Rules and Reality

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This morning I made the mistake of stopping for fuel, southbound on the A1, at Astwick. Clearly, it was simply not convenient for the staff on duty at the time. Having replenished the tank I went to make my payment. I was the only customer. And I had to wait.

It was much more important that the surplus cash in the till be counted while I stood and watched. It was very important that the notes all be the same way round, that notes of the same denomination be kept together and that they all be rolled tightly into a small sheaf and secured with an elastic band. Then they had to be securely stored.

If you are losing the will to live at this point, so was I. But there I was, pinned in place by my obligation to pay for the fuel I had put into my tank, while any obligation they had to serve their customers was blithely ignored.

There was a second person behind the counter. It was apparently paramount that she restock the shelves for possible future customers, rather than serve those already present. I can see the short-term logic. I had already committed myself to my purchase. There was no practical way to avoid paying. Perhaps, in her mind, potential future revenue was more important than past revenue.

Next time an Area Manager drops by he or she will see a tidy, well-stocked, well-organized filling station. In all probability the folks behind the counter will get a pat on the back for a job well done – for following rules and regulations about what makes for a well-run site. What the Area Manager will not see is a forecourt crammed with raving fans. The sadness here is that those fans will not be missed, because the measures are all wrong.

Here we have an organization almost completely inner-focused. It has decided for itself what is good, what is acceptable, what people should want and it has put in all the procedures to deliver just that. Wonderful; meanwhile the world outside goes on.

It will come as no surprise to learn that the company in question is BP. The same BP that hired Transworld to do the drilling and still believes that is sufficient to excuse them from the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Business in Progress

Recently a leading think-tank, the Ernst & Young Item Club, said that the economic outlook for Britain is like a "horror movie".

In my opinion that is a contrived exaggeration designed to catch the attention of the media.

One wonders what metaphor they would possibly have substituted if they had been commenting in 1926. However, there are so many doom merchants plying their trade at the moment that trying to go one better might be expected.

So, just how bad is the economic outlook as seen by the Item Club? What constitutes a “horror movie” these days?

Growth in UK GDP during 2007 was 3.1%. The Item Club expects growth of 1.5% in 2008 and growth of 1.0% in 2009 before it returns to 2.5% in 2010.

Growth????

Oh, yes! Ernst & Young are not forecasting a recession … far from it. They are expecting that the UK economy will continue to grow.

This is about as close to a horror movie as Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Even if things turn out worse than Ernst & Young’s choice of prose, professional firms need to get a sense of proportion. In the US Great Depression 1930-33 the reduction in the level of GDP from peak to trough was a fall of some 30 per cent.

That means that some 70% of output was maintained, although the exact figures will have varied from sector to sector and firm to firm. Nevertheless the point is well made that business continued to happen. Some people even did remarkably well out of it.

Therefore, what you can be sure of is that, no matter how poor the economy gets, substantial amounts of business will still get done.

The only question you need to answer is whether you will be among those doing that business.

There is a recognised 3-step process that will help you towards a positive answer:

1. Raise your standards. Increase the levels of service that you provide and the attention that clients receive. Satisfactory is not good enough, either to win new business, or retain existing accounts.

2. Change your beliefs. Who your prospects are, where they can be found, what they want and your capacity to meet those expectations all need rewriting. The world has moved on; you need to keep pace or you will be left behind.

3. Revise your strategies. Whatever game plan you have been following is now familiar to all your staff and most of your competitors. It’s predictable. “A skilled commander seeks victory from the situation and does not demand it of his subordinates” ~ Sun Tzu.

For the outlook to be perceived as bad is nothing new.

Recently, Sam meets his friend Joe in the Arndale Centre and greeted him warmly.

"Hi Joe, I haven’t seen you for some months. So how is the company doing that you set up with Maurice last year?"

"Well,” said Joe, “As I told you then, I put in all the money and Maurice put in all his business experience. But things have changed a bit since then."

"What do you mean?" Sam asks.

"Now Maurice has all the money and I have all the business experience."

How invisible are you?

Recently I was talking with a new contact who offers data management services - basically making digital copies of archive documents. He was wondering whether having a presence on sites like Ecademy or Facebook would yield any benefit to his business. On balance he doubted it.

The reason he gave was that he dealt mainly with people like the Senior Partner in a firm of Solicitors or the CEO of a Hospital Trust. He questioned whether that sort of individual would ever look at any website, even Ecademy, to find services such as his. Probably not.

I asked him to imagine that he was a Senior Partner.

Only then did he recognise the full course of events that led up to a request to tender and eventually a signed contract. He realised - for the first time - that although he might end up meeting people like Senior Partners, such exalted beings do not do the initial leg-work to identify possible service providers.

Generally that is done by someone much lower down the organisation, usually a lot younger and with no decision-making capacity - but certainly with the freedom to list, or not to list, those who might provide that service. And, being younger, that more junior person would almost certainly look at Ecademy, Facebook and other similar sites.

Clearly, if his firm had no presence on those portals, then he would be invisible to the list makers of this world.

Being on the list would not guarantee an invitation to tender; but not being on the list would certainly guarantee no invitation to tender.

It was a small point, missed by my new friend until now, but with all the potential to make a difference. And all from a small piece of networking.

So, how invisible is your firm? And would you like to get more noticed?