Getting better & better – not

Words: 449 Reading Time: 1 minute 30 seconds

My nearest Sainsbury’s has a number of large, temporary signs outside proudly declaring that “We are improving your car park”. Let me disabuse them.

It is true that various pieces of construction and earth-moving equipment are trundling about, making an uncommon mess and changing the car park’s configuration. But it is not my car park. It is their car park and they would not be “improving” it if they did not expect solid payback as a result.

Of all the things I would have changed about this Sainsbury’s, it would not have been the car park.

1. The store is quite small, so I would have made it larger.

2. I have yet to see all checkouts staffed all at the same time – even the busiest of times – so I would have changed that.

3. And they are routinely out of routine items, so I would have worked on “improving” that.

None of this has been done.

I am a regular shopper at this site. Was I ever asked what I would like “improved”; even once?

Umm, no.

This is Sainsbury’s idea, so naturally the improvement is angled towards their priorities, rather than mine. It does not seem to have occurred to them that by addressing what the customers want their expected return might be even bigger that the one they have calculated.

Sadly, Sainsbury’s are not alone in this propensity by the big battalions to portray their selfish decisions as being in “our” interests by deliberately false or misleading statements.

1. The repeated message put out by the BBC (taxpayers’ money!) that DAB is wonderful and will make life better for everyone has long been discredited, but they continue to pump out the propaganda at everyone else’s expense.

2. ‘Because you’re worth it’ – which, if the company really believed its own publicity, would result in them giving you the product without charge.

3. And ‘Delays Possible’ before major motorway works that run for miles without a sign of any activity by man or machine. The arbitrarily imposed lower speed limit means that delays are not just possible, they are inevitable, because whatever hour of the day or night I pass through I cannot drive at the speed customary for that stretch of road.

The less sceptical among us may be drawn in by these blatant falsehoods; the rest of us grow weary as our delicious language is hijacked in the service of mammon.

With our words we tell our stories and through our stories we sell ourselves and what we offer. How are we to do that if the words no longer say what they mean? We cannot mangle the moving parts and still expect a functioning mechanism.

Your Credibility is Fragile

The spectre of a major employer saying one thing and doing another rises again as Shell prepares to cut 3,200 jobs.

In the past Shell have explicitly recognised how important their employees are to the continued success of the enterprise. In May 1997 Cor Herkstroter, President of the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company, delivered a speech highlighting the need to “safeguard the interests of shareholders, our staff and others who work with us around the world”.

He went on to declare “our most important asset is our people.”

One wonders why a company would consciously and deliberately choose to dispose of such a key resource.

Any professional stands or falls, not by their technical proficiency, but by their credibility. If the President of a company states publicly and unequivocally that, “we are linked by our shared values - integrity, honesty and respect for people - and our belief in the importance of trust, team working, professionalism and pride in what we do,” then all stakeholders, including the employees, are being invited to accept it as a fact.

It serves nobody, least of all the business community in general, to have those values cynically cast aside in pursuit of ephemeral profits.

Important assets and core values persist over time. Cor Herkstroter recognised that too: “I believe that one of the Group's greatest strengths has been our ability to take the long view - even when this has been unfashionable.”

May 1997 was over ten years ago. Things do move on. But these were not passing sentiments of the moment for Shell. The Shell Report 2001, a detailed and glossy exercise in CSR, affirmed: “our achievements depend on the efforts of Shell people all around the world. Their expectations drive our commitments.”

The section boldly headed ‘Business Principles’ continued the theme with the assertion that “It is recognised that commercial success depends on the full commitment of all employees.”

Credibility is hard to accrue and easily damaged. Not having credibility is tough, but professionals can earn it, painstakingly, over a period of time. However, having once had it and then lost it puts the professional in a much worse position. The loss tends to be permanent as staff, suppliers and customers adopt the understandable habit of taking everything you say with an appropriate amount of salt. As Alfred Adler recognised: “Life happens at the level of events, not of words,” or, as the Chinese have it: ‘Talk doesn't cook rice’.

One can point to the performance of Shell over the years and argue whether it represents success or failure and whether that gives them commercial credibility. That is not the point. Shell have shed staff before this latest proposed trance, yet there is no way of knowing what the outcome would have been had they refrained from offloading people. However, if one accepts their own evaluation of the basis of their success, their staff are clearly and plainly a crucial ingredient. Therefore it follows – as night follows day – that sacrificing any of this valuable resource has to be detrimental to their outcomes.

Shifting those staff to outsource partners does not secure for Shell the same benefits it once had. The staff in question will be expected to identify with the interests of their new employer, not Shell. There will no longer be that “full commitment” to Shell that it once published and promulgated as a determinant of commercial success. Sorry boys, you really cannot have your cake and eat it.

While I believe that people are an indispensable part of any organisation’s success – simply because without people there is no functioning organisation – it is not necessary for you to share that view. What is essential is to survey your past declarations, examine your own values, assess what will deliver success and act in accordance with those tenets at all times. As a professional your principles are not expensive, they’re priceless.

“If your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt.” ~Henry J. Kaiser