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! 

After answering a question on leadership on LinkedIn I was advised that it would make a great blog entry. So here goes!

Building a great team is similar to opening a restaurant
I’ve spent thirteen years working with team leaders to make them effective and I often make the analogy that building a successful business team is similar to opening a restaurant to serve great food. It needs a capable, stable and motivated brigade in the kitchen as well as a team of people to serve the food and make the eating experience memorable.

The ingredients good or bad are often immediately noticeable by customers. If the team, in both the kitchen and front-of-house areas can’t work together then either the food or service will suffer and customers will IMMEDIATELY stay away in droves. 

Staff turnover a universal problem
The first task is to have a stable team. Staff turnover is a universal problem, and not just in the catering sector. Each new appointment seems to carry with it a high risk of failure.  Let’s explore why this is …

There seems to be three common mistakes that team leaders can make. The first is failing to communicate the results that are required from the team. Job descriptions provide an indication of the required results but success in a job depends upon the boss’s assessment. The team, therefore, needs to understand what constitutes a success in the boss’ eyes and how such success will be measured.

Gaining a clear understanding of what success looks like can be achieved by holding a series of meetings with the the team. As such they are best undertaken as formal 1:1 discussions, as opposed to short conversations over the coffee machine or at a team meeting.

The types of questions that need to be asked include:

·    How has the current situation reached this point?
·    What problems have been identified if the situation is not improved?
·    What actions the leader expects in the short and medium term?
·    What would constitute success in the leaders’ eyes?
·    How and when will performance be measured?

Understanding the leader
The second mistake is failing to communicate the boss’s management style. This means understanding how the leader likes to be communicated with and how often? What decisions the leader likes to make personally and what decisions are clearly delegated to individuals in the team?

Culture a major ingredient
A big mistake a leader can make is to ignore the culture of the business or not to consciously develop a culture for a new team. To ignore culture makes introducing change more difficult. In addition the leader needs to consider that all change will have an affect on other people, particularly in other areas in the organisation, so prior to making changes it’s important to consider the consequences both upstream and downstream.

Then there’s the aspect of training. A leader wanting to build a strong team needs to ensure that the team can deliver what’s expected. One of the lessons from Restaurants is that there’s little point in placing Duck a la Normande on the menu if the kitchen brigade haven’t the ability to cook it properly and restaurant team don’t know how to serve it.  (Or what it is).

Now, isn’t that a recipe for business success?

I was not surprised to recently read that graduates aged around 29 feel unappreciated, unrewarded and unless it changes are about to leave the games field (their current employers) and take their ball with them.

As we know generation Y refers to people born between 1985 and 2000 and if one believes the Great Expectations Report published by ILM and Ashridge Business School their expectations of employment aren’t being met.

They had better get used to it
When I told a friend of this his reply was “Well, they had better get used to it. Who’s expectations are being met in this current business climate” and then went on to talk about the “poor products” that come out of universities and business schools that I thought a bit harsh.

However, the research in the report states that 45% of the group believe their salaries are below expectations. 38% think their career opportunities disappointing and that over one third (40%) will be thinking of leaving their current job within twelve months.

Talent pipeline
Whilst this report shouldn’t be a surprise, as far as my experience goes if you ask any group of employees if they are happy a large proportion won’t be and will be looking for employment elsewhere. However, for businesses trying to create a pipeline of talent able to be the managers of the future the thing I would suggest is not to panic. Some turnover is good and if you’re hanging onto the majority of the employees you find most useful through targeted actions then it’s as good as one can hope for.

Then again there was the useful piece of advice from the ILM Chairman Peter Cheese, “How employee groups are managed is integral to holding onto them.”
Now there’s something new!

One of my best friends popped in for dinner last night. Over drinks we talked about how his business was managing with the financial downturn. Increases in unemployment, London riots and business difficulties were all discussed but I was delighted when he told me that his business was “Doing better than expected”. I heard about the new business plan that I expect will generate a healthy growth for the next year.

“What keeps me awake at night”
He’s managed to avoid laying people off work and whilst he wasn’t hiring people he was intending to restructure his team. The thing that was keeping him awake at night was that the restructure might cause some of his good people to leave. “I know jobs are hard to find right now but good people are still able to move quite easily” he explained.

5 Point Plan solution
After discussing much of the content of an article I wrote some months ago HERE for IQPC we talked about strategies for retaining his good people. In the end we settled on a five point plan. It would be specific to detail in this blog post but if you’d like to hear how we arrived at the solution then email me at stephen@assimilating-talent.com and we can arrange a SKYPE call and I can fill you in. 

A few days ago I answered a question on delegation on LinkedIn and then on Friday was having a robust discussion on delegation with a friend in my network and thought I would share the discussion with you.

“Delegating could harm a career and promotion prospects”
Was the statement made by the senior manager in my network. He reasoned that obvious errors cost the business money and impacted on mission critical outcomes. Then with the time taken to recover from from errors delegating tasks took up valuable management time and could “harm his career and promotion prospects”.

“Management style didn’t encourage mistakes”
It seemed that his “management style”, and that of the business, didn’t tollerate mistakes. I pointed out that if the management don’t tollerate mistakes then there will be little room for experimentation. If people can’t experiment then, those that use experimentation to learn, will become frustrated and tend to leave to businesses that will allow it.

Experimentation is healthy. It’s how we learn to improve at any hobby, computer programme and game, even how to socialise and make friends. But, it seems that when people become managers they often have to be trained in how to encourage and manage it.

In any event lack of experimentation, from my experience, only helps competitors forge ahead with more efficient processes, products and customer focussed thinking.

The process
I explained the process my mentors showed me and which I’ve have adopted and train:

a) Discuss the subordinate’s idea with them. Be open minded, highlight potential problems as you see them, business issues and consequences of success and failure.

b) If the subordinate still wants to proceed then discuss the process they will be using and then provide support (physical as well as verbal) and have a plan to pick up the pieces.

c) If the subordinate is successful. congratulate and say how delighted you are and tell everyoneone else what a success it’s been. If it’s not a success then discuss the reasons with the person, then ask how they intend to recover the situation. Again provide increased support but don’t blame, chastise or bad mouth to others – (after all you made the decision to allow the experimentation and would have looked good if it had succeeded).

d) Turn the entire process, success or failure, into a learning situation by analysing what went right / wrong with the subordinate and what could be done differently next time. Either way make the subordinate “feel good” about the process and your support.

I’m not sure my friend was convinced by my arguments. Then I must admit he’s been secure in his current job for the past twelve years, despite higher than average team turnover and mediocre company results and doubtless will be there for a good while longer!

I was asked a question on LinkedIn and this is a brief outline of my answer that I thought those in my network might find interesting

For many people there is a direct relationship with management
capability and high staff turnover. In my opinion, however, there also needs to be other
considerations before one always blames team managers.

Too often, in my experience, blame is placed on “Salary” as a reason why talent leaves when in fact the real reasons are in the company’s power to prevent. A motivating statistic is that when a talented individual
leaves the RISK that further talent will follow increases by 50%.