Category: Tactics

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You will catch more flies with honey than vinegar – but be careful!

You may have heard the truism, ‘You catch more flies with honey than vinegar’ and many of us will have experienced the delights(!) of working with or for someone who just doesn’t get it. They think the way to motivate people is to use a larger stick!

That style of management may have worked once upon a time, but for many in this day and age it is very unproductive. It may even lead to a run-in with the HR department.

That kind of conduct is becoming even more of an issue with younger members of staff, as many more appropriately skilled advisers than I could tell you.

At the other end of the scale, the ‘ask rather than tell’ style of management fits very well with the style expected by these younger people.

But there is a danger with this style. It can be misinterpreted either accidentally or deliberately as a sign of weakness.

There are some who will decide to ignore the ‘request’ you’ve made, knowing full well that it’s a command in disguise. They are testing to see if you are serious – do you really mean it? – or is it just a polite request.

Let me illustrate this. I’m running an engineering business these days and, as part of our quality requirements and our health & safety policy, all drinks in the workshop and assembly areas must be consumed in non-spill containers. We provide suitable containers to all members of staff, of course.

A couple of the older hands have decided that they prefer to drink tea from their own favourite mugs. However, these mugs are not spill-proof – and covering the steaming tea with a piece of paper or card (!) doesn’t comply with company requirements.

When challenged on this infringement, the response is something along the lines of, ‘I’ve been doing this for 40 years’.

The polite request hasn’t worked. I could go as far as instigating disciplinary action – this is a clear breach of company policy – but these guys have worked for the company for a very long time and are also very good at their skilled manual jobs.

My preferred route in this situation is to offer a little bit of sarcasm. There’s a cartoon going up in the canteen showing a mug of tea with a paper lid over it and a message beneath it saying, ‘This isn’t good enough’.

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How do you solve a problem?

Whatever business you’re in, the chances are something will go wrong sooner or later – or not go quite as well as it could – so you need to fix it.

Many people implement a potential solution without giving it enough consideration or analysis, investing time and effort into a hastily devised solution.

Sometimes they will be right, but often they are wrong, and the time and effort are wasted.

Sometimes that inappropriate solution has just made the situation worse – the problem has become more complicated.

The first step is to identify the problem. That sounds obvious, but you would be amazed how much effort is wasted tracking down a problem that, in the end, is based on someone’s opinion but not borne out by the facts!

A classic example is: ‘The internet is slow today’.

The quick resolution of this is to: ‘Reboot the hub’.

Which has disturbed everyone in the business and caused some delays – maybe only for a few minutes, but still a disturbance.

What should and could be different?

Using this same example, run a speed test on the PC in question. Run a speed test on other PCs and if you notice a marked difference between the first PC and the rest, you have eliminated the hub as the cause.

That’s the key word in problem solving – ‘eliminate’.

When considering a problem, take the time to analyse all the possible causes and then proceed to eliminate them one by one.

Advance methodically by selecting those causes you think are most likely and eliminate them first. And if the first solution won’t solve the problem, you know what the original situation was and can come up with other possible causes to investigate.

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Conflicts of interest

Everyone looks to the leader in the business and measures his or her performance.  They are watching and waiting for signs, whether good or bad. They aren’t just waiting for the leader to fail, but they do want their leader to show who they really are – and demonstrate success.

As the leader, everything you do is being closely observed.

What the team observes, and how they interpret what they see, will shape your reputation.

Perception is reality.

It doesn’t matter what you think – what matters is how your team perceives you.

One situation where this can really come back to bite you is when there’s a perceived conflict of interest.

This could relate to a preferred supplier – someone you get on with really well – where the team simply sees poor performance. Not only does that supplier get a bad reputation (they only got the job because of their friendship with you) but so do you – you’re giving work to your mates.

It could be that there’s someone you like in the business and you have a friendship with them. The word will spread – you can’t keep that secret – and the rest of the team may think you’re giving your friend special treatment.

In family-owned businesses, it could be that a family member has been taken on. Are they there because they’re good at their job, or just because they’re a family member?

  • You can’t help having friends in the business.
  • It may make sense to employ a family member.
  • You might form a friendship with that supplier.

So what can you do?  The solution is to be transparent.

You can’t help the perception people have of you, but the more transparent you are the better things will be.

If it’s an employee who is your friend, perhaps have them report to a different manager.

If you’re going to employ a family member, make it abundantly clear to the rest of the team that this employee is there because he or she is a family member! That way, expectations will be low, but the results may surprise everyone in the team.

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Why don’t you do more business overseas?

Strange as it may seem, people make most decisions based upon emotion rather than facts.

Sales training courses emphasize the need to engage with the customer emotionally, using the Know, Like and Trust principle.  Anyone who has bought a house will recognize it’s an emotional purchase. When you’re deciding whether to buy a property, there may and should be some filtering of the options based on facts – for example, distance to the station, school catchment areas etc. – but, at the end of the day, the decision will be emotional.

The same is true for other purchases. Cars are bought based on emotional decisions and car manufacturers spend fortunes promoting their brands rather than the mechanical features. 

Do you remember the Janis Joplin song ‘Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes-Benz’? That wasn’t an advertisement, but it shows the power of the brand.

In your business, however, emotional decisions can lead you astray. I’ve seen talented individuals leave businesses as a result of disagreements with their managers, when in fact these talented individuals were suggesting business improvements. These improvements were taken as criticism of the managers, who reacted emotionally instead of rationally.

It’s emotional reaction that can hold a business back. You don’t take the opportunity to engage that new supplier or explore that uncharted overseas market because you don’t know what might be involved.  When we don’t know what something might involve, the usual reaction is fear – fear of the unknown.

If you add into the mix a whole range of preconceptions and apocryphal stories that abound, especially when it comes to overseas markets, you have a recipe for poor decision-making! You’ll hear any number of horror stories likely to affect your perception of overseas trading opportunities – but you won’t hear very much about the millions of ventures successfully achieved in other markets.

There’s no rational reason to avoid these market opportunities, but you do have to do your research and plan for them. You should focus on gathering as much factual information as possible and proceed slowly, step by step. The success you enjoy in these new areas will be well worthwhile!

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The mission comes first

You have a set of tasks to complete, a to-do list that just seems to get longer and longer. And there’s a horde of people waiting to speak to you.

The phone never stops ringing.

The email keeps pinging, demanding your attention.

There’s yet another meeting, just around the corner.

If you’re not careful, you’ll get sucked into day-to-day activities.

Add a few big projects to the list – getting ready for that exhibition, developing that new product line, working on a new marketing campaign – and, before you know it, you’ll be wondering where the years have gone!

It’s easy to lose sight of the overall objective of the business.

It’s easy to spend time looking at all the mundane things that cross your desk. It’s even easier to get caught up with projects that are exciting and demanding.

If this is what’s happening to you, what’s happening to the people who work for you and with you? Their situation will be even worse.

I’ve often used the simple question ‘Why?’ when considering different activities in a business. Why are we having this meeting? Why are you doing that? Why are we going to this exhibition?

Controversially, I’ve also been known to ask, ‘Why does this job exist?’

Mostly, the answers can be summarised as, ‘We’ve always done it that way’.

If you can make time to ask the questions and dig through the initial, rather facile answers, you then need to make time to absorb the real answer.

You may find that individuals have forgotten the real answer. They’ve forgotten the real mission of the company.

It’s worth taking a step back to remind everyone why the business exists: What’s our purpose? What’s our mission?  Then make sure every activity is directed towards the fulfilment of that mission.

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The past is the past so focus on the future

Many of the circumstances that existed before the Christmas break will still be the same now the New Year is getting underway. For example –

  • You’ll probably be interacting with the same people
  • The business will face many of the same opportunities and challenges
  • You will react in the same way

Old habits die hard!

That makes it really easy to feel as though nothing has changed. You’ll get dragged back into the same old things. There’s a cynical saying that goes, ‘Same s**t, different day’.

All those wonderful plans you’ve been thinking about, all the great things you were planning to do at the start of the New Year are likely to get overwhelmed by the wave of history. You get dragged back into day-to-day battles and your plans sit in the drawer gathering dust.

In a year’s time, you’ll probably reflect on how little progress you’ve made towards your goals and feel really frustrated.

Or else you can take proactive steps today to break with the past, leave all those old habits behind and focus on new plans and opportunities.

To do this is easier said than done – but that’s usually true of anything worthwhile!

A tip that will help – and can be applied to any change project – is to set short-term goals and deadlines. These will act as milestones or staging posts towards your longer-term plan.

Hold frequent progress meetings. Try to avoid calling them ‘review’ meetings, as that tends to imply you’re reviewing what has happened, rather than focusing on the development of what has yet to happen.

Remind everyone involved that you can’t change the past.  You can, and should, learn from the past; but change only happens by looking to the future.

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As simple as it can be

Simplifying things is a challenge for any business. If you have a simple process, people can follow it without making mistakes. If you have a complex process, mistakes can and will be made.

I find that quality management systems often appear to be over-complicated. There’s a theory that goes something like this –

‘The system is important. Important things are complex and difficult to understand, so they are written in complex language.’

If you add to this theory the individual who overplays the difficulty of their job, you have the quality management system that becomes a bureaucratic nightmare  –  otherwise known as the business prevention system.

Those are the systems that people hate. They are seen as restrictive, serving only to enforce compliance.

One recent experience with a customer – a very large organisation – illustrates this. They were returning a unit to us for some additional development work, but the unit had been purchased as a standard unit, not for development.

We’d agreed in April to do some further work. In July, after several emails, we got a reply from someone in the customer’s team, a frustrated engineer. He told us –

‘I can’t send you the unit. It’s sitting on my desk, but it’s so far into our systems that I can’t work out  how to send it back to you.’

I’m sure these were exceptional circumstances, but it’s an example of a system hindering the business.

However, if you can take a step back and look at the reasons why particular processes or procedures exist, you may find some nuggets of value.

A procedure or process often came into existence to resolve a problem. Over time, extra layers were added. The result is that you end up with a complex mess.

When you set about simplifying a process or procedure, start by asking, ‘Why does this exist?’ and create a simple process to deal with just that: ‘Why?’.

If that’s not possible, perhaps the process is trying to do too much?

You’re likely to find examples of trying to do too much when you examine  complex assembly processes. We have processes that are extremely complex – one product we analysed recently had 174 parts. Any process that tries to capture such a large assembly of parts is going to be complex.

However, it’s possible to view that product as a number of different sub-assemblies. Each of those can still be regarded as complex, but there are probably only 30 parts in the most complex of them.

We have an overall procedure in place to assemble this product, but the lead procedure is simple and refers to the sub-assembly procedures, which in turn are also simple.

Making a process or procedure simple isn’t easy – but it can add great value to your business.

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Are you afraid of the voters?

Politics is in turmoil. Some really divisive issues and equally divisive politicians are making headlines around the world.

Much of the recent press coverage refers to a lack of trust, while some politicians are telling us they don’t trust journalists. Fake news, anyone?

This lack of trust leads to politicians avoiding disclosure, fearing censure from voters. They get caught hiding things, so voters trust them even less. The voters think politicians have their own agenda and undisclosed motives; the politicians think voters and the media are out to ‘get them’.

This destroys any chance of cross-party cooperation. Anyone who crosses the line will be branded as a traitor, no matter how important the matter may be. Major issues such as healthcare or gun law in the US and, of course, Brexit in the UK are all topics where politicians of different parties hold similar views but can’t or won’t cooperate with one another.

This same theme of trust – or the lack of it – can be seen in businesses, everywhere.

Many businesses suffer from the ‘silo syndrome’, where functions and departments don’t cooperate but follow their own agendas. That can lead to conflicting messages being delivered to customers and suppliers!

Equally common is the division between ‘them’ and ‘us’, with management on one side of the fence and the workforce on the other.

Symptoms of a ‘them and us’ culture operating become apparent when there is a workforce that seems disengaged, a lack of innovation in the business, and often a clock-watching culture in place.

The good news is that, with a little bit of bravery being shown by the leaders of the business, these challenges can be dealt with.

The starting point is communication. If you, as leader, explain your decisions and, even better, share your objectives for the business with the workforce, you can remove the barrier. It won’t come down all at once, and it will take continuous effort to keep it down. But, if you communicate and do these things, you’ll get a workforce that’s engaged and can take your business to another level.

Don’t be afraid of the voters.

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Try and Try again – or maybe not? Persistence pays.

When I was a child, my parents often exhorted me to “Try & Try again” if I failed at something.

In business, all too often I meet companies who, when something is suggested, respond with “Oh that doesn’t work – we tried it some time ago and it failed”

If you dig into that & get them to recall the details, it’s amazing what you can find.

A direct mail campaign didn’t work for us

Well, in fact you only sent one piece of mail, to a small selection of your past customers

We tried using a different system

This is one of my favourites. In general people are resistant to change and prefer to do things the familiar way. If they aren’t convinced of the need to change, your team will prefer to see the new system fail.

It was too complicated

Well, it might be, but it is more likely that the proposal wasn’t broken down into its component parts. You can eat an elephant, one mouthful at a time, but if you start with the whole elephant on the plate it can be a bit intimidating.

Most of the time, business don’t try often enough or hard enough. They are not convinced of the strategy, and go into it half-heartedly, then withdraw at the first obstacle. That’s a recipe for failure.

If you are going to try something new, research it, plan the steps, and then execute it whole heartedly, with real commitment from the leaders of the business.

You could still fail because your strategy was incorrect, but most of the time Initiatives fail for poor execution, not faulty strategy.

 

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Strategy or Tactics?

Many business advisors bandy around the words “strategic” and “tactical” but for me, the only real difference is the timeframe.

There will be times when you have to take a decision to solve today’s problem, but it comes back to haunt you at a later date.

It’s a bit like buying something you can’t really afford on a credit card. If you are not careful, you end up paying for it twice over (or more) by the time you’ve paid the interest.

A client of mine has been approached to sell his business, and I am helping him through the process and we are providing information to the buyer.

One piece of (quite important) information is the share structure and ownership of the business.  The MD and his wife are the majority owners, but two key employees (Nick & Bob) were given a small shareholding many years ago.

When the MD declared the shareholding, he included Nick & Bob as owning 5% of the business each, but when I looked at the accounts there were far more shares that he had declared.

Several years ago, when bidding for a large contract, a director’s loan was converted into share capital so that the business could obtain finance. 

The MD had forgotten all about that transaction. It had to be done at the time, his money was already committed to the business, and it didn’t matter to him.

But Nick & Bob don’t own 5% of the company each, they own 0.05%.

This business will sell for about 5 million pounds; Nick & Bob will receive a few thousand pounds instead of the £250k they would be entitled if they still owned the 5%.

If my client wants to do the honourable thing and give Nick & Bob the difference (I am sure he will) then taking into account the various tax implications he will be about 500k worse off.*

If, after taking the undoubtedly short term decision to convert that loan to share capital, the MD had thought through the implications for Bob & Nick in the longer term, there would have been a way to make sure they still had the 5% he had promised them.

So when the answer to the short term problem is obvious, and you just get on and do it, try to take a step back every so often & ask yourself the question

 “How will that affect me / us / the business in 3 years’ time?

*(Now I think I have a solution for this problem – I just need the corporate lawyer to check)