Monday 5 December 2016

Southern Rail: one of Baldrick's 'cunning plans.'

I had a conversation recently with a close friend who'd been trying to get a resolution to a customer complaint with a major retailer for nearly two weeks.  Phone calls and emails had all been ignored and the complaint was nowhere near resolution.  Then they sent a tweet and the tweet said:

"[company]'s customer service equals that of Southern Rail"

Within five minutes there was a response via twitter.  Before the end of the day a phone call was made by a senior member of the customer complaints team and the problem had been rectified.  When asked why they'd responded so quickly when they'd ignored my friend for two weeks, the answer was surprising.

"We don't want to be associated with Southern Rail."

Nothing to do with the immediacy of twitter then and all to do with reputation.

At the edge of despair

Those who live within the Southern Rail network are at the edge of despair.  People are losing their jobs, businesses are losing money or growth is being dampened.  Roads are clogged even more than usual as people leave the railway network in droves, as even on non-strike days the service cannot be relied upon.

One has to question the business operating model where you rely on staff doing overtime to provide a basic service but even putting that to one side, how can a company with the remit for essential infrastructure go for nearly a year with industrial dispute after industrial dispute and still have the confidence of its shareholders and the government?  It certainly hasn't got the confidence of its staff or its customers.

As one who has suffered from the growing tragedy of these disputes it's difficult to keep a non-biased head on my shoulders.  I'm not going to declare for one side or the other however in this duopoly (or should it be a triumvirate as the government is closely involved).  What I am going to point out is the blindness of all sides to the wider, long-term damage to the company, it's service offering and potential to regain its customer base.

The general public and businesses within the region now have little or no sympathy with the unions or management.  They have a growing anger that no one is prepared to be reasonable and the government, in the interests of the country, will not step in.  With the shadowy non-franchise/management arrangements, there would appear to be no financial urgency for the company to settle and rumours that it's really about unions v government abound. 

Baldrick's 'cunning plan'

Some are asking whether, in the words of  Blackadder's Baldrick, it's all "a cunning plan" to reduce the number of travellers because the network can't cope, and never will be able to cope with the growing passenger numbers.

If this truly was a sketch show it could be funny.  But it isn't a sketch show, and it isn't funny.

As a sop, season ticket holders are to get a free month's travel equivalent.  Financial compensation for travellers does not save jobs, does not boost the economy and, importantly, does not restore customers' faith in the service.  I also heard this week that the other rail companies around the country are secretly disheartened with the dispute as it has a negative knock-on to their own business plans. 

And now the magnitude of the issue is being writ large when national companies with no connection to the rail industry see Southern Rail as a pariah, something they do not wish to be associated with to any degree.  With customer satisfaction rates through the floor, rumours aplenty, industrial relations at a nadir, peer group businesses' disquiet and well-known national names distancing themselves one has to ask, "Is this any way to run a business?"   

Friday 16 September 2016

Why reputation matters

Just today we hear of Chrysler recalling 1.9m cars because of an airbag defect and Samsung withdrawing their exploding note7 phones.  As a result their share prices tumble and consumer confidence weakens impacting on future sales. IT software programs are released and then updates are a regular feature as glitches are revealed through customer use.  Car manufacturers apologise for 'fixing' emission readings.   Headlines hit the news media as problem after problem arises.

It seems as though there's more of these being reported than every before so is this just because it's flavour of the month for the media to find 'bad business' stories or is there a growing trend of decreasing reliability of design and performance?  Has the rush to market meant that products are being issued without proper testing?  And what does this do to business reputations?

You could argue that it doesn't do anything to reputation.  Coffee drinkers still go to Starbucks, books and DVDs are still purchased from Amazon despite the furore over taxes and proposed boycotts.   Sure their revenue dipped for a while but it soon rectified itself.  Volkswagen still sell cars.  As far as the consumer is concerned it's business as usual and it's the city boys that fret and wring their hands because there's a paper movement in share price. What difference does it make to the general consumer, apart from a little inconvenience because the car's in the garage for a half-day.

It matters because there's a psychological contract with your customer.  The customer puts a lot of time, energy and thought into their purchase. A strong, unassailable reputation makes that choice considerably easier and can often support a price point that's higher than the competition.  Have the tiniest of snags in that contract and it's like having a pin prick in a piece of cling film.  The security seal is damaged.  Not only that, have another piece of bad news and that tiny pin prick will soon develop into a hole and the hole into a tear.  Once the contract is torn you're swimming with the rest of the fish in a very deep ocean.

It's damage limitation for companies that have defects; damage limitation to reputation through apologies and mea-culpa and then the cost of rectifying the problem with the product and relaunch. Undertake a cost benefit analysis of that whole process and I wonder if by investing similar time and money into ensuring the product or service is right in the first place would cancel it all out.  Plus it would mean that the reputation that matters so much, remains unassailable.

Monday 8 August 2016

The business that is the Olympics

The Olympics are upon us once more.  Records will be broken, there'll be disputes, accusations of cheating, celebration of success.  Search for any combination of behaviours, systems and processes, targets and league tables, management and leadership and you'll find it in abundance in the whirlpool that is the Olympics.  And one thing you can be certain of, is that things change.

They change from Olympics to Olympics, from discipline to discipline, from day to day.  What strategy you would have had on Monday could be out of the window come Tuesday.  So how do those in positions of leadership cope with the changes?

Perhaps one of the keys can be found in the British Swimming Team and the amazing story of our first gold medal winner of the games, Adam Peaty.

You may recall that there has been a history of difficulties between the coach and the team even back in the days of Beijing. London 2012 was a particularly disappointing medal haul and the team were accusing of being 'molly coddled'  Significant changes were made at the top with new appointments which heralded a new way of working and thinking.  I wanted to pick out three key statements made in a recent interview to The Independent by head coach Bill Furniss.

"We are more focused"

“We work on resilience"

"Setting targets is futile because there is no accounting for what the opponent may achieve"

There is no question that the first statement, focusing on what's important, is central to good leadership and good strategy.   We too often got caught up in the 'noise' that surrounds us which leads to a dissipation of effort and energy into less productive activities. The clarity you gain by focus enables you to make better use of your resources to greater effect.

Resilience is often neglected.  Invariably it's the hard slog that drives down motivation, numbs creativity yet it's the hard slog that's required.  With swimming it's the hours of trawling up and down the pool, spending time in the gym to perfect technique and gain maximum fitness.  It's the same in business.  If you don't develop resilience then where's the inner drive to keep going when things get difficult?

The third might be seen as more controversial.  After all we live our business lives with targets, performance management, KPIs.  What's important to support this approach is the following comment from him. "Swim your best performance of the season and your life when it counts... do that and I'll be a happy chappy ... we will count the medals at the end of the week."

You know your competitor's strengths and weaknesses up to a point.  What you cannot account for is individual performance at specific times which can throw all previous thinking out of the window.  Your competitor might be that much quicker at responding to a crisis, or opportunity than you which means they take the lead.

This is practical, motivational, supportive leadership from Furniss.  He has instilled within the organisation a culture of focus, resilience and released the psychological and potentially negative burden of targets.  Instead he's offered them  the positive driver of doing your best when it counts". 

He didn't select Ross Murdoch, the Commonwealth champion because of a poor time in trials. Murdoch didn't perform to his best when it counted.  It was controversial but it set the marker and the team are responding to it.

Peaty knew when it counted and he's got the Olympic gold medal as a result.   

Wednesday 6 July 2016

Chilcot: Deceit and lies revealed?

Chilcot has reported and the facts are laid bare.  The headlines don't tell us anything that we didn't know already but the detail within the report is damning.

It would be too easy to use the report as an example of failure in numerous fields from robustness of data to strategic planning.  Now is not the time - perhaps in a few months that can be considered and similarities made with business operations.  For now I want to focus on one thing and that is Tony Blair's insistence that he took the right decision.

Not that the decision was based on flawed information, which is how so many commentators are looking at it, but to his state of mind.

It must be a terrible burden to know that your decision resulted in the death of thousands, tens of thousand of people.  It must be appalling to know that your decision has ruined hundreds of thousands of other lives around the world.  How then do you protect yourself from the terror of taking that decision?  How do you protect your sanity?

You do what Tony Blair has done.  Express remorse and sorrow for the result arising from the decision but stick fast to the mantra that it was the right one.  To admit it was the wrong one opens the door to unthinkable despair.

We can only speculate on his motivations for taking the decision he took.  Whether it was ego driven or not; whether it was a fundamentalist view of justice and retribution or not; whether it was an overwhelming fear of slaughter in his homeland or not.  Perhaps he has pondered for himself on those motivations.  If he has then his unconscious mind would protect him by convincing him that it was done for positive intent.

Has he lied?  Do we lie to ourselves when we take decisions?  Do we deceive ourselves to protect ourselves? To some extent I would say yes.  There are decisions taken which, on reflection we know were wrong.  Depending on the scale of that decision we either shrug it off on the one hand or gradually persuade ourselves that we couldn't have done anything else on the other.  

Fortunately we are not in a position where our decisions have the enormously negative impact on so many individuals as Iraq and I for one am thankful for that.  Tony Blair was, and there is only one way that he can survive.

Monday 27 June 2016

3 top tips for leadership during turmoil

The UK is in a mess.  That seems to be the general consensus of opinion amongst the 'experts' that no one wanted to listen to, who predicted slumps in the pound, stock market crashes and everything else as a result of Brexit.  And it seems that the doom mongers are right.  Or are they?

Whatever the longer-term outcomes arising from Brexit the reality is that we are going through turmoil and this is a period when leaders are needed more than ever before.

It's not easy though, especially when there is so much uncertainty, so much 'mess' around.  It's difficult to get things into focus.  If it's not easy when you have a superior to report to who can act as your guide or signpost, then it's hugely difficult when you're at the top on your own with others expecting you to have all the answers.

Here's 3 top tips for those who are in that position.

Step away from the hysteria
The present situation has been whipped up over the weeks, mainly by a media that likes stark headlines, and reinforced by reporting over the last few days. Individuals can be caught in the subliminal message that's being portrayed that catastrophe is just around the corner and when enough people get sucked into that you get group hysteria which feeds upon itself.  Time will stop it but as a leader you don't have time.  Step away from the group to maintain perspective.  Resist the conversations that merely reinforce a negative scenario and introduce a reasonable, tone neutral clarification of what's happening. Beak the hysteria loop and model calm thinking for others to follow.

Keep an eye on the facts
Leaders have to have an umbrella view, to scan their own horizons and to do that you need to know the true facts and figures.   Ignore the hyperbole and focus on the specifics for your business. Ensure that others know the facts relevant to the business and discussions are held on the realities of the situation.  If your business doesn't rely on activity within the stock market then be aware but park it and ensure others do too.  If you're reliant on a certain exchange rate for your profit margins, analyse what will happen when it changes from x to y or z and have plans in place for that.  If a major customer is exposed as a result of Brexit then you'll put contingency plans in place in case they crash - as you would do for any client who might be at risk at any other time.  Good horizon scanning is a critical part of leadership and Brexit is just one of the factors that you should have been looking at in any event.

Show empathy
In a period of turmoil people look for certainty.  They're afraid of what might happen because they feel they're not in control.  They'll be worried about their own job security, their mortgages, savings, whether they can still go on holiday, that their neighbour or family member voted the other way and there's the possibility of division because of it.  Show that you understand their uncertainty, offer them options wherever possible so they can start to get a little control in their lives: let them explore how they can react if there is disharmony with their neighbours for example, how they can defuse an argument before it begins (it'll be useful within the business too!), include them in your own planning for the future of the business.  Show them a bit more attention, use your emotional intelligence and it will pay dividends.

Of course it's more complex than that and you'll have your own uncertainties.  How can you be that rock of support and leadership when you're not sure if you're doing the right thing?

So here's an extra tip for you - appoint a coach because now is the time when they come into their own.  Now, more than ever you need someone who can provide you with a protected space where you can explore the complexities of things to come, have accountability and focus on what's important for your business so you can ride the waves of turmoil in the months and years to come.

Friday 24 June 2016

David Cameron - a flawed leader

So the nation has decided and we're leaving the European Union.  David Cameron took the biggest gamble of his life, it didn't pay off and now he's paying the price.  What does that say about Cameron as a leader?

He's always been known as 'lucky Dave' or 'the Teflon Tory' as he's managed to smoothly charm his way through the party machinery to become their Leader and in effect the CEO of UK plc.  The question is now, was he up to the job, with all the complexity it entailed?

The reality is that a great CEO has to be a master tactician and strategist - or to have the insight, intelligence and wisdom to have the people around him who are. In this instance his strategy was flawed.

He had the referendum in the party manifesto - the corporate aims and objectives if you like, as a means of controlling a difficult batch of people below him.  Whilst compiling this, he bargained on not being able to put it into practice because there would be another coalition.  Could a good CEO have read the runes more correctly?  A good tactician would have had a back-up plan just in case the umbrella view of the environment hadn't been accurate.

Then he gave out a corporate message, as he'd done successfully so many times before, that there would be negotiations within the global corporation of Europe which would win the day.  Again he underestimated his influence and negotiating ability in an arena that was vastly more complicated than the one in which he'd been used to dealing.

And then the referendum campaign significantly failed, not only in the result but also it's running which merely served to distort and divide UK plc so that he had no option other than to step down.

The reality is that a failed strategy is the graveyard of many a CEO.  UK plc requires not just a good CEO but a great one. Cameron had a year where he was leading without the support of a deputy CEO in the guise of Nick Clegg.  That year has cruelly shown the level of his talents and he now joins the list of those corporate CEOs who got it wrong and were not up to the job.

Monday 23 May 2016

The battle for the EU is between dourness and creativity

With a week to go before the UK decides whether to stay in or out of Europe what's struck me is not the 'he said, I said' almost child-like approach to the arguments (you'll notice that's entirely male driven by the way) but an infinitely more subtle and perhaps powerful indicator of our unconscious thought processes.

It's the battle of the dour against the creative.

On the one hand we have several highly charismatic individuals within the leave campaign who can utter the wildest of statements and yet the general public seem not to notice how absurd they are. Their opponents will point out these absurdities, possibly ignoring any nuggets of truth there might be in these or other statements by the gregarious team.  The literati may recognise the absurdities too and externally berate them - but internally...?

On the other hand we have the staid, solid, fact driven crew of the stay campaign. They talk of opportunity but these are swamped by their own dire warnings of chaos and confusion in just as florid a language (for them) as their opponents.  These too are ignored by the general public.  The statements sit there, like cold porridge on a plain white dish neither offering any gems or enticement to partake.

What is that attracts us to one or the other camp?  What can they do to encourage others to change their minds, to come to a decision to vote one way or the other?  And this aspect, this is where it gets really, really interesting.

There's four styles of learning which aid our decision making and only one of these really fit the staid, solid, fact driven campaign.  Similarly there's four types of preferred communication styles and again, only one of those really fits the fact driven campaign.

The balance lies more with the visual appeal of a wind-blown Boris or beer hugging, grinning Nigel . Their tone of voice, their buoyancy, yes their outlandish statements, appeal to the emotion more than cold, hard fact driven mantra by Osborne & co who, by the way, aren't even the leaders of the stay campaign.

It's the patriarch trying to suppress the upstart teenager.

The stay campaign offers little in the way of community.  Who wants to be part of a group of people who talk fear?  The leave campaign offers much to our social needs of fun, collective protest and group identity.  You may think them outrageous and to some, positively dangerous, but you still listen, comment and engage.   Do you get just as excited by the remain utterances?  I think not.

Now it might be that as we get closer to the date of the vote that the tenor of the campaigns shift. It's also true that all the pre-vote excitement could naturally level out and equal attention given to both sides. Wise heads may well prevail and the facts from both sides debated sensibly.

I suspect though, unless and until the stay campaign finds charismatic individuals to speak up, to level the playing field as it were, the chances of there being rational, intelligent discourse and debate is slim.  That plays into the most primitive instinct we have - emotion.  It will be emotion that makes the ultimate call on 23 June.  The winner will be the side that taps into our emotions.

Thursday 5 May 2016

Can football teach us a thing or two about leadership in business?

There's been a little bit of excitement around the UK these past few days and it's got something to do with football and a team in a town that hitherto has been known for it's car park King.

The manger of this football club has taken a team that was languishing at the bottom of the pile to championship level - it's reached the magic 4% of market leaders - and some would argue within the football fraternity that it IS the market leader.  So how has that been done?

Claudio Ranieri leads a team that knows how to recognise talent.  Once they recognise talent, they know how to nurture it to gain commitment and dedication to the club, the organisation and to their sport.  He's managed to do this using, by comparison with others in the field, a very small budget.

How many leaders of corporations or organisations do you know that have managed to achieve that?

Then they have the ability to think strategically, to know their competitor's weaknesses and to take advantage of that.

They have been able to take the brand away from it's industry to make it a household name.  I'm not a football person by any stretch of the imagination yet here I am writing about it.  That's success.

They have been able to focus on what's important, on the factors that made their team the most successful in the business this year.  To go from a no-hoper, to a possible, to a probable, to the top.

That's success.

That's leadership.

To find out more about leadership and focus go to our website www.mtc2.co.uk














Thursday 17 March 2016

The big snooze?

What was it like for you?  The 2016 Budget that is.  Earth shattering? A bit of a damp squid?  Well, it all depends on your perspective.  This morning, I'm picking out a couple of my highlights.


For the punter in the street the normal trigger points of beer, wine and whisky taxes were stroked, some positively, some negatively but overall nothing excessive.  Oh, apart from the fuel duty which will please everyone, drivers and business alike.


For the savers, and we know that pensions is a long-standing time-bomb that no Chancellor has managed to defuse, the life-time ISAs to encourage savings might please the IFAs and their kin.  Although I'm concerned about abolishing the Money Advice Service, that's supported a mountain of vulnerable individuals with their finances.  Which leads me on to...


For the public sector and those who rely on their services, the dire forecasts of savage budget cuts and more of the same?  Well they're only just starting to hit from the last lot and now there's more to come, although quite what they will be...      


The sugar tax.  Ah yes, the sugar tax.  Nice headlines from that.  Although we've got another few years to rot our teeth and increase the diabetes risk before that's put in place.  It's not an eye-opener though, most in the industry were accepting this would be coming down the line some time soon and so would already be putting their strategies in place.


Likewise investment in the infrastructure.  That will be a welcome boost to our industries, particularly in relation to road and rail, yet these are long, long-term plans, dependent on the political machinations of times to come, and so won't have an immediate effect on the economy.


Turning all schools into academies - for those in education, again the tide's been running that way for a number of years so it's no surprise.


Now for the smaller businesses, the small engines of entrepreneurship that keep our economy ticking over.  They're the biggest winners of the lot with rate relief, the major conurbations being able to retain their business rates for local investment, increased promise of reductions in corporation tax and abolishing of the Insurance Class 2 stamp.  It's a dodgy wicket though, with Osborne relying on income from the blue chips to help pay for it.


Will it mean big changes in how you run your business?  With the OBR downgrading the economic forecast, and 'those in the know' saying the country's productivity growth is permanently damaged, for SME's probably not.  For the big boys?  Well that's different, with the Chancellor's stated intent to chase them down for tax avoidance (although he's tried to do that before with little success) they will be looking again at their strategies and see if what they are already doing will fit, or whether they need to consider something anew.


And finally, for the economy as a whole? Well unless there's public confidence in the country's stability, belief by the individual that they've got secure employment, or that their zero contracts or minimal wage or compensatory benefits are not going to be cut, cut and cut again, no-one will be spending any money.  And that, that my friends, is the biggest risk of all. 

Thursday 11 February 2016

It's a matter of trust

The headlines are fired up today and the news channels alive with the news of the imposition of new contracts on junior doctors in the NHS. It's the latest stage of a three-year saga of claims, counter-claims, negotiations, hopes, disappointments and effort. I say latest, because even though it seems to be a final announcement, I suspect it's anything but.

How has this come to pass?

Obviously not being part of the inner-circle I can only offer my own perceptions on what could, or might, have happened here. And that's the point. It's down to perceptions. Perceptions of their own and each other's values, perceptions of position, power and status, perceptions of what's right, or not. Perceptions of truth and reality, perceptions of what was on offer and what was not, perceptions of how far the other side would bend or remain firm. Perceptions of trust.

This is where I think it has all fallen down. Trust is critical to any negotiation, whether it's public or private sector, it's critical to any productive relationship and trust is now all too lacking in this sad, sad stand-off. Was it ever there?

To understand how difficult it has become let's unpick the multiple levels of trust in this situation.

6 Levels of Trust

The first is the trust that the general public has about the NHS, our most major of institutions and, for anyone who has lived outside of the UK, one of its most precious.

The second is the level of trust in one particular section of the NHS - it's doctors. Trust from the general public, the individual patient, between colleagues and between the medical hierarchy.

The third is trust between the doctors and their representatives, in this case the BMA. The fourth is between the Minister and his advisors, his parliamentary colleagues and his own boss.

The fifth level of trust is between the press and its readers, whether it reports fairly and impartially and how it's used, or abused by interested parties.

And finally the sixth between the BMA and the Department of Health and, importantly the public face of the DoH, the Minister.

It's a complex beast isn't it, Trust? It takes careful nurturing to build and the slightest whiff to bring it down. A word, a phrase, a look can smash trust when emotions are raised or confidence is lacking in oneself. The individual then perceives the other in a negative frame, not willing or able to see that there might be a different interpretation. The language becomes gladiatorial: winning the battle, retreating, stepping back, stepping down, taking a stand.

Will trust be regained? It appears, and again I emphasis that this is my perception based on what the press have allowed me to read and hear, that the first four levels of trust will hold. The fifth is still shaky but the sixth, ah the sixth.

Which strategy to follow next?

How will the government respond? Once they've stood by the Minister to get the contract imposed what will happen in the succeeding months? Will they quietly move him on to allow a new face to re-build trust? Sometimes that is the only thing that can be done, regardless of the abilities of the individual. Or will the BMA re-think their approach, accept that this time they misjudged the situation and quietly settle on a new understanding, re-think their strategy of how to proceed the next time negotiations need to be undertaken?

Whatever the outcome, damage has occurred and both sides need to think long and hard about how they operate in the future. What's true for these protagonists is also true with any business negotiation.