CHAPTER 13

Change: How about…the People Inside?

But we haven’t yet finished with introspection. There is no point being radical in the world if you haven’t first and continuously been radical back home. Are there any tasks or processes within your business that need a fresh perspective in making them better? And let’s divert here for a second. Continuously radical is a commitment you make to yourself to constantly re-examine every facet of your business to see if there’s a better way. Better doesn’t need to mean leading edge—the best data capture device we ever created was for a group of florist shops, to collect all the delivery notes, supplier invoices, and suchlike needed by HQ and which were frequently going astray. It was a humble spike. Once spiked, none of these documents were ever lost, and when finally released, they provided a complete record. An additional bonus was the documents were also already filed chronologically, which, when dealing with queries, proved invaluable too.

What Do They Do?

We have assumed above that you do actually know what each person does. There is a theory that effective management/delegation best follows the rule of seven, meaning each person to have no more than seven direct reports. If you have seven and each of those have up to seven themselves, you have a maximum sized company if evenly spread across activities of 1 + 7 + (7 × 7) = 57 people, before necessarily creating another level. If you are fewer than 57 souls, it must be reasonable for us to assume you know what they all do. Because if you don’t, then we suspect you already have legacy passengers or position fillers.

Of course the rule might simply be a piece of MBA speak we’re working so hard to avoid, but it does ring true with many of the companies we know and work with. Up to that sort of number in your team, you should know what’s going on in some detail.

Maybe Hire Slowly, Fire Fast?

The chances are, as you spend time deliberating over letting go of a person, who may not be up to your usual high standards, you will lose five plus of your better people. The reality is these better people will be frustrated working with this person that doesn’t match their high standards either. And what’s going through their minds is that they shouldn’t waste their talents working for a business that tolerates a person like that. The best people want to work with other great people. Seeing your tolerance of subpar performance signals to them, they are in the wrong place. The best people are always the first to prioritize their careers and move on.

Callous and cruel perhaps, but if these JIC people are eating into your profits, contributing less in return, and tempting your best people to leave, then they’re not part of the business; they’re part of the problem. If you are actually into charitable giving, then we think you are entitled to pick a charity of your choice, rather than it being chosen for you by continuing with these people.

When we were employed in a national coffee business with sales offices and warehouses nationally, it acquired a rival national business working from a single center. Our fellow directors wanted to retain the acquired business premises and team JIC. The authors argued successfully against this and proposed that by passing out the acquired company’s customers to the existing regional operations, it improved their efficiency, whilst for the customers, it offered better service through its own higher quality people. It made no sense to keep the acquired premises, nor its people JIC. JIC of what? It would be like hiring people en masse which would have lowered internal standards. It’s better to hire slowly, being as sure as possible the new hires fit/exceed the standards set by your team.

Before you rush to fill that vacant spot, how can you truly figure out if the candidate truly can walk the walk on personal accountability:

What Do They Think Needs to Change?

A few braver, bolder owners/CEOs of businesses we know make it a habit, usually on a monthly basis, of taking a recently hired member of staff out to lunch. Not the same person. The idea here is to rotate this one-on-one right through the company, and it’s not to be a direct report either because there should be ample one-on-ones with such people in the normal course of business engagement.

Now it is very nice if this is a new hire, because it is a great way to make them feel really welcome to the company—but no, leave that responsibility/honor/pleasure to his/her line manager. Though do make sure this does happen. No, instead you want to get them three to six months in—you’ll know the timing better than us—when they know pretty much how your business ticks and their part in it, they still remain enthusiastic and haven’t quite forgotten their previous career and the inspired parts of it. Of course if they are already moaners and have left their enthusiasm way behind—there’s a different conversation to be had, and it’s not over lunch!

And no, it is not simply good enough for you to make the observation that you were involved in the individual’s recruitment, and that you have exchanged the odd greeting around the water-cooler. What you want is to let them tell you the good and the bad as they see it now, which means you must shut up and listen. Sure, you will often have to set a framework, prompting at different times to have them focus their commentary on their job, their line manager, anything they want to tell you as the bigger boss, and so on. They might have methods or ideas they remember from previous employment that could benefit the business or have become aware of wasteful processes within their current role. After all, we shouldn’t have to constantly reinvent the wheel.

You should also allow them to eat the odd morsel before their lunch gets cold. In return, you’ll be able to feed back to them, between mouthfuls of dessert, what a great job they’re doing, noting minor course corrections and so on. You will doubtless know all the facts to support this piece, because we can be certain that all of this will have been told to you by their line manager, just before the lunch in question. We never cease to be surprised how often the manager—operationally between you and your guest—suddenly realizes you’re lunching with someone in his or her team and feels the urge to brief you.

The purpose of the lunch is to have a clear understanding of what’s really going on in your business from a people perspective and therefore be able to continuously make informed decisions on people matters. And, when you do gird your loins and go for a big-bang change, to know the right things you will have to do to keep the right people.

Strange, but nice strange, things happen when you do this sort of thing. We authors know of a CEO who lunched with one of his sales clerks and, directly from her resultant enthusiasm, she introduced from her own circle of contacts the three next hires for the company. And of another CEO who took the accounts assistant to lunch with the above intentions and later married her.

What Are They Saying?

As a rule, people rarely complain to you about the person standing between them and you in the company hierarchy unless that third person is rude, abusive, demanding sexual favors, or displaying other inappropriate behavior. If that third person is simply hopeless, or ineffective, or not listening and responding to comments from below, there’s every chance you won’t be told. Sure, that lowly worker will sound off to his contemporaries, his family, his drinking buddies, or whatever—maybe even looking for another job elsewhere, but he or she won’t tell you, the only person who can actually change things.

So listen carefully to subtexts in any encounter you have with those outside of your direct reports.

One other way of barometer checking is the company meeting. Invite everyone, make it during working hours, and after updating, praising actions, and announcing business developments to the multitude, open the room up to discussion on ideas for improving the business. Obviously respond to what is being said, but try to also be aware of any sections of your business not contributing en masse as they might be suppressing comments or obeying line manager orders. Similarly, be alert to where suggestions from a section don’t seem to get a ringing endorsement and support in the same meeting from the person who nominally heads that activity.

And please not just the one meeting. They should probably be a regular occurrence and you can bet in the first meeting, there’ll be a lot of nervousness and reluctance that slowly dissolve as people begin to feel more comfortable with such sessions over time. And if that all seems too formal for your liking, have an “impromptu” meeting whenever there is a new hire to welcome on board or when you have just won a major contract or whatever. Don’t make it a session in a local bar. It is not the right place to discuss company secrets quite apart from the fact some might not enjoy (or perhaps be old enough to enjoy) a bar atmosphere.

Pause: Did you make notes of things in the Action This Today section in the back of this book? If not, please take this opportunity to review the prior pages to identify again any thoughts and ideas you want to follow up on.