt)

Business Leaders are people too!

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Breaking down the silo walls

Many businesses are structured into departments which have objectives and targets. There’s a common failure when cross-departmental links are not as strong as they could be, and instead departmental managers and their teams focus on their individual objectives and neglect the greater good of the organisation as a whole.

There’s an extreme example in my own career history. Many years ago my appointment as Managing Director of a division was announced and shortly after the announcement a colleague who was the MD of a different division rang me. Steve congratulated me, and then said “let battle commence” I was somewhat shocked – after all, we both worked for the same parent company. I’d have expected the friendly rivalry to see who could get the best scorecard for the year, but not an all-out battle!

Steve didn’t stay in his role very long, but when you looked at the measurement used to assess his (and my) performance, there was nothing to encourage mutual cooperation.

This approach is often known as operating in silos. Everything is contained within the silo, nothing in the outside world impacts on the silo.

What you actually need is cross-departmental functionality, and one methodology to break down any barriers is to have teams comprised of members from different departments with a cross-business remit. The team is responsible for something that affects everyone – perhaps organising a social event, or looking after the canteen, or making some minor improvements to the working environment. They’ll need a budget, and be empowered to get on and make changes.

You can help prevent the barriers coming into existence if you are careful with departmental objectives but also by reminding managers that they have internal customers, and if you don’t meet the needs of the internal customer the business won’t meet the needs of its external customers.

Finally, if you have an area of friction between two departments it can help if there is a “bridge” position between the two – someone employed to carry out duties that straddle both. That position has reporting lines to the two departmental managers in what is known as a matrix structure.

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Put your problems in context

It is really easy to become very concerned with a problem that in the end is just a little problem.

You uncover the issue, and it nags at you. There’s a voice inside your head crying “fix me” and you find it difficult to focus on other things and get things done.

My son has been living and working in Tanzania for a few years now. He’s Head of Physics in a private school and it is a very different world to the one we know. There is very limited internet, restricted water supply during the dry season and frequent power cuts. On the more positive front, he is on the doorstep of some of the most famous safari parks in the world and occasionally has monkeys in the garden!

One phrase that has come from his experience is “first world problem” which is used as a response to a complaint about something minor. We might say “there’s nothing worth watching on TV tonight” and the response would be “first world problem. You have a TV, power supply….!”

So does the problem you are obsessed with really matter?

Is the coffee machine broken? Perhaps the printer is not working as it should be.
There’s a problem with the sandwiches? (That was always my favourite. A business I ran provided subsidized lunches. They were the subject of so many complaints it was almost a relief to get rid of the perk when we had to save some money)

Is it affecting your customers?

If the answer is no, that makes it a bit like a “first world problem.” It might be an irritation, perhaps it is hampering your efficiency but in the end, you are working around it and the customer never knows.

If the answer is yes, then you are right to obsess over it and get it fixed. It affects your customer – so it really matters.

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Actions have consequences

 

“What’s the use you learning to do right when it’s troublesome to do right and ain’t no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?” Mark Twain, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

We all want to do the right thing, but from time to time the temptation is there to take a shortcut, because we are feeling under pressure., or because it is just easier.

Perhaps it is the quality department, who are being pressured to get stuff out to the customer. They can do it if they take a short cut and inspect fewer widgets – it is just this time, and it won’t matter.

Perhaps it is that proposal you are writing – it is easier just to cut and paste some content than do the hard work of creating the original content.

Maybe it is in sales, when the customer asks “Can I have it by this date?”

Or is it in customer support, where the documentation from the last version will do just fine.

The trouble is that shortcuts have a nasty way of coming back to bite you.

The extra inspection might have found the problem, but instead the customer found the problem and suddenly you are no longer a supplier.

That proposal didn’t meet the requirement, and you lost the opportunity

We didn’t meet the delivery date the sales team promised, and the customer is very unhappy.

The customer found a problem and the solution in the documentation doesn’t work – it did in the last version, but there’s been a change.

These shortcuts can appear to be nothing more than a quick fix, sometimes it doesn’t even feel like you are making a decision but actually it is a positive decision not to do something.

Like any action, consequences flow.