Credit Crunch questions the way we all work
Friday 30th May 2008Steve Walker, Managing Director, Promise Solutions.
Hemlines go up in prosperous times and fall as recession fears grow, or so fashion theory goes. So which way will your hemline go over the course of 2008?
Although it may not seem like it, a recession offers wonderful opportunities. Whenever dynamics change there are new opportunities. We all tend to spend too much time on autopilot and as a result, we often miss out on opportunities. But I have found that the market downturn has led me to get more involved with the day to day running of the business rather than delegating from my office. Getting my hands dirty again over the last few months has helped me identify and develop new opportunities with the help of my team. The idea is that by breaking with our daily routines we see things from a different perspective and open our minds to ideas we might not otherwise have considered.
I think it is U2’s Bono who always asks: 'Who's Elvis around here?' In other words: who stands out? Everyone can be a bit more like Elvis, have more of an impact and shine a bit more. I think that by getting more involved with the day to day running of the business and working more closely with the rest of the team, new ideas develop more quickly and easily. Keeping a finger on the pulse helps senior managers to stay focused rather than hindering strategic thinking in my opinion.
A great example of this for me was attending the Manchester Mortgage Expo with my colleagues recently. Whilst, as expected, our secured/unsecured loans and debt management proposition was our main attraction, I learned, first hand, that brokers are looking to be more innovative than ever before. The feedback we had from advisers regarding Promise Homesales was a case in point. Advisers saw that they could easily add estate agencies to the range of services they offered to their clients without having to get involved themselves. They realised that adding home sales and HIPs to their service offering could help them generate more mortgage enquiries and protect their current mortgage leads from being lost to the in-house adviser at the local estate agent. In addition, Promise’s one-stop offering allows them to generate incremental income from the sale of a property, the home information pack and consolidate any associated mortgage sale in an all embracing service.
Whilst HIP’s are still often quoted as costing £500 to £600 the reality is that brokers can sell a HIP for £285 including a referral fee of £40. Being able to meet brokers face-to-face in this way proved invaluable, as it provided feed-back about our proposition and the real potential it offers. Suffice to say, the decision to promote our Homesales offering more was made on the same day, and plans largely agreed on the drive home.
Over the years McDonald's has been able to sell hundreds of millions of hamburgers. One of the reasons for the chain's success is that McDonald's is a franchise operation and the owner of each franchised restaurant is on premises running the business. That's not to say that every business requires the owner at the helm all the time. In my experience, leaders who deliver need continuously to question their effectiveness, particularly the following:
• How are you making certain there is follow-through? Too many organisations have action plans that never get reviewed and fall by the wayside.
• Have you reviewed the balance between control of employees and discretion? Have you got the balance right for your business, especially in the current market?
• Throughout your business, how are you keeping consistent focus on priorities, particularly the customer? Are you rewarding and recognising people against the key deliverables?
• How are you generating enthusiasm and passion for the success of the organisation at all levels?
• Are you maintaining and strengthening two-way communication channels – inside and outside the organisation?
• Are the skills of your people up-to-date and do they feel confident to make their own decisions which fit local circumstances?
In my opinion hands-off management isn't as advantageous as it may sound, particularly now, and if hands-off Management is bad, hands-in management is a couple of steps closer to workplace hell. Popularly thought of as micromanagement, it resides at the other end of the spectrum. The hands-in style erodes trust and kills creativity. It gets particularly rotten when you make a decision only to have a hands-in manager come along and reverse the decision.
Hands-on management lives in the middle of these two styles. A hands-on manager knows when to be involved in decisions and the work of their team and when to give them space. It takes confidence in yourself and faith in your people. But then it’s fair to say that it is hard to be a good leader without these two things. From an employee’s perspective understandably they want managers and Boards who consistently apply this style.
At least by focusing on management style in this way we will have increased control over the future prosperity of our businesses during these tough times and those of us that get it right may well need to shorten our hemlines sooner rather than later.
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