What do employees really want?

What do employees really want?

Jan 9, 2017 | Change, Governance, Leadership

 

If I asked that question of 50 randomly selected medium sized business owners, the first answer would be something like ‘More pay’.

That would be the wrong answer.

‘More pay’ is the default when other things more important to them are missing, and there is no other reason to go to work each day. This is in Australia of course, a place where the necessities of life are covered, nobody is going to starve.

Employees want to work for a successful business, one that offers them security and a chance to learn and develop their talents and interests, as well as supplying the means to  buy the necessities of life. Nobody likes turning up not knowing if the business will be open that day, or if the receivers will be waiting for them.

When was it ever a better feeling to be on a losing team, than it was to be a part of a winning team?

Giving employees this reassurance is more than telling them that the business is profitable, although that helps. It is about taking them into your confidence as you would a trusted friend. Funny thing about trust, it needs to be earned by performance, and once earned, it is returned.

Trust given begets trust received.

Creating the environment where that trust becomes automatic and mutual takes time and effort, but success will put ‘better pay’ way down the list of employee concerns.

Following is the pathway I advise those I work with to follow:

Articulate where we are going. It is difficult to get people to buy into a journey  without telling them the destination. Try getting your young kids in the car just by ordering ‘get in the car,’ but tell them they should jump in the car, we are going to Luna Park, and you will be killed in the rush.

Paint a picture of the destination. Your kids have a mental picture of Luna park, fun by the harbour,  but your employees have no such picture of what success looks like, so paint it for  them, recognising that it is not just about the success of the business, it is about what success means for them, their colleagues, friends, customers and families.

Show them the journey. The kids know the way to Luna park, sort of depending on age, but your employees have no real idea of the journey you will share on the way, so lay it out. What sort of operating targets there will be, describe the workplace, the type of customer necessary for the success, what skills and knowledge will need to be deployed , and which ones will need to be developed, Who are your competitors, what are the expected challenges that need to be overcome, and so on.

Describe why it is important to get there. This is  not about profits and personal success, it is about what difference you are making to the community and people’s lives, a description of  the higher purpose, or the ‘Why’ of the business. It can sound a bit ‘mushy’ and new age, but when there is something that people can relate to at a gut level, the power of that is immense. Profit is an outcome of a job well done, one of the many measures of success, it should not be the primary measure of success.

WIFM. (What’s in it for me) while the objective is to engage with a higher purpose, there will always be a time where this question needs to be answered. When you have succeeded in doing the above, the answer will be  about the satisfaction of doing something useful, being valued, having control over your workplace, being a part of a community, learning and growing, and when those are satisfied, they may ask how much will be in the pay packet.

Personalised feedback. All of the above points are general, things that a leader  could and should do for the whole group of employees. However, employees are also individuals, and managing direct reports one on one is a core responsibility of leadership.  A one on one conversation can be many things, feedback on performance both positive and pointing out areas for improvement, assistance with a problem being faced, collaboratively addressing difficult problems,  advice of a personal as well as commercial nature, professional development,  and an opportunity to build a relationship of trust and respect. The meetings can take many forms, but they should be regular and formal, which means agendas and meeting notes, as well as diarised meeting times.  As a general rule, you would have these meeting with your direct reports, and encourage them to have similar meetings with their reports, indeed, coach them to do so.

When you do all that, you will build a motivated and engaged workforce, and that is a competitive advantage that is really hard to replicate. I can help with all that, having done it several times, and so know how to avoid the most of the traps.

How to set a marketing budget that works

How to set a marketing budget that works

Nov 21, 2016 | Governance, Management, Marketing

Pretty obvious question, particularly at this time of the year when organisations are starting to think about the preparation of the 2017 budget.

In many  enterprises, the marketing budget is set by the boss and the finance people.

They see marketing as a cost, so typically it becomes a percentage of revenue. They agree a targeted revenue, then apply a percentage.

What absolute bollocks

If marketing is a driver of revenue, then the more you spend, the more productive you should be, and when well done with metrics and sensible discipline, the more money you get at the top line as a result.

Therefore the challenge is for marketers to come up with sensible marketing plans, that promise to deliver on the strategic objectives agreed by the enterprise.

Marketing then becomes  an investment, not a cost.

Zero based marketing will have its day, when the marketing planning  is done reflecting the strategic drivers and priorities of the enterprise, and answers the question ‘what are the best ways to deliver on the objectives?’.

Do that and you generate the revenue, and marketing becomes an investment, the effectiveness of which can be measured.

Thinking about marketing as an expense is about the most common stupid assumption in the corner office, but is well ingrained because marketing people have lacked the balls and organisational grunt to back their convictions that it is otherwise. When confronted by reasonable, but difficult questions marketers without the necessary experience, knowledge, or intellect,  break into generalisations, weasel words and fluff.

Use cascading S.M.A.R.T. goals to forecast and measure the impact of the tactics employed to achieve an outcome, any outcome, not just marketing.

Pretty sensible acronym.

Specific. Measureable. Agreed. Realistic. Time bound.

I know the BEHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) crowd will trot out JFK’s BEHAG to reach the moon by 1969, that galvanised the space effort, but most of us do not have the resources of the US at our disposal, so lets just take a powder and be realistic.

Set realistic enterprise goals, then have them drive the allocation of resources to marketing, and indeed elsewhere, hold people accountable, and have continuous learning loops in place. Only a fool makes the same mistake twice.

I once had a very confronting shouting match with the MD of a business I worked for who drove the whole budgeting process from the bottom right hand corner of the P&L. Somehow, magically, a number appeared, and he drove budgets backwards through the business. It was a reverse auction between functions, who could promise to deliver the most for the least?

Problem was that the promises were extracted in a strategic vacuum, and meant little.

The shouting happened as the finance guy offered up a chunk of his budget that had been earmarked to integrate the reporting systems of several businesses we had taken over the previous year to deliver reliable and timely sales and margin numbers. At the time (it was over 20 years ago) I stated it was not worth spending marketing budgets if I could not track the outcomes, and the priority was therefore the sales information, not the promised revenue resulting from the marketing expenditure because it could not be reliably measured.

I smile now, but at the time, it was not fun, and was just another nail in my corporate coffin.

The essential 70/20/10 rule for business optimisation.

The essential 70/20/10 rule for business optimisation.

Nov 10, 2016 | Governance, Leadership, Management

Most of my time is devoted to improving SME manufacturing businesses. I do it for a living, mine and theirs, and I have an ulterior motive.

I want my grandchildren to have a better life than me, and while I have had a great life, the pace of  improvement has faltered noticeably over the last 25 years as the productivity of our economy has floundered, and the flow through benefit to living standards has reduced to a trickle.

I put it down to the decline of manufacturing.

We have taken the easy way out, as an economy and society, and taken the benefits before they were able to be sustained.

Short term gain, long term pain.

The evidence is everywhere, from the short termism of the stock market to the supposed microscopic attention span of millennials, self indulgence of baby boomers,  and the politics of who gets what of the tax take ripped out by the three levels of government and their acolytes.

I believe that without manufacturing, the process by which we gain leverage, the decline will continue. There are only so many baristas and hairdressers we need, and they offer no leverage, as you can only make one coffee at a time.

To the rule in the header.

Almost all small and medium sized manufacturers I work with, from those resilient few remaining who supply into FMCG markets, to those in engineering and service manufacturing (like printing) the formula for optimisation is reasonably consistent.

70/20/10.

70% of the time, effort and investment needs to be devoted to the foundations of the business. The numbers, financial and otherwise that deliver meaningful measurable and actionable planning and feedback loops on the allocation of their resources to their core business. In effect it is improving on the things that made you successful in the first place, but which have not evolved as quickly as the competitive  environment around them, so they are being squeezed.

20% of the effort and investment into adjacent areas. These are the places that will in all probability spawn the new product category, class of competitor,  demanding but value driven customer, and the emerging niche market that technology has enabled. This adjacency leverages some of the capability developed in your core market in a different way, stimulates capability development, and delivers you asset productivity.

10% of the effort is playtime. This is the messy, risky, scary, and significantly disconnected from your core, innovation and change initiatives. it is from this effort that the product and business model disruption that will change everything can emerge. Way better to be on top of the changes, anticipating and planning for them, rather than being taken by surprise and belted by them.

The numbers vary, and the nature of the resources allocated varies, but in rough form, 70/20/10 seems to hold across business sizes, models and market types.

 

How could Samsung stuff it up so badly?

How could Samsung stuff it up so badly?

Oct 21, 2016 | Branding, Governance

Once again, we are the observers in what will become another in the great ‘How to manage a marketing cluster****’ course.

I am talking about the public reaction of Samsung to the exploding Galaxy Note 7 phone.

Recent history is littered with lessons on both sides of the equation, how best to handle the meltdown as it happens,  and how to really stuff it up. You would think that an operation with the size and apparent sophistication of Samsung would have learnt, but it seems not.

The Galaxy 7 was launched in August, in a race to beat Apple to the market with their new ‘Apple iPhone 7’. There were almost immediately reports of the batteries blowing up, initially treated with some scepticism, as the fail safe levels built into the design and regulatory testing regimes should have identified any problems. Ooops… Samsung test their own batteries, whereas others all have third party tests done.

At the point of recall, Samsung had produced 2.5 million units, sold about 2 million, and there have been 35 reported explosions. Not quite a 1 in a million chance, but not far off it, so I guess they just thought it a minor glitch.

On October 10, Samsung announced ‘We are temporarily adjusting the Galaxy Note 7 production schedule in order to take further steps to ensure quality and safety matters.’  For the couple of weeks prior, Samsung had been recalling the phones, but calling it an ‘Exchange program’. When a couple of the exchanged phones also went ‘Boom’ they ended production, with the ‘temporary’ announcement above.

From October 11 until October 17,  when the US Federal Aviation Authority put on a blanket ban on carrying the device, describing it as ‘forbidden hazardous material’ airlines had started banning carrying the Note 7 on board off their own bat, recognising the public concern and real safety question.

There is a pretty large gap between ‘forbidden hazardous material’ and an ‘exchange program’.

Samsung’s statements are in competition for the ‘Biggest Blooper-statement in history’ Oscar with then BP Managing Director Tony Hayward who said ‘There is no-one who wants this thing over more than I do. You know I want my life back’  in the days after  Deepwater Horizon blew up in April 2010.

By contrast, when Arnott’s had a recall of Monte Carlo biscuits in 1997 prompted by an extortion bid, MD Chris Roberts was up front, recalling all Arnott’s products from the retail trade, explaining the reason and how Arnott’s was dealing with it. While it cost a lot of money, the Arnott’s brand was probably enhanced in the long term. Similarly, in 1982 Tylenol, the market leading US analgesic brand was found to have caused the death of a young woman after she consumed a poisoned pill. Johnson & Johnson immediately recalled all Tylenol from the shelves, and committed to completely redesigning the packaging to ensure tamper evidence. J&J garnered considerable public support, and Tylenol rapidly regained their market leading position after the relaunch.

These are just a few of the best known but very many examples Samsung should have considered. Had they done so, the short term cost would not have been as high, and the damage to the brand not as severe. Coming on top of the recent exploding washing machine episodes you would have thought they had sufficient practise to get it right.

The cost to Samsung will be huge, in both short term cash losses and longer term damage to the brand. Apple must be loving this!

As an aside, you would think that Samsung would have taken down their digital marketing material on the device, particularly with the tag-line ‘Rethink what a phone can do” but at the time of post publication, had not.

How will Australia regulate for ‘Culture’

How will Australia regulate for ‘Culture’

Sep 28, 2016 | Governance, Leadership

As a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, I look forward to the events put on by the institute, and attend when I can, when the topic of discussion is of particular interest.

Annually there is a general ‘Director Update’, the 2016 version is currently rolling out, and I attended in Sydney last week.

Amongst the items of interest, one particularly took my attention. The emerging focus on ‘Culture‘, has belatedly come onto the radar because the legislators are beginning to use the word.

This begs the question of how you define ‘Culture’, certainly those in Canberra writing the rules have no idea, despite setting out to legislate for it. It is a bit like legislating for ‘Motherhood’. Everyone agrees it would be great to have it, successful people have benefited from it, but definition is a bit tricky.

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast” is now a commonly used phrase, shortened from the original by Peter Drucker who wrote: ‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast, technology for lunch, and products for dinner, and soon thereafter, everything else too’

Lou Gerstners view expressed in his terrific insiders view of the turnaround of IBM  “I came to see in my time at IBM that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game – it is the game. In the end an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value.”

Building a positive culture depends on leadership, not regulation. Absolutely not regulation.

This remarkable TED talk by Simon Sinek is talking about leadership and the culture good leadership builds. I think anyone in authority should watch it and absorb the message, and set about trying to articulate what it means in their context.

ASIC (Australian Securities & Investments Commission) Chairman Greg Medcraft in his speech opening the 2016 ASIC Annual forum failed to give any hint about the definitional questions around Culture, simply pointing out that it led to good commercial and social outcomes. He did add that “We are incorporating culture into our risk based surveillance reviews’ which is terrific but it would be nice to know how one of the key regulators is going to measure it. Back to the politicians?

On occasion I have been critical of the AICD for its focus on the compliance issues of listed companies and their directors, often seen as the ‘big end’ of town. This focus is not unreasonable given that every organisation has to focus on what is seen as the main game in one way or another. However, it does tend to marginalise the unlisted and family company block which constitutes the vast majority of enterprises, and the overwhelming majority of those in the role of ‘Director’ often without knowing anything about the fiduciary responsibility that goes with it.

However, in this case, starting to talk about Culture, the Institute has kicked over a rock that requires a lot of consideration and debate, so well done.

I look forward  to that conversation.

Credit: Thanks once again to Hugh McLeod for the inspired cartoon.

4 easy questions to help get stuff done

4 easy questions to help get stuff done

Sep 15, 2016 | Governance, Leadership

Taking action is the hard part of getting stuff done, the talk is easy, but when the rubber has to hit the road, then you see who is really adding any value.

The 4 simple questions I ask are:

Who is responsible?

Who is accountable?

Who is to be consulted?

Who is to be informed?

Lack of an answer on any of them is a sure indicator of a hole that will swallow some of your efforts.

Last night I was at a forum hosted by the local council for sporting organisations in the region.

The forum had no real objective beyond some institutional need to ‘consult’ , a useful process, but the organisers seemed to have no idea about the framework on which they were seeking input.

As the answer to each of these 4 questions was “nobody’ or ‘not sure’ I do not expect to smell the rubber any time soon.