Business Leadership | Leaders, The 7% conundrum - Private Education, Top Universities and all that

Business Leadership | Leaders, The 7% conundrum - Private Education, Top Universities and all that

I am all for achieving equality in education provision and ensuring equal opportunities for those with talent and acumen and entrepreneurial initiative.

I have seen a lot of coverage critical of the system where the majority of our leaders, our politicians and our senior commercial folk seem to come from the 7% who attend the best universities and private education.

I think this is skewed the wrong way round. The question should not be ‘how is it that best universities and the private education schools seem to generate the leaders and initiative takers ?’ but rather, "how is it that an education system with the other 93% of our young people does not?". To read the full LinkedIn article by Bob Shepherd Associates, click here.  Simple really.

Running A Business | It's Lonely At The Top

Running a business | It's lonely at the top

If you are running a business you need to wear many hats, you need to know everything and you need to know it now.

More than this - in many case you are isolated and alone. It is therefore, important that from time to time you take off all those hats and create some time for you to reflect, some time for you to learn, some time for 'You' to improve. In fact you will get more done, be more directed and more efficient.  To read the full LinkedIn post by Bob Shepherd Associates, click here.  Simple really.

Business Advice | They say..... A Cobbler never mends his own shoes

Business Advice | A Cobbler never mends his own shoes

As a general thing I am quite struck by business folk who propound some expertise in something when they are guilty of it themselves!!  The communications experts who can't communicate. The life coaches who are fragile themselves. The business experts who can't market themselves. The PAs who are always late. And so on.

You could say 'Cobbler and shoes' or you could point out that their own experience is an education they can use for the benefit of others. It's a consultant's privilege - 'do what I say not what I do'.  I am probably guilty of some of it myself.  We can't be good at everything. The best card I have to play is the external view. I turn up and there it is, wrapped up in some experience, some training and some developed practices and a different perspective....

Luckily my clients value it.....

To view articles and observations by Bob Shepherd Associates, just click here.

Leaders and Managers

Leaders and Managers

The old ideas of leadership are changing in business. In truth they have been changing for years and 'evolving' may be a better word to use. The old autocratic ideas of a pyramid hierarchy with someone at the top are rarely found these days.

Quite apart from the gender roles disappearing and the values that went with them watering down, the structure of business has changed. Some of that is good and some not, as with all change. What was there before was a mixture of good and bad as well and it is a mistake to ever think everything is or was fine.

Some have started to realise that leadership is present at all levels and is an integral part of the mixture of all things. 'If you want to know how to build a pyramid ask the man with the trowel', is a phrase I heard many years ago and it touches on the same thing. Leadership is managing people upwards, downwards and sideways. It's managing your people, your boss, and your colleagues: Click this link to read the full post on LinkedIn

Tescos - The Devil Is Not Always In The Detail

In response to a downturn in fortunes partly due to adverse PR from a couple of monumental mistakes the big Tesco machine has decided to retreat. Some 43 stores across the UK will be closing and some big developments will not be going ahead. A news article today has some details at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-31365003 

This strikes me as the wrong strategy. It is not as if there are not still massive profits being turned in. They are not actually short of cash. Closing some stores is negative PR (again) and a reduction in the potential opportunity for income. Empty sites underline the idea that Tescos are not doing very well. In fact they are doing well, just not so well as they used to do. 

A giant Tesco Extra opened in Newport a couple of years ago. From the beginning it was obvious that something was wrong. Rushing to open it against the competition (Morrisons opened just down the road a week earlier!) it seemed poorly laid out and not well managed at the start. It was just too big. By the time you had traversed the aisles and discovered you had forgotten the sugar you were some distance away. 

It works better nowadays. The management has got to grips with it and though there are large areas of unused floor space it is now better organised.

One solution to all these closures and mothballed stores would be to adopt more of the policy they already have for including other enterprises in the main store. A number of small units and kiosks operate within the Tesco store building. Expanding that idea along the lines of a mini shopping mall would attract people to the Tesco store as well. This is the opposite to the current thinking which has people attracted to the units, because they are already in the store for Tescos. Department stores have been doing this for decades and still maintain their integrity. 

Keep it simple is my advice. My feedback to their recent survey on Price Matching was that it was not so important as they thought. Penny pinching over their rivals and in the process doing damage to the economy in the long run only generates more bad publicity in the end.

I am not used to giant supermarket chains phoning me up wanting Bob Shepherd Associates as consultants but the principles of a qualified external view, coupled with management strategies and basic business principles are there whatever size operation you have. The devil is not always in the detail.

Transformers? They Are Out There!

You know the sci-fi characters that morph from giant robots into odinary trucks and vehicles? We see them in adverts and elsewhere even if, like me, you thought you had managed to exist without them.

Well it has occurred to me that they are out there anyway, dealing with us all in local government and other large organisations. 

What put this in mind was a frantic and desperate client yesterday who had, amongst other frustrations, attempted to tangle with his local Rates people. He has a long lease on a large industrial unit which he took over less than 3 months ago. 

As a formative social enterprise he went to a senior person in the Local Authority Rates department who agreed he could get an 80% reduction subject to a bundle of forms and subsequent agreement. His separate application for a business grant from another department of the Local Authority was turned down because of £1600 rates outstanding. (This is understandable if you consider the application for a rebate is not yet finalised) In the post he received a Court Summons for a Rates Arrears of £7600. (Clearly a mistake. It probably relates to a previous occupant, or the landlord.  In any case he should have heard something before a Court Summons for non payment arrives) image by Jonund (talk)

There is plenty to be challenged here and there are ways of metaphorically thumping the desk to get a Rates Department operative to tie the strings of all this together. If you have worked in that environment, or indeed any large organisational administration, you will be able to relate to the problem. It happens. Such departmental thinking does not encourage apologies or speedy retractions. There will be no concerned letter asking for forgiveness. We all know this. It is how 'they' think. if anything there will be a presumption that the system is right and this lonely business man is some kind of renegade fighting the Big Machinery Collective. 

For my client, from a simple commercial small business background where such collective shortcomings are usually ambushed before they ever make it into print, none of it makes any sense. Official looking papers and forms and procedural language all incline him to tear his hair out in frustration. The various operations involved come from different people operating different desks and probably there are sensible explanations in defence of their actions. It all ends up on the one doormat however. The world is full of such things. 

The arrears demand from the energy company for premises with a pre paid meter is another one I have seen lately. Nothing personal, but they are out to get you! For my client me summarising a set of to do actions is a big relief. My external perspective is all he needed to calm down. Bob Shepherd Associates, a calming force in business! 

The Thing About Business

Whatever the flavour, size, style or type of  business you have there are some common features - some common characteristics. This is the secret behind how I can contribute to a business. I do not actually need to know the technical and finer points of the business to know what needs some attention, needs a fix or needs some development. 

For example all businesses need to communicate with the outside world in an attractive and constructively encouraging way. The methods for doing that may have differences in detail and sophistication and will have a different focus on one channel over another, but still the principle is there. 

For another example all businesses need people, as staff, customers, service providers and representatives. In a small business the responsibility for these aspects devolves on to one or two people perhaps, but the principle is still sound. A small one man band has complete responsibility for all forms of representation which covers everything he/she does and every action taken. On a simple basis if you are rude and impatient with everyone you meet you are less likely to make a success of attracting customers. 

Exactly the same applies to big businesses who have dozens, hundreds, thousands of staff. The difference in the detail is that although the immediate responsibility is devolved to the one person dealing with the customer at that moment over the phone, or in that email, or in person, or in recounting some story in the pub about 'work' over the weekend, there are others in the chain of controls and in the team network who are affected by association and who also have the same responsibilities. There are probably controls in the form of line managers, reports and appraisals and all manner of monitoring devices. It can get complicated. 

I read something recently that came to the wonderful conclusion that a happy staff would perform better and benefit the business. How this comes to be a revelation is a sad refection of the state of business and the level of management understanding that exists today. 

Bob Shepherd Associates looks at the components of business and ensures they are both working and in proportion. If and when everything can be made to knit together properly the business can develop happily and successfully. Simple, yet complicated! 

Keep Close to Your Competition

Should you be worried about your competition? 'That depends' is the Consultant's answer. If your business is not strong and you can admit that you cannot keep up in terms of quality, price and service then, well, yes you should and frankly it is only a matter of time...

If you are confident in all these things then you may be able to say 'let the competition do what they can.' Very often the market is such that there is room for more than one anyway.

There is always call for you to establish an edge over the competition. With High Street banks for example they all offer broadly similar products and services so the only difference in any particular town is the behaviour of the local representatives. They are in a position to gild the service with their own personality and level of competence and the management of their front line staff and their back room departments. In the end the national nature of their industry means that whatever they do has no big effect on the performance of the bank as a whole and they have little control over the activities of their centralised functions.

So I can find an equal number of business customers from each bank who are enchanted or disenchanted with their Bank.

With a smaller locally based business the situation is much more under control. Adopt the Basil Fawlty school of service delivery thinking, and you will turn away more than your share of custom. Going the extra mile as the expression goes will earn you praise and at some point, more customers. I had this amply illustrated by a mobile telecoms company today who were travelling a 50 mile round trip to deliver a replacement  handset - because that was the 'right' thing to do. 

With the competition I maintain you should check regularly what they are doing. Check their website, keep an eye on their premises, check their exhibition stand etc. With a new business this is especially important. You do not have to do what they are doing but at least be aware and then decide if you have missed a trick and should do something similar and perhaps better.

But it is not a race. One networking organisation I know feels unable to accept anyone from rival organisations. Well, there are dozens of networking organisations and their customers are probably yours as much as yours are theirs.

An exhibition company I know avoids contact with others in their 'patch' as they see it. I would have a stand at the others if it was down to me. Competition is a matter of perception very often. Perception in the eyes of your customers but also perception of the business market opportunity that can be found in your competition. Be proud of your brand and your delivery and rise above it!

Bob Shepherd Associates specialises in building business. If you want the benefit of our experience in evaluating business and putting practical plans into operation it need not cost a lot. Make contact today!