I was talking to a friend and business owner over the weekend about his team productivity and the process that allows team productivity to fall when times are uncertain.

It’s most often observed during the early stages of change or during an M&A when rules are about to change and become unclear. It’s made more noticeable when management reduce communication because there’s “nothing to say”. The problem is that everyone else, team members that is, ate having their say. Around the coffee machine, in corridor meetings and outside of work. The result is that productivity falls, sales reduce and projects are put on hold until the uncertainty is removed.

It’s NOT an option
I told my friend that to “Say nothing because there wasn’t anything to say” is NOT an option. This increases the sense of uncertainty at a time when people are looking for direction. It is possible to point out to team members that the way ahead is unclear EXCEPT for the fact that sales are still required, increased efficiency needed and that meeting targets will still be expected.

This afternoon he telephoned to say that after briefing his team, corridor meetings had significantly reduces and one team member said “Even though things aren’t clear thanks for reminding us what’s important”

We’ve all heard team leaders and managers say to things their teams during meetings and company briefings and accept them, no matter how trite because, they’ve become part of the tapestry of noise that makes up business speak.

The problem is that some of the things that team leaders say…they really shouldn’t.
Often the reason that they are said is to motivate and make staff feel good about themselves to increase productivity or take on more work or start a new project.

Let’s take the phrase “Staff are our greatest asset”.
It’s not a lie and is often the truth but like any valuable asset, when needs must, people can be dispensed with to increase money in the bank (Redundancy). They are only an asset when they are doing what’s expected…when not they become a liability.

Many of us will have seen a staff member or a team move from “Hero to Zero” within days of making a mistake and “the greatest asset” a few weeks before becomes a liability.

“Do this for me”
Another phrase I’ve often heard is team leaders who ask the team to “do it for me” or “Do it for the company”.
Let’s get it in context. If the staff member or the team weren’t being paid a salary they wouldn’t be doing it at all…

Email me with things you think team leaders say and shouldn’t
I’ve become so interested in the noise that some companies make that I’m developing a new talk on the topic and if you have “things that team leaders say…and shouldn’t” please feel free to email me at: stephen@assimilatinmg-talent.com.

Don’t do it for me. The best email that I receive I’ll be sending a gift to!

Over the past week I’ve been amazed at the response of companies to negative comments on Twitter. In the “getting complaints resolved fast” it seems to scare companies far more than threats to complain through official channels!

It takes 50 days to post a form
At this point I’m not going to mention the companies concerned (look through my previous blogs and tweets if you want to know the who) but to say that one complaint was after I was informed that to post me a form that needed completing could take up to fifty days to post…yes that’s right fifty (50) days to post out a form!

Brand protection
Within an hour of the negative tweets complaining of the poor customer service I was being contacted by teams of people wanting to resolve my complaint to prevent further negative tweets being made. Now, one has to admire the protection of the brand image and how effectively the complaint was handled but my main question is why let the situation where a customer is frustrated or angered occur in the first place?

So, perhaps the advice if you have a complaint about a company should be “Tweet first, blog next, mention it on facebook and if that brings no satisfactory result then complain officially”.

As the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee approaches we are likely to be bombarded with comparisons of the “then and now”. Commentators will be lecturing us saying how much better off we all are than in 1952!

People worked harder
Doubtless they will mention that people worked harder in 1952. Yet in reality communication and technology mean that we work faster and more effectively now than sixty years ago.

There will be statistics showing that more women are employed than ever before and regrets that “company loyalty” has disappeared. Forced redundancies, company closures and so on have meant that people are prepared, often out of necessity, to change jobs and careers more often than sixty years ago.

Is comparison pointless?
Yet comparisons are rather pointless. During the past sixty years the world has changed beyond recognition for most in the UK and the USA and it’s undeniable that the general standard of living of Briton’s has improved.

The real issue
The real issue for discussion with commentators, politicians, business leaders and bankers should be not whether things are better now than in 1952 but instead if things will be better at the end of the reign than they are now?

Over the last week I’ve had some correspondence with the Automobile Association (UK) which has demonstrated to me, once again, that too many companies make process and policy decisions that are harmful to their reputation and income. In this particular instance there’s a happy ending but it’s not always the case.

In December my Mother died with eight months on her AA membership paid for on an annual contract. Rather than waste the subscription I thought it would be a nice idea to have the membership transferred to a younger cousin so that they could benefit from the eight months of her subscription.

An expensive policy
On phoning the call centre I was told that “Your Mother’s account account is closed and it’s our policy that no refunds are made by the AA”. I asked to be transferred to discuss the issue with a manager to be told that “the call centre can’t transfer calls”. At this point I was annoyed believing that the policy of “no transfer” under these circumstances was unfair and, in reality, poor business practice.  I even pointed out that this policy decision was damaging to the AA because as well as losing my Mother’s subscription, the AA was now likely to lose mine (on renewal) and possibly my sister’s future subscriptions. Three subscriptions for the cost of administering a slight change. An expensive policy!

The power of social media
After a tweet in frustration (re-tweeted by some) the AA contacted me by direct tweet message asking me to detail my grievance in an email. After a couple of emails the issue is resolved and the AA will provide eight months membership to a person of our choice. The organisation now has the potential of a new long-term member. A good result for them and satisfactory conclusion for myself and shows the power of multimedia.

But my question is this:
Having a policy of “No refund” if fine under most circumstances and I can think of lots of reasons why the policy is in place but those that design such policies need to also think through the possible damage it could do under certain situations. The potential to the AA for lost opportunities and lost income over many years could have been costly!

When making policy rules…think of the exceptions that might be beneficial to the corporate reputation and create policies for dealing with exceptions.

Have you noticed there’s a lot of discussion from employers on how eduction is failing to provide people with the skills and knowledge needed. IT companies complain that graduates can’t understand background programmes, Senior executives despair that new hires don’t know how to communicate, employers shake their heads at qualifications that don’t provide the skills for work that employers are seeking.

Mission Critical opportunities being lost
Yesterday I was contacted by a CEO who told me that a “new hire” he had employed last year “wasn’t working out”. It seemed that the qualification and some experience hadn’t given the new hire the skills the job required and mission critical opportunities were being lost. 

What to do?
Larger companies are sponsoring education programmes to ensure they are
able to hire the skills they need but smaller businesses can’t afford to
do that. So what to do?
When recruiting it’s worth investigating the content and syllabus of qualifications if they are critical to the job skills. Then test them. If computer skills are required test them as part of the interview process. If communication or management skills are required for the job then these too can be tested at the interview stage.

Where skills are being recruited it’s a matter of “Employer be aware”

I was interested to read that two leading academics have predicted a revolution at work over the next ten years. Alison
Maitland and Peter Thomson, visiting fellows at Cass Business School and
Henley Business School respectively, are predicting that employees will soon be deciding when, where and how they do their jobs and that in future workers will be paid by results and not by the hours worked.

Revolution will help boost output
Reported in People Management, the pair maintain that such a
radical change in working practices will help businesses boost output,
cut costs, speed access to new markets and afford employees greater
freedom.

They highlight the Clothing
retailer Gap that is said to have halved the turnover rate of employees
when it introduced a ‘Results-Only Work Environment’ in the production
and design department of their outlet division in California.

A flawed prediction.
I see there being a flaw in their argument. Can you imagine shops, banks, and other places where staffing is needed during opening hours, allowing complete flexibility in how, when and where the job is done?

Then there’s their proposal of paying for results. Now that sounds like a great idea and would have much support from people all over Europe that would love to propose that we start by paying Bankers, politicians, Estate agents (Realtors) and civil servants purely on their quantifiable results. I can see there being thousands of applications to be “Productivity assessors”
Now there’s a revolution! 

Over the past few weeks I’ve been talking to some managers responsible for teams of sales assistants in large retail shops. The task was to show them how they could restructure their team’s approach to customers that would generate an increase in sales.

In this videoclip I tackle two main problems.
The first is the problem with asking “Can I help you?” that too often destroys a sale.
Secondly, how to generate multiple sales

Contact Stephen by email: stephen@assimilating-talent.com

Yesterday I had a great time with some business friends discussing the scandal of the NOTW and Rupert Murdock’s business empire. We all agreed that there have been lots of occasions when businesspeople believe their created image that they then become paralysed when things start to go pear shaped.

“You’re brilliant”
Director paralysis isn’t new. This often comes from having people around you that always tell you how brilliant you are. The more a business leader hears it the more they come to believe it. Murdock’s thousands telling him how brilliant he is seemed, at the start of the scandal, to create a paralysis of understanding of the seriousness of the situation. This, as is so often the case, was translated by the UK public as being arrogance.

Then again I’ve observed Directors of much smaller companies believe their own image and create similar problems for themselves. Like the Sales Director who joined an insurance company saying he had come to “save the company” when most people didn’t know, or believe, that it needed saving.

Or the Managing Director who told me that in twenty eight years at the head of his business he’d not made a “New hire mistake ever”. In fact he told me that he could identify a success when “they walked through the door“. His staff turnover was very high and continually created problems for his sales.

“Remember you are mortal”
As generals drove through the ancient Rome after winning a war a slave at the back of the chariot would whisper in their ear “Remember you are mortal” in case they believed the crowd’s adulation. I wonder how many CEO’s would consider hiring someone to continually question their thinking, just in case they thought themselves infallible?  

In announcing that Lloyds TSB are to shed 15,000 jobs over the next three years probably contained little surprise to most people. Indeed there will be many that will be quite pleased that some bankers are reaping what they sowed without realising that the middle management and back-room boys losing their jobs are not those who will be receiving big bonuses over the next three years.

Restructured teams have an increased chance of failure
My real concern is that five thousand job losses each year, for three years, will mean a vast number of teams being restructured. The problem with team restructure is that only 60% tend to deliver targets. That means that 40% of teams fail to deliver on expectations. That’s one big storm of disruption for Lloyds TSB to navigate.

Costs can be huge
The cost of such failure in lost opportunity terms can often amount to ten times the salary of the team and in banking circles that can be  huge! ( a team salary of £1million could produce a potential lost opportunity cost of £10m) However, when one’s focus on savings will be judged on salaries saved the actual costs of the restructure often get ignored.

That is until financial statistics reveal that further jobs have to be cut because the anticipated results haven’t been met!