• Do you feel that you always seem to be short of time?
• Do you often feel you have too much to do?
• Do you then feel guilty about what you don’t get done?
• Do you find yourself struggling under piles of paperwork?
• Has the advent of e-mail and mobile phones just added to the burden?
• Do you go home some days and wonder just what you have achieved?
• Do you sometimes feel stressed with all the things you have to do?
• Do you work overtime, or into evenings and weekends just to cope with it all?
• Could you use a few more hours in the day?

Well, the tips and techniques described here are bound to help you. In fact, if you follow the tips given here religiously, you will give yourself at least an extra hour of effective time every working day.  Indeed, that’s what will happen if you just follow Tip No. 1 by itself.  It proved so effective for Bill Schwab, he paid his consultant thousands of dollars for that one idea alone. But in this case, it won’t cost you a penny!

And just think about what that extra hour actually means.  One extra hour a day amounts to over 20 extra hours a month, around 240 hours a year, or around six extra working weeks a year!  Do you think if someone gave you an extra six weeks to use just as you saw fit, you could get some useful things done? I’ll bet you could!  Well, now’s your opportunity.

So, let’s get on to the practical advice  straight away.

Tip No. 1  –  The Schwab Action List

Way back in the 1920’s Andrew Carnegie was one of the most famous millionaires in America.  He owned the Bethlehem Steel Company which produced rails for the American railroads.  He employed as his chief executive a man called William Schwab, whose ability in managing and motivating people he admired so much, he paid him a salary of $1 million a year!  Imagine what that would be worth today.  (I can tell you : it’s $35 million in 2025 money.)

A management consultant once approached Schwab claiming he had an idea which would help him and his senior executives get more done with their valuable time. He said he did not want to charge Schwab any fee  ‑  he simply wanted him to try the idea for a month or so, and then pay him what he thought it was worth.  After only three weeks’ trial Schwab sent the consultant a cheque for $25,000. That’s worth more than $400,000 in today’s money.  Some idea!  So what was it?

This is what the consultant told Schwab :

Every evening make a list of all the things that are on your mind, and on which you need to work the following day.  Don’t leave anything out. The order does not matter. Then decide what are the first three things you will work on, and write the numbers 1, 2, 3 against them. Don’t go any further than that.

Next day :

1) Start on number one.

2) Do not start on number two until you have finished number one!  

That’s it.  There’s no more to say.  That’s the whole story.

It all seems so simple. Why did Schwab find it so useful, why did he think it was worth so much money?  Well, the act of writing everything down and applying numbers to your tasks forces you into deciding your priorities every day, to decide what is most important to get done, and in what order.  Instead of going home at night thinking: ‘I really should have got that done today’, you will know you got down to the really important things first.

That’s why Schwab liked it so much. He spent a lot less of his day on time-wasting trivialities  ‑  he really got major things done.  If a manager like Schwab –  already paid $1 million then because he was such a great manager  –  thinks this idea is worth today’s equivalent of $750,000, then it is clearly worth thinking about.

I have used this system personally for years, and I have to say, of all the tactics I’ve ever used for managing my time, this is the most useful of the lot.  It’s both simple and it works.  However, here are a few extra tips and points about the system which you will find useful.

3) Compose your list the night before.

When you do that, and without your doing anything active about it, you will find your subconscious mind begins to work on the items, both as you go home, and overnight too. Then, having incubated them silently overnight, you will often find ideas popping out next day which will help you handle problems more effectively.  In addition, you will find yourself preparing for a prompt start as you travel in to work, as you already know what you are going to be working on. That way you spend less time on office chatter and other distractions and get down to work straight away.

4) Put everything you can think of down on your list.

Have you ever been working on an item, but something else you haven’t done keeps nagging away at the back of your mind, and you can’t concentrate properly on what you are doing?  I suppose we’ve all done that.  Well, get it all down on the list  ‑ once you can see it down there, your mind will let it go and you’ll be able to concentrate much better on what you’re doing now.

5) Keep checking your priorities.

When you have finished with item number one, review your list and consider whether item two is still the next priority.  If it is, get straight on with it. However, a phone call might have added something urgent to the list in the meantime.  Or you suddenly remember something you should have been working on.  Just add the new item to your list, reconsider your 1, 2, 3, and start again on number one.

6) Resist the time-wasting trivia.

Because your lists are sometimes long, there will always be a tendency to ‘knock off’ a few of the trivial items first, just to make the list look shorter.  If you do that you’ll find you are half‑way through the morning and you still haven’t started on your real number one.  However, some relatively unimportant things may have to be done by a certain time  e.g. the post goes at four o’clock and you need to get something off that day.  Because you get to choose your next three items, you can use a mixture of both the urgent and the important. The system is very flexible.

7) Delegate!

Once you have used the system for a few weeks, you’ll realise that some items are never going to rise to the top. These are the candidates for delegation.  If you have an assistant, show them what needs to be done in detail, and let them handle these items permanently. If you have no subordinates, speak to your boss or colleagues about how you can find a different way of dealing with them.  Better still, if nothing much has happened as a result of going undone, consider dropping them altogether!

8) Just use one list.

Don’t use several lists for different purposes, just work off one list.  Keep it visible on your work surface all the time, and put a definite line through each item as you complete it.  Two useful psychological things will happen :

• There’s a great deal of satisfaction seeing yourself visibly getting through the work.
• Because everything you need to do is on the list, you will not feel guilty all day about the things you haven’t done yet  –  they will get done, but all in good time.

9) You have to practise.

You can’t play good tennis simply by reading the rules, you have to practise.  It’s the same here.  You will find, despite my warning you against it, there will be a great temptation every time to knock off trivial items before you get started on your number one, or to ‘just answer this e-mail’, or ‘just make this phone call’.  Resist that.  If it needs doing first, you should have made it your number one!  Stick with the priorities you yourself have decided.  And as you practise, you will find yourself getting better all the time.

Tip  No. 2  –  The Two-Ship Syndrome

Computer simulations often reveal useful new ways of tackling old problems. When I was involved some years ago helping to improve productivity in the docks, we conducted a computer study which demonstrated a simple truth which has influenced how I work ever since.  I have dubbed it The Two‑Ship Syndrome.  It’s illustrated on the next page.

Traditionally dock work has been measured in ‘gang shifts’ i.e. estimating how many shifts it would take for a gang of, say, eight men, to unload a particular cargo.  Imagine that two ships enter a port at the same time, each with ten gang shifts of unloading work. With only two gangs available, the dock manager would normally allocate one gang to each ship  –  that way no ship gets an unfair advantage, and each ship departs at the end of day ten.

Our computer simulations told us that was the wrong thing to do.  Despite the aggravation he might get from one ship’s master, the dock manager should allocate both gangs to one ship first.  With two gangs operating, Ship A would then depart in half the time (day five).  Both gangs should then transfer to Ship B.  It would not depart until day ten, of course, but under the old system it was always going to depart on day ten anyway!  The advantage is that by putting all his resources on to one vessel at a time, Ship A can depart much earlier, and the second ship is completed in the same time as before.

The implications of this simple but fundamental point can be quite far‑reaching.  The clear lessons are :

• Give all your resources and attention to one task at a time until it is completed. 
• Don’t keep several things going at one time  ‑  it is confusing, it makes life complicated, and it takes longer to get any one thing done. 
• Choose your first priority and stick with it until you are through.  Most important : there is no disadvantage to task number two if you stick with task one until it is complete.  It gets done in the same time as before.  But someone can be getting the benefit of your first piece of completed work while you are working on the second.
• There is no magic.  It is simply the best way to get the best productivity from your valuable time.

Tip No. 3  – Reactive Time and Proactive Time

Many people say they could arrange their time much better if it weren’t for other people  ‑  they are the real problem.  They send you letters that need replies, they call you to meetings, they send you endless e-mails, they phone at the most inconvenient times, and generally disrupt your day.

It is quite true that in organisations of any size, demands are made of you by your boss, colleagues, subordinates and others.  But clearly you all need to work together to make the whole business operate efficiently.  So you need to accept that much of your day will be taken up with reacting to other people’s requirements of you.  This is what is called reactive time, and just accept that in any organisation of any size, it is inevitable.

Once you accept mentally that this is an essential and inescapable part of everyone’s job, you will immediately feel less frustrated and less resentful that people are ‘stealing’ your precious time.  However, your in-basket is not the job!  You need to spend at least part of every day devoted to doing the important parts of your job, to delivering the results for which you are being paid  – that is called proactive time.

So, what should the proportions be exactly?   That depends on the job.  If you are a manager with a number of subordinates or colleagues with whom you have to interact, then perhaps less than 50 per cent of your time can be put in the ‘proactive’ category. The more senior you are the less likely you are able to control the amount of proactive time you get.  Then again, if you are serving customers face to face, more than 90 per cent of your time may be spent ‘reacting’ to their needs.  But that is the important part of the job  ‑  administration and working alone will come second.

Normally, you should be able to get in about two hours or more each day on the major objectives of your job, or on the ‘proactive’ tasks that will really make a difference to the performance of your department or your business.  If you cannot say what these objectives or tasks are off the top of your head, you need to spend time getting clear in your mind exactly what they are.  Otherwise you will definitely not be in control of your time or your life  ‑  you will simply be letting events and circumstances buffet you around willy‑nilly.

You can identify the ‘proactive’ tasks of your job by asking yourself questions like the following :

(a) What are the outputs required of my job?  In other words, what are the tangible results I am expected to deliver?

Note : We are not interested here in all the activities required to produce the result, only the result.  The task then is to minimise the activities required to produce the result.  That is the key to improved productivity.  You need to focus particularly on the outputs of the job.  For example, the output of a salesperson is not sales calls, but actual sales.  The first is only the means to the end, and the end is what you need to identify.

(b) What contributions can I, in my job, uniquely make to the organisation?

Every job will have unique contributions it can make to the organisation.  For example, a manager might be responsible for providing the right equipment and training to do a job, but the member of staff will be responsible for the quality of work they turn out.  That contribution is unique to them.  So, describe exactly what a quality job would look like in your case.  That is what the company is actually paying you for, and is what you should spend important time on.

(c) Who are my customers, and what do they expect of me?

In this sense, your customers are the people who get the result of your work.  They can be both internal and external.  If you don’t know exactly, you will get a lot of useful credit if you go and ask them.  Here’s what to ask them :

• What gets done well now which you appreciate and want me to continue?
• What could I do which might improve my service to you?
• If I were to concentrate on just two of these items, which would be most important to you?

By the way, don’t promise the earth, but the goodwill you generate, and the pointers you get on how you could spend your time effectively, will be invaluable. 

This is all about your proactive time, identifying the real value you can deliver to your organisation; and in knowing how to allocate your time, there is nothing more important. 

Tip No. 4  –  Getting Undisturbed Time

You may find it difficult ever to get enough uninterrupted time to get something major or worthwhile done. That is a common management problem. The only way you can regularly get some undisturbed time (UDT) is to make some agreements with your boss, colleagues and subordinates.  Here’s what one group of managers decided to do to get over the problem.

They agreed that they would take their UDT in chunks of one-and-a-half hours. Why one-and-a-half hours?  Because you can get something useful done if you don’t get disturbed for an hour-and-a-half.  And there is seldom anything so urgent that a colleague can’t wait for that length of time to speak to you without any real problem. 

Being in the insurance business this group of managers found they had a big pile of mail every morning, and they often had minor questions and problems to sort out first thing.  So they agreed they would all be available to each other early each morning.  Anyone having some UDT would take it between the hours of 11.30 and 1.00p.m. or between 2.30 and 4.00 p.m.

The arrangement means they all know when they can actually get some undisturbed time, and also when they can get their queries answered by their colleagues both morning and afternoon.  They all agreed to respect each other’s UDT  ‑ that’s important, or this system won’t work.  When a secretary says: “He’s taking some UDT”, they leave her boss alone. But they also know when they will be able to see to him that day, namely before 11.30, between 1.00 and 2.30, and again after 4.00 p.m. Since this group adopted the system, they find they can get all their little issues dealt with at three different times during the day, but they also find they can get much more done with their personal time.

There is a great tendency for the urgent to crowd out the important all the time. You know the syndrome  ‑  you rush about all day doing things but you feel you are ‘not really getting anything done’.  So, book some meetings with yourself.  If all you put in your diary is meetings with other people, you imply that time for yourself is less important than attending to everyone else’s needs.  So book your own time and fit the rest around it.  That way you’ll get some time for these essential positive tasks.

Don’t offend your colleagues by shutting yourself away and refusing to see them, however.  Otherwise you imply that anything you are doing is much more important than whatever they want to see you about.  They’ll just get back at you later by being ‘unavailable’ when you need them.  The better solution is to make agreements with them about when you will be regularly available, and about respecting each other’s UDT.

Some eighty years ago a mathematician called Pareto discovered that 80% of the wealth in Italy was owned by just 20% of the population. This has become known as ‘Pareto’s Law’, or the 80/20 rule.   In business this shows as a tendency for a relatively small proportion of factors to have the greatest impact on results. For example, many companies find that 80 per cent of their sales are accounted for by only 20 per cent of their product lines. Similarly 80 per cent of their sales may come from only 20 per cent of their customer list, and so on.  These 20 per cent are the critical few customers on which any business would want to concentrate to maximise its results.

Similarly, in doing your job it is important to identify the ‘critical few’ tasks which matter in your job, rather than be bogged down by doing the ‘trivial many’.  Make sure you know which are the 20 per cent which matter and do some work on them every day. Never go home any day without having done something to advance your work on these, the key outputs of your job.

Tip No. 5  –  Managing Other People

I once had a 2.30 appointment to meet a Senior Manager, but there was a queue of five people waiting to see him at his office when I arrived.  He dealt with them all one by one before we were able finally to sit down together, late.  They all thought it was marvellous to be able to come to Norman and get quick answers, and he secretly felt it was a daily demonstration of how important he was to the company  i.e. how indispensable he was.

But he wasn’t managing his time at all, it was managing him.  It’s easy to be seduced by the idea that the place would fall apart if you weren’t there, it’s flattering to your ego.  But it’s not managing.  What happens, as in this case, is that your people feel it’s easier to get you to provide an answer to all their problems, and it’s safer too  –  because if they do what you say and it happens to go wrong, then it’s obvious who will be to blame.

What also happens is they arrive in your office and say something like : “We’ve got a problem”, and then proceed to explain it to you.  That’s the first step : instead of it being their problem, it’s now shared, it’s become our problem.  You discuss it, there does not appear to be a quick answer, so you say : “I need to think about this.  Leave it with me, and I’ll get back to you.”  That’s step two.  They have taken this troublesome monkey and left it in your office. It’s not their problem any more, it’s all yours!  And that’s a killer for any effective management of your time.

There’s a simple solution for this all-too-regular event.  Your people won’t act with greater responsibility until you give them more responsibility.  And not doing everything for them will give you a lot more of your own time back.  So, don’t ever agree to talk about any problem unless your people come with a recommended solution.  That means all of the thinking time will be theirs, and importantly, you will be helping them develop their management skills in the process.

Don’t ever fall into the trap of saying : “If you want a job doing right, you’d better do it yourself”, or “By the time I’ve explained how to do it, I could have done it myself”.  That’s a person who is always going to be short of time, who is not going to develop their people, who is going to stay merely a do-er rather than a manager.  Ask yourself each time : ‘Is this something I should really be doing, or could it be done just as well or better by somebody else?’  Good managers delegate to get more done.  And you can use this three-level delegation process to help you get there.

1. The subordinate presents you with a recommended solution. You approve, they implement.  This is the stage where the member of staff is still being ‘educated’ to take on full responsibility for the matter in question.
2. The subordinate implements an action to solve a problem by themselves, then advises you what they have done to keep you up-to-date.
3. You feel the person concerned can now be trusted fully with the task concerned.  They no longer have to advise you, they take on full responsibility, and implement their own problem solutions without reference.  That’s the way they grow, and relieve you of a work burden at the same time.

One of my favourite starting points when starting work with new clients is to ask the executive team to write down what they see to be the top three objectives for the business over the following three years.  Not an unreasonable question.  I have never failed to fill two flipcharts full of what they say are their top three priorities.  The record was with one substantial company whose M.D. had just circulated a list of company objectives three weeks before.  Their list came to 39!

Normally these differences are never revealed, but the outcome can only be serious dissipation of focus and effort in achieving the results the company most wants to see.  If there is not clarity and unity of view at Board level on these issues, there will be no greater clarity elsewhere in the organization, and performance can only suffer as a result.  Coming from different departments and disciplines, Directors will obviously view things differently, but coherence about what the business is aiming at has to assume the highest priority, bar none.

The Rarity of Boardroom Teamwork

A few years ago, consultants McKinsey conducted a survey to see why boardroom teamwork seems so rare, and this is what they found.

• Membership of the top team is generally automatic
  If you are promoted to head a major Division, you often automatically become a Board member at the same time.  It is not a separate choice, and most welcome the accolade.
• Executives spend most of their time with their own teams rather than the top team
  Because of that their relationships within their own departmental team are more developed – and often their loyalties and attention incline in that direction too.
• They see their senior team contribution as the same as their division performance
  No-one actually asks for a senior team contribution beyond that.
• They feel themselves as accountable to the leader rather than the whole team
  They may work with other members of the top team, but if there is ever a dilemma, pleasing the boss is the priority.
• The Leader is seen as the person responsible for bringing it all together
  If teamwork doesn’t happen, they blame the boss rather than themselves.  But one person can’t demand or ‘drive’ teamwork.  The team has to work at it together.

Now some may say that teamwork doesn’t matter all that much at Board level.  Others think it is vitally important.  For those who do, the analogies of the soccer team point up some important lessons. 

• There, the objectives for the team are abundantly clear – to score goals at one end, and prevent any going in at the other end. 
• Team members are so committed to that, they automatically help each other and are quite prepared to do whatever it takes to achieve collective success.
• And the measures of success are crystal clear : either the ball goes wholly over the line, or it doesn’t.  [Would that some business measures were as clear.]
• The players don’t care who achieves success for the team.  When they score, they celebrate together and pat each other on the back.  Personal success becomes the team’s success.

If you applied the same criteria to your top management team, how would they fare?

• Specific team goals
  So specific that, if asked independently, Directors would all say exactly the same thing?
• Clear success measures
  So clear that at the end of the day you would be able to say : yes, we did or no, we didn’t.
• The whole team fully committed to the same goals
  Directors all show by their talk, their actions, and energetic co-operation that the company’s goals are their first priority.
• Celebrations when they win
  Celebrations add fun and emotion to the business of winning, and that winning feeling creates a hunger to repeat the experience.  Do you celebrate very often?

Because teamwork seldom happens by itself, increasing numbers of companies are building team-building processes into their working practices to make team thinking into a normal way of life.  Here’s just two such processes to help get your Board setting a team example to the whole company.

Agreeing Objectives As A Team

The Team Objectives Meeting (TOM) process is one which has been tested and refined in many different companies and countries over more than twenty years.  It’s chief advantage is that it works.  There is a simple sequence of steps.

1. Team members are given a Pre-Think Document setting out important questions which need to be asked, and answered, if the team are to be successful in meeting their key goals for the coming year.  Individuals are asked to complete the document without consultation.  That is deliberately designed to encourage a variety of thoughts on the issues facing the group, rather than standard or parrot-fashion answers.
   
   This pre-thinking is absolutely essential if any meeting of the team, on such important issues, is not to be merely an unstructured get-together, with vague outcomes that satisfy none of the parties.
2. At the TOM itself individuals are asked to give their personal views and answers on each question to the team as a whole.  These are listed on screen or on flip charts so everyone can see the spectrum of thoughts and opinions offered.  The new ideas that turn up can often be eye-opening. That immediately leads to animated discussion on the merits of the various proposals.  But that is the core purpose of the TOM  i.e. in-depth discussion by the whole team of the future direction and performance of the business.
3. Certain guideline rules apply at the TOM.  The first is, before any action goes ‘up on the wall’ as a firm decision, it must have the 100% agreement of the whole team.  That is critical if you are going to get no-fail follow-through later.  Some may say “I can’t see us getting 100% agreement on anything in our group”, but experience with TOMs over twenty years has shown that’s what always happens, whatever the business, whatever the team.
   
   The rule also protects all the parties involved, as no-one can be railroaded into accepting any action which they don’t agree with, or they don’t think will work.  That protection applies not only to every team member, but to the Chief Executive too.  These are genuine team decisions.  The rule also makes outcomes eminently practical – if a team of eight or so people all agree something will work, then you can be pretty sure that it will, especially as they all then want it to work.
   
   Getting everyone on board with a decision can be a tough process, but implementation can be even harder.  At a TOM, no action will have been decided upon unless it had buy-in from every individual in the team.  Ownership and genuine commitment make a huge difference when it comes to execution.  But when the focus is clear, there’s nowhere to hide.
4. So the team does not spread its efforts too thinly, an important TOM rule is: no more than four priority 1 objectives for the business (i.e. must be done, no excuses).  When Directors focus their collective weight and attention on the same few agreed objectives, the chances of their being realised are hugely enhanced.  And whatever contribution they may make in their respective disciplines, Directors know that how they link with their colleagues as a team to deliver on the company goals will now be taking first priority.

Boosting Team Member Co-operation

It is not unusual in any team to find prickly relationships between some team members, and that can often cause a drag on the team’s performance.  But there’s no need to indulge in some great 360° appraisal programme to tease out the issues;  that can be done much more simply, and within the team.  So part of the preparation for the TOM is to answer these questions.

• What could your team boss do personally which would allow you to improve your effectiveness as a member of the team?
• What could each of the other team members do for you which would improve your effectiveness without damaging theirs?

The key is not to make complaints, but to make positive requests.  The recipients do not have to say ‘yes’, but if they say ‘no’, they have to say why.  That’s all.  However, the process is a two-way street – whatever change one team member asks of their boss or a colleague, they should expect to have similar requests made of themselves, and be just as ready to change.

In practice, team members generally ask for straightforward common-sense changes which get readily agreed.  Often the recipient did not realise such small changes could remove some unsuspected irritation or make such a positive difference to a relationship.  But, simple as the process is, the act of seeing so many agreements being made across the team on what can often be sensitive issues, undoubtedly creates closer bonds within the team and their ability to work well together.

*   *   * 

Great teamwork adds an extra dimension to the performance of any sports team, and it’s just the same in business.  After a top management TOM, with its fundamental 100% agreement rule, Directors all start voicing the same story about the priority objectives of the business.  That’s what convinces managers and staff that the Board has really ‘got its act together’, and that in turn is a powerful driver for encouraging teamwork throughout the whole organization.

Companies of all kinds use appraisal and merit pay schemes in the belief that they motivate their staff to higher levels of performance.  However, the sad fact is most Company merit schemes motivate only the minority, and effectively turn off the majority.  In practice, only the top 20% or so get the best increases.  Success is actually reserved for the few.  For the rest most appraisals are a fencing match between the manager and the subordinate about how much his performance is worth, with neither relishing the experience.  As a result both parties find reasons to defer and avoid the event until the whole business of appraisal becomes just a great administrative hassle.

And these are not the only problems.  Many managers perform the appraisal process inadequately, do not ‘tell it like it is’, and often give more-than-deserved awards to avoid confrontation and unpleasantness.  Staff who have arrived at the top of their pay scales complain that “they have nowhere to go”.  Others  –  usually good performers in the middle of the scale  –  protest that some are paid at the top of their scale who have effectively “retired in the job”.

Some years ago Frederick Herzberg demoted money rewards to the status of mere hygiene factors.  In his view the true motivators are achievement, responsibility, advancement, recognition and the work itself.  But not many companies rely solely on the possibility of advancement or the satisfactions of the work itself to motivate their people.  The vast majority encourage achievement with merit awards and give pay increases for taking on greater responsibility.  So, despite the research evidence, the actions of most companies tend to confirm their belief that money does act as a motivator.

But do companies direct the money they use to motivate the majority ?  For example, many companies use pay scales for managers and office-based staff but use a single pay level for shop-floor employees.  Why put an electrician on a straight rate of pay, but put his daughter in the office on a merit scale?  Will he not progress through a learning curve just like his daughter, and ought this not to be reflected in his pay?  Either he is overpaid at the start, or he is underpaid as his performance improves with experience.  Are such companies actually missing a great motivational opportunity by with-holding merit scales from shop floor employees?  In most manufacturing companies there are many more manual employees than managers and staff.  So are they in fact motivating the minority rather than the majority?

By definition it can only be the few who get the top merit awards and the promotions.  The future for most employees, however, is that they will stay at the level they occupy now.  Not for them the Herzbergian turn-ons of advancement and additional responsibility.  It is difficult to get switched on if promotion is unlikely and second class merit awards are the best you can hope for.  But these people are in fact the majority, and if the job of the manager is anything it is getting motivated performance from all employees.  Merit schemes which actually pander to the privileged few, and act as a turn-off to the many, simply don’t help the manager achieve that objective.

The Technical Problems

The structure of most merit pay schemes have other inherent problems too.  For example, most merit awards are actually added to the current basic weekly or monthly pay.  That is costly.  An employee on £20,000 per annum with 20 years to go will get around £1,000 from a 5% merit award this year, but the company’s permanent commitment will in fact cost some £20,000 over the period, excluding pension costs.  If performance deteriorates next year the increase cannot be taken back  –  once given, it is there for ever.  It has become an entitlement, and once an entitlement it can no longer be motivational.  Also, coming as £20 per week or £80 per month it appears small.  Paid as a lump sum it would be much more motivating  –  you can do something with £1,000.

In addition, most pay scales are inordinately long.  Generally the top of the scale is typically 30-50% higher than the bottom, and sometimes stretching over a period of fifteen years or more.  In many cases the pay scale below may overlap as much as 50% into the scale above, with consequent complaints and comparison problems.  Yet it can be reasonably argued that the learning curve for any job is no longer than three years at any level, even for the Managing Director’s job.  Long scales also tend to encourage job-holders to expect awards every year irrespective of performance, with the inexorable bunching and drift of even ordinary performers towards the top of end of the scale.  Much of this is inevitable  –  like Everest, as long as the scale is there, people are going to want to climb it!  But is this really cost-effective?

Some companies have resorted to defining a limited amount of money which managers can allocate among their subordinates to take care of merit awards.  This keeps merit costs to known limits, and forces managers to decide how they are going to award the cash among their people before they start.  The focus here, however, is on keeping costs down, not on how best the extra money can produce the extra motivation it is actually designed to achieve.  Subordinates still push for the biggest share, and managers protect themselves by saying they are constrained by ‘company policy’, or by making very similar awards to everyone to avoid unpleasantness.  One British company recently wanted to encourage better performance among its staff and introduced a new merit pay scheme.  The system kept costs down by confining awards to only the top 20% or so.  Six months after the introduction, an employee opinion survey showed some two thirds of employees ‘dissatisfied’ or ‘very dissatisfied’ with the new system, with only 19% ‘satisfied’.  In effect, the company actually found itself paying out extra money to upset the majority of its staff.

The Negatives of Discrimination

Most appraisal and merit pay schemes make much of discriminating between good, better and best performance.  Although this may help to justify different pay awards, comparisons of one individual’s performance against another can set up tensions which make teamwork difficult or create resentments where individuals pay the company back with tit-for-tat negative behaviour.

In practice, discrimination of performance often gives rise to arguments in appraisal sessions.  It is relatively easy to distinguish between the top and the worst performers in any department.  The hard distinctions are those in between.  If the appraisee knows his money will be affected by his classification, he naturally uses every device in the book to exert pressure on his manager to give him the benefit of the doubt.  This pressure is hard to resist.  If the manager refuses to budge, the subordinate may well be turned off, and get back at the manager by becoming a ‘difficult’ employee.  On the other hand, if the manager concedes, he has to face the consequences with his boss and the Personnel Department.  This two-way tussle forces the manager to use a combination of persuasion and compromise to minimize his personal aggravation.  But the appraisal has then become an exercise in justification, not a process of motivation.

For most people an appraisal is like an examination at school.  We all remember that the same people kept on getting the top marks and the prizes  –  for them it was fine.  For the majority, however, the examination marks were simply a repeated confirmation of their mediocrity.  With them, examinations generated feelings of anxiety and worry.  They feared the worst.  And these are precisely the feelings appraisals generate in most people at work.  That is why appraisals are constantly put off and avoided by both managers and subordinates.  Discrimination ensures that only the few can really call themselves a success, and the rest become also-rans.

The Key to Motivating Employees on a Wide Front

Why is all this time and effort spent in such fine discrimination if it does not make a positive contribution to motivating employees?  For the fact is, merit awards based on appraisals of last year’s work can only be reward for performance past.  But true motivation is the heightening of effort and attention in anticipation of rewards yet to come.  And that must not be only for the few  –  it must motivate staff on a broad front.  The key to motivating employees throughout the organisation is the prospect of success for the majority.  Only when everyone feels they can succeed in your business, will they start delivering that elusive extra performance which is the whole purpose of the exercise.  And that extra performance can be considerable.

For many years management consultants made a very good living out of the fact that employees with effective methods and a financial incentive produce measurably better results than those without.  First, the consultants would devise the most effective methods they could for doing the work involved, train the employees in the new methods, insist that they used them, and provide a money incentive for hitting predetermined targets.  As a rule of thumb, they assumed that employee performance would be around 75 before the incentive scheme was in operation, and would rise to 100 following its introduction.  The difference is rather like a normal walking pace compared to the brisk pace of someone on his way to catch a train.  In other words, from the same people ‘motivated’ performance was expected to deliver some 33% more output than ‘normal’ performance. 

Productivity  –  making more effective the resources under one’s control  –   is  actually the central task of management.  Consultants would say there is a third more to come from people who feel motivated.  Peters and Waterman, in In Search of Excellence, go a lot further than that  :  “The amount of performance improvement possible from the turned-on team is not a percent or two here and there, it’s hundreds, if not thousands, of per cent”.  However much it is, it is well worth going for.  And not just from the high-flying few.  We want that sort of performance from whole teams of employees, from the great majority rather than the minority.

What Is Required

Schemes which are designed to use money awards to produce enhanced or motivated performance from the majority of employees need to fulfil a number of important requirements.

• They should motivate on a broad front  i.e. encourage everyone to stretch, and expend that extra effort.
• The money incentive should be endlessly renewable  i.e. not die out when individuals reach the top of their scale. 
• The money should be paid as lump sums. 
  £1,000 paid as one lump is much more motivational than £20 per week.
• The winning posts need to be made crystal clear. 
  Appraisals which depend on subjective assessment of personal qualities will always cause inconsistency and argument.  Better to pay the money for the achievement of defined, stretching objectives.
• The system should encourage the holding of appraisals.
• It should avoid demotivation.

Stating the requirements of a system tends to be a much easier task than turning them into practical, workable realities.  But the prospect of having a ‘turned-on’ many, rather than a motivated few, is a prize worth pursuing.  Here are some practical and tested ways of implementing these concepts.

Use lump sums

If it is true that people respond to the prospect of financial rewards, then merit awards paid as lump sums are far more motivational than the same amount of money paid in small instalments in salary over the year.  Despite the tax take, the net amount is still more desirable than the amount left when added to regular salary.  If the lump sums are also paid out at useful times in the year  –  before holidays or before Christmas, for example  –  then even better.  Of course, it makes a difference to your company cash flow if merit awards are paid as year-end bonuses rather than being spread out over the year, but there is no doubt what the recipients prefer.  And that means a lot more motivation for the same money, more bang for the same bucks.

There are other advantages too.  When a merit award is added to salary it is a permanent increase.  The true cost to the Company is actually the yearly amount times the number of years the employee remains with the Company  –  you could be multiplying the yearly cost by 20 or more.  Paid as a lump sum, however, you incur only the costs of 5% of this year’s salary, not of every salary for years thereafter.  That same lump sum can be awarded again next year, of course, but only if the motivated performance of which the individual is capable is actually demonstrated next year as well.

In this way the award is made annually renewable.   No employee will ever get to the top of their scale again and have nothing else to go for.  Every year there will be something worth stretching for  –  for every employee, not just for some.  Managers at every level will have the opportunity to agree sensible and demanding targets with their subordinates, and expect to get motivated performance from every one of them.  That means motivating the majority, not the minority. 

Finally, merit awards paid as lump sums are not added to basic rates of pay.  That means they are not added to other costs such as holiday pay, sickness benefit, overtime costs, and the rest, for the whole of the year thereafter.  Staff budgeting becomes a much more predictable process  –  a change that will be welcomed both by managers and accountants.

Use Short and Simple Pay Scales

There is a great tendency for pay arrangements to try to take account of everything, and therefore to become complex and confusing.  It takes real effort and commitment to keep them simple, but the benefits of the simplicity are appreciated all around the Company, both by management and employees.  The use of lump sums as merit awards gives the opportunity for such simplicity with the introduction of much shorter learning curve pay scales.

On the basis that even the M.D. of the company should take no more than three years to reach a competent standard in the job, pay scales of this length can be introduced for jobs at every level.  Every new entrant to a job would start at the beginning of, say, a three-year scale, and move in equal steps up the scale each year, providing satisfactory progress was being achieved.  It would be expected that 80% or more of job-holders would in fact make such satisfactory progress (as experience shows they do).  

Of course the judgment of the manager would have to be exercised in coming to this conclusion.  In the case of insufficient progress, he would have the authority to defer the increase, or with-hold it, as appropriate.  When increases depend on his authority, subordinates tend to listen better and respond to his standards.  He in turn would have to make clear from the beginning precisely what is expected, but from observation this would be no bad thing in many Companies.

A 15% pay scale, combined with opportunities to earn lump sum performance bonuses, would then look something like this.

Abandon Discrimination

This is a key point in the business of motivation.  In the normal run of things, performances of subordinates will fall into a normal distribution pattern, with a few at the good and bad ends of the performance scale, and the majority falling somewhere around the middle.  If the objective is to reward performance past, then rewards should follow a similar distribution curve, and comparing and differentiating performances will be necessary.    However, if motivating the majority is the objective, discrimination is simply self-defeating.

We are never going to make a silk purse performer out of sow’s ear material.  What we can do, however, is to move each employee up one or two notches on the performance scale which represents the best performance of which they are capable.  The best any Company is ever going to do is to get everyone performing at his or her ‘personal best’.  You cannot do any better.  And if you believe, as many affirm, that your people are your most valuable assets, then getting the best they can each deliver becomes a task of paramount importance.

In practice, every manager should agree with each subordinate key objectives which, if achieved, will constitute ‘stretch performance’ for that employee.  A sufficiently attractive personal performance bonus  –  the prospect of two weeks’ pay paid as a lump sum will motivate most employees  –  should then be payable for the achievement of these key objectives.  Any employee who delivers on these should get all the money.  Normally the majority (around 80% or more) will.  That way the majority will begin to feel a success in your business, rather than some kind of mediocrity.  And there is nothing so motivational as the drug of success . . . .

A few words of warning.  It is important that not all employees get the money, otherwise the money will be simply seen as an entitlement and no longer motivational.  It has to be genuinely for extra performance.  Failure to meet the agreed key objectives should not get the money, not any of it.  Do not be persuaded to start differentiating again ‘to keep people happy’.  At the very worst give half of the money for a ‘near miss’, or defer the award to sometime in the following quarter if a little more time will allow the person to deliver.  But insist on real performance  –  after all, that is what the Company is actually paying extra for.

Give Power to Your Managers

It is not just money that motivates.  One of the most important factors in getting motivated performance from all employees all the year round is the immediate boss.  Personnel Department cannot do it from afar, it has to be done by the person who interfaces with the employees on a daily basis  –  the manager.  No matter how good the system, it is how it is used that counts.  That is why managers have to be a committed and integral part of the system, or it will simply not work effectively.

As a first step, managers have to be educated about the purpose of the appraisal / reward system  i.e. to get motivated performance from all employees, to get them giving their ‘personal best’.  The money will not do it by itself, they have to add the strength of their management and coaching all the year round to the motivating force of the reward. 

Secondly, a lump sum merit award system gives managers considerable power.  Employees tend to listen much better to their manager during appraisal sessions when they know he has one or two weeks’ pay, which he can award or not, based on their level of motivated performance.  If employees know they can expect a personal bonus for meeting their agreed prime objectives, around 80% of them will actually be looking forward to their appraisal, knowing, without their boss having to tell them, that they have already passed the winning post.  And the appraisal also gives the manager a golden opportunity to raise all these other questions of attitude, style, compatibility, and co-operation which are so important to good teamwork.  Used well, such a system can be a powerful tool in the hands of the manager.

It is useful before embarking on appraisals each year to get the managers involved together in working groups to discuss the sort of objectives they are likely to agree with their subordinates.  This will lead to a degree of consistency between managers in objective setting, and enable them to learn useful practical tips from each other.  The act of getting together also reinforces with managers the importance of continuing to motivate and manage their people well as an integral part of their job.  Meeting again after the appraisals is also helpful on a post- mortem basis to discuss the problem issues and build the learning points into the following year’s procedures.

If there is a Personnel or Training Department, one of their useful functions is to attend such meetings to help the practising managers with their everyday problems.  It must be added that the task of coaching, appraising and motivating must remain firmly the job of the manager and not of the Personnel Department.  Managers will of course make mistakes.  Personnel Departments do too.  But persistence and patience should be exercised in allowing adequate time for managers to learn this part of their job well.  When they have finally taken on board this daily and ongoing responsibility, that patience will be well rewarded.

Conclusion

Any manager knows, and consultants have been proving for many years, that there is a substantial difference between ordinary performance and motivated performance.  Yet most appraisal and merit pay schemes tend to motivate the elite few and leave the majority feeling like ordinary also-rans.  In most companies, there is a wealth of motivated performance which is just not being released.  That is an increasingly untenable situation for most companies in today’s tough and competitive world.  The vast potential available in motivating the majority  of employees will put those companies who tap into it successfully in quite a different league to their ordinary competitors.

Mismatch of expectations can be funny when dealing with jokes but when dealing with customers expectations mismatch is not funny at all.  Customers don’t tell you when you fail to meet their expectations, they just don’t come back.  Companies everywhere are trying to find that edge which will help them deal with their customers better and set them off from their competitors.  But there’s only one sure way  –  and that’s constantly to meet or beat the customer’s expectations.   It’s as simple and straightforward as that.

An illustration will help to show just how expectations work.  A large and nationally-known engineering company budgeted around a 9% increase in managers’ salaries in 1988, figuring this would well cover their expectations and more than match ‘the going rate’.  In normal circumstances this would have been perfectly acceptable and kept managers thinking positively.  However, the Company had recently introduced a bonus scheme for shop floor workers a few months earlier which had worked so well that wages soared within two months by 20% or more.  Management could hardly complain as they were achieving productivity gains of around 30%, but it became clear the budget figure which had looked generous when composing the annual budget now looked suddenly inadequate.

There is in fact no absolute figure with which all employees will be happy.  It all depends on what their expectations were before the event.  The rule is actually very simple : where events fall short of expectations, unhappiness will result.  Happiness only results where events actually meet or exceed expectations.  The degree to which expectations are exceeded will show in the degree of delight which follows.  And, as it is with employees, so it is with customers.

There is only one way to guarantee  customer satisfaction and that is to meet or beat their expectations.  When you do that, they will keep coming back for more and act as walking adverts for you by talking to their friends.  Where you fail to meet their expectations they will equally talk to their friends  –  only this time the news won’t be so good.  And one thing’s for sure :  they may tell four or five people about the good service you gave them, but they’ll tell twenty or more about your failures. 

The customer-conscious company cannot but be interested in their customers’ expectations  –  their reputation stands or falls on how they match up against them.  The concept of expectation theory has been known for some time, but only now is it being applied to customer management.  The reason for its growing popularity is that despite its simplicity the concept has within it a number of features which make it the ideal training vehicle with which to imbue employees from top to bottom with customer satisfaction zeal.  Here are the features which make Beating Customer Expectations so powerful.

1. First and foremost, you see things from the customer’s standpoint.

Before you can even start beating the customer’s expectations you have to know what the customer’s expectations are.  To do this you are forced to stand in the customer’s shoes.  Many customer service programmes talk about ‘customer focus’ or ‘customer awareness’, but in these positions you are looking from your  side of the desk.  In defining the expectations of the customer you have to jump the counter onto his  side.  That makes you talk in the first rather than in the third person.  You no longer talk about what he  wants but about what I  want.  That makes a lot of difference.  You find yourself asking : What am I expecting of this company in terms of service, and what am I actually getting ?  What visible signals do I see that they really deliver superior service?

You see things differently when you are a customer rather than an employee.  The customer judges you on the service he got the last time he dealt with you, or the last time he had a complaint.  No matter what the Managing Director says is his company’s commitment to service, or what high-sounding mission statements are pinned on the wall, if it’s not getting through to first-line employees then the customer judges you on the service he actually gets.  That’s all he sees.  The service he actually gets will either make him come back or stay away.

One of the big banks has made great play of its commitment to excellence in customer service but it’s the little things that irritate.  Recently a customer holidaying in Scotland visited a branch to draw some cash.  Having stood in a short queue she was told that it would cost one pound to draw £30 in cash over the counter but if she went round the corner to the bank’s Autoteller machine she could have the same amount of cash at no charge!   Whatever the good reasons from the bank’s point of view that this is justifiable, such episodes simply serve to convince the customer that the integrity of the bank’s internal systems are more important than customer convenience.  Front-line employees start from square minus one in keeping customers happy when such apparently petty irritations are already built into the system.

Since customer satisfaction has to start with their present expectations it becomes imperative to find out what their expectations really are.  That is why a properly conducted customer survey giving hard and quantified data is so much better than guessing.  Guessing implies you are still standing on your side of the counter.   What we need to know is what they  actually think.  Survey data gives you something of substance to work on, and when you have introduced changes and let them run you can then make comparisons with the next survey to see how it all looks from the customers’ side.  Managers who avoid asking the customers their views because ‘surveys may become a rod for our own backs’ are simply saying they prefer not to know.  But service starts with customers and ends with customers.  If you are serious about it you have to know.

2. Customer service is personal, not absolute.

There is no absolute standard of excellent service.  Your service is only excellent if the customer says so.  He is the sole judge.  You might be no worse than the competition, or even better than some, but if your service does not come up to the customer’s personal expectations, he will still judge you as unsatisfactory. 

When a navvy goes into a local shop, cursory service may be all he requires providing he gets his fags and his bottle of pop.  When the lady of the manor enters, however, she will be disappointed if she does not get some recognition and some personal attention.  Similarly the pensioner may treat her visit as a bit of a social occasion and appreciate a personal chat with her shopping.  Considering customers’ individual expectations forces you into considering them as persons  and not simply as so many shopping units.  The same standard of service for all may be all you are prepared to provide but customer satisfaction means dealing with the person in front of you as an individual, and they all have different needs, preferences and requirements.

The Disney people at their massive theme parks have long recognised that all their ‘Guests’ are individuals and ask thousands of different questions about the business :  like how many bricks are there in the castle, how much did it cost to build the park, how many hamburgers do you serve in a day, how many lights are there in the park, etc. etc.  The ‘hosts’ don’t just look sheepish and mumble something like “a whole lot!”.  If they don’t know they find out  –  right away.  Round the clock there are staff at a central exchange armed with great fact books just waiting to answer such outlandish questions.  The host can pick up a ‘phone anywhere around the park and get an authentic and immediate answer for the Guest.  Satisfaction for the visitor is priority number one.  Visitors often report that their highest expectations were vastly exceeded.  At Disney beating the customers’ expectations has long been a way of life.

Customers’ expectations arise from a whole variety of sources.  Their normal way of life will have a big bearing on the standards they are prepared to accept.

For example, if they are used to eating in French restaurants, then a MacDonald’s meal may not appeal at all.  Their previous dealings with you   will also shape their expectations.  Comparisons with others in the same business will also colour their view of you.  For example, if the competition introduce some desirable innovation, suddenly your service which appeared quite adequate yesterday becomes inferior today.  And of course your own advertising will create expectations, and if your staff are not fully geared up to deliver on your promises, you risk shooting yourself in the foot.

I recently received an invitation a few months ago to apply for a Gold Card from one of the big banks.  I had always refused before as my Access card seems perfectly adequate and entails no annual subscription fee whereas the Gold Card does.  This time as a special deal there was to be no joining fee, so I decided to try it. 

The rather up-market sales literature gave a specific number which could be rung to get detailed information on anything to do with the card.  As it happened I did have some questions so I rang the number.  “I have some questions  about the Gold Card, can you help me?” I started.  “The Gold Card?” said the girl on the end.  “Yes, it says on your literature here that if I have any queries I should ring this number.”  The noises behind sounded like an ordinary bank and I heard the girl whisper apprehensively :“It’s somebody asking about the Gold Card!”  If this was the number to ring, nobody had told her about it.  Soon a gentleman came on the ‘phone and asked if he could help.  “Could he confirm that any unpaid portion of a monthly bill would only be charged at two and a half percent above the bank rate ?”  “If that is what the booklet says, that must be right.”   A few more complex questions produced short delays while verification was sought. 

If you are going to launch an up-market service for up-market clients you need to be ready to give up-market service.  Glossy literature followed by unglossy service simply gets you the reputation for talking better then you deliver.  Don’t create expectations in the mind of the customer which you cannot then meet  –  that guarantees  disappointment.  Despite this obvious truth companies repeatedly fall into the trap of allowing their marketing people to issue product and service promises which they are not ready, not trained or not capable to deliver.  You only need to do this several times and your reputation soon takes a bit of retrieving.  Only raise expectations in the mind of your customers which you can meet and beat if you want to really impress them.

3. Customer expectations change.

If you think of the Olympic Games it is clear that for the most part the performances that won gold medals last time may not be good enough to beat the competition this time.  So it is with customers.  If you deliver what you gave them last year the best you will do is to meet  their expectations.  To beat  their expectations you will have to go one better.  If you don’t, the competition will.

Taking goods you had just bought back to the shop and expecting to get your money back was not at all commonplace a decade or two ago.  But Marks and Spencer changed all that.  Their no-quibble money-back undertaking is one of the foundations of their reliability and success.  Nowadays getting a refund on goods you return as unsuitable has become standard practice.

For a long time getting your parcel delivered safely or speedily by the Post Office was a pretty unreliable business.  When TNT and others started offering guaranteed next day delivery of packages throughout the country they carved a great piece out of the Post Office market.  Soon the Post Office were offering a “me too” service with Datapost and paying for television advertising as well to get some of their business back.  Now there is a host of such delivery services and people like National Freight and ANC are majoring on such seductive factors as common courtesy, consideration and personal concern to expand their business.  The competition gets tougher all the time.  The customers love it of course, but there expectations keep rising.  This year’s service will need to be even better next year.

4. Expectations recognises the ‘feeling’ content of pleasing customers.

As we have indicated customers all have different needs and expectations which are personal to them.  They may be looking for courtesy, efficiency, speed, reliability, expert advice or just plain understanding.  But they all want to find in their way that dealing with you is a pleasant experience.  Some trainers in the customer service business actually advise their protégés to hand their customers “warm fuzzies”  –  in other words to make their dealings with the customer into warm and pleasant experiences (like it was with his teddy bear).  However odd this may sound it has strong psychological justification in practice.   Pleasant experiences in dealing with you create strong associations in the mind of the customer and these associations are quite powerful in making him want to repeat the transaction.

On the other hand in handling the customer one wants to avoid unpleasant experiences.  The trainers colourfully call these “cold pricklies” or “wet crinklies”.  These are the irritations, annoyances and upsets that make the customer stay away or shop elsewhere.  The words may seem funny, but they have two particular advantages  –  they describe the way customers sometimes feel and they are easy to remember. The associations your customers have in their mind about you are the expectations you have created.  If these associations are overwhelmingly positive you only need to keep meeting their expectations to keep them coming back.

“Effective leaders take their company (or their team) to levels of performance where they have never been before.”

If leadership means anything, it means leading the group you manage somewhere new, somewhere better.  That’s the prime function of the role.  You’re not really a ‘leader’ if you don’t do that.   

Generally managers ‘manage’ the resources they’ve got, whether it’s people, equipment, space, materials, buildings, methods etc. to get the best out of them.  They plan, they organize, they solve problems, they keep things going – largely they maintain but they don’t necessarilyimprove.  And that’s the key definition of the leader – they take you somewhere better. 

And they don’t just exist at the top  – they can and do exist at every level in an organization.  Interestingly, one Japanese company tells new front-line managers : “If in six months’ time your team is still doing things well, but exactly the same as before, see that as a failure.  What we want you to do is to spend at least half of your working time focusing on improvements.”  Of course, the leader of the company is in charge of pointing the whole business in the right direction, but at every level manager-leaders can be taking their teams to ever-better levels of performance.

*   *   *

There‘s always been a drive in management circles to try and capture the essence of good leadership.  Indeed, some years ago the Mars Group undertook a study to look at all those who had become chief executives in their various companies round the world, to see if they could identify the key characteristics that made them successful in the company.  With that information, they thought they then might be able at the recruitment stage to select candidates with these same tendencies.

After a year of observations, the study team found it difficult to isolate any key characteristics which were common to all the CEO’s.  Indeed, they all seemed different.  Some were older, some younger; some tall, some short; some were overt personalities, some quiet; some dominant, some collegiate; some came from a marketing background, some from manufacturing; some just happened to be the best available for the job at the time.

However, even if there appears to be no one set of characteristics that define good leaders, we might gain some useful insights by looking at some well-known business and political leaders.  Here are a few.

• Good leaders often have quite different personalities.

Take for instance Sir Terry Leahy, who became Chief Executive of UK grocer Tesco when it had a 16% share of the market.  During his eleven years in that role, the company surged to a 36% share of the market, twice as big as any competitor.  That meant UK citizens were spending as much as one-third of every grocery pound in their stores.  A quite remarkable achievement.  But Terry is not some dominant, flamboyant personality, he plays a steady game. 

On the other hand, Steve Jobs was quite a different character – a real dynamo overflowing with ideas. But these ideas meant Apple could turn out products which set the standard for others, and for which their customers were prepared to queue up in their thousands at midnight to get their hands on.  Steve was not the easiest manager to live with, but the company’s success has made it (at least for a time) the most valuable company in the world.

What distinguishes great leaders from the ordinary is not their personalities, but their results.  That is the acid test.  And there are other interesting observations we can make.

• Leaders may be dominant, but they’re not always right.

Take Saddam Hussein for example.  Looking at the turmoil there has been in Iraq since his fall from grace, some might say that at least there was some degree of stability while he was in charge.  But his methods were often vicious and brutal, and his personal security had to be of an exceptionally high level to ensure he stayed in power.  Eventually his overweening personality and territorial ambitions led to his downfall, to a completely devastated country, and internecine war among its citizens.

Different, but similar, has been Fidel Castro.  Strong leader, dominant personality, but a country whose citizens have had to suffer deprivations, isolation, rationing, and lack of development for decades.  It seems that the price of isolation due a dominant leader is eventually paid by its ordinary citizens.

• Inspiring leaders don’t always make good managers

Nelson Mandela would certainly feature in this category.  A trained lawyer and prominent member of the African National Congress, he was a fierce opponent of apartheid in South Africa.  Later he spent 27 years in prison after being convicted of sedition.  However, his example and his name became a true inspiration for millions of South Africans.  His influence was a large factor in keeping the peace in the country post-apartheid. But the economic and security policies adopted by his new government have signally failed to produce for the vast majority the improved living standards they hoped would follow.

Similarly, Mao Tse-tung was a great inspiration to millions of Chinese citizens, and his little red book is still revered by many.  However, the great suffering of many millions under his regime, especially during the so-called cultural revolution, stands as a great blot on his record.  It is perhaps looking at the poverty-stricken lives these same millions were then forced to endure, and comparing what has been achieved by China in recent times through good management, that we can see the clear difference.

• Some leaders seek power above all else.

Robert Mugabe is an obvious example here.  There have been many accusations of deep and widespread fraud in many of Zimbabwe’s elections over the years.  To consolidate his power when in office, Mugabe decided to turn the country into a one-party state (Zanu), abolished the role of Prime Minister in favour of Executive President (himself), and transferred the ownership of hundreds of white-owned farms to black owners with little or no compensation.  Mr Mugabe continued to cling to power determinedly throughout his later years, only reluctantly stepping down at the ripe old age of 93.

Even more extreme has to be Kim Jong-un of North Korea.  The country has army-controlled borders night and day to prevent citizens escaping.  Those who make the attempt know their families left behind will all end up in concentration camps.  Although a relatively young man (34 in 2018), and schooled in Switzerland, Kim made his authority crystal clear in 2015 when he had his own uncle executed publicly by anti-aircraft gun.  Meantime the economy struggles, and in the past, with poor food production, the government warned citizens they might again have to eat the roots of any plants they can find just to survive.

• Other leaders are driven by the need for achievement.

Jack Welch, former Chief Executive of the American company General Electric would certainly fall into this category.  Engaged in a variety of industries when he took over in 1981, Welch declared they would not stay in any business in which they could not be number one or two in their market.  He was somewhat ruthless with his policy of every year awarding bonuses to his top 20% of managers, and firing the bottom 10%.  However, in his twenty years with the company, GE acquired some 600 companies, and the company’s market value increased from $12 billion to some $280 billion in the process.

Jeff Bezos, founder and Chief Executive of Amazon, the online retailer, is certainly another example here.  Jeff started back in 1994, merely selling books on the internet.  Now the business sells such a variety and volume of all sorts of products, it has become the biggest online retailer in the world.  Jeff wants the company to be “the most customer-centric company in the world”.  Looking for yet other worlds to conquer, the company is already into the business of electric cars and space travel.

• Some leaders are just right for their time.

In business and politics, some individuals simply have the mix of characteristics that make them right for the job at the time.  In 1979, Britain was suffering greatly from strike activity when Margaret Thatcher became the first female Prime Minister in British history.  Margaret proved she had the strength of character not only to restore a better business-Trade Union balance, but militarily to defend the sovereignty of the Falklands against invasion by Argentina in 1982.  However, she later overstayed her welcome and was voted out in 1990.

A similar fate befell Mikhail Gorbachev.  He understood the readiness of the Soviet Union for change in the late eighties, when the Communist party was effectively dissolved, the Berlin wall fell, and his emphasis on ‘perestroika’ (restructuring) and ‘glasnost’ (open-ness) helped the country engage in more peaceful relations with the Western world.  However, he was much opposed by so-called ‘hardliners’, and lost power in 1991 as Soviet republics declared unilateral independence, and Boris Yeltsin assumed a leadership role.

Whatever your views about leadership, observation of the realities allows us to reach some interesting conclusions, namely:

• Good leaders come in all different shapes and sizes, and can have quite different personalities.
• Inspiring leaders don’t always make good managers.
• Leaders may be dominant, but they’re not always right.
• Some leaders seek power to the exclusion of all else.
• Other leaders are driven by the need for achievement.
• Some leaders are just right for their time. 

[Could Donald Trump just be ‘right for his time’ in the USA?]

It is easy to become ‘seduced’ by ‘qualities’ or personality characteristics when considering what constitutes good leadership, and many writers on the subject do just that.  But in the business context, the only useful question when choosing a future leader is : “Can this person take us to new and better places – in terms of growth, innovation, quality, productivity, customer service?” And personality characteristics only matter if they fit the demands of the organization  –  at that time.  That is the deciding factor.

For example, look at this chart of scores from a real company. The questions all seem very relevant, but look at the variance in views between departments, and between management and the rest of the staff. It’s very revealing. [Scores are in percentages.

According to Question 7, 100% of managers think things are improving in the company, but only 25% of people in Marketing think so, and even fewer in Production and Information Systems. In Question 3, 100% of managers say the company is committed to giving good customer service, but Customer Services department are only half convinced about that. 100% of marketing staff think their boss encourages them to contribute new ideas (Question 5), but only one third of Production people think their ideas are welcome, and even fewer in Information Systems. Whatever managers’ opinions might have been before the survey, the survey scores reveal the true situation.

There’s two obvious points that emerge from a chart like this. It’s next to impossible to manage people effectively in any business if you don’t know the facts. Managers are forced to ‘manage blind’, and opinions vary widely about how best to manage people in different departments. Naturally, managers do the best they can, but they can often then be frustrated and disappointed with the response they get.

But when you do know the facts, managers don’t have to guess any more. They can home right in on the things that their people say most need attention. For example, significantly less than half of the people in every department here feel they do not ‘have all the materials and equipment they need to do a good job’. That’s a terrible score, but now that they know, managers can get down to solving that problem straight away. Not only will staff appreciate the change, productivity will start to improve too.

The vast majority of people much prefer to do a good job, it’s their natural instinct. But when people find they don’t have what they need to do that good job, their work becomes an irritating and frustrating experience every day. On the other hand, we know from experience that when managers put everything in place to make it easy to a good job, employee morale and motivation starts to soar across the company.

Employees don’t expect everything to be put right overnight, as they generally realise it takes time to bring about major changes. There is no need to launch immediately into some great campaign. Employees will start giving positive scores to a question like ‘I think things are improving in the company’ (unlike the chart above), as long as they can see visible evidence around the place that management are moving in the right direction. And with the survey data to hand, managers will know just what to work on.

Focussing Managers’ Attention

It’s an old adage but very true – what gets measured, gets done. If a company judges their managers’ performance by measures of output, productivity, meeting monthly schedules, budgets, etc., it’s no surprise that that’s what they concentrate on. But the corollary is that what does not get measured will inevitably fall in the manager’s list of priorities. As you might expect, they allocate their time to what they are most likely to be challenged on.

When you start to measure how well people are being managed, managers suddenly start devoting more time and attention to the issue. Federal Express, the international parcels company are strong believers in that. This is how founder and CEO Fred Smith puts it : “We discovered a long time ago that customer satisfaction really begins with employee satisfaction. The respect and care with which we treat employees carries over to how our employees treat and care for our customers. That belief is incorporated in our corporate philosophy statement: People, Service, Profit.”

To support that belief, Federal conduct an employee survey every Spring. The first ten questions of the survey focus on how employees feel they are being managed by their immediate boss. The company bunches these ten questions into what they call a ‘leadership index’, and each year they decide on a goal they want to achieve on that. If the company doesn’t reach that goal, the top 300 managers don’t get any bonus. Since that bonus can amount to some 40% of their salary, do you think they pay attention to how their people being managed? You bet they do.

Now you do not have to go that far exactly, but not measuring at all leaves any company open to unseen mismanagement, which can significantly undermine its performance. While some managers are naturally good people managers, most find people management one of their most challenging tasks. And it is just these types of manager that real data from an employee survey can help most, by showing them precisely where to devote their attention to make real progress with their people.

Perception Versus Reality

When managers have been making efforts to manage well, they can often be disappointed with the low scores employees give to certain questions. But that is because employees often see things a lot differently from their angle.

To illustrate the point, try this little exercise. Have a look at the box below, and count up the number of letter ‘f’s that you see. It’s quite easy.

So, how many are there? Three? Good, you’re not alone, that’s what most people say. But it’s wrong. Four, you say? Very good. Still wrong! . . . . . . There are actually six ‘f’ s in the sentence. Really. Go back and look again.

[Just for the record : there are two ‘f’ s in the first line (finished and files), and one more ‘f’ in line two (in the word scientific). But there are also three examples of the word ‘of’, two in line two and another in line four. So that makes six ‘f” s altogether.]

Don’t worry if you only saw three or four ‘f’s – more than 80% of people do the same. Many find it unbelievable that they couldn’t see every one. After all, it’s only four short lines of simple English. But we use this item just to make one very important point when it comes to managing people.

The truth is not what the facts are, it is what people perceive them to be.

You may be working very hard to improve things, but employees don’t give you any credit for that if they can’t see it. That’s why you have to work on managing employee perceptions as well as the truth, if you want to move employees’ views.

Take a look back at the survey score table we showed at the beginning, in particular at the question “How satisfied are you with the info. you get about the company?” Apart from managers, the satisfaction score is poor in every department, down to zero in one case. Now that’s easily cured, and it costs virtually nothing to keep people up-to-date on a regular basis with the positive things that are happening in the company. You don’t have to go boasting, or pretending that there aren’t any problems. Employees are actually more realistic than that, and they will feel better about a company which treats them like adults, and shares information with them about how the company is doing.

Starting Out

When companies do their first survey, they are generally hoping for the best, but are often disappointed with their first set of results. Don’t worry about that, that’s normal. The first survey is simply the platform from which you start to make real improvements in the company. In addition, the employees will have given you invaluable information about what to work on. You won’t have to guess any more, you can focus your management efforts on the right things and in the right places.

When you do your second survey, you will be able to see the results of the actions you took, and measure the progress you have made. Don’t expect a great revolution, of course, but our experience is that scores always start moving in positive directions. Indeed, when managers know just what to focus on, we have seen scores improve by as much as five-fold within just a year. That’s something they could never have achieved otherwise.

It may seem obvious, but managing people well cannot just be left to Personnel Department. The fact is, the immediate manager has a more powerful influence on employee attitudes than any other factor. That’s because he is the face of the company employees see every day. To them he is the company. What he does and says will have more influence on their attitudes than anything the company might otherwise say or do. That interface is critical when it comes to employee attitudes. That is where ‘the rubber hits the road’.

That’s why giving every manager the survey scores from their immediate team is specially important. That places prime responsibility where it really belongs, with the manager who works with his people every day. They are the people who can really change things, and with the right data in hand, they will. The purpose behind it all is to get managers treating good people management as one of their most important functions. When they do, you can expect to see employee attitudes – and performance – take leaps forward all across the business.

The Difference It Makes

Many Directors and managers we meet believe they know what their people are thinking without having to ask them. But when we ask managers to predict what scores they will actually get on key questions, we find that 90% of the time they are just plain wrong. The reality is often quite different. And if you don’t know what that reality is, there is no way you can manage it effectively. If you are serious about managing your people well, you have to know the facts. When managers get the true facts into their hands, they start to manage differently, and better. It literally changes the business.

You can have some of most sophisticated machinery and technology available, but in the end it’s people who make it all work. It’s people who face the customers, it’s people who solve the problems, who come up with the new ideas, who show the flexibility to deal with all the variables, who can co-operate with others to get things done. And it’s only when you start measuring how well you are managing that ‘most valuable asset’ of your business, that you are going to unlock its full performance-changing potential.

The major trouble is that most managements are not clear about what actual pay-off they expect their communications system to deliver. When asked why they want to “communicate”, they say things like “to keep people informed”, or “so that people know what is going on in the business”, and other such generalities. They take on a great burden of work preparing and delivering communications to their workforces, but employees do not appear to derive any greater job satisfaction as a result, nor does the performance of the business seem to improve significantly as a consequence. The outcome simply does not seem to justify all the hard work and effort.

So here are some guideline rules, developed over years of observation and experiment, which will ensure your communications process actually delivers real benefits to company and employees alike.

Focus Communications on Improving Business Performance

It is generally felt that company communications should try to engage the interest of employees and encourage their participation. But the investment of time, effort and money in employee communications ought also to be regarded like any other investment – namely it ought to contribute measurably to the performance and efficiency of the business, otherwise why do it? We would expect any new telephone system or new computer system to make a direct contribution to the performance and efficiency of the business, and so it should be also with any employee communications system.

That is why communications to employees need primarily to be about things which will improve the performance of the business, i.e. product quality, customer service, productivity, costs, efficiency, on-time delivery, meeting schedules, profitability, etc. etc. And the communication needs to be expressed in a way employees can understand, and to be about subjects which affect them, or on which they can take action. If your communications are not about these things then they will not be seen as a priority either by the managers or the employees.

As a result, when the pressure is on, the real business priorities will take precedence, communications will fall to the bottom of the pile and will get done “when the manager has time”. Similarly if the communications are not about something which really interests employees, or about a subject they can do something about, they won’t mind if communications meetings simply don’t get held.

A large manufacturing company producing components for the motor and aero industries, whose communications were in need of major re-vamp, decided to harness their system to focus specifically on performance improvement across the business, and on changing the company’s style of operation. First, their executive team got down to the job of defining their key company goals in such a way that they would be

(a) simple and understandable to all employees,
(b) relatively constant over the following five years or so, and
(c) something every department and employee could do something about every working day.

After much debate and consideration of many alternatives they chose the two following goals :

• Competing through superior customer service
• Continuously improving business performance

These might have remained as mere trite statements but for how the company chose to communicate them and to turn them into practical realities throughout the business.

They gave each member of their executive team a pre-think document, and asked them to consider what practical things they were each going to do to make these goals a reality. They then held a two-day off-site conference, where each department head agreed with his colleagues what their departments were each going to contribute specifically to the company’s goals, and how they were going to measure and communicate their progress. The same team meeting process then cascaded down through the business right to shop floor level. Each working team took two days out to put their own practical programme together which was then presented to their team manager’s boss for approval and support.

And things soon began to happen. To see whether they actually were superior in customer service, competitors’ products were brought in to make direct detailed comparisons. The company also sent operators to work on their customers’ production lines to find out how their products were actually being used and installed. That led to some immediate and enthusiastic changes and improvements. Their customers began to see that the company’s goals actually meant something in practice.

The working teams around the business had also used their two-day off-site sessions to set themselves some performance improvement targets, and soon graphs and charts began to appear showing how each group was doing against its chosen objectives i.e. demonstrating their contribution to the company goal of continuously improving business performance.

With simple goals like these and a process of this kind, communications in a business take on a coherence and a purpose you cannot get where communications are undertaken simply as a matter of faith, or ‘because they are a good thing’. Communications only become meaningful and understandable to employees when they hang from a clear overall purpose. That is a fundamentally important point. Without such a purpose communications simply appear to be a confusing collection of random information.

Make Your Communication Messages Clear and Consistent

Messages about the company’s values and beliefs need to be repeated and followed through if employees are to take them on board, and live them in their everyday work. Advertisers can certainly teach us a few things when it comes to getting messages across. Generally their messages are simple, clear and consistently repeated. When Heineken has told us this week that their beer ‘reaches parts other beers cannot reach’, they don’t suddenly switch to a different message next week just in case we get bored. No, they repeat the same message constantly until we all know it by heart. And that is precisely what needs to be done in business if your messages are to get through to employees, and actually become part of your company’s culture.

The companies which use communications best are very clear about their messages. And these are no mere empty slogans. Rather they are the principles the company actually lives by, they are statements which characterize the company’s fundamental philosophy and which they carry through in their everyday operations. IBM is a good case in point. They have had their troubles over the years, but their business philosophy is based on a set of ‘beliefs’ that they have professed and communicated about for decades. They are:

(a) Respect for the individual
(b) To give the best customer service of any company in the world, and
(c) To pursue all tasks with the idea that they can be accomplished in a superior way.

These are the beliefs that keep the company working their way through difficulties and recessions to remain one of the most admired companies in the world.

At the same time, however, there are several key messages which the company’s employee communications are constantly emphasizing :

• IBM knows where it is going
• IBM is a good place to work
• IBM makes a significant contribution to the community
• Technology is both necessary and exciting.

And of course they have abundant evidence to illustrate and support these messages. Indeed, if some of these message bells have not been rung for some time, the company’s communications media will deliberately carry articles and items to keep the messages fresh in employees’ minds. That way, their communications have consistency and coherence.

But like all good messages they have very much a two-sided effect. On the one hand they influence employee opinion in constructive directions, but they also constantly press the company into positive actions which will give substance to its own messages. The company has to show it knows where it is going, it obviously has to be a good place to work, and so on. Otherwise employees see communications on these subjects as just so much hot air. Your messages will have next to no effect if your actions do not match and follow through.

Make Your First-line Managers into the Company’s Principal Two-way Communicators

MORI, the pollsters, conduct many company employee attitude surveys. Often in these surveys they ask employees where they actually get their information from, and where they prefer to get their information. Usually a variety of media is listed and respondents are asked to nominate their top five in order. When they combine employees’ top three choices this is typically what they find. (This example is from a 2,000 employee survey).

Sources from Which Employees Prefer to Receive Information

My immediate manager 85%
Team meetings 59%
Notice boards 35%
Printed material sent to me 29%
My manager’s manager 29%
Direct from senior management 15%
From Personnel 15%
Trade Union representative 7%
Audio visual presentation 6%
House magazine 4%
The ‘grapevine’ 4%

Consistently employees vote overwhelmingly in favour of their immediate manager as the communicator they prefer. But is it any wonder? He is the person employees see every day and who understands their practical problems first hand. When he does communicate face-to-face you can ask him questions in your own words i.e. the communication is two-way and at the employee’s own level. He is not impersonal like a notice board, a video or a magazine. He talks their language. He is the person who talks to them more than anybody else in the business. He is their natural choice.

While composing the list, managers realized they would have to provide everyone with the quality of equipment, tools, materials and training to make these standards readily achievable. Many accepted they would have work to do on that score. But that is the job of the manager – not just to set the standards, but to make it as easy as possible to achieve the standards required, to do the right thing.

But first-line managers cannot simply be given the prime responsibility for communications and then left to sink or swim. If the process is to be done well, they need strong and continuing support. First, in the preparation of useful and pertinent material pitched at the level of the employees’ understanding. Second, in the form of thorough training, retraining, and on-the-job coaching until they can perform their communications role with confidence and conviction.

In fact, without this kind of support managers may well be acting to nullify the very messages their company wants to convey. Consider this point. Most formal company communication systems operate on a once monthly basis. But, whether we like it or not, the manager is communicating with employees every minute of the day by what he says and does. If communications meetings take roughly half a day a month (we are being generous) and there are around 23 working days in the average month, then what the manager does every day has a 46 to 1 chance of convincing employees that that is what the company is really like. If what he does is in conflict with company messages, his daily actions will swamp anything the company says formally only once a month.

In the end there is really no viable alternative but to use the communications source employees clearly prefer the front line manager. That is also why company messages must not only be few and simple enough for the manager to carry around in his head, they need to be actionable enough for him to be living them in his everyday work. He is the face of the company they see every day. To most employees he is the company. If he is not speaking and acting in line with the company’s declared philosophy every day, then they presume the mission statements and pontifications from the top are simply so many fine words and window dressing. If he does not act them out, they won’t either.

Communicate at the Level of Your Employees’ Understanding and Interest

Another key factor in successful communication is to talk at the level of employees’ understanding and interest. The interest graph below makes what may seem a simple point but it is crucially important. Indeed, many companies offend the point regularly by communicating information largely at the right end of the graph!

The more the information does not affect the hearers personally the more eyes glaze over and attention wanders. If it’s about pay, the new bonus scheme, or about changes to the job then they’re listening. But words about the new office opened in Brazil or the return on equity in the Chairman’s latest report to the City just leaves them cold. The more company communications are about such subjects the more employees find excuses not to turn up, and the more the manager is grateful to have business pressure as an excuse for skipping meetings.

One multi national company in the UK, however, does get attention from all its employees on how the company is doing as a whole. That’s because everyone’s pay and bonuses are dependent on it!

The company publishes its sales and profit plan for the year to all employees in the form of a large graph which is prominently displayed at each plant. As each month goes by the actual sales and profit performance are plotted on the graph. When sales hit predetermined trigger levels, and providing profitability is above a certain minimum figure, every employee from shop floor to managing director – gets an increase in pay and a lump sum bonus. Naturally everyone gets very interested in how sales are going, they want to know about the latest products and what the competition is doing, and they are keen to do whatever will help the company succeed. That’s one obvious way of making sure everyone takes an interest in the progress of the company.

But employees are also interested in the thing that affects them most every day, and that’s the job they do. If employees spend eight hours locked into their job every day they are keen to know about things that will make the job easier, that will help them avoid problems, and turn out better service or a better product.

This is where the Japanese in particular have stolen a real trick in many of their manufacturing companies. They know that the time span of shop floor employees’ attention is relatively short. They also know that these employees have more to do with high product quality and productivity than anyone else in the company. So by far the most of their communications is about the product itself and its quality. Their communications are not an optional add-on which happen once a month – they happen for the first few minutes every day before the start of each shift.

That has several positive advantages. It has to be about the job that’s all you can get in in that short time. It also makes for regular interaction of the manager with his people and keeps employees fully up-to-date with changes that may have happened in the last twenty-four hours (and there’s always something has happened to change things). The daily get-together where they regularly sort out problems together also begins to make the group feel success as a team. And you cannot really get the same feeling when you meet just once a month. It’s a habit well worth adopting.

Make the Upward Communications Channel as Strong as the Downward

Most company communications systems are strong on the downward channel but peculiarly weak on the upward channel. They tell much better than they listen. The popularity of Briefing Groups or their like have also tended to reinforce the idea that communications is about taking the messages down the organisation, about telling the troops what is happening. But if you want employees to participate actively there has to be a strong listening channel too, where the big boss actually hears what is being said on the front line and is seen to do so.

To give employees the opportunity to talk directly to executives at the top of the house, Scottish and Newcastle brewery introduced a get-together called The Chairman’s Forum. Forty employees drawn from all levels in the organisation and including trade union representatives were invited twice yearly to meet with the Chairman. On the basis that no negotiating took place and that confidential information would be respected, the Chairman gave details on current problems and performance in the business, and on company plans for the future.

Any issue could be raised, and since the Chairman undertook to give straight answers to any question and not to withhold any information, often participants found themselves discussing things even shareholders or investment analysts were not aware of. But the record is that confidences have been respected, and those taking part (different each time) act as opinion-formers throughout the business, and have succeeded in gaining wider acceptance of the need to drop restrictive practices and streamline operations.

Employees always have ideas and positive suggestions to make about their work and their company if they are asked and that’s another good reason to make the upward communications channel easy to use. Allied Irish Bank introduced a company wide Marketing Action Programme to galvanize the whole organisation into a more market-oriented stance where superior customer service became a prime goal. To engage everyone in the company programme and to get positive contributions from all their employees they introduced a staff suggestion scheme called Super Thought.

Staff were encouraged in each unit and branch to get together in voluntary groups to come up with positive suggestions for change and improvement where they could win special gifts and have the chance of taking part in a raffle for a car. In the four months of Super Thought some 1200 teams submitted around 11,000 suggestions. The net result was that staff became very much aware of the seriousness of the banks new orientation, and the bank got the benefit of a host of new ideas by making the exercise exciting, and by making the upward communication channel so much easier to use.

Listen to What Your Employees Tell You

Most communications systems will soon fall into disrepute with employees unless you show you are actually listening to what they say. The point came home very much to a manager who recently joined a large UK conglomerate making products for the car industry. Having been appointed General Manager of several manufacturing units, his boss proudly told him of a new communications system one of the units had recently introduced and suggested it ought to be extended elsewhere.

He duly visited the plant to find out more. During his visit he was collared by the plant shop steward who said: “Are you the new General Manager? You’re the very person we want to see. We’d like to talk to you about a few things.” Since there were only about seventy people on the site, he decided to call everyone into the cafeteria for a short meeting. And did they bum his ears!

They proceeded to tell him all the things that were wrong in the plant and how nothing appeared to be getting done about it. First, there was nowhere to park when they came for work the small area set aside soon filled up in the morning, and many employees were having to scramble around the local streets finding spaces to get into work. Second, the toilets were in a disgraceful state, with cracked windows, cracked toilets, doors hanging off, etc. Third, they were all being “gassed” by the fumes from the process they were using. And so it went on. The new manager promised to investigate and take action on each of the points they raised.

Later, when he asked the plant manager why these things had not come up in his new communications meetings, he said they had. Why had he not done anything about them? He replied : “You mustn’t react to everything they say, otherwise you would never be finished. I use the communications meetings to them have a good moan and let off steam”. What about the fumes? “To tell you the truth,” said the manager, I do go home with a sore throat myself most evenings”!

Now this may be an extreme example, but many employees all over the country feel to a greater or lesser degree that they cannot get things done through their communications system. As a result they switch off and management then wonders why employees do not respond when they want their help. You can have what looks like a wonderful system on paper the meetings are held regularly, minutes are produced, etc. etc. but if you don’t show you are listening by taking action on what you hear, then the process may be nothing but an elaborate waste of time.

One UK manufacturing company not only listens to what its people say, it judges its managers on their employees’ opinions! Every two years they conduct an attitude survey a means of ensuring employees’ views are heard anonymously and in confidence. Embedded in the survey are eight questions about how employees think they are being managed. Simple but important questions like : “I am clear about what my manager expects from me in my job”; “My manager listens and does something about the problems I raise”; “I get credit from my manager when I do a good job”; “I can talk over problems with my manager”; and “I get fair treatment from my manager”.

When the results are published each manager has his rating shown as his “managership index”, which is the average of his scores on the relevant eight questions. Having set themselves managership objectives, and knowing they are having their performance measured, managers get very interested not only in what their employees say in the survey, but what they say all the year round. And it raises by a quantum leap first-line managers’ interest in ongoing good management and continuous good communication.

Communications are not something you can confine to ‘communications meetings’ once a month, or to house journals or notice boards. Admit or not, communications of one kind or another are going on in business every minute of the day. It is not something you can separate out and give to someone in Personnel. It is like breathing – the life of the company simply does not go on without it. And if management actions are not in line with their communication messages, a formal overlay of communications meetings will have little effect on employee behaviour, or on their commitment to the business.

So, is your company clear about its key messages? Are your first-line managers the principal (trained) two-way communicators in your business? Do you demonstrate by your actions that you listen to what your employees say? You will never get your communications act together until you do.

Wrong. Quite wrong.

Adopting Best Operating Practices (BOPs) is actually easier, better, cheaper, faster, and safer. Not only that, it’s cheap to do. You don’t have to visit some university to find out what is best practice, or employ some expensive consultants to help you do it. For most companies, best practice is right inside the building! Let me give you an example.

A South African engineering company with whom we worked produces huge pumps for use in the oil and mining industries. These pumps are dependent on large rubber seals to make them leak-proof. However, figures showed that at least 15% of the product needed to be re-worked every month to patch up faults. While investigating the problem, the manager revealed that five of his operators produced flawless work month on month with no re-work requirements.

The five operators were requested to describe how they went about the job, and their method was captured and put on paper. The rubber department was then re-formed into five separate teams, each team having one of the ‘best practice’ operators acting as their team leader. That changed how the job was done throughout the section, and in a matter of three months the re-work they had wrestled with for so long had fallen by some 80%.

That is the prize of capturing and using the best operating practices right inside your own business. Not only does the company gain a benefit, employees feel proud to have contributed. The greatest compliment you can pay your own employees is simply to listen.

Writing up BOPs is a good idea for any company to take up. Here’s why.

BOPs Deliver Better Quality

BOPs describe any process in a step by step way, so that anyone with the right materials, equipment and training will turn out a good product or service every time. That’s its key purpose. Writing BOPs press you into making sure you put all the elements in place to achieve the consistent quality you as a manager would want to see. You start to ask questions like :

• Have we got the right materials to produce a quality job?
• Is the equipment we are using capable of delivering a quality job consistently?
• Are the tools good enough?
• Have we got the right information and systems to deliver good quality?
• Have my people all had the right training?
• What do I need to do now to make that happen?

The act of writing down the process also urges the manager to find out who already does the job best, to capture that, and make it available to all their staff. Just spreading that knowledge will immediately produce more consistent and reliable quality. It’s a process many Japanese companies started long ago, until now the quality and reliability of their products have become quite legendary.

One of the first companies to do this was car company Toyota. Taiichi Ohno, for many years their Operations Director, and acknowledged originator of their ‘zero defect’ policy, was a great believer in BOPs. The company described the detail of all their jobs in what they called Standard Work Sheets, their in-house version of Best Operating Practice. Here’s what he said about them.

“Standard work sheets and the information contained in them are important elements of the Toyota production system. . . . We have eliminated waste by examining available resources, re-arranging machines, improving machining processes, installing autonomous systems, improving tools, analyzing transportation methods, and optimizing the amount of materials at hand for machining. High production efficiency has also been maintained by preventing the recurrence of defective products, operational mistakes, and accidents, and by incorporating workers’ ideas. All of this is possible because of the inconspicuous Standard Work Sheet, which has changed little since I was first asked to prepare one 40 years ago . . .”

BOPs Are Good For Productivity

One of the benefits of writing down all the steps in a BOP is that you start to ask other pertinent questions. Like :“Do we really need to do all this?” Or, “Why do we do that?” [The usual answer is : “We’ve always done that”.] Then you start to get intolerant of any steps that don’t add value.

In this context, a value-adding step is : ‘anything that changes the product or information in some way, so that it is of value to the customer’. By ‘customer’, we mean whoever gets the result of your work; and that person can be inside or outside the business.

To take an example. A nurse takes information from a patient, composes it into a form which can then be used by the doctor to help diagnose or cure the patient’s ailment. That’s a value-adding step. A production operator in a car factory takes a piece of raw metal and machines it into a gear, which can then be used in a car’s gearbox. That’s adding value. A Finance Manager takes raw data from Sales, Buying, Production and other departments, and composes it into Accounts, which can then be used by managers all round the business. That’s adding value.

BOPs are an opportunity to eliminate all those steps which don’t add any value. For example, it may be that information provided by one department on one kind of form then has to be re-entered on another form in the next department. That’s adding cost, but no extra value. The rule there is : enter data only once in a format that can be used by everyone. Another example : a product made by a competent employee has to be examined by an inspector before it is allowed to go on its way. The ‘inspection’ step adds cost but no extra value (product not changed in any way), so eliminate it. If the employee is competent to make the product, they are also competent enough to check its quality in the process.

In our experience, we find in manufacturing companies that on average 25% of process steps add no value at all. Surprisingly, in office environments we find that average figure to be even greater, at around 40%. That’s why BOPs are great for productivity – there is so much to go for by seeking out and eliminating those non-adding-value activities. The greatest improvements in productivity don’t come from employees ‘working harder’, that’s usually small beer. Changing the process is where the biggest improvements lie.

One of the most productive approaches to that is to concentrate on making the job easier to do. As a rule, we know that will add at least 10% more productivity by itself. For example, if employees are using the same items and equipment repeatedly in doing their job, then it’s useful to keep these regular items within easy reach, so that they can get into a rhythm and don’t have to stretch or strain. Here’s a drawing which will illustrate the point.

In a small parts assembly situation, it is obviously helpful to have all the items used repeatedly as close to hand as possible. Those used less often can be placed at a stretch (an extended arm), but still within reach. The same applies to an office desk job – all the paper, pens, pencils, staplers, calculators etc. need to be easy to put your hand on. Twisting, getting into awkward positions, having to walk back and forward to files, etc. should be out.

BOPs Are Good For Cost-Saving

One of the intentions behind BOPs is to devise a method of doing the job right first time. That’s because not doing the job right first time adds to your cost but produces no new value for your customer. The customer gives you no more money because you had to work overtime to re-do the job, or had to scrap items not made right, they don’t care about that. That cost is all down to you.

And often, that cost is hidden. Let me give you an example. A while ago, we ordered some telephone headsets for our business, which had a telephone earpiece on one side only (so we could hear other people in our office). When they arrived, they were all double-sided. We phoned the company : “Send them back,” they said. We did. The second set they sent were exactly the same, double-sided. We phoned again, we sent them back again. We finally noticed that the labels on the headset boxes all said ‘single-sided’, but someone had put double-sided headsets into single-sided boxes!

All this to-ing and fro-ing, searching out the products, sending them out, getting them back, re-sending them out several times over, not only adds to the company’s costs, it irritates the customer as well. So it’s actually costing the company more to ruin its own reputation. It’s a ‘lose-lose’ situation however you look at it. A key function of the BOP is not only to avoid all that embarrassment, it’s to save the needless hassle and cost of putting things right that should have been right in the first place.

BOPs Are Good For New Employees

When new employees join any company, someone is generally assigned to show them how to do the job. If the current employees are already working to the BOP for the job, that is what they will teach the new employee. Not only that, they will insist the new employee reads the BOP, to make sure they understand what is required, what points to pay particular attention to, problems to avoid, etc. That way, they won’t be picking up any bad habits by default; on the contrary, they will be learning and doing the job the best way the company knows how – from the beginning.

McDonalds, the hamburger chain, is a great example of this philosophy. Whether or not their products are to your taste, they get an awful lot of customers passing through their doors all round the world : 50 million every day in 119 different countries. They are very committed to their core QSC principles : Quality, Service and Cleanliness. But there is no way they are going to deliver that consistently to their customers, with 31,000 restaurants and a million and a half employees, unless they are pretty specific about how to do it.

When the McDonald Brothers started they had 15 ‘Do’s and Don’ts’ they wanted their people to observe. That soon developed to a 75-page bound manual; today that manual extends to more than 600 pages. Every operation is described specifically : the famous French fries must be 9 / 32 of an inch thick, they must be cooked in the right oil for a specific number of minutes; if they are not purchased within ten minutes of cooking, they must be discarded. It’s quite clear, no questions needed, that’s the way we do it, it’s the best way we have discovered of delivering to the customer the quality product they expect.

That’s great for new employees. The Best Operating Practices described in ‘The Book’ make it clear just what they have to do. They know they are expected to greet every customer with direct eye contact and a smile. They know how quickly customers should be served. They know what to say, they know what to ask, and how to do it. When cooking hamburgers, they know how to lay them out on the griddle, what temperature to cook them at, for how long, how to turn them (not flip), to get the right finished product.

Many of the company’s staff may be only sixteen or seventeen-year-olds, or on their first job, but they all follow the BOP routine. That’s why McDonalds achieves the same standards of quality, service and cleanliness wherever you are in the world. It’s why customers and families go there in such numbers, because they know what they are going to get. BOPs have made McDonalds into one of the most successful restaurant chains anywhere in the world.

BOPs Are Good For Continuous Improvement

Once the BOP has been written for any job, it’s not a static thing. There are always ideas that occur to managers and employees which could make the job easier, better, cheaper, faster or safer. When they prove that the new idea really works, they build it into the BOP. It’s like the Olympics – things never stop improving.

Decades ago, Japanese companies realized they were never going to compete in world markets without improving their product quality. That’s when they adopted their kaizen philosophy. The word actually means ‘good change’, but in the West has come to mean ‘continuous improvement’. Japanese managers take continuous improvement to be a key part of their job. In fact, Masaaki Imai, who wrote the book ‘Kaizen’, says when he was first appointed as a supervisor, his boss told him : “If the job is being done exactly the same way in six months’ time, see that as a failure”. He got the message.

The great advantage of writing Best Operating Practices is that you capture what is best in what you do now. Thereafter, the tweaks and improvement ideas you come up with enable you to go even further, but importantly you don’t lose what was good in the first place. Step by step, you get to places you never thought you would achieve. Every time I quote the next example by way of illustrating the point, I still find it quite mind-boggling, but it’s absolutely true.

Back in the eighties, Motorola, the electronic devices manufacturer, were getting customer complaints about their product quality, so they decided to attack the issue with some vigour. When they started, their defect rate (only ½%), was already good by industry standards (in other words they were getting 995 items out of 1,000 right first time). So they began measuring defects by ‘parts wrong per 100,000’ to keep pushing ahead. Seven years later, the company ran full-page advertisements in Sunday newspapers to tell the world their product quality had improved a hundred-fold since they started.

But the quality standards continued to rise, with the company’s Six Sigma programme eventually setting a standard of no more than 3.4 defects per million – an incredible 1,200 hundred times better than their start-point! Now you may think it would take any company years to get there, and in the first instance for Motorola, it did. But when the company opened a new plant in China, it found it was achieving the same Six Sigma standard in six months with completely new employees. That’s the hidden power of BOPs – they take you to levels of performance you have never reached before.

BOPs Are Good For Safety

One important element of a BOP is to describe the safe way of doing things, that is : safe for the employee, and safe for the customer. In this respect, the rule to follow is not to make the job ‘as safe as possible’, to the extent that it kills productivity, or makes the job tedious and boring; but to make the process ‘as safe as necessary’ to do both a safe and effective job.

Most often, the safety parts of a BOP are ‘things to check’ before starting the job, or to watch while doing the job. That process is very familiar to airline pilots. They all systematically go through their checklist before they ever take off : are all the instruments working? the lights? the wing flaps? the tail rudder? the radio? the windscreen washers? etc. etc. And they need to. It could be a life-or-death matter. On a twelve-hour journey to Tokyo or wherever, the pilot can’t just pop out of his cabin to ask the passengers if there’s an engineer on board. They’ve got to get it right before they start. It’s a necessity airline engineers are only too aware of. But these simple BOP checklists are one of the key reasons that airline transport is one of the safest forms of travel in the world.

The simplest form of BOP is just a checklist, but it can have far-reaching consequences. Recently, a group of heart surgeons decided to produce a checklist of questions that doctors could use to make good diagnoses of patient problems. Not everybody can be a specialist, but this was a way of imparting specialist knowledge to local practitioners to detect problems early, and thus improve the chances of survival for many patients. With local GPs using the checklist systematically, the heart surgeons were surprised how well the system worked : it was like they had been there themselves. What surprised them even more, given their long experience, was how lackadaisical they had become when they themselves didn’t use the checklist. Some even said the doctors had become better than they were. That’s the benefit of writing, and using, BOPs : it both spreads good practice around, and prevents experienced people getting slipshod too.

What The BOP Should Include

1. A description of the job to be done.
2. The material, equipment and tools involved.
3. The method to be used, including particular key points to be watched.
4. A description of what a good job looks like.
5. The measurement methods to be used, so that the job holder will know when a good job has been done.
6. The most common faults, and how to correct variances.
7. The name of the person who wrote the BOP, and the date when it was last updated.

Primarily, BOPs are designed to achieve the following:

• A description of ‘the best way we know how’ of performing a particular task
• Ensuring no-fail quality is built into the process
• Removal of ‘waste’ from the process
• Providing a safety-assured method
• Encouraging continuous improvement

How BOPs Are Used

Generally employees will consult the BOP when they are new to the job, when they haven’t done that particular job for some time, or when they want to check a point which may have begun to slip over time. Pictures, drawings and illustrations are most desirable, but real model examples close to the work are best. One UK manufacturer of baths and basins has to deal with a great variety of water-managing systems, plungers and cisterns. In the cistern manufacturing section, some thirty varieties of the mechanics are mounted on boards and hung on the walls. Each time an operator has a batch to produce, he takes the appropriate board from the wall, places it in front of himself on the work-bench, and starts to work with the model product and parts right in front of him. That’s good BOP practice.

BOPs don’t have to be rigid or elaborate. They just have to encourage best practice. In laboratory situations, it would be the step-by-step safe sequence for executing processes. In a hospital, it is even more important to do the work ‘the best way we know how.’ One geriatric hospital group encourages their staff to write up their processes as a standard for the whole group this way : when the process has been examined and approved, it is entered in ‘The Beautiful Book’. Their employees love to have their name recorded in The Beautiful Book.

In office-based situations, forms can play a big part in communicating and storing key information. Yet it is pretty commonplace for people to complete forms inadequately. Sales people will often omit important information from their sales order forms, or job applicants will struggle filling recruitment forms when they are not quite sure what is required. That’s where BOPs may take the form of a manual of ideally-completed forms. Seeing what a properly completed form looks like is much better than simply being given a blank form to complete.

BOPs Are A Key Managerial Job

Often when we are addressing groups of managers or employees, we will ask the question : “How many of you think we shouldn’t do things in the company the best way we know how?” No-one ever puts their hand up. They all think we should do things the best way we know how. That’s why it is so important for the manager to set out in detail best operating practice for every job in his or her department. It can take time to do all that, of course, but I would say : there is no job more important.

Employees are not going to fall into ‘best practice’ by accident. The why’s, the wherefores, and the detail have to be demonstrated and explained. But because the vast majority of employees actually prefer to do a good job, when you describe the BOP, and you give them the materials, tools and training to do that good job, that is just what they will do. The BOP is what makes best practice into standard practice in your company.

When composing BOPs it’s vital to involve the people doing the job. You’ll have ideas, but they will too, and it’s important to build the best ideas into the BOP, wherever they come from. Furthermore, employees are flattered that you have consulted them, and shown such respect for their opinions. Also, the ownership they feel in the process makes them much more committed to following the BOP when it’s finished. It’s a win-win situation for the manager.

A final point. Although it’s important to be open and democratic when composing the BOP, the manager needs to be relatively autocratic in implementing it : ‘It is not optional to follow best practice when we know what that is; that’s what we do : we follow the BOP. If someone comes up with a new and better idea, we will build it into the BOP to make sure we don’t lose it. But until then . . . we follow the BOP’. Eventually, it will become a habit to do just that. That’s when ‘best practice’ will have become part of the company’s culture, part of ‘how we do things round here’.

A few years ago I was revisiting a company which we had helped win the ‘Best Factory in Britain’ title, on the occasion of their end-of-year awards party. We heard about some remarkable achievements, and there were congratulations all round. Finally we came to the ‘Employee of the Year’ award. To my great surprise, it was awarded not to an employee, but to a front-line manager. And it wasn’t a fix, he was the overwhelming choice of the employees themselves.

Maintaining Discipline by ‘Kicking Ass’

“What’s brought that about?” I asked him quietly later. “A few years ago, I wouldn’t have won anything like that,” he confided. “You see, I grew up in a company where I saw managers going around ‘kicking ass’. I thought that’s what you had to do. So when I was first promoted, I did exactly the same, I ‘kicked ass’ just like them. But since I’ve joined this company I’ve changed completely, I’ve realized you’re never going to get the best out of your people if that’s all you do.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Well, when you manage by ‘kicking ass’, people only do as much as they have to, to keep you off their back. They don’t take initiatives to help you, on the contrary they quite like it when they see you getting into trouble. If problems occur, they wait for you to sort it out, they think it’s your job. If you’re not there, they see it as an opportunity to slack off. If you want to keep productivity up, you’ve got to be there all the time. Come to think of it, I don’t know why I ever thought it was a good way of managing.”

“So, what do you do now?” I asked. “First, I don’t just rely on fear, threats, and punishment discipline to keep people in line. What I do is, I treat my people like adults, but I expect them to behave like adults.” “But what does that mean in practice, George?” I continued.

“I expect them to do the job the best way they know how all day every day, whether I’m there or not. Anyone who wants to indulge in childish behaviour like stealing extra minutes at every tea break and lunch break, lining up at the clock well before finishing time, always waiting to be told what to do when they can see themselves what needs to be done, had better think about finding a job somewhere else, because it’s not going to be here. I make an assumption that they all want to do a good job every day, and they know that’s what I expect of them.

“On the other hand, they know what they can expect of me. I make it my prime task to get them everything they need to do a good job – the right equipment, the right materials, the right information, the right working environment, the right training – that’s my job, and they know it. And I bust a gut to get them everything they need, knowing that they’ll do a good job for me in return.”

“So, it’s not just because you have become Mr Nice Guy that you’ve won this award, then,” I ventured. “No,” George came back, “I think I’m quite demanding actually. Going soft is not the answer, people have to know what’s OK, and what’s not OK, and I think they respond to that. But we talk to each other as adult to adult, not as boss to minions, we talk and act as if we’re all playing on the same team. They know they can rely on me, and I rely on them. I think maybe the reason they all voted for me is that’s not what they normally expect managers to be like, and they like the respect it gives them. Anyway, that’s what I’m going to keep doing, because it really works.”

The Importance of the OK BOX

This manager has alighted here on something fundamentally important if you are going to get from your staff the kind of behaviour you most want to see. It’s what I call the OK BOX. Making clear to staff what is OK, and what is NOT OK, and being consistent about it. The vast majority of people actually prefer to do a good job, but you have to spell out what that good job is, in practical terms, so that everyone will know – without having to ask you – when they are doing a good job.

Once you have done that, you can safely leave your staff to simply get on with the job. And they will. But there’s one important condition. You must show you assume that’s just what they’ll do whether you are there are not. And that expectation must be genuine on your part; in other words, you treat them like adults, and assume they will act like adults. This point was well illustrated when we were working with an American computer memory company several years ago. Every department seemed to be plagued with late delivery problems, with delayed material supplies, hold-ups between departments, scrambling to get orders out on time every month, etc. With one exception. Finance department always delivered their reports on time, and it seemed so quiet in there.

While working with the managers of another department, we decided to invite Brian, the Finance Director, in to tell us how he did it. After some initial embarrassment, he said : “Let’s take a simple example. If I need some figures totalling, I make sure my member of staff understands exactly what needs to be done, then I make sure she has all the equipment she needs to do the job. I watch her start off to make sure everything is OK, then I leave her to get on with it. I tell her that if she has any problems to come and see me straight away, but if I don’t hear from her, I will assume everything is going according to plan.”

“But what if she doesn’t do that?” one of the managers asked. Brian looked horrified. “Doesn’t do that?” he replied, ” Doesn’t do that? Why wouldn’t she?” It was clear the idea had never entered his head. Brian’s department worked like clockwork, because he communicated this strong expectation to his people that if he gave them a personal responsibility, they would do the job like responsible adults. And they did. There was never any question in his mind about it.

The Source of Good Discipline

And that’s where good discipline starts – in the mind of the manager. In fact, the expectations in the mind of the manager have more to do with good employee behaviour than any other factor. What you expect, what you are willing to accept, is what you will get. Brian had clear expectations of his people, and every month that’s what they delivered without him ever having to raise his voice. That effective kind of discipline is positive, not negative. And it works better.

Going around ‘kicking ass’ may be seductive – it feeds your ego to see people’s fearful reactions to your authority, and the quick changes you can make. You may even convince yourself the place would fall apart if you were not there. And of course it would, because everybody’s waiting for you to make all the decisions, to solve all their problems. And that style of managing takes up so much time. You have to be there all the time, all day every day. You rush from one issue to another, the problems never stop coming. That’s because no-one wants to take any responsibility, they’re leaving it all to you. It’s a 100 Years’ War. Then, when you are away for any length of time, you find yourself phoning in at regular intervals to ‘make sure’ of this, and to ‘make sure’ of that. But that’s not managing, that’s failure to manage.

The answer is to change from external discipline to self-discipline. Take the trouble to spell out the requirements of the job to every job-holder, in detail. Then make every effort to see they have all the equipment, materials, information and training they need to do the job well. At that point, tell them you expect them to get on with the job without supervision. You won’t be dragooning them into it. They have to take responsibility for the whole job, for their quality and productivity, for making sure their customers, both inside and outside the business, get a zero-defect job.

At first staff may appear apprehensive about that, but think about it this way. Because they are doing the job all day, most staff know more about the details of their job than the manager does anyway. Also, how much time can any manager super-vise every member of staff during a day – that is, look over their shoulder to make sure they are doing the job right? Managers we ask usually plump for 10% of the time at most, but more likely 5% or less. So if staff are already doing the job by themselves for 90% of the time or more, just let them do that good job for 100% of the time. It’s simple.

But taking that step releases a lot of valuable management time. That is time managers should use to make improvements, especially those which will help make the job easier for their people, or help them to do a high-quality job more consistently. When employees see that their boss is spending most of his time now working on things that will help them, or make the job easier for them, they are much more likely to want to do a good job for him in return. That was one of the key reasons why George, in the story above, was voted ’employee of the year’ by his own people.

Describing What A Good Job Looks Like

Good discipline is first about making the OK Box clear, and then encouraging people to get in there, and stay there. That means you need to spend time showing what’s right and praising what’s right rather than spend endless time correcting and criticizing what’s wrong.

On our first visits to a new client, managers were unanimous in their opinion that their biggest problem was “lack of discipline”. Digging deeper, we discovered this meant employees making late starts and early finishes, producing jobs of variable quality, failure to keep their workplaces clean and tidy, wandering off from the job, etc. etc. Worse than that, the managers confessed they had no idea how to correct things, as whatever they tried did not seem to work.

We told them we would start by defining with them what a good employee looked like, describing the behaviour they would most like to see. We might then consider conducting six-monthly appraisals with each employee, and rewarding them for their good behaviour rather than punish their bad behaviour. We explained that what we came up with would have to be simple, understandable, and readily achievable by any employee. This is the list the front-line managers finally agreed upon.

1. Work output meets target
2. Quality level meets ‘best’ standard
3. Performs a variety of jobs to the required standard
4. Helps to train colleagues as required
5. Makes suggestions / takes initiatives to make improvements in the company
6. Responds positively to short-notice problems
7. Always operates within known health and safety rules
8. Excellent housekeeping standards maintained
9. No absence / timekeeping problems
10. Personal learning objective achieved every six months

While composing the list, managers realized they would have to provide everyone with the quality of equipment, tools, materials and training to make these standards readily achievable. Many accepted they would have work to do on that score. But that is the job of the manager – not just to set the standards, but to make it as easy as possible to achieve the standards required, to do the right thing.

Making Good Behaviour Commonplace

When the list was presented to staff, it was explained that everyone who achieved these standards would be open to receive one week’s pay as a lump sum every six months as a reward for their good performance. If their manager decided they deserved a tick against each item they would get all the money. If not, there would be no reward.

The announcement had an immediate effect. Staff started to clean up their work areas, suddenly the whole place began to look clean and tidy. People wanted to help out if there was a problem. Those who had often lingered in the cafeteria at lunch and break times started getting up from their tables to get back to work before their boss. Managers were amazed, they had never seen that before.

And of course they were delighted. It became clear that good behaviour and good performance was becoming the norm. And that’s very important in any organisation – that renegade behaviour is not seen as ‘cool’ any more, on the contrary that good behaviour is accepted as ‘cool’.

To reinforce that position, we encouraged managers to sit down with each individual six weeks or so before their formal appraisal to give them a reading on ‘how they were doing’. They would first congratulate the individual on the items where they were doing well, then ask them what they could do on those where they were falling short, and what they as their manager could to help them. That way the role of manager becomes much less critic, and more encourager and praiser of effort and improvement wherever they see it. That positive reinforcement mode is most important if you want to make good behaviour commonplace in your organisation.

When Chastisement Is Necessary

When all is said and done, there will always be some who will push the boundaries too far, either by lack of effort, repetitive default, or just simple defiance. If you are not to see your standards degenerate to a point of unmanageability, you have to take prompt and consistent action to bring any recalcitrants back within your OK BOX. That doesn’t automatically mean by applying punishment or sanctions (although these can work, of course), but much more by persuading the individual that staying within the OK BOX is actually a much better option for them than not.

In this context, it is fundamental that the manager does not position him- or herself as the ‘Enforcer’ of discipline, the all-seeing critical eyes. That takes us back to the 100 Years’ War scenario which makes life fraught for everyone on a daily basis. We need to make the individual responsible for their own behaviour, not the manager. The manager can be there to help the individual improve, but not to act as their ever-present overseer. The individual has to manage themselves to meet the standards and stay comfortably within the OK BOX.

To reinforce that position, we don’t do any shouting or telling. On the contrary, when there is a behaviour problem to be solved, we only ask questions. The process is called ‘Questions-Only Discipline’, or QOD. There are only four questions involved, they are easy to remember, but they press the individual into taking responsibility for their own behaviour, and to making clear commitments about their future conduct. And, most important, they really work.

Initially, tell the individual involved that you would like a word with them privately. In doing this, your quiet but deliberate demeanour should convey the message that it is about something serious, so it is important not to be smiling at this point. Take them to a neutral location away from their normal work environment (your own office will do), and make sure you will be undisturbed by telephone or visitors.

Throughout this whole procedure, stay in adult mode the whole time. That means speaking calmly and firmly, and never raising your voice. Shouting is out. Losing your temper is out. Do not wag your finger and act like a sergeant-major, implying ‘I could make your life a misery, if you don’t do as your told, mate’. That means you are taking back the responsibility for that person’s behaviour, and that’s not the idea at all. Just accept that by going through this process, you will get a commitment from the individual that will be far more powerful and lasting, and give you a far more pleasant working atmosphere, than you would get by shouting and threatening.

Now, here are the questions.

1. Ask : Do you understand what the required standard is?

Get your respondent to tell you precisely. Just saying “yes” is not enough. They have to tell you in their own words, specifically. They might hesitate, but press them into it. You have to hear the words coming out of their own mouth, then there is no doubt that they do understand. Explain calmly why the standard is necessary.

2. Ask : Do you have a problem meeting the standard?

They clearly do, otherwise you wouldn’t be there together. If they prevaricate, don’t be put off. Insist on hearing what the problems are. Often they find this embarrassing as their excuses are often woefully weak. But don’t spare their embarrassment, as their discomfort will be a powerful incentive for them not to want to have such a meeting with you again.

Show you are listening intently to what they say. Indeed, it often helps to have a pad in front of you, and to be seen taking down everything they say (yes, it is serious). Don’t start criticizing or showing your irritation at this stage, otherwise they will clam up to avoid your further disapproval. Just keep asking questions if you need further clarification.

When you think you have all the problems listed, then say “All right, let’s take each one of these, and see what we can do about them”. Note we are using the word ‘we’ now, implying that although the responsibility remains theirs, you are now on their side if they are ready to make the effort to resolve them. The task then is to end up with simple solutions to each of the problems they listed, which you think they will be able to carry through. When you are satisfied about that, then move on to question three.

3. Ask : What can I expect in the future then?

This is an important question. This is when your respondent articulates aloud their personal commitment to different behaviour, and that is fundamental. Do not say what you want. They must tell you what they are going to do in the future. When you finally endorse what they say, it must sound like that they have now ‘made a contract’ with you, and you should act like that is what it is.

If the vibes in the session make you feel that your respondent has made a true mental commitment to change, then you can end your meeting at this point. Only ask question four if you feel there is a danger they might default on their commitment, or they have failed to honour previous undertakings.

4. Ask : What will we do if you don’t?

Do not be fobbed off with throwaway answers. For example, if they say : “No, it’s all right, I’m going to do it”, you should reply to the effect : “Yes, I’m pleased about that, but I’m still asking the same question : ‘What will we do IF you don’t?’ Where do you think that could lead?” The best outcome to that question is that they themselves articulate the undesirable consequences they will bring upon themselves if they don’t put things right now.

At the end they need to feel that the discomfort of this type of meeting is something they don’t want to repeat. On the contrary, conformance seems a much easier option all around. At this point you can allow yourself a smile, indicating that you’re pleased that the individual has chosen to work with you, and do the positive, sensible thing.

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Effective discipline in any organisation is not about penalizing and punishing the behaviour you don’t want to see; it is much more about encouraging the behaviour you do want to see. That means making clear what a good job looks like in the first place. Since most people actually prefer to do a good job, just making that clear will lead to the vast majority of your employees conforming to your reasonable standards without a problem.

However, when behaviour deteriorates to an unacceptable level, then asking the right questions, and placing the responsibility where it truly belongs, will be much more effective than any amounts of blustering and criticizing. After all, external discipline exercised occasionally by you will never work as well as self-discipline exercised by the individual every hour of the day.

“everybody in the organisation can do something about every day”.

Step One

Read through each one of the 12 Ladders contained in the following pages. You will see each Ladder is divided into five categories, ranging from statements at Level 1 representing ordinary performance up to Level 5 representing ‘world class’.

As you read through them, indicate with a in the “My Rating” section of the scoring table at what level you think your organisation is currently on the particular Ladder concerned. If you are undecided between one level and the next e.g. between level 1 and level 2, choose the one which most applies.

Step Two

When you have marked where you think your organisation is on each of the 12 Ladders, we would like you then to prioritise the Ladders regarding their importance for your organisation at the present time. Allocate the Ladders to one of the three categories below, putting only four into each category.

Category 1 : Must do, requires urgent attention in the short to medium term. (Remember you can only choose 4 ladders in Category 1)

Category 2 : Should do, requires attention in the medium to long term. (Remember you can only choose 4 ladders in Category 2)

Category 3 : Can wait, requires attention once we have dealt with Category 1 and Category 2 Ladders.

Step Three

Take action. Now that you know where your priorities lie, start taking action to get your company or your team on to the next step of the Ladders of Performance which are most important to you. And don’t think that those companies already at world class level are somehow uniquely filled with exceptional people. They aren’t. They simply used the best operating practices they could find, put them into practice, and launched themselves on an ongoing programme of continuous improvement. Start now on your journey to world class.

Aligning Management Objectives

The extent to which staff understand the Strategic and Operational Goals of the organisation, and, in their natural work teams, have actively participated in agreeing and committing to improvement objectives.

Customer Focus

The extent to which everybody in the organisation understands how service is measured, to recognise the needs of both internal and external customers. The degree to which the organisation is truly customer-focussed.

Organising the Workplace

The extent to which the organisation has a culture of cleanliness and tidiness. Factory floors, outside areas and offices tend to look like new. Organisation is apparent everywhere; in reception, data collection and storage, customer liaison, inventory management, communication, etc.

Visible Measurement Systems

Whether on the factory floor or in the office, staff understand and participate in displaying (for all to see) the critical performance measures of the business. Also on display will be Best Operating Practices and Key People Measures.

Managing for Quality

The extent to which everybody in the organisation understands their personal contribution to product and service quality. In-process defect prevention measures are designed into processes and quality standards exist everywhere.

Eliminating Waste

The extent to which staff understand that activities that do not add value are waste. Scrap; re-work; unnecessary storage; inspection; delay and transport; are continually process-mapped as part of ongoing efforts to improve the work ratio.

Best Operating Practices (B.O.P’s) and Continuous Improvement

Regardless of the nature of the activity, there is always a best way of doing it. This (best practice) is benchmarked, either internally or externally, written up and implemented as the only way “we do things around here”.

Teamwork

Teamworking is different from team-building. It measures the degree to which teams are the building block of the organisation, where teams have full responsibility for an entire product or service.

Staff Empowerment and Involvement

The extent to which every staff member has the authority to do whatever is necessary to do it “right at the time” for their customer (internal or external). The extent to which they are treated like adults, and work effectively without supervision.

Rewards and Recognition

The extent to which reward and recognition systems are simple, open, clear, and fair. The extent to which they attract, retain and motivate managers and staff to deliver superior performance.

Purposeful Communication

The extent to which company communications are regular, orderly and coherent, and support its stated goals and values. The extent to which information to do the job well is timely, accurate and accessible.

Continuous Learning

This Ladder examines the degree to which both the company and its employees realise that continuous improvement and continuous learning on everyone’s part is absolutely essential to stay ahead and remain competitive.

Within ten seconds of starting, her singing had the whole audience on their feet cheering. The judges faces bore looks of utter astonishment – she really could sing! When the cheers had died down, judge Piers Morgan, who gave her a standing ovation, said : “That is the biggest surprise I have had in three years of being a judge on this show. That was stunning!” Amanda Holden, another judge, told Susan : “We were against you at the start, but it was a privilege just to listen to that”. In no time, a clip from the show was on YouTube. In less than a week, the clip had had more than 47 million views, more than Mandela, the Pope and President Obama combined. Unbelievably, a previously unknown middle-aged spinster from Scotland was suddenly a star.

There are two big reasons why Susan’s performance made such an impact on the public everywhere. Most people live somewhat ordinary, even anonymous, lives, and they felt it was great that an ordinary lady like Susan, with few physical advantages, who had had few good breaks in her life, could suddenly get the chance prove to the world that she was someone of real talent. They could really identify with that, they loved the whole idea, she deserved it.

The Power of Expectations

But the second big reason was : expectations. Had a nubile young lady come on stage looking the part, and sung the same song equally well, she would have gained great applause and judge approval, but her clip would never have appeared on YouTube. What made Susan unusual was that expectations of her performance were virtually zero before she started, and the gap between what she delivered and what was expected was just huge. That’s what made her clip worth putting on YouTube, and the reason millions of people identified with her across the world.

That’s the awesome power of expectations. It’s not the performance alone that determines people’s response, it’s what was expected before the event that makes all the difference. That’s a factor that’s so important in life, and certainly in managing people, that every manager ought to know the essential principles, and put them to work on an everyday basis.

The point was well illustrated for me many years ago while working as a management consultant for a Company involved in computer manufacturing. Their American Managing Director complained to me : “I don’t understand these British people, David. Last year I offered them a bonus, and they more or less threw it in my face”. He told me that the previous year the Company had been doing well, and he indicated via their notice board that as a gesture of thanks he planned to pay a bonus at Christmas.

I later discovered there had been much speculation among employees about exactly how much the bonus would be. Despite average wages then being only around £20 a week, rumour built on rumour until the expected bonus generally fell somewhere between £50 and £100. The Managing Director had not been thinking of anything like such a figure. When his special bonus of £10 appeared in pay packets just before Christmas, instead of creating general delight and gratitude, there was widespread disgruntlement and hoots of derision.

The Laws About Expectations

The lesson of this story is a fundamental one. If you fail to match or exceed your employees’ expectations, even when you are giving money away, they will respond with complaints, ingratitude and even resentment. On the other hand, had our Managing Director kept his mouth shut – and I mean said nothing – but then put an unexpected £10 in each pay packet the week before Christmas with a personal note of thanks, good feelings about the Company would have been universal. It may seem perverse, but exactly the same sum of money will vary in its impact dependent on where expectations stand before the event.

This M.D. had tried to do the right thing, he thought he was being generous. But when he got nothing but catcalls and looks of disdain for his trouble, he didn’t know where to turn. The shock certainly shook his confidence and almost paralyzed his ability to manage. Had he been aware of the simple, but fundamental, laws of expectations, however, it would have been a whole different story.

These are the Laws of Expectations, which determine people’s reaction to actual events :

• Events which match expectations will gain ready acceptance. Events which exceed expectations will produce increasing degrees of happiness and delight.
• Events which fall short of expectations will be met by expressions of dissatisfaction. Events which fall well short of expectations will produce increasing degrees of disappointment, complaint and protest.

The implications of these relatively simple laws are far-reaching for anyone involved in management, simply because of the frequency with which such situations occur, whether dealing with employees, customers, or colleagues (or even family and friends). Most of us have had an intuitive awareness about expectations, but conscious awareness of their importance and power can radically alter how effectively people are managed.

The basic principles about expectations and emotional responses can probably be best described diagrammatically using this simple scale.

The ‘zero’ at the bottom of the scale represents ‘no previous expectations’. In that state, it is virtually a guarantee that any good thing that happens will come as a ‘pleasant surprise’ and therefore will be well received. Note : it doesn’t have to be big to produce good feelings, it just has to be unexpected. Good feelings will always result where there’s a positive gap between what was expected (nothing in this case) and whatever good thing then comes along.

Now let’s take the example of office-worker Ginny who is about to meet her boss to have her annual performance appraisal. This is an event which always raises apprehensions, but Ginny has heard that 3% is the going rate for pay increases this year, so she has modest positive expectations before the meeting (the blue arrow on the left-hand side of the chart). Her boss points out areas he feels she could improve, but in general he congratulates her on her good work, and says he is awarding her a 5% increase in pay. That beats Ginny’s expectations, so she is very happy. However, the boss has something more to say : Mr Walker, one of the department’s senior staff, is retiring soon, and he has decided to promote Ginny into that position. Now, Ginny is quite delighted.

The fundamental rule to bear in mind is that it is the size of the gap between what was expected and what happens that determines how pleased the individual will be, not just the event itself. On the other hand, if Ginny’s boss had dropped a few hints that she might be in line for a special increase, she might have presumed it was going to be 6% at the top of the range, in which case 5% would not have had much impact. Equally, if she had been promised Mr Walker’s job earlier, rather than be delighted, she might start asking why she was not getting his level of salary straight away.

There are three key points which come out of this simple example :

• Where expectations are zero, even small pleasant surprises will please.
• The higher the expectations, the more difficult it becomes to please.
• So keep good news confidential, even secret, until you are ready to announce.

Taking the trouble to manage expectations can have a fundamental effect on employee attitudes and motivation towards their managers and their organization. So it is worth describing some of the practicalities that flow from these basic principles.

The Laws in Practice

As a general rule, don’t let good news leak out. Rather keep it confidential so that when announced it comes as a pleasant surprise to 90% of your people. Small business entrepreneurs make a habit of using this device, though often unwittingly. For example, caught up in the general feeling of goodwill towards the end of the year, they may impulsively decide to send all their staff a turkey for Christmas. If it comes out of the blue, the staff begin to think the boss is marvellous.

Inevitably, however, he has raised their expectations in the process, so that everyone will begin to expect something similar the following year. If he sends everyone another turkey, he may be surprised to find that this time, instead of the usual delight and gratitude, people start complaining that the quality of their bird is not as good as last year, or that their colleague got a better one than they did. That’s expectations for you.

But generally our seat-of-the-pants entrepreneur instinctively knows he has to do something different. Just when everyone is expecting a turkey, he surprises them all by buying everyone tickets for a Christmas show. Result : more good feelings, because the boss instinctively knows never to let expectations get entrenched by doing the same thing repeatedly. Unfortunately larger organizations tend to lose this kind of spontaneity which can be very effective in replenishing the tank of employee goodwill.

There are other times, however, when announcing in advance can have a positive benefit : for example, when a Company announces an increase in holiday entitlement. This can in fact generate two amounts of goodwill – one from the announcement itself, and another when the holiday is actually taken. In other words, the thoughts about a forthcoming holiday can give as much pleasure as the vacation itself.

I learned of one organization who announced in advance that it intended to mark a milestone in the Company’s history by offering a gift to all employees : a wallet for the men, and a purse for the women. The news was unexpected and was widely well received. When the gifts finally arrived, employees were pleased with the quality, but they discovered the Company had forgotten to mention one thing . . . there was an unexpected £10 note inside every one. That’s managing expectations.

Managing Negative Expectations

There comes a time in every manager’s life when there is no alternative but to communicate bad news, and managing negative expectations needs quite different treatment. This is what we will be dealing with in Managing Employee Expectations, Part 2. 

No-one likes to communicate bad news, but sometimes it has to be done. That’s a situation that needs quite different treatment if you’re going to manage expectations effectively.

Generally, when people have been expecting some negative event in their lives, anything better than what was expected will bring feelings of relief. I well remember in my early thirties having a consistent pain in my stomach that convinced me I probably had cancer, since my father had died of the disease just a few years before. My daughter was just two at the time, and I thought ‘I’m not going to have the chance of seeing her grow up’. It was a depressing thought. Wow, was I relieved when my doctor told me it was something quite simple. When I got back home, I sat back in the chair with a great sigh of relief, and was mightily grateful.

Most negative events are not exactly life and death affairs, but the expectations rules are the same : anything better than people’s worst expectations will bring feelings of relief and gratitude; but the degree to which events are worse than expected will bring increasing feelings of disappointment, upset, anger, and protest. So now we can show the full expectations spectrum, both positive and negative.

For managers, the message is clear : events which match or exceed employees’ expectations will result in general peace and goodwill. But those which fall short will produce reactions of disappointment and protest. But what happens when you think you cannot match employee expectations, or you have something to announce which may come as a nasty surprise? There are only two alternatives if you want to avoid trouble :

• Improve the content of the announcement until it does match expectations
• Take time to prepare employee expectations, or reduce them to a level where you can announce

Implementing Difficult Decisions

A simple but interesting example illustrates the point well. One well-known company had been shocked in the past when it decided to increase its cafeteria prices. Employees protested and immediately declared a boycott. They loudly catcalled those who went to fetch meals, deliberately moved away from tables if diners approached with a tray, and made great play of bringing in their own food and drinks.

Several years later the managing director still remembered the episode and was distinctly apprehensive when his H. R. manager told him the subsidy was now out of control, and further price increases would have to be made. He assured him it could all be done without trouble or the usual 30% fall-off in meals take-up. The M.D. was still sceptical but let the H. R. manager go ahead. Fortunately, he knew something about managing expectations.

First, a notice was posted saying that the cafeteria subsidy had risen to ‘intolerably high levels’ and that a ‘substantial increase’ would be required soon. The notice deliberately gave no further details. Inevitably rumours started to circulate and the pessimists began to make everyone expect the worst. (By the way, this sort of ‘trial balloon’ enables feelings to be tested and avoid making an announcement which could misfire embarrassingly.)

Having allowed time for the message to percolate over a week or so, a second notice then appeared saying the company had managed to confine the increase to only 10%. It also showed that, despite the increase, the price of most dishes would be not more than the cost of the uncooked food and gave a number of examples. In addition, the increase in prices was not to take place until after the summer holiday shutdown. For the following three weeks everyone felt somehow they were getting a bargain and, when work resumed, prices exactly matched expectations. The feared 30% fall-off in meals take-up simply did not occur, and the whole process went through quite smoothly. Even the M.D. was pleased.

Announcing Unwelcome News

There come times in every manager’s life, of course, when there is no alternative but to communicate bad news. Managers often have tough decisions to take, which they know employees are not going to like very much. But they cannot afford simply to chicken out, otherwise they are in effect no longer managing their business. In such instances the answer is to prepare employees for any unpleasant changes stage by stage, and to treat those involved with genuine concern and sensitivity.

For example, you may have redundancies or even a plant closure to announce. Unless something dramatic, like a takeover or the loss of a huge order, has occurred, no-one will really be expecting it. If you make the announcement suddenly, you will not only provoke hostile and energetic reaction inside the company, but possibly active support from trade unions, local authorities, Members of Parliament, newspapers etc. outside the company. That simply compounds an already difficult situation.

Some companies choose to announce such things without notice on the basis that it ‘gets the thing over with as soon as possible’, and avoids complicating matters with protracted union discussions. But that demonstrates very clearly that the company is much more concerned for its financial numbers than for its people. And those who are left behind find themselves asking ‘Could it be us next?’ Such nasty surprises send quivers of anxiety all round the business and employees feel they cannot trust their own company. Employees have long memories when it comes to such unpleasant shocks; they often harbour the resentment for years. So the quick-fire solution is bought at a heavy long-term price.

Such difficult events can be managed well, however. One consumer products manufacturing company concluded they should close down an ageing plant and move the manufacture of the plant’s products to another site. Managers made the announcement to the employees in groups, working from a prepared brief, and were able to tell them that they would each be seen individually to talk about options – either moving to the new site, taking a different job at the existing site, or redundancy payment terms and help to find another job.

Every employee involved was then interviewed by two managers (who already held data on the skills and job experience of every person affected). In each case the matter was talked through over a period of days until they had a solution for each. The shutdown worked out well because every person in the plant knew what they were going to be doing when the plant closed, and the individual concern shown by the company exceeded most expectations.

Some Words of Advice

Although expectations can be raised quickly, for example by a simple announcement or even by an unchecked rumour, shifting already established expectations requires time, especially if that needs to be towards the negative end of the spectrum. In the case of the cafeteria prices mentioned earlier, the H. R. Manager gave people time to get used to the idea of higher prices before the announcement became definite and specific. As a rule of thumb, bad news should only be made definite when this is judged to fall short of the worst expectations of 80% of your people.

If lay-offs are a real possibility, give employees fair warning to allow minds time to adjust. Making the first announcement drastic and specific simply guarantees to produce a nasty surprise and evoke reactions of shock and protest. However, if a vague early warning statement creates so much insecurity that they prefer to hear the whole truth, level with them if the trouble is more than temporary. Don’t be afraid to tell them the worst that could happen – at least that way there will be some feeling of relief if subsequent events don’t turn out as bad as their worst expectations. And unless there has been an uncaring attitude in the past, or the situation has been repeated too often, you will be surprised at the support and co-operation you receive in response.

On a more personal level, there is a good piece of advice which can be very helpful when one is facing a particularly difficult situation. Think of the worst that can happen. Articulate it. Write it down and look at it. Imagine it specifically and get used to the idea that it might just happen. Then take the next difficult step. Accept that it will happen. See yourself accepting it stoically and dealing with it soberly and steadily. Once you have genuinely accepted the worst that could happen, anything that turns out better will be a bonus. If your worst expectations cannot be exceeded, you will feel less pain and shock, and you will experience relief if things are not in fact as bad as expected. You will be surprised at the positive motivation and calm you can derive from the process. Try it.

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Most of us can well recall episodes in our lives when things turned out so much better than we ever dared hope, and what a great feeling it was. Unfortunately the disappointments are also well remembered, and often linger longer. The fact is expectations pervade every part of life, our personal lives, our work lives, our organizational lives. The same events can produce either feelings of pleasure or disappointment, of goodwill or resentment, of acceptance or protest. In organisations, that will all depend on just how expectations have been managed. in the past The principles are simple, but the effects are powerful. If managers are to handle their people relationships effectively, they not only need to know about the Laws of Expectations, but to use them to positive effect every day.

Identified here are twelve of the most important factors involved in achieving world class performance standards in business. The factors are :

• Aligning Management Objectives
• Customer Focus
• Organizing The Workplace
• Visible Measurement Systems
• Managing For Quality
• Eliminating Waste
• Best Operating Practices
• Teamworking
• Staff Empowerment and Involvement
• Rewards and Recognition
• Purposeful Communications
• Continuous Learning

Each of the factors in the audit is divided into five different levels – from Level 1, representing ‘ordinary’ performance, to Level 5 describing ‘world class’. The benefits of this are :

• It helps you see where you are now.
• It shows you just what you have to do to move performance up to the next step on the Ladder.
• It recognizes that getting to world class is a journey, not an event.

One of the most important factors in getting any organization to world class performance levels is to have the whole management group ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’. That may be difficult, but it is absolutely essential. So that you can see how the system works, have a look at that first Ladder – Aligning Management Objectives – and see where you think your company is now.

By the way, don’t worry if you find you are only at level 1 or 2 now on this or most of the other factors. That’s where most companies start, even the big ones. But with the 12 Ladders layout you’ll be much clearer about what you should concentrate on, and about what you can do in practical terms to take your company performance to the next level on the road to World Class.

Download the full audit now.

The trouble with job descriptions is that they only describe activities. Most are full of “-ings”: planning, organizing, communicating, deciding, motivating, etc. etc. What we need to describe are the outputs required of the job-holders, so that they know what to focus on, what to spend their time on, how to get the right things done. A powerful new trend today is to describe jobs not as a series of activities, but in terms of the Personal Contributions (PCs) each job-holder can make to the performance of their company.

The first rule when defining the Personal Contributions of any job is: They should represent the outputs of the job, the results to be achieved rather than the activities used to achieve them.

Take a sales representative job as an example. In describing their job, a salesperson might say: “I research my territory; I make phone calls to make appointments; I travel to meet potential clients; I make presentations,” etc. But these are all activities, they only add cost. The only thing that adds value to the business is ‘actual sales’, and that should be the first output of virtually every salesperson job. One of the key tasks then is actually to minimise the number of activities it takes to achieve real sales, the key reason the individual is employed. That is what makes the salesperson truly productive.

Take another example: a maintenance engineer. Asked to describe his job, he might say: “I work with tools; I attend to breakdowns; I keep spare parts; I carry out regular oiling and greasing services,” etc. And while all these may be needed, again they are all activities, they only add cost. The true output we are looking for, and what the engineer should focus on, is: ‘Fully Operational Equipment’. We should then help the engineer minimise the effort and cost involved in delivering that result.

When maintenance engineers have their jobs defined as a series of outputs rather than a list of activities, they not only begin to see their job differently, they start doing it differently. Often they stop calling their job ‘Breakdown Maintenance’ (we only work when machines break down) and rename it ‘Running Maintenance’ (our job is to avoid breakdowns and keep things running). They soon realize that showing machine operators how to avoid the most common breakdowns makes the job easier for both parties. That stimulates co-operation between engineering and production rather than conflict (never an easy thing to do!).

And that is one of the great benefits of describing jobs in terms of Personal Contributions. People begin to understand that they are not only doing a job, but that that job needs to be making a positive contribution to the profitability and effectiveness of the organisation as a whole. PCs, by focusing on the outputs of the job, also make it clear just ‘who does what’, so that (like the engineers and production operators above) staff in different departments can integrate their activities and work like a team to get a better job done.

The second rule about Personal Contributions is: They should be unique to the job-holder.

Fuzzy responsibilities can cause wasteful overlap and duplication in many companies. That adds cost but no extra value. PCs start from the premise that where two people are responsible for the same thing, one is not required. Indeed, where three people are responsible for the same thing (and it often happens), two are not required. PCs make clear what each individual is uniquely responsible for, and how their work interlocks with those of their colleagues. Similarly, jobs at every level have to add some new value, not simply supervise the jobs of others.

Let’s take an example. It is not uncommon for sales organisations to decide on overall company sales targets, and to allocate subdivisions of this to the various regions or departments involved, who in turn allocate targets to the front-line salesforce. In simplistic terms, this might lead to an organisation chart like the one below:

PCs say there is only one group of persons responsible for making sales, namely the salespersons who come face-to-face with the customer. That is their unique responsibility. It is not enough then for managers to claim their job is simply to encourage, push, pressurize and otherwise ‘motivate’ their salesforce to meet their targets. If the salesforce are already meeting their targets, then we don’t actually need any of the managers above… unless they add new value. So what is that new value?

Let’s rewrite the jobs in terms of their Personal Contributions. For salespeople, we might decide on Sales Levels (actual versus target), Order Size (to prevent too many overly small orders), and New Accounts (to broaden the customer base) as three of their key PCs.

What contribution could Sales Managers then uniquely add? Here we could nominate Sales Tactics (developing strategies for maximising sales), Sales Training (organising for salespeople to get the training they need), and Sales Administration (minimising the amount of admin salespeople have to use to get the job done). In other words, Sales Managers become the ‘servants of their people’ rather than their supervisors. Supervising the work of a subordinate is an activity, not an output.

At Director level, we would attribute PCs where they have unique authority to act. For example, Company Sales Strategy (deciding for example which sections of industry the company should focus on), Sales Prices (decisions which help the company maintain margins yet stay competitive), Market Research (such as working on ideas for new products, etc.).

The organisation chart might then look more like this:

The list at each level is likely to be longer in a real situation, of course, but the layout illustrates the key points. Every PC is unique to the person at that level, there is no repetition or duplication. But the PCs are specifically designed to work together to form a coherent whole, where everyone knows clearly what the other’s role is, and each can support the other in maximising the performance of the organization as a whole.

Fuzzy or overlapping responsibilities can often be annoying and confusing, but in some cases they can be downright dangerous. This came home sadly to one company when a contractor was electrocuted on the job, and managers started blaming each other for the failure. The Maintenance Supervisor had not controlled the job, some said; the Maintenance Supervisor said the blame lay with the electrician who last worked on the equipment; surely the Production Director must be accountable for everything that happens in his area, said others; the Safety Officer did not ensure the situation was safe, said the Production Director. When tempers had cooled, it became obvious the responsibilities on safety had to be made much clearer for the future.

Managers in every area had to take on personal responsibility for providing equipment which was safe for staff to operate, they concluded, but equally staff members had to adopt safe working habits to make the system work effectively. The Production Director had both the responsibility and the right level of budget authority to provide a safe working environment. Equally, he had to ensure the work arrangements met laid-down legal requirements, even though he would take advice on that subject from the Safety Officer, whose personal responsibility it was to keep fully up-to-date with current legislation.

The interlocking responsibilities then began to look like this:

Director

• Legal Safety Procedures
• Safe Working Environment

Safety Officer

• Safety Legislation Advice
• Safety Training Services
• Accident Records

Manager

• Safe Working Equipment
• Safe Working Methods
• Subordinates’ Safety Knowledge

Employee

• Safe Working Habits
• Hazard Spotting

If there is any issue on which companies need to clarify exactly ‘who does what’, it is on the matter of safety. This company has not had a serious accident in 25 years.

Rule Three: PCs must be within the control or authority of the job-holder.

This may seem obvious, but job-holders are often given responsibilities where they are not in control of the results, or where they have no authority to act. Let’s take the example of a typical front-line production situation to illustrate the point. When we ask front-line managers to describe their own versus their operators’ responsibilities, we will regularly get some or all of the following:

PCs of the Manager

• Output / productivity
• Quality
• Costs
• Admin / Records
• Good Housekeeping
• Scrap / Rework
• Safety
• Employee relations
• Training

PCs of the Operator

• Attendance
• Good timekeeping
• Meeting performance targets
• Flexibility

Managers generally feel that they are primarily responsible for the output and quality coming out of their sections, and simply expect their people to turn up on time each day, to apply themselves to the job, and be reasonably flexible in getting the work done.

But then we pose a key question: “Where do the faults first occur?” For example, who actually has their hands on the product all day, the manager or the operator? Providing the operator has all they need to turn out a quality job, who is really in charge of producing a quality product, or meeting reasonable productivity targets? Everyone concludes it has to be the operator. The fact is, we need to allocate responsibility where the control actually lies. Responsibilities make no sense otherwise.

Then we pose a second question: “How many of the items currently on the Manager’s list should we properly transfer to the Operator?” And what responsibilities do we give to the Manager to ensure they add new value? It is not uncommon then to get a list like the one below.

PCs of the Manager

• Productivity
• Process improvement
• Costs
• Admin / Records
• Safe working arrangements
• Team development
• Housekeeping standards
• Work scheduling
• Employee relations
• Training

PCs of the Operator

• Output
• Product quality
• Scrap / rework
• Data collection
• Safe working habits
• Skills
• Good housekeeping

In this scenario, operators are expected to assume full responsibility for what they are already in control of anyway, and what they are fully capable of doing. That is what they are paid for; that is their personal contribution to the performance of the organization which affords them their living. And that clarity means the Manager can devote much more of his or her time to one of their main functions, namely searching out opportunities for continuous improvement.

For example, the manager may feel that some rearrangement of the work area, or the sequence of the processes, could well increase productivity. That’s why we allocate ‘output’ on the existing equipment to the operator, but ‘productivity’ to the manager who has the authority to make such changes. The same applies to most of the other items on the list: the manager’s separate functions fit like a jigsaw with the functions of the people he manages to create a seamless and productive whole.

That is one of the key benefits of redefining jobs in terms of their unique personal contributions to the business. With exactly the same resources of people and equipment, and at no additional cost to the business, productivity and co-operation in the organisation takes a major leap forward.

Rule Four: PCs must be directed to serving the job-holder’s customers.

There is a strong tendency for those within a company to believe that their ‘customers’ are all outside the organisation. Some who never meet ‘customers’ think they don’t have customers. Not so. Every job-holder has customers. In fact, if you don’t have customers, you don’t have a job. For every job-holder, your customers are whoever gets the results of your work.

If you are a craftsman directly preparing a product for a buyer, or you daily provide a service face-to-face, then your customer is clear. But in many more instances, servicing the ultimate customer requires a sequence of processes to get the complete job done. In that case, your customer is the next person in the line. The critical requirement for every job-holder is to deliver whatever is the required item, on time, to allow their customer in turn to do a zero-defect job. After all, only if all the steps in the process are done well can any company hope to deliver to the ultimate customer the fault-free product or service they were first promised.

Our experience is that once job-holders identify all their customers, whether inside or outside the business, they start doing the job differently. That change of thinking is inevitably reinforced when they actually visit their customers and speak to them face-to-face. In the insurance company, they might hear things like: “I know you send me all this information, but sometimes I get held up because I can’t read your writing,” or “by not opening the post first thing in the morning, we can often lose a whole day by not having the information we need.” In the manufacturing business, it might be: “I know you deliver these parts to me, but by piling them on top of each other like we do, quite a few of the parts get damaged before I get the chance to use them,” or “when these heavy parts fill a whole crate, it gets too heavy to lift – can we use a smaller crate, or put in fewer of these heavy items?”

Interaction between doers and their customers within companies is something we strongly encourage. First, it breaks down barriers between departments, and staff begin to realize the need to work better together if they’re going to get their whole process right for the customer who ultimately pays all their salaries. Also, when staff meet together to talk about the job, they realize that aspects of the job which may have been irritations for years are often very easily cured. Finally, when you know the person who gets the result of your work personally, you pay more attention to the job – much like doing the job for some unknown customer and doing the same job for a member of your family.

Job-holders often find that they have never been asked to identify their customers before, or to talk to them about the service they get. One example we encountered was the R & D Division of the Bank of England Printing Works where they had been printing English banknotes for many years. They felt they didn’t have customers, or if they did there was only one, namely the Chief Cashier, whose signature appears on all notes and who habitually ordered more than a billion notes every year.

But when the department considered who ‘got the results of their work’ they realized that all the retail banks in the country were their customers; as were their own manufacturing division (to make the notes easy to print securely and cost-effectively); as were the police (making notes hard to forge); as were all those who handled notes every day e.g. foreign exchange offices, betting shops, blind folks, High Street grocers and retailers, etc. etc. Astonishingly, they had never been to talk directly to any of these; they had done all of their work till then from inside their department.

The insight and revelations brought about a whole revolution in their thinking. First, they renamed their department Banknote Development Division, to keep them focused on their prime purpose. ‘Manufacturability’ became one of the key success measures of their work. They redefined every job. They abandoned their former hierarchical organization structure in favour of a project-based structure, where people became members of different project teams irrespective of their seniority. Delivering recognizable value for their identified customers became their raison d’être.

Many job-holders think they already know what constitutes a ‘quality job’ in their own case. When they start visiting the people who get the results of their work – their customers – they soon realize that ‘quality’ is not what they say it is, it is what the customer says it is. Describing jobs in terms of Personal Contributions makes job-holders much more customer-focused.

Rule Five: Well written PCs allow job-holders to know when they are succeeding.

Many people have to wait until their personal appraisal with their boss to find out how they are doing. Often they are afraid they will hear things they don’t want to hear. Similarly, bosses often defer appraisal meetings where they may have to communicate unwelcome news. Not with PCs. One of the key features of PCs is to attach ‘success measures’ which will allow the job-holder to know – without having to ask their boss – when they are succeeding. The intent is to create much more of a ‘no surprises’ environment.

Let’s take some examples of success measures from real people doing real jobs by way of illustration. Most job-holders will normally have a list of seven to ten PCs, but here we have extracted just one PC from several jobs to show some sample bullet-point success measures.

Management Accountant
Company Accounts

• Accounts on Directors’ desks, complete and error-free, two days before each Board meeting
• Directors commend the accounts for their simplicity of layout and understandability

Production Manager
Productivity

• Productivity = defect-free product output versus total hours worked
• Minimum annual improvement 3%

Catering Manager
Site Catering Service

• Percentage usage by site employees
• Subsidy kept within agreed budget

Secretary
Document Management

• Any specified document retrievable within two minutes of request
• All consulted documents back in files by end of business each day

When managers or staff are first asked to define the outputs of their jobs and how they should measure their success, they often come up with some interesting ideas. In one company, salespeople themselves decided what would be regarded as minimum, good, and outstanding performance on a number of PCs, such as Monthly Sales Value, Sales Profitability, New Accounts, etc. They then agreed what figures should apply in each category, so that every salesperson would be able to judge their own performance against these three standards every month by themselves. The idea rather appealed to their managers, who then felt the urge to adopt much more a role of helper and trainer rather than pressurizer.

In another organization, a group of secretaries tackled the task of defining their PCs in a series of meetings over several months. In the process, they described what a good, better, and best secretary would do for their boss on subjects like Diary Management, Making Travel Arrangements, Taking Minutes, etc. Interestingly, once they had defined what they regarded as ‘best’, the secretaries couldn’t help doing what they had just described. The fact is, the overwhelming majority of people prefer to do the best job they can, and when we make it clear precisely what that is, that is what people will do.

In getting to the true value-adding outputs of any job, there are a number of pertinent questions that ought to be asked.

• What is the most useful contribution I can make to the performance of this business?
• What is it the Company is actually paying me for?
• What should I spend my time on to achieve the best results?
• How will I know when the job is being done well?
• How can I best satisfy the customers who get the results of my work?

There is a tendency to believe that when one is terribly busy, one obviously must be doing a good job for the organisation. But no, busy-ness is not the same as effectiveness. For any job, effectiveness is delivering on the outputs required of the position. One salesperson might be frantically energetic and hard-working, but still struggle to make sales. Another may be much less active, but keeps bringing home the orders. The trouble with job descriptions is that they just describe what people do, not what they need to achieve. That is why more and more organisations are using the concept of Personal Contributions to define their jobs. They realize that in today’s challenging and competitive world, performance is all that counts.

Principle Number One

To earn anyone’s trust  –  whether in business or in life  –  Principle Number One is :

Do as you say you will do.

It may seem trite and simple, but it is fundamental.  You damage your good name every time you say things like : “I’ll phone you back on that”, but you forget.  Or, “I’ll get it to you by Thursday”, but you don’t.  Or, “I’ll get that equipment repaired for you by tomorrow”, but it doesn’t happen.  They may all be relatively trivial by themselves, but each failed promise adds inexorably to your image of unreliability.

Soon people feel they can’t take you at your word.  They start checking up on you, they chase you to make sure they will actually get what you have already promised.  When people lose trust in you they start phoning you repeatedly before the deadline day ‘just to make sure’.  Whereas one phone call would have done it in the past, now you get several on the same subject.  It’s not only annoying, it’s a great waste of your time.

People much prefer to work with correspondents whose word they can take at face value.  They say things like : “George won’t be pushed around, but if he says he’ll get something to you by Tuesday, you’ll get it by Tuesday”.  It’s obvious : if you prefer to deal with people like that, become a person like that yourself.

Now you don’t have to be perfect exactly.  If things turn out as you say nine times out of ten, people will forgive the odd misdemeanour.  They will still see you as someone they can generally count on.  That rule applies whether it’s the people you manage, your boss. your colleagues, your suppliers, or your customers.  But if something you said looks like it is slipping, tell your people or your colleague in advance, so that they’re not disappointed.  They’ll appreciate your showing you treat your commitments seriously.

And that kind of attitude just enhances your reputation.  People talk positively about you when you’re not there.  They say things like : “I can work with George, he’s all right”.  Or, “Jenny’s OK, no problem there”.  You can take it that when your staff or colleagues see you in that light, they’ll be much more willing to help you out when you have problems.  And best of all : the respect you get from your staff and your colleagues creates in your mind the kind of good feelings which make it a pleasure to come to work every day.

The Corollary of Principle One

There is one key point about being able to keep your promises on a regular basis, and it’s this : Don’t make easy promises which you are then unable to keep.  It’s easily done: you come under heavy pressure to deliver something on an impossibly short timescale; or you get pressed into taking on overly ambitious objectives by your boss; or colleagues in a meeting railroad you into making unwanted concessions.

Generally, these unwilling concessions are made just to get rid of the pressure at the time, to avoid public embarrassment, or simply to get people ‘off your back’.  It certainly relieves the pressure temporarily, but it’s nothing to the pressure, criticism and embarrassment people pile on you when you then fail to deliver.  And it can leave your credibility in tatters.  So, take the pressure at the time – once.  Don’t store up trouble for the future.

During my career, I worked for a well-known international company with production plants, marketing units and offices all round the world.  Every year, each company would be required to produce its annual plan for examination and approval by the international board.  That was an anxious time.  Nobody wanted to get their plans stomped over by the board, queried, questioned, or rejected.  The larger companies with good profit records could put their plans over with some confidence, and could resist calls for unrealistic growth or profit projections.

The smaller companies did not find that so easy, and many of their chief executives were tempted to put forward ambitious numbers to try to impress.  That may have made for an easier ride at the plans meeting, but they then found themselves  pummelled and pilloried every month thereafter, as they repeatedly failed to ‘make their numbers’.  The ‘easy-ride’ strategy turned into a twelve-to-one losing bet.

In the end, you have to decide whether your reputation is important to you.  There’s always a price to pay if you want to maintain it.  If you don’t pay the price up-front of holding out for realistic objectives in the first place, you risk paying the price many times over as your repeated failure gradually sinks your good name. That’s where reputations are often won or lost.  The choice is up to you.

What Does Trust Mean To You?

One of the problems with the word ‘trust’ is that it has so many different meanings to different people.  A company we worked with had a great reputation with both its employees and its customers.  They paid well above average salaries, offered a string of benefits including excellent pensions, and operated a company-wide single status policy.  Employees usually stayed for many years, but whenever a vacancy did appear, there was always a great line of applicants eager to work there.

The company decided to conduct an employee opinion survey, and the consultants they used persuaded them to include the question : ‘There is not much trust around here between employees and management’.  Much to the company’s astonishment, more than half of the employees agreed.  Naturally, they wanted to find out why, and started to investigate.

“Well, I agreed with the question because I couldn’t trust my manager with my life,” said one employee.  “We don’t think there’s not much trust in our department,” said another, “but I’m not so sure about these other departments.”  Another comment was : “If my manager was forced to choose between supporting his employees and supporting the company, I think he would choose to support the company.  After all, they pay his salary.”

Rather than ask a question which was subject to such wide interpretations, the company decided they needed to personalise the question more to bring it closer to home.  The following year the question they asked was : “I feel I can trust my manager”.  This time, 75% of employees agreed.  The company felt this was an important factor, as the immediate manager is the face of the company employees see every day; indeed for many, he is the company.

However, the company decided to push further on this.  In their discussion together they concluded : The word ‘trust’ has a particular charm of its own, but leaving the word ‘trust’ aside, what would we want employees to say about us?  What would we be content with?  For example, people want to be treated fairly.  They might put up with their manager being firm, but they would still want him to be fair.  And they wouldn’t want him to indulge favourites, for whatever reason, but to treat everyone even-handedly.  We think that should be part of what we mean by ‘trust’.

The following year, they added a new question to their survey.  It was : “I get fair treatment from my manager”.  More than 85% of employees endorsed this statement.  So the company has made this aspect part of their definition of trust now  –  that employees should not only find their managers reliable and credible, but that they should also expect from them fair and even-handed treatment.  Just to keep managers ‘eye on the ball’, the company now asks these same two questions of employees every year.  We think that focus is a good one.

Maintaining Your Integrity Under Pressure

Situations often arise in business through no fault of your own which put your reputation for integrity to the test.  For example, rumours may start circulating that the company is about to be taken over, or that a number of people are to be laid off.  Some of your staff may get wind of this and confront you directly : “We’ve heard rumours that some of us are about to lose our jobs.  Is it true?”  Now, you may be tempted to deny the rumours just to put your people’s minds at rest, but what if the rumours later turn out to be true?  Your people are not going to feel they can trust what you say in the future after that.

So what can you say?  You could say this : “I’ve heard these rumours too, but as far as I am concerned that’s what they are – rumours.  I can’t enlighten you any further unless and until I get some genuine facts or statement on the situation.  But if I do (don’t say ‘when I do’ as it may imply their worst fears are about to be realized), you will be the first to know, I assure you.”  These are sensitive times for both you and your staff, so tread carefully on this.

The situation can be made even worse when you have actually been given more background by the company, but have been asked to ‘keep it confidential’.  If your people realize a meeting has been going on, and they then ask you what you know, it’s obviously difficult to plead ignorance.  In that circumstance, probably the best you can say is : “As soon as I get the go-ahead, I’ll be passing on all the information I know”.

However, just when you thought the pressure was getting intolerable, one of your staff tells you his friend in another department has already been told by his manager everything that’s going on.  (Implication : ‘so what’s wrong with you?’)  That’s a real dilemma.  What now?  Well, don’t go and spill the beans immediately to your people (the reported incident may not be true, and senior management don’t like disloyalty either).  Speak to the departmental manager concerned to see if anything has happened.  If you sense the rumour might be true, tell senior management that the information is leaking, and that something has to be done.  Most companies will then make a pragmatic decision to resolve the situation in a company-wide fashion. That way, you will have shown loyalty both to the company that gives you your living, and to the people you manage.  That’s a good position to be in.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

In most organizations, employees simply want to feel :

• they can believe what you say
• you will do what you say you will do
• you will treat them fairly

For them, that’s what trust is about.  You don’t have to be soft or compliant for employees to like working with you.  On the contrary, you can be tough and demanding as long as you are fair.  Whenever employees are asked who was the best manager they ever worked with, they regularly quote someone who was ‘firm but fair’.  They inevitably prefer to work with someone they can respect and trust.  Isn’t that something you would like your employees to say about you?

1.  The team should deal with a complete product, process or service

Many companies are not organized in quite this way, but it is fundamentally important if you want truly effective teamwork.  Where team members can see and understand the whole product or service for which they are responsible, the more they feel ownership and commitment to its quality.  Where they are only responsible for elements of the product, the more they will blame others when things go wrong (and they do!).

Now this may mean reconfiguration of how the work is currently structured in your company, but until that happens, departments will remain merely a group of individuals, each intent on looking after their own job and staying out of trouble.  Even if the team cannot be responsible for the full product or service, they need to know the specific part of the process for which they are accountable.  What defines a team is the product or service for which the group feels collectively responsible.  It is the common purpose that makes people feel like a team.  Without that, teamwork does not exist.

2.  All the skills necessary should be within team to do the complete job

That may mean transferring both people and equipment from the specialist departments where they have been previously located.  For example, where completing the process requires simple interim lab tests of the product, that test (and the person who conducts it) needs to be brought within the team.  Similarly, where quality tests are needed, these tests should be conducted by members of the team.  The quality of the product needs to rest firmly with the production team, not with someone outside the group.

There should be no hand-offs to other functions in completing the full product or service.  That way you will know where the responsibility lies if things go wrong, but also the team will have the full power to put things right when needed.  Equally, when things go well, they will be able to take justifiable pride in their achievements.

3.  There should be unbroken  visual contact between team members

There is much greater team feeling and commitment among people who can see and interact with each other closely every day.  Barriers caused by visual blockages or distance adversely affect team feeling and co-operation.

Operators may realize that what they do is part of a process, but if their colleagues are hidden behind a wall or bulky machinery, they inevitably identify more with their own part of the process than with the product as a whole.  Similarly, people based in different geographical locations find it difficult to feel part of the same ‘team’.  And that’s still the case even when they are communicating by phone, email or even video-conferencing on a regular basis.

The best conditions for creating teamwork feelings is where team members can see everything everyone else is doing, and where they interface and converse with each other every day.

4. The work area should be clean and visually well organized

It is obviously easier to work in an area which is clean and well organized.  One specialist consultancy business claims it can improve productivity in any manufacturing company by 10% or more simply by painting the walls pale grey from six feet up, a darker grey down to the floor, and painting the workfloor areas green.  We know from experience that the visual impact of what appears to be a clean and cared-for work environment has a daily positive effect on the people who work there.

It also means the work is likely to be safer, and less likely to suffer quality contamination through dirt, etc.  Needed items become easier and quicker to find when there is a place for everything, and everything is in its place. And the daily discipline of keeping the work area clean will carry over to following Best Operating Practices faithfully (see later), and getting the product ‘right first time’.

Importantly, there is no disadvantage in having a visually well organized workplace.  That applies whether we are talking about the employees who work there, or the visitors who may come to see if you are the type of company they want to do business with.  A clean and tidy workplace implies to them a well-organized company, and that often results in your getting more business than you expected.

5. Visible measurement systems should show in every area

Visible measurement systems –  graphs, charts and information sheets on the wall – help focus staff attention daily on the need for continuing good performance.  It is a daily reminder of what is expected of the department. For greatest effect, the charts need to be close to the work area, and to show target lines as well as actual performance.  It is even better if team members themselves enter the performance data on the charts – that way the results belong to the whole team, and not just the manager.

The open nature of this kind of data is also useful for visitors to understand what is going on in every section.  Ideally, they should be simple and clear enough to be understood without having to ask staff to explain what they mean.  And visible measurement systems undoubtedly have a positive motivational effect on the staff themselves  i.e. no-one likes to show failure publicly.

6. Multi-skills, flexibility and job rotation should be standard practice

Multi-skilling helps in a number of ways :

• Individuals become more valuable to the company and to themselves (in the jobs market-place)
• Being able to flex around a number of jobs makes what can be repetitive jobs less boring
• It is also one of the ways to improve productivity e. less standing around and waiting
• The product or service can still be delivered in cases of absence
• Staff may be able to enhance their status and/or their pay by being able to perform a number of different jobs
• The section is never dependent on one key person, and can deal with problems or questions promptly as they occur
• Team members don’t say “It’s not my job” any more

7. Best Operating Practices are captured and used

Managers – and team members – can always tell you who does which job best.  High performance teams always want to capture that ‘best way’ and make it available to everybody in the team.  They do that by writing down the method in detail, and insisting that everyone use that method, because it’s the ‘best way we know how’.  That becomes the team’s BOPs  i.e. Best Operating Practices.

If someone comes up with an even better way, then the BOP is altered to include that improvement, but I have never met a team who didn’t want to do the job ‘the best way we know how’.  It soon becomes a source of pride within the team that ‘no-one knows how to do the job better than we do’.  They begin to act like champions, because they are.

8. Team members “muck in” to help each other

Unforeseen problems occur in even the best run operations.  That’s when good teams all ‘muck in’ to help each other out.  In fact, it’s the essence of good teamwork  –  working together to achieve a common goal.

In high-performance teams, single jobs in isolation don’t exist any more.  They are only one link in a whole process for which team members feel collectively responsible.  That’s why they jump to it when any blockage occurs and threatens the process  –  the process is their baby.

9. Great teams know who their customers are

A surprising number of workers have no idea who gets the result of their work.  They assume it perhaps goes to someone in another department, but they’ve never been introduced, or communicated with them directly.  They think that’s their boss’s job.  Others may know their product goes to some paying customer outside the business, but they’ve never met them either.  As a result, they simply do as much as they need to, to please the boss, as that is the person they have to face up to each day.

But when they do know who their customers are, have met them and know how they use the product, they are much more likely to make a product that fits the customer’s needs.  Great teams make it their business to talk directly to their customers, because they know that will affect how they do their work.  After all, quality is not what we think it is, it is what the customer says it is.

10. There is a daily communications process

The favoured communications process is a ten-minute start-of-day meeting in the work area (preferably where the visible measures charts can be seen).  This system has a number of benefits :

• It’s a roll call of staff (are all the jobs covered? have we any gaps?)
• Team members can all be updated on the day’s work schedule in one go i.e. better use of management time
• Work tasks can be rapidly allocated so that everyone knows exactly who is doing what
• Any problems which have developed in the previous 24 hours can be discussed and quickly corrected
• It reinforces teamwork on a daily basis

And think about this.  Any work group that meets five days a week for around forty-six weeks a year (that’s well over 200 times a year), talking about the details of their work each day, are going to feel and act like a team even if their boss never actually mentions the word ‘teamwork’.

11. Continuous improvement and continuous learning become part of everyone’s job

In the 70’s and 80’s the Japanese took great lumps of market share from European and American companies by concentrating on quality, and they engaged all their front-line employees in doing that. They also encouraged team members to contribute regular ideas on making the work easier, better, cheaper, faster, or safer. Considering that in many companies something like 80% of employees do front-line jobs, there is often a lot of unused brain-power right inside the building, and it would be quite profligate not to use it to the full.

We all learn by experience, but high performance teams like to encourage team members to take on specific personal learning objectives on a regular basis.  That is part of the six-monthly performance review process in one company, where employees are expected each time to propose a new learning objective for themselves, and their boss sees it as part of their job to help them achieve that.  These companies realize that any new asset they buy will inevitably deteriorate and lose value over time, but by continuous learning their people actually become the only appreciating asset in the business.

12. Team members are treated like mature adults, and expected to act like mature adults

Supervision in many companies is based on the notion that employees will slack off and avoid work unless they are closely watched.  It is a quite different philosophy that applies in high performance teams. Front-line staff are treated like adults and expected to behave like adults  i.e. it is assumed and expected that they will get on with the work without the need for policing or supervision.  And that approach can pay-off handsomely.

One company decided to embark on introducing ‘autonomous work groups’.  They told their first group that they could either continue working as they were (with a supervisor), or decide to organize their work as a team (without a supervisor).  They were rather apprehensive about the idea, but decided they would like to give it a try.  After five months of operation, their productivity had jumped by more than 25%, and their on-time delivery never fell below 98.5% in any week.  And that was with the reduction of one team member (the supervisor) out of a team of eight.  Front-line teams can often deliver astonishing results when they’re treated like adults.