I love Vera. I love her complex character played by the great Brenda Blethyn, the people in her CID team and of course gorgeous Durham and Northumberland. And the storylines are just perfect Sunday night viewing, for me anyway.

Whereas she has got some great qualities as a leader (more of that later), when it comes to her management style, I have to take issue with a few things. 

First of all I frequently find myself saying ‘please’ out loud as she gives another directive to the team. Now I don’t know if this is how the police operate since it is a command and control structure. I have no experience of working in an environment where people have to call me ‘ma’am’ but even if you do give out orders, I still think you could add a ‘please’. 

I know in the police, the armed forces and the operating theatre there will be times that you need to snap an order in the quickest possible time because of the urgency of the situation. By the time a surgeon has asked, "Would you mind awfully passing me a scalpel please", the patient might have died. So ‘scalpel’ has to be barked out, and that seems reasonable.

The thoughts of the army shouting, "Fire! please," wouldn't be quite right either. But I just wonder then, if someone is used to operating like this, say in the NHS (no pun intended!), how easy it is to revert to a more collaborative or even merely polite style in everyday situations. If anyone has worked in this type of environment I’d love to know what your experience is.

When my dad ran his coal business I don’t think he would ever have got his lads together to ask how they should do something. His was very much ‘do this or that’ and that style was very much of it’s time. But my experience at McDonald’s and with clients since, has shown me how much more people buy in and take ownership when they’re treated like adults and are involved in establishing and developing the ‘one right way’ for an exceptional customer journey.

The other thing I wonder about with Vera is how she treats her team individually. The long-suffering Kenny receives a fair bit of rib-pulling and mockery which a less robust individual could wilt under. And then I’m never sure about how fairly she treats them. Which would I rather do, get driven round the countryside in a gorgeous old Defender, meeting potential suspects or look through six hours worth of CCTV footage? Mmm tough one that. So maybe Aiden her sidekick is a higher rank than the others but if not, the others could feel hard done by.

And there’s the dilemma for business owners or managers. How to keep people sweet when you probably do prefer some of your team members to others or when someone is great at a role but which they find maybe boring or unsatisfying. Do you change roles round to keep people happy and potentially lose effectiveness or productivity? How do you ensure you’re not playing favourites even subconsciously?

If you have a ‘one right way’ of doing tasks in your business, it is much easier to train people up, to multi-skill. That is one of the ways where people can develop and have variety in their work. You may also uncover a diamond, and people over time have a chance to develop niche roles if that’s what you’re looking for. As for playing favourites, I think you just have to ‘police’ yourself :) 

So that’s two things I don’t like, but there are a couple of things about Vera as a manager that I absolutely love. Firstly she really really cares about the victim whoever they are and secondly she perseveres until she succeeds. 

So despite some of her management short-comings, I will continue to be a huge fan of Vera and tune in every Sunday night.

Do one thing: watch Vera and see what you think about how she manages her team and then think about your own style. Are there any similarities or things you’d like to improve? 

Thanks for reading.

Image property of the Radio Times

‘Do this and your people will fly!’

Feedback! The key to improving performance. And yet so many people feel awkward about giving it or shy away from it altogether. So why do people find it so difficult? Perhaps you’re one of them. You may be the person who makes a joke of everything or someone who says, ‘Well, they know what I think from my body language.’

We all approach feedback differently. To those of us who have a British upbringing, feedback can often be seen as awkward, negative & confrontational. We see giving feedback as daunting. For me, the only reason to give feedback is to inspire improved performance. ‘Inspire’ is the key word. You want people to be walking away thinking, ‘I know how I’m going to do it better next time now,’ and wanting to do just that.

So how do we deliver that? Let’s take a look at ways of giving feedback which will remove the angst. There are two methods. There’s informal feedback – the ongoing, day to day feedback, and then there is the formal performance management to back that up.

Informal Feedback
Find someone doing something good everyday!

Ongoing, day to day, when someone in your team is doing really well, you want to showcase and highlight that to the rest of the team. Have a philosophy of ‘trying to acknowledge someone doing something good, each day.’ Publicly acknowledge the event and explain why you’re pleased – perhaps it positively impacts a customer or the rest of the team and so forth. It’s all about positive reinforcement – you want more of this.

Spot learning opportunities everyday!

Don’t just walk past the bad stuff. Don’t allow it to happen without addressing it – nip it in the bud. Inaction does nothing to sort the problem and worse still, erodes the trust and respect of the other team members if they think you’ve let it slide. This, if you like, is ‘just in time’ coaching where you again, on a daily basis, seek out learning opportunities. In these circumstances just have a quiet word, there is no need for public humiliation. This time ask the person ‘why’,‘Why is this not acceptable?’ Give them the opportunity to work it out for themselves and see the effects of their behaviour. ‘When you said that to John, how do you think it made him feel?’ If they can work it out for themselves they will take it onboard more than if you simply lecture them. Make it a genuine learning experience.

The EEC Model
Here at MPL we talk about the EEC model:

• Event
• Effect
• Continue or Change* 

(*’Continue’ if it’s something really good or ‘Change’ if it’s something not so good.)

Event
What’s caused me to comment on the way you’re working? Maybe the way you answer the phone, maybe the way you spoke to a client, maybe the way you completed a piece of work. What is the reason I’m talking to you?

Effect
What effect has it had on me, on the client, on the business, the team? Is it a good effect or not so good? Did you forget to smile when you answered the phone, making your voice sound sombre and moody? Did you complete this piece of work, but it wasn’t absolutely spot on in terms of accuracy? Did you get a great customer review?

and then either Continue
‘Thanks so much. You did a great job. Loved the way you’ve got absolutely every detail correct, keep going with that. Customer x was thrilled with that.’ Do more; continue.

or Change
When it’s something that you want to correct, then you’re talking about how you want somebody to change their performance. What can they do differently? What do they need to do to be up to standard? Give people the chance to get things right next time.

Formal Feedback
When it comes to formal feedback, remember that nothing should ever be a surprise. All of the informal feedback that you’ve given feeds into your formal, sit down performance review. We recommend that you do formal performance reviews at the end of each quarter. That you make it routine. It’s a chance to sit down with your team member to talk to them about the great things they’re doing, and to inspire them to do even better.

Many people shy away from that whole idea of sitting down with each team member. Either that, or they only sit down with them when something bad has happened and they want to tell them off. No wonder their team members dread the call, it’s like when I was little, our dogs hated the car because the only time they got in it was to go to the vets! When you make delivering feedback routine, it becomes a more positive interaction between you and your team. It becomes a conversation, a discussion. ‘How can I do this better? How can I improve? I really want to improve, how can I do it?’

Encourage your people to keep their own development journals
This will become a useful tool for development because it will help to highlight where each team member would like to go, how they want to improve, and what they need from you in order to achieve this.

Encourage them to jot down the things they did really well, their ‘Proud Page’.

To note when things didn’t go to plan; what were their learning points. If they had some training or coaching, what three things would they do differently next time as a result, their ‘Learning Page’.

Their ‘Aspirations Page’; what challenges would they like, what training/development would help them get there.
The formal appraisal should be their story; you just need to listen. Then ask these question: 

1. ‘What do you need from me?’ 
2. ‘What can I do differently that would help you?’ 

That is how to build trust.

People are more likely to ask for support if you’ve made this whole performance management system part of ‘the way we do things around here’. The way we do things round here is we give honest and open feedback, whether something is good, or needs to be improved. We are always honest and open; though honest doesn’t mean brutal! Make that part of your culture, and you have a real picture of continuous improvement. Everybody always looking to do that little bit better to make that marginal gain.

Do this and your people will fly. Do this and your business will fly.

Do two things:

1. Diarise those 90 day formal review slots now and make it routine.
2. Hand out development journals with a ‘How to’ for their use.

Thanks for reading 

Photography credit: Owen Kemp on Unsplash

‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times!’

Geoff had been with Martin from the start, and had worked hard to help him grow the business. As a result, he’d been promoted to manager, reward for all his efforts. Well, financially he was so much better off, great!  But the day-to-day reality felt more like a punishment. 

Plucked from a job that he excelled in, and where he felt completely comfortable, even when the pressure was on, he now found himself managing a team of fifteen, actually no, not even a team, a group of people who came together every day to work under the same roof. Their work standards certainly didn’t match his; ‘sloppy’ and ‘slow’ were the two words that summed them up for him. 

When I met him he was exhausted, frustrated and disbelieving that this group of people would ever do their job right without him watching over them, let alone take ownership. He was checking every piece of work that went out to clients, working longer and longer hours to do so, and the team, knowing their work would always be checked by him, didn’t bother to check it themselves. Why bother if he didn’t trust them? 

Together we set to work on reviewing the customer journey with the team, I introduced them to the concept of simple, logical, repeatable, and we streamlined their flow of work, removing all of the hoops that they and their clients had been jumping through. We developed How-To guides for the most routine tasks, to achieve consistency and raise the basic standards, and we introduced regular meetings to improve communication, daily fifteen-minute huddles to set the expectations for the day, weekly meetings to review what had been achieved and set priorities for the coming week. Once a month I got them to meet as a full team, and to have one of the team do a twenty-minute presentation on something that would be of interest and/or benefit to the whole team. After that meeting, I encouraged them to go out for a team drink, or maybe even a meal, to build team spirit. 

With Geoff, I focused first on his mindset, and the notion he had that everyone but him was lazy, useless and not to be trusted. I asked him to focus on training and feedback; to show individuals exactly what he wanted, by using How-Tos, and then to let them get on and do their job, without his interference. I encouraged him to trust that if he trained his people properly, and gave them feedback that encouraged them to improve, then they would, and that mistakes were not the end of the world, but a learning opportunity. 

Geoff wasn’t convinced at first, but to his credit, he did listen, and he did change both his mindset and his actions. The daily, weekly and monthly meetings became the norm, and as the team began to blossom, I watched Geoff relax into his role as their manager. Twelve months later, with three further managers grown from the team, Geoff was promoted to Director within the business! Proud or what? 

When I started working with Amit, it was clear that he had a problem with the team. For a start they didn’t work as a team, and they were all way too focused on the clock; never a good sign. Turnover was high too; for a business that was five years old, 90% of the people that I met had been there for less than twelve months. 

There was one employee though who was driving Amit mad; always turning up late, questioning every decision, doing sloppy work; Amit was at his wits’ end and wanted to know what I would do about it, in his place. 

‘Well, tell me one thing first’, I said, ‘Do her values match yours?’ 

‘Good god, no!’ was the reply, ‘But she had an excellent CV’. 

That is so often the problem, and one that you’ll have difficulty overcoming. Hiring to a CV, focusing on the experience that an individual has had, rather than their values, their attitude, their fit for you, and your team, is a big, and a very common mistake. 

So, Amit sat her down and had a conversation about his vision and his values, and what he was looking for in the people he worked with. He inspired the woman in question with his passion and drive, and she is now a real advocate of the business and a highly valued member of his team. 

Focus on values; find those whose values match yours, you can always train for skill. 

Do one thing: have you shared your vision and values with your team? If not, it’s never too late to start or reinforce.

Thanks for reading.

"We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their actions.” - Stephen Covey

I was attacked by a wasp the other day. My lovely walk in the country was suddenly interrupted by a severe burning pain in my arm - the little beggar having sunk his stinger into me with no provocation whatsoever. 

On my way home, accompanied by what felt like a hundred pixies stabbing my arm with tiny sharp daggers, I pondered on the purpose of a wasp. Wondering if their role in life was simply to cause pain, annoyance and allergic reactions. Why do they exist?

So next day, faced with some serious work to do… I googled, ‘What purpose do wasps serve?’ and was amazed to discover that they actually do serve some purpose as pollinators, though not as efficient as their bee cousins. 

To be honest, it kind of ruined the blog I was going to write about the wasps in your business that serve no purpose:

• The extra hoops that you make a customer jump through
• The products that have never sold that you won’t let go of
• The team member who has struggled since day one.

But now I know that the pesky wasp actually does some good, it got me thinking that perhaps we shouldn’t rush to judgement, or take things, particularly people, at face value. 

Maybe that person serving at the till had the headache from hell and wasn’t up to smiling. 

Maybe that colleague who didn’t return your good morning was too preoccupied with her bulging to do list that she didn’t even hear you. So often we can take things personally when more often than not, people's behaviour is nothing at all to do with us.

Maybe that person you think has struggled since day one, just hasn’t been trained properly, or maybe they would blossom in a different role, or maybe they’ve been doing something quietly, behind the scenes, adding value to your business and just not making a song and dance about it.

Perhaps this person will never be a bee but they make a very effective wasp!

Have you ever employed or worked with anyone like this; someone who you doubted initially who turned out to be a revelation for all the right reasons? (Think of Richard Branson at school and where he is now).

Do one thing: Think about your people and for each of them write down what you believe their main strength to be, then ask them what they think. Finally ask yourself, “Am I playing to and challenging their strengths?” (Okay, that's three things!)

Good luck and thanks for reading :)

P.S. Did you see both the old and young woman in the picture?

​Photo Credit: NY Public Library 

’You can dream, create, draw and come up with the best ideas in the world, but you need people to help you turn your dreams into reality.’

As business owners, we rightly focus a heck of a lot of attention on our external customers and what we can do to give them a great experience. We can often forget that our people are our customers too, and without them, we can’t provide a great service, or grow a successful business.

We want our team to be full of ‘go-to’ people, leaders and high performers. We want them to support us in our vision, to be loyal to the business, to work hard for us; but what do they want in return?

If you had to choose one thing that has the most positive impact on your team what would it be? ‘Communication?’ ‘Involvement?’ ‘Trust?’ What would you be looking for if you were in their shoes?

Below is a list of the top 20 answers to the question, ‘What makes you feel valued at work?’

Take 5 minutes now to think about how your team would rate your ‘delivery’ in each of these areas, and rate yourself from 1-5 (1=unsatisfactory, 2=needs improvement, 3=satisfactory, 4=good, 5=excellent)

1. Knowing where the business is going
2. Knowing the ‘roots’ of the business - where it came from and why
3. Being involved in the planning process
4. Knowing what’s expected of me and how I’ll be judged
5. Being told when I’m doing well, and what I need to improve
6. Having simple consistent ways of doing things
7. Having time invested in my development
8. Having the opportunity to progress
9. Being trusted to do my job and left to get on with it
10. Being encouraged to have ideas
11. Knowing how my role supports the business/ customers/ the rest of the team
12. Working in a no-blame culture, where mistakes are seen as opportunities to learn
13. Being appreciated and thanked for a good day’s work or a job well done
14. Having calm, consistent leadership with no mood swings!
15. Having regular ‘formal’ feedback sessions
16. Being paid fairly
17. Celebrating success with the team
18. Being kept up to date with how the business is doing
19. Being listened to and heard when there are blocks to my performing well
20. Not being in a ‘long hours prove your worth’ culture

How did you do?

Are there a few there that might get rated ‘needs improvement’ or ‘unsatisfactory’? How would you say that affects your people’s performance or your reputation as an employer?

If you’re unhappy with the results, there is no better time to act than now, because as Walt Disney said,

‘You can dream, create, draw and come up with the best ideas in the world, but you need people to help you turn your dreams into reality.’

Value your people, turn YOUR dreams into reality.


Do one thing: We've created a questionnaire for your team members ready to use and a ‘How to' guide of how to use it (please download below).
If you do use it we'd welcome any feedback about how it went and any improvements we can make.

If you feel on a roll our Business Efficiency Test will give you further insight into how each of the key systems in your business is operating - including your customer experience system - and will give you strategies for improving them in a pdf report. Take the test now, to see how you measure up.

​I had an interesting conversation with a control freak last week.

He was telling me how he hates to delegate - doesn't trust his employees to do anything without some sort of supervision, because they cock things up, make mistakes, take longer to do the job than he would.

"I check EVERYTHING' he said, 'I don't want my customers to have anything but a perfect service'.

It's the perfect excuse for the control freak...I'm not doing it for me, I'm doing it for my customers.  Drives me nuts.

Here's the thing, for those of you who recognise that you may be borderline, if not full-blown freaks...you're keeping yourself stuck in that rut we talked about last week.

Just like the bind weed in your garden - you know the one with the pretty flower that pretends its trying to make your garden look lovely, while its tentacles set about destroying it...that one! - you're strangling the growth of your people and your business.

You've forgotten that someone let you make mistakes when you were learning, someone gave you room to grow and develop, someone recognised that mistakes are how we all learn.  You've forgotten that all of the successful people you look up to have built their success on a bucketload of failures, and much bigger failures and mistakes than any of your people might make if you gave them their head.

You want to limit mistakes?  Have systems.  Set standards. Give your people proper training in how to use your systems to achieve those standards.  Manage their performance.  Reward good performance and re-train when it's not so good.

People want to learn and develop, they want to grow - it's much more of a motivator than money.  Give them ownership of their job, help them to feel like they belong to something, that you're relying on them to help you build something that you can all be proud of.

I saw this quote on Facebook, and it is oh so true - 'A team is not a group of people who work together.  A team is a group of people who trust one another.'

Trust your people and build a high performing team, that runs your high performing business.
​
Get control of your freak.  Pull out the bindweed that's killing your business.

For more information on how MPL can help you visit www.mariannepage.co.uk or contact me on hello@mariannepage.co.uk

When you're in a relationship, any relationship...whether it's with a friend, a partner, a customer...what's one of the things that you treasure most?

For most of us I'm guessing it's trust.

You want to know that you can rely on the other person; that when they say that they're going to do something, they do it; that they aren't moody-you always know where you stand with them. In other words, that they're consistent.

Consistency is a powerful relationship builder for a business. You only have to look as far as McDonald's to see that.

Your customers love it because they know what to expect from you...that any surprises are only going to be the nice kind. They know that they're going to get the same service no matter who they deal with or what time of day it is.  They know where they stand with you and that they can rely on you.

Your team love it because they know what's expected of them. They feel ownership because they understand what they're doing, and are left to get on with it.  They feel a responsibility to deliver for you and your customers.

And you love it, because it makes your life easier.  It frees up your time.  It allows you to grow your business...or develop it as a franchise...maybe run it from the beach.

A consistent business built around simple, logical systems, gives you freedom to do whatever rocks your boat.

Being a constant, dependable presence builds relationships in all areas of your life.

How consistent are you?
​
…If you want more consistency in your business...if you get the What and want to know more about the How…then do pick up a copy of my book Process to Profit which shares a lot of info about setting up the systems you'll need…or, if you don't have time to read a book, please drop me a line, and I’d be happy to talk through some options with you.

For more information on how MPL can help you visit www.mariannepage.co.uk or contact me on hello@mariannepage.co.uk

Hands up if you've been an employee at some point in your life.

Chances are you have...whether you had a paper round, worked in the local supermarket or did jobs around the house for your mum for a bit of pocket money.

What was the experience like?

Do you remember it fondly, or was it a painful episode that you just put up with cos you needed the money?

What were you like as an employee?

A joy to work with...always on time and always cheerful? Or a pain in the backside...tardy, careless and moody?

What did you learn from it?

That there are good bosses and bad bosses, that you can like a boss without respecting them, and respect them without liking them, that it's all about relationships?

Way too often recently I've heard business owners talking about their employees as if they are adversaries in some gladiatorial contest.  Too much talk of HR, contracts, tribunals, and not enough about growth, fun and team spirit.  Too much focus on marketing the business brand, and none on developing a great brand as an employer.

For a lot of years I worked with McDonald's, a business renowned for giving young people their first job and then developing them to the point where they had real options in their life.  Were there people who didn't fit, didn't want to make the effort, didn't want to be part of a team...yes, of course.

But stay or go, there was never a drama, because there was always a system.

 - A system for hiring, for making a first day special, for structuring and measuring the success of a probationary period.

 - A system for training them how to follow the procedures and processes, and for developing the individual as an individual.

 - A system for measuring and managing performance, for keeping them on track.

 - A system for recognising and rewarding a job well done.

Systems make life easier for your employees and therefore for your customers.  Everyone knows where they stand. Everything is consistent and reliable.

Best of all, you are in control without always having to be there.  You're in control without having the drama that is too often associated with employing people. You are in control of a team of people who know what their role is, what standards are expected, and who get on and perform that role to the best of their ability.

If you want your business to run like clockwork, to grow without more effort on your part...sort out your people systems, and develop a great employer brand.

…And if this is still a dark art for you…if you get the What and want to know more about the How…either pick up a copy of my book ‘Process to Profit’ which shares a lot of info about setting up your people systems…or/and drop me a line, and I’d be happy to talk through some options with you.

For more information on how MPL can help you visit www.mariannepage.co.uk or contact me on hello@mariannepage.co.uk

Some of you will have seen the tv reality show, The Choir; it’s been going for a while now and I’ve always enjoyed it, as much for Gareth Malone’s enthusiasm and empathy, as the music...I find the whole programme uplifting.

What I’m noticing in this series, much more than I did in the first though, are the workplace relationships within the organisations featured.  Almost all of them are fractured to some extent, with workplace hierarchies appearing to have a very real impact on the self worth issues of those at the bottom of the pecking order.

Even in the fire service, which for me was the most united by a common cause, we had a ‘them and us’...the fire fighters and the support staff...with the latter clearly feeling in some way ‘less important’ than their more heroic colleagues.  Interestingly it showed up in the power of their singing too.

The programme featuring Sainsburys was the most fascinating, so diverse was the workforce, and so disjointed...and Gareth really struggled to unite those from the ‘Ivory Tower’ of head office, with the shop floor workers and the warehouse guys. The hierarchy...or was it the culture...appeared so firmly entrenched that the 3 groups didn’t appear to think they should talk to one another, let alone know how to.

Of course these are all big organisations, and it’s easy to see how these fractures develop.  It can often be because those on their feet all day, doing what they consider to be the ‘hard work’, and the unsociable hours, can grow resentful of those who they perceive to be sitting on their backsides all day in the office, drinking coffee...and taking home more money. 
That’s an over-simplification, but you get my drift.

So what about our much smaller businesses?  Are our teams fractured in the same way?

If the culture of any organisation is built around the beliefs and behaviours of the leader, which is my view...what are we doing day to day to ensure that all of our team is united around ‘our cause’?  How are we promoting the value to our business of everyone who works for us; making sure that each individual knows that their contribution is key to the whole team succeeding; that no one is more or less important than anyone else?
​
What would Gareth Malone find if he came to our business to build a choir?

For more information on how MPL can help you visit www.mariannepage.co.uk or contact me on hello@mariannepage.co.uk

I’ve had a couple of interesting conversations this week.  The first with my mastermind group, concerned the fact that a few of us enjoy what we do so much that we forget that there’s meant to be a commercial aspect to it.  So busy being busy, doing what we love, that we just never get round to the ‘making money’ bit.

The other was with an old hockey mate of mine, Lara Morgan, as hard-hitting in business as she always was on the hockey field - the sale of her first business for £20 million bears testament to that.  Lara was sharing her frustration with me about the fact that so many of us shy away from selling...”you guys just don’t want to sell’’ she was saying, which to someone who built her business on the back of hard-core selling, was clearly exasperating.  I needed to do a “disproportionate amount of selling” she told me, if I wanted to have real success with my business.

Reflecting on these two conversations, it strikes me that they are two sides of the same coin...whatever the reasons...most of us just aren’t out there selling enough.   Some of us might hate it with a passion; some of us are terrified by it; and some of us just bury our head in the sand, telling ourselves that our product isn’t quite ready yet...our pitch not quite perfect.
The truth about selling is that it’s all about building relationships...but with a punchline!

If we do our jobs right...if we know WHY we are in business, what we believe, and what our cause is; if we start a conversation with like-minded people, give them heaps of valuable free content, show them that we have the solution to their pain; and if we understand our own value, what our skills, expertise and experience are worth...then the punchline is easy.

People buy into us.  Whether they are employees or customers, they will choose to buy what we’re selling based on whether they like us, and how much they trust us to give them what they need.  Build the trust, have what the customer needs...and they will often deliver the punchline for us.

For more information on how MPL can help you visit www.mariannepage.co.uk or contact me on hello@mariannepage.co.uk