Benchmarking? Time-wasting!

One of the standard tools in the business toolkit is benchmarking, and I'd like to suggest that it has limited value.  The idea of benchmarking is simple - we assess what we are doing against our competitors.  If they are doing something wonderful that we are not, we copy them.

Problem 1:  If we benchmark ourselves against competitors, we are looking at the results of their old thinking - in other words we're seeing the results of something which they planned some time ago, and it will take us some considerable time to implement what they are doing.  By the time we do, they - if they are any good - will have moved on to something else, so we are always riding in the wake of their success.

Problem 2: I used to be a professional musician and there was an instrumentalist I particularly admired. I learnt, painstakingly, to play just like him. I was delighted one day to read a review in the music press which compared me to him. Then one morning I woke up to the realisation that the best I could ever be, if I continued to pursue this route, was a copyist - someone with no style of their own. I set out to create my own brand and style and received far better plaudits from reviewers who never again compared me to him.

The best businesses have their own brand and style, their own flair and edge. They may well look at the competition but ultimately it's their internal recognition and development of their own talented people that creates their success.  If we are simply copying what others are doing well, then we are copyists and not originators.  Our brand is a shadow brand, without any real form or substance.

Problem 3: How do you compare like with like?  Because your organisation is (theoretically) different, it's almost impossible to know whether you are really comparing things which are similar.  For example, your production processes and equipment may not allow you to do what your competitors are doing without huge financial outlay;  the other organisation may have people skilled in areas which your organisation can't match.

Problem 4: It's expensive and time-consuming.  Why not pour that time, money and energy into positive developments within your own organisation?

Problem 5: You'll never find your own talents if you spend your life comparing yourself to others.  Which was really problem 2, but I liked it so much I thought I'd paraphrase it.  It provided a useful benchmark...

There is a place for competitor analysis and for quick and dirty comparison with other organisations.  But don't let benchmarking gather momentum and become an end itself.

David
We work all over the world providing management and leadership development.  We'd love to hear from you.  Call or drop us a line:

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Klingons and wallflowers - business networking

You've packed your business cards, combed your hair, washed your face, arrived at the networking event and you're raring to go.


You enter the conference hall and see scores of little groups of people engaged in conversation.  They all appear to know each other, or at least are giving the impression of being very comfortable in each others' company.  The thought of approaching and trying to break into one of these groups is daunting.  


You noticed that, dotted around the edge of the room are lots of people standing on their own, obviously feeling just as you feel.  You catch someone's eye; they smile; and the damage is done.  You've made a friend for the day - and you won't shake them off.


Take a step back from the heightened emotion of the networking event and consider why you and others are there.  People go to conferences and business networking events to meet people who may be useful to them in their work.  It's as callous and calculated as that.  They are not looking for friends and it's not a dating agency - it's about making the best "use" of people.


Those ranged round the edge of the room - the wallflowers - are there because they find it difficult to approach perfect strangers and strike up a conversation. At the first sign of encouragement from you, they'll become your personal klingon, clinging on to you for dear life because you were nice to them and talking to you is less scary than approaching someone else.


If they are nervous about approaching others, the likelihood is that they have been nervous in other situations.  Follow that logic through and they probably don't have an extended network, because they are not terribly good at networking.  And so, callous and cold-hearted as it seems, they are the very people to avoid because they are unlikely to be useful to you: the very people you don't want to meet.


Now switch your gaze to the people in the middle of the room, chatting away merrily to others.  They are there because they already know how to network, and so probably have reasonable networks which could enhance yours. 


Single out one of the little groups and look at the way they are standing - is the group open or closed?  In other words, is there a gap big enough for someone else to join in or are they so engrossed in each others' company that they have closed the physical gap, leaving no space for anyone else to join them?  


Open groups are unconsciously inviting others to join them, either because their conversation has run its course or because one of them is trying to get away from another.  Simply walk over and smile.  It's a all a game and they understand the rules.  After the person speaking has finished what they are saying, one of the people in the group will turn to you, shake your hand and ask you about yourself.  Remember that you can be as useful to them as they are to you. Be ready!


To start, learn to shake hands properly.  Trivial as it sounds, it has a big  effect on the impression that you create and the first few seconds are all important in creating the best impression.  A handshake is just that - a shaking of hands.  It's not about offering a hand to be shaken. The grip should be firm and the palms should touch - an arched hand or proferred fingers feel horrible to the other person.  Shake the hand, make eye contact, smile and introduce yourself.


When you introduce yourself, say your name twice - first name alone, then whole name.  For example, I would say "Hello, I'm David - David Cotton."  It will sound perfectly natural to the other person and it gives them two opportunities to hear and remember who you are.  If they hear your name, they are more likely to introduce you to others.  If they don't it will embarrass them, and you may lose opportunities to be introduced to others.  If you don't catch their name first time, say immediately: "I'm sorry. I didn't catch your name."  Don't wait until you have to introduce them to others because it's embarrassing to tell them then that you don't know who they are.  Say their name back to them to further ingrain it in your psyche - "Hello, Jane, it's nice to meet you."


Now tell them about you.  There is nothing worse in networking than declaring your title or grade as an opener.  I've been to many events for both the private sector and the public sector and public sector people in particular are fabulous at telling everyone their grade and department.  "Hello", they say, "I'm an AO in DwP."  Well, nobody cares, and you just bored everyone!  AO is a paygrade and is not interesting to anyone.  


This is where your 'elevator pitch' is so vital.  What can you say about yourself in 20 seconds that's sufficiently interesting to make someone else ask a follow-up question?  And that's what it's all about.  It isn't about selling yourself or your organisation in those few brief seconds.  Instead, it's about dropping hooks into the conversation so that the other people are interested enough to bite - by asking a follow-up question - because they are genuinely interested in what you said.  If they glaze over as you speak, you either talked for too long or expressed yourself in an uninteresting way.  Think about the outcome of your work and use that to concoct your elevator pitch.  It's more interesting to hear that you collect money to build roads, schools and hospitals than to say you're an EO in HMRC.   


Do take a stock of business cards with you.  Exchanging them as you are introduced to a person doesn't work - at this stage you don't know anything about the other person and it gives the impression of being a little too zealous.  Get into conversation and then, if they seem interesting, say "Oh, perhaps I can give you a card?"  which means "Please give me your business card."  


If you are stuck with a real bore, there are plenty of ways to get away.  Here are a few:

• "Well, it has been lovely to talk to you and I hope we meet up again"
• Tell them you need the toilet
• Open up the circle, indicating that there is room for others to join you.  Introduce whoever joins the circle, mutter "excuse me" as they are talking and wander off
• "There's someone else I must catch up with..."

As the use of social networking media software becomes prevalent, perhaps we'll see a  reduction in the number of face to face events. For the moment, they are still relatively common.  Enjoy them!


David


We work all over the world providing management and leadership development.  We'd love to hear from you.  Call or drop us a line:

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I don't care what I leave behind - I won't be there to see it

I've been thinking a lot recently about stewardship, initially prompted by a friend and colleague and brought to the fore in a conversation with delegates on a recent training course.

The course delegates were enjoying a jolly good moan about one of their computer systems which didn't work. They said that it had been slow and lacked functionality ever since it was introduced three or four years ago.  I asked what they had done about it and, after a few sheepish looks at the floor they admitted that, apart from grumbling to each other in private, they had done nothing.

I asked what they would say if a new joiner came into their team and asked the same question.  How would they explain that they had known about the faults but done nothing to get them fixed?  What kind of legacy were they leaving to new people coming into the organisation?  We explored other aspects of the business which upset them and unearthed a long list of things which didn't function as they wanted and which had gone unchallenged.

I asked if they feared raising the issue of things that didn't work, or if they were unsure who to approach to get them fixed.  They said they had no qualms about approaching the appropriate people to fix the problems and knew exactly who to go to.  So why hadn't they done anything about it?

Well the answer was simple: they couldn't be bothered!  It was easier to sit and moan than to go and talk to someone and rectify the problems.

It struck me that in a vast number of  organisations there are  people who prefer to moan about things than do something about them.  Now of course there are lots of organisational reasons why they behave in this way and they are/will be the subject of future blogs.  But at the heart of this is a real lack of "stewardship" - the idea that we are only temporary members of any organisation and what we leave behind us is inherited by others who continue to work in an organisation long after we have left.

So it's worth thinking, at whatever grade you work, what's your legacy?  Are you a real steward for the organisation or is your concern about the here and now and what's in it for you?

Perhaps the best new year resolution you can craft for yourself is to become a steward, so that every system, process and function in your gift works so well that you would be proud to pass it on; you behave at work as a role model for others, passing on a legacy of trust and respect which you would hope future generations in your organisation would follow.

Or you could just not bother.  After all, whatever you leave behind is immaterial.  You won't be there to see it.

David

We work all over the world providing management and leadership development. We'd love to hear from you. Call or drop us a line:

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It's snowing - let's blame someone

Britain's press is seized by a hysterical urge to print the word "snow". It appears in every newspaper headline and is the main story in every TV and radio news report. Why? Not because it's snowing, but because it's someone's fault.

Now it's not the first time it ever snowed in the UK, and probably won't be the last. But we are running out of salt and grit and we have to blame someone. We could blame the local councils for not planning ahead. We could blame the Meteorological Office for not predicting the extent of the snow. We could blame the national government because...they exist.

At the heart of all this is a real social problem. No longer can we accept that accidents happen, that there are sometimes exceptional circumstances, that someone made a mistake, that something just went wrong. Instead we have to point accusing fingers and seek out culprits.

The same trend is becoming prevalent in business. Accidents are now incidents. Mistakes are "critical." People need to be punished.

Somewhere deep down I think we may be losing touch with our humanity, forgetting that humans are - well - human, and that sometimes things just do go wrong. For every second we point the accusing finger at others we are neglecting to offer support, sympathy, help and constructive advice.

There's a lovely psychological term to describe our behaviour: "false attribution error." When we make a mistake we know all the circumstances which led to it and, although others don't have that level of circumstantial detail, we want them to make allowances for what we have done. When others make a mistake, we don't allow for all those circumstances and simply blame them for the results of their mistakes.

So, ladies and gentlemen, it's snowing. The main roads are clear and with a little caution we can navigate the side roads which are not. And do you know what? The snow looks beautiful.

David Cotton
E: david@wize-up.co.uk
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Don't bother to grow your business...

Some years ago I was asked to talk at a conference whose theme was "Growing your business."  The conference was aimed at owners of businesses valued at around £10m who wanted to take them to the next stage. I was the penultimate speaker in a long day of talks from venture capitalists and business angels.

I asked for a show of hands from the 150 delegates - "How many of you want to grow your business?" Around 95% raised their hands.

Twenty minutes later, when I asked the same question, fewer than 20% raised their hands.

In the minutes between the two straw polls, I told them the story of a client of mine. I won't tell you precisely what he did because it was so specialised that it would hint at his identity, but it was related to the production of a specialised food item.  He had a passion for what he did, was internationally recognised for it (although he had a staff of just eight people) and had won more than 80 awards for excellence in his field.  He was very hands-on in his chosen field and loved nothing more than getting up at 5:00 every morning to collect the ingredients for his product and go back to his small kitchen to create this wonder food.

Trade was good, he was making a very comfortable living and able to pay his staff well.

I asked him about his plans for the following financial year.  He said he wanted to grow the business - double his staff, move into larger premises, open a showroom/museum devoted to his wonder product and double his revenues.

I asked what that would mean in practical terms, and as he began to think it through, his face fell and he began to realise that as the business grew, it would take him further and further away from the very thing he was passionate about - the very thing which had encouraged him to start the business.  In the space of 20 minutes he had talked himself out of growing the business.

We spent the rest of the session talking about sustainability - what he would have to do to ensure that he was well equipped internally to cope with external changes so that the business continued at the same levels as before.  I left him a happy man.

Hearing this story, many of those at the conference started to re-examine their real drivers, to think about what it was that gave them a buzz about running their own businesses.  Sure, by the time they had reached the £10m mark, many had already moved away from a hands-on approach but most were still sufficiently close to the business to remember what inspired them to start it in the first place.

I wasn't invited back to the conference the following year.

As a business owner, where is your passion?  What makes you want to get up in the morning? How can you reignite that fire at the start of a new year?  How can you sustain that interest and momentum in the future?

David

Email: david@wize-up.co.uk
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Why would anyone follow you?

In my leadership workshops I sometimes ask delegates to define 'leadership' on the grounds that if we are going to spend the next day or two exploring the concept, it's useful to start with a common, agreed definition.

Their definitions are often lengthy, quite tortuous and overcomplicated.  To me, the definition is very straightforward: Leaders have followers.  If you do or say anything which inspires people to follow you, you're leading.  Leadership has little or nothing to do with position or title and a lot to do with behaviour.  I spent several years as a school governor and watched 11 year old children who had more authority in the classroom than their teachers - other pupils were drawn, like magnets to them, hanging on their every word and copying their behaviour.

Everything that you do and say as a leader gives permission to your team to do and say the same things.  If you come into the office looking like hell on earth because you spent a night on the town then you've just told your team it's ok to look like this.  If you shout and bully your team, then it's ok for your team to do the same.

So now, why would anyone follow you?  Don't hide behind a title, because that doesn't make you a leader.  Don't hide behind value statements,because nobody can see your values.  All they see is how you behave.  Here are some question to ponder:

• What kind of behaviours are you demonstrating which you would want other to follow?  
• What do others think of you?  (When did you last ask them?  Would you want to hear the answers?)  
• Do you know what impression you are creating for other people?
• Is there a match between what you believe you are exuding from the inside out and what people are seeing looking from the outside in?
•  And really importantly, do you care?

The media/book/big personality cult of leadership has been quite damaging to real leadership. The best leaders are also good managers, in touch with their business and the people within the business.  Cult leaders are removed from the day to day operations of their businesses, making a big noise but divorced from operational practicalities. Real leaders don't have to have planet-sized egos and enough charisma to fill a football stadium; instead, they need to have an ear to the ground, talk to people, demonstrate quite naturally to others the standards of behaviour they expect and get on with the job.

I'd love to hear your comments and feedback.

David

We work all over the world providing management and leadership development. We'd love to hear from you. Call or drop us a line:

T: 44 (0)161 929 4145
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Stop doing training needs analyses

When I first started working in training and development, it was the fashion to conduct a training needs analysis every time anyone identified an issue within a business. After all, there's no point in hiring training professionals if they are not doing training work, is there?

The problem is that each time you do a training needs analysis, you presuppose that training is the solution. And sometimes you'll be right. And sometimes you won't.

Businesses suffer business problems. To be effective as an in-house trainer, you must have a real grasp of the business. Without that, you're likely to produce isolated interventions which have little lasting value.

More useful - as well as developing an understanding of what the business is all about - is to do a business needs analysis, spending time analysing business requirements with no presupposition that training will be the solution.

In 1986, Nithin Nohria, William Joyce and Bruce Roberson began the Evergreen Project1, one of the biggest management studies ever undertaken. It set out to determine which management techniques are real indicators of long term success, measured in terms of "total return to shareholders". Its conclusions were that the major tools and techniques, such as total quality management, Kaizen etc had no effect on the bottom line at all. They discovered startling consistency amongst the successful businesses. Each one of them excelled in four "Primary practices" and any two of four "secondary practices" (and it didn't seem to matter which two).

Successful companies were great in Strategy, Execution, Culture and Structure.

They were also great in any two of Talent, Innovation, Mergers & Acquisitions, and Leadership (!)

The book neatly summarises the findings in each of the eight "practices". Turn the summary into a series of questions, tweak it for your business and you have a wonderful framework for a business needs analysis. Use the questions to really discover what's going on in your business, in a department or team and you'll find:

• you gain a greater understanding of the business
• you can make more pertinent recommendations for business improvement
• you increase your credibility as a business partner

So next time you're tempted to do a training needs analysis, stop and think - how do I know that the outcome should be training? If there's any doubt in your mind, consider instead a small scale business analysis. It won't cost any more than a TNA and it will reveal vastly more.

And if you need help in conducting your business needs analysis, call us on 44 (0) 161 929 4145 or email info@wize-up.co.uk. We'd be delighted to help.

David Cotton

www.wize-up.co.uk

Twitter: http://twitter.com/wizeupltd

1 Nohria, Joyce and Roberson: What really works: The 4+2 formula for sustained business success. Collins, 2003, ISBN-13: 9780060512871, ISBN 0060512784

New year, new directions

Some years ago I was asked by the Board of Directors of an SME to help them to more effectively deliver their strategy. I hope it doesn't take a trained consultant to work out that my first question was "What's your strategy?"

To a man (they were all men) they pointed to the Finance Director and said "Ask him!"

The FD blushed a deep scarlet, pondered and then had a lightbulb moment.

"Reduce our cost base by 3% and double our margins over the next, erm... three years."

His colleagues applauded.

I repeated that I had asked them for their strategy, not their financial targets.

Over the years, I've found that the same confusion exists pretty much everywhere. Strategy is sexy stuff, talked about constantly in Boardrooms and yet little understood.

Without a clear strategy, a business has no direction. Without direction, everyone becomes task focused and silo-based. It becomes fairly easy to tell the organisations with no strategy. Just go to a board meeting. Typically, as one person gives their monthly report, the others are hastily scribbling theirs. There is little point in listening to the person speaking, because nothing they say has any direct bearing on your own functional area. 80% and more of the meeting looks backwards instead of forwards. If you have no direction, discussion of the future has no framework or structure.

So, why not start the new year by reviewing your strategy.

We can help you with our 1-day Strategy Review or 2-day Strategy Programme.

Call us on 44 (0)161 929 4145 or info@wize-up.co.uk

David Cotton

www.wize-up.co.uk