I was thinking today of some of the egos I worked in past jobs. Like Sales Director that at their first team meeting announced, “I’ve come to save the company”, which came as a surprise to all who didn’t think that the business needed saving.

And the HR Manager who, on being appointed, introduced herself to her well qualified team by saying “I’m a fellow of the CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel Development) and I’m a professional!”

Tricky things to handle
Huge egos are tricky things to handle and handle them we all have to do. Teams that are expanding want
strong characters, who are self-motivated and who have a 
desire to win! But too often the appointment of a new leader can go to their already big
heads and makes them tough to deal with? So I was fascinated to come across this article in Management Today that addresses the topic. Not in much the detail and doesn’t provide too much that’s of help but the article makes you think.

A great friend of mine, John Donnelly, always says about team meetings that “You can’t be caught working if you’re in a team meeting” and of course he’s right. It amazes me how many people still flit from one meeting to another, particularly in public services, that actually believe they are doing something! The problem is that when they attend the next meeting to discuss actions from the previous meeting they often haven’t had time to do the work because they’ve been too busy attending meetings!

Three hours a day in internal meetings
According to the figures, almost a quarter of employees spend up to
three hours a day in internal meetings.
Answering emails is another time waster with the average number of internal emails received being 32 – although
nearly one in five say they get up to 50 a day, which works out as one
email every eight-and-a-half minutes.

Internal meetings a colossal waste of time
Management today have an article that suggests that UK businesses waste
£255m a day on internal meetings and emails. And that’s not just on
multi-packs of chocolate Hobnobs: The refreshing thing is that those attending meetings often see them as a
colossal waste of time, that is except those that spend their days in meetings rather than be seen working.

I had to laugh at Management Today’s article on Ryan Air’s plans to replace toilets on their planes with paid seating.

Famous for its cut-throat approach
to cost-cutting the budget airline plans to remove two of its loos and replace them with up to six extra
seats but as MT asks “Is its latest ruse literally taking the piss”. 

Planning meetings:
We can only imagine the suggestions that the management team come up with at cost-cutting planning meetings. Presumably
they’ve considered building on the priority boarding model by charging for in-flight
commodes. this could be a money earner whilst saving passengers having to get up from their seat mid-flight.

It should be noted that there’s no legal stipulation for
an airline to provide toilets on its aircraft. It’s just if you’re supplying loads of beers to stag parties off for the weekend it would seem sensible to keep the seats dry for those coming back on the return journey!
Or will dry seats cost extra in the future?

Maximum seats allowed
As Ryanair proposes to prevent passengers from squeezing one out at one
end, it’s simultaneously doing the squeezing at the other: The airline carries an
estimated 75m passengers per year, and currently flies only Boeing
737-800 and has installed 189 seats on each plane, the maximum
allowed under current rules and it also charges up
to £20 per piece of checked luggage per flight. The Office of Fair Trading is investigating a ‘super-complaint’ by
the Consumers’ Association into such charges by low-cost airlines.

It’s not often that I blog twice in one day but I’ve been motivated by two pieces of news today. The first came from the BBC who predict that 1 in 4 children will grow up in poverty within the next ten years. The second piece of doom and gloom news was reported in Management Today that said “More doom and Gloom as BCC cuts UK growth forecast”.

The end of the world is nigh!
The world seems to be talking itself closer to the precipice faster than the village idiot saying that the end of the world is nigh! Quite frankly I’m tired of listening to doom and gloom merchants. Now I understand that good news doesn’t sell newspapers or advertising space on TV but can’t we have some success reported. There’s so much out there!

Successes
Such as the hugely successful and multiple award winning Riverbanks Clinic. Only recently established but already one of the UK’s leading Aesthetic Medicine Clinics and run by a brilliant team of dedicated professionals.

That Selfridges was voted the “Best Department Store in the World” at the Global Department Store Summit in New York in 2010

Lebara, the mobile phone company, that won the UK Customer Service award at the Mobile News Awards 2011

there’s so much good news to talk about do you know any other business success?
If so, let’s start to publicise them.

A survey has found that UK’s leaders aren’t impressed with the work that their own companies are doing to develop their next generation of managers.

Management Today writes that figures by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, just four in 10 leaders think the measures their company has put in place to coax out their employees’ inner CEO is ‘highly effective’ – which means six in 10 don’t.

The survey asked 367 leaders about their leadership development programme and found that two in 10 actually think the LDP’s in their own company are downright ineffective. As MT so rightly asks: “Considering they’re the people in charge of their companies why they sort it out?

In the long run it’s likely to be a costly error but then again few people in charge have the vision to find and develop the person who will eventually replace them. Instead the tendency is to get rid of the threat!

Yesterday I blogged on Simon Swan’s article in the latest edition of Management Today and got quite a reaction. A whole load of people, shocked at the costs to their business, contacted me with questions and to discuss team restructures. They ranged from large businesses with a number of teams to a small company of four considering expanding to a team of just five people.

Not so boring stats
All of them were shocked to hear the answers to the “INfrequently asked questions”.
that business never asks*:

• What percentage of new hires fail within two years of appointment?
  A: 40%
• What % or restructured teams fail to meet objectives?
  A: 42%
• What % of projects are completed to time, budget and specification?
  A: 28%

But it doesn’t have to be like this and I talked through my callers an eighteen minute SKYPE call when I explained how to reduce the risks of new hire and team failure…easily.
They’ve urged me to offer the same eighteen minutes to my SKYPE contacts (stephenharvarddavis) and I thought I would offer this to my blog readers and at no charge.

If you want to take me up on this then email me at Stephen@assimilating-talent.com so that we can arrange a mutually convenient time for a SKYPE call.
For the moment I’m restricting this to the first ten respondents and during the next seven days so don’t let time pass if you want to take me up on the offer

* Stats from various sources including Fortune Magazine and HBR

Did you see Simon Swans article in the latest edition of Management Today*? Simon talks about the importance of interviewing and quotes Harvard University research that says that new hire failure costs can amount to five times salary. I thought the costs understated and suspect that Simon’s probably taken a fixed cost of salary and direct expenses but not included the lost opportunity costs that result from a new hire failure.

At this point you probably might discount my own research as being inflated, if I included it here, so let me point to Brad Smart’s book “Topgrading” ,as evidence, where he wrote that his research into new hire failure could amount to 24 times the salary. Much of these come from lost opportunities which, depending upon position, include lost sales, projects not met and so on

I thought it interesting that Simon’s solutions to the problem was to ensure that the Resume (CV) was accurate and that the interview process robust. All good stuff. However, a crucial part of the process is the six months that a company spends integrating the individual into the new job. 

* 5th August 2011

I was facinated by Management Today’s article: “Directors seem to have a very different view to the hoi polloi on how business is going…“ and that most senior executives feel secure in their current job and even if they were to be made redundant that finding a new job would be easy.

However, what caught my eye was almost the final line of the article that said, 74% of directors reported a strong collective sense of purpose, compared to a mere 47% of those below them. Not because I disbelieve the statistic but because, in my experience, almost all Directors feel a greater sense of purpose than subordinates.

Most subordinates, on the other hand, have to wade through encouraging and often meaningless “visions, goals and objectives” to determine what’s happening. This was reinforced by a friend who told me last week “There’s no point in being too upbeat and enthusiastic about the company’s prospects, it saves time, tears and disappointment in the long run!”

Perhaps it’s why so many Directors will sigh, run their brow and ask “Why is my team so difficult to motivate?”