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One of my favourite films is Office Space. In this clip the job evaluation consultants ask ‘our hero’ Peter Gibbons to talk them through a normal day – and he does…
Enjoy!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-n0d54Nx5c]
If you haven’t seen the film you might like to ponder what the results of Peter’s honesty were!
Watch out for tomorrow’s post!
And if anyone asks you why you are watching videos on the company’s time tell them it is management development.
Another copy of People Management drops onto the doormat and once again I am reminded about the potential for Human Resource Management to help negotiate the credit crunch. My favourite piece of advice – ‘Look for ways of saving money without laying people off’! – Just wrong in so many ways. How do ‘membership magazines’ get away with such dross?
And then there are the usual mantras about talent management, talent recruitment and talent retention. There is even a glossy supplement on Recruitment Marketing that shows just what lengths some organisations go to in order to recruit the best. Pictures of gyms, yoga classes and the Bourneville Sports Ground all provided to help retract and retain talent. Articles headlined ‘The Talent Crunch’ – and then over 30 pages of very expensively crafted and placed adverts many of them from organisations that consistently under-invest time and money in people development. (They obviously take the CIPD advice seriously and see training as a place where you can ‘save money with having to lay people off‘. Indeed it even saves you the expense of redundancy as you can watch your talented people walk out the door on their own volition! Double bubble! Indeed many of the recruitment ads are from the NHS where the recent Healthcare Commission report showed that the chances of you getting even an annual appraisal that you feel is helpful are less than 1 in 4!
Most wars are stupidly expensive and damaging – and the war for talent is no different.
This is because people have an innate and practically limitless potential to learn and develop. Some people have switched on to this potential and been developing it successfully for a while (this is what we mean by talented). Others have not yet learned to believe in and develop their potential.
So if you really want to develop a great team of talented people don’t join the talent recruitment wars. Instead fight for more engagement with people, more feedback, more coaching and more work based opportunities for development. Fight for the right of every person to be supported effectively, frequently and professionally to develop their own potential. Practice the rhetoric of investing in people instead of flying the flag for it.
Don’t head hunt other peoples talent.
GROW YOUR OWN.
Not only will you find remarkable talents in some quite unexpected places – but you will also get a reputation as a place where talent can flourish, people can express themselves and explore and develop their potential – and that is more appealing to talented people than the sexiest job advert or well appointed gym.
I awoke this morning to hear the following rallying(?) cry on the Today Programme:
‘We need nothing short of a green revolution…if we are to hit European targets on climate change’.
I didn’t catch the speakers name – but the last reason that we need a green revolution is to hit European targets. In fact I can’t think of a worse reason for a revolution.
Yet many managers use this kind of pathetic rhetoric on an almost daily basis.
‘We need to improve training and development as part of our pursuit of third star’.
‘We need to improve boys literacy at Key Stage 2 if we are to get a good inspection’.
‘We need to increase sales if we are to hit our targets’.
Most people do not care about targets or inspections.
They do care about doing a great job, doing the best that they are capable of and making a secure living. So we should be saying:
‘We need to improve training and development so that we can deliver the very best public services that we can’.
‘We need to improve boys literacy at Key Stage 2 if we are to be a great school’.
‘We need to increase sales if we are to increase our profitability and grow the company’.
Perhaps the most inspirational speech ever is Martin Luther Kings ‘I have a dream speech’. Here is an excerpt:
‘I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.’
In the hands of the unknown revolutionary on the Today Programme this might have become:
“I have a plan that one day we could pass some really good equal opportunities legislation and pursue some really ambitious diversity targets.”
I get to work with a lot of businesses. Some of them are successful. Very successful.
And all of the successful businesses have one thing in common – a successful management team with diverse talents. Between them they are able to produce a great product or service, market and sell it brilliantly and have in place first class financial management, planning, forecasting and controls.
If good management teamwork is a pre-requisite for a successful organisation then why are so many management development programmes designed to work with individuals and to promote the cult of individualism rather than good management teamwork?
One of the things that LEGI has stimulated in ‘deprived areas’ all over England is a renewed interest in Enterprise Centres.
Many of them have a very wide remit to:
This breadth of focus should provide a real strength – a business community that is diverse in terms of goals (making profits AND making progress) and stages of development (start-ups mature businesses and high growth all under the same roof) and from a variety of business sectors. However it is also a potential Achilles heel as it easy for the various market places that the centre sets out to serve can become confused.
For example in Leeds this was recently written about one of the Enterprise Centres being developed in the city:
‘Shine Harehills offers flexible and high quality serviced accommodation for Leeds growing companies’
‘The space, being marketed to the city’s growing creative industries includes 14 office units, each around 600 sq ft, plus spaces from 50 sq ft.’ – ABOUT LEEDS – Summer 2008
Now this makes it sound ideal for a small but growing business looking for space in a professional, high quality and creative ‘for profit’ cluster, but perhaps not an ideal choice for a small social enterprise start-up.
The new generation centres are usually located in the heart of some of the most deprived communities in the country. It will be interesting to see what the ‘creative professionals’ make of the location of SHINE! Especially if they follow the local media and buy into their characterisation of the community.
The fact is that not everyone will be keen to situate their office in the middle of one of the most challenging and diverse neighbourhoods and the third most deprived ward in the city. This may sound like a horribly middle class mind-set. Middle class or not – it matters. I recently suggested meeting a client of mine for a curry on Harehills Lane. However she was not happy about parking her lovely Audi TT convertible down there so we ended up in the Shadwell Tandoori (again). Audi TTs are the ‘runarounds’ in that part of the city. Finding entrepreneurs who want to make a profit and play a part in community life will help to ensure success.
The nature of the local communities could result in the new Centres being put behind large fences, surrounded by CCTV and feeling more like Secure Units than open and welcoming centres for community enterprise. Working effectively with local people, councils and the media to change community narratives from ‘impoverished and problem filled’ to ‘optimistic and full of potential’ will be critical to the successful development of new generation enterprise centres and the transformation of the communities themselves.
Being able to develop and market a cost effective and diverse ‘new generation enterprise centre’ will depend on engaging the right balance of different tenants – and helping each of them to quickly realise the benefits of being part of such a diverse community rather than looking for a more homogenous business environment.
They will also need to very carefully learn the lessons from previous generations of enterprise centres, few (if any?) of which have managed to stay close to achieving their social objectives as they have had to pursue almost ANY tenant who can reliably pay the rent and cover the additional operating costs associated with high quality managed workspace. When faced with the reality of developing a sustainable business plan, that is not dependent on long term subsidy, sometimes the quality slips as does the range of additional services and support.
These ‘first generation’ centres sometimes do little more than offer cheap office accommodation for entrepreneurs that live elsewhere, enabling them to generate additional profits that are spent in other more affluent communities. These centres often then provide only a handful of jobs in security, office administration and caretaking to local people. The actual regeneration potential of the centres for providing business incubation for local entrepreneurs to help to transform the enterprise culture of the local community is largely missed.
If this new generation of centres is not to fall into the same trap then passionate and skilful management will be required – as well as a strong nerve – to ensure that they do become powerful centres of regeneration for local entrepreneurs and not simply low cost profit machines for the already entrepreneurial classes. The centres will need to have strong boards that are held to account as much for their role in the regeneration of the local community as they are for the financial performance of the Centre. And, believe me, when centre managers report to their boards the first thing they talk about – sometimes the only thing – is the financial security or otherwise of the centre.
I hope the new generation centres are massively successful. I do believe that they can achieve both commercial and social objectives. I just hope that they are able to attract the executive and non-executive management teams that they need to keep a balance between their commercial and the social objectives and to keep funders and other stakeholders on board for what could be a long, bumpy but incredibly worthwhile enterprise and regeneration journey.