This week has been a double celebration for the Rambutan bunch.
We celebrated the company’s 2nd birthday and were chuffed to appear on the front page of our local paper.
The Harborough Mail reported on our refreshing response to the series of reports by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. The full article can be viewed here: http://tiny.cc/uvb41
Here at Rambutan we believe that in internal communications the channel should match the message. Have a look at the attached…what do you see?
When David first saw this he was running a little late after a three day development event in Düsseldorf.
“I arrived at the sign in the photograph with my Air Berlin voucher for flight 8476 to London Stansted in my hand. I was more anxious than usual because of my lateness and the fact that the media had been filled with tales of volcanic woe for the past few days. I could see my flight on the sign but the number was wrong. I switched views from my voucher to the sign, turning my head more times that the centre court crowd at a Wimbledon tennis final. The panic rose…had they changed the schedule due the ash cloud…and why was there a price for the flight? Had they cancelled all flights and decided to charge people on a first come first served basis? Nightmare…I was late..I would never get a seat and this was the only Air Berlin flight to the UK that day.”
Since Jill joined the Rambutan bunch earlier this year she has found that she is getting a lot of attention from wasps….in fact she got stung three times last week alone. David said that he seems to remember from his childhood that orchards were a challenging place to be at this time of year for Spheksophobics (that’s posh for ‘person with fear of wasps and bees’….and yes of course David would have Googled this!). So does becoming a fruit (i.e. joining a bunch of Rambutans) make you a target for stinging pests? Let’s hope not but may be this question should have a ‘don’t try this at home warning’ just in case.
The interesting reflection that Jill’s tri-stinging week gave her was that it didn’t hurt as much as she remembered and may be the fear of the pain was worse than the pain itself. Have you ever been in a situation when there was something to fear or worry about in the future but it turned out OK? It turns out OK (or better that feared) most times for most people…clearly this statement is based on hearsay, gut feel and tea leaves and must not be taken as anything resembling statistical evidence.
Worrying about the future might be a human preoccupation but if things are not going to be as bad as you thought then why not start at that point and then if they are not even as bad as that why not start at that point…and keep repeating the cycle until…hey presto the future glass is half full.
At this point you are either bored, baffled, bewildered or bollixed so to put it into once sentence: Worrying about how bad things might be is about as effective as trying to knock out a hedgehog with a balloon…refresh your thinking if the way you are thinking is not helping you!
Sarah was struck by a conversation she overheard on a train yesterday, which was between two people who knew each other but who clearly weren’t the best of friends. It went like this:
• “I can’t believe you did that – you’re such an idiot”
• “Fortunately I don’t value your opinion about me… hmmm, actually, I do value your opinion ‘cos I know that anything you say is based on the fact you’re ignorant, therefore the opposite must be true…”
Funny, but with a serious side to: Whose opinions do you value? Whose opinions are you taking on board when you shouldn’t?
A local business recently asked David’s opinion on how to improve staff morale..here are David’s thoughts..
“I have always found the question ‘how can we improve morale in our workforce?’ (and the various derivatives such as attitude, engagement, commitment et al) a little puzzling. To me morale/engagement/ ‘whatever’ levels are the measure of something else and not an end or a project in their own right.
I remember my boss in food retail years ago asking me how we could improve mystery shopping results…equally odd question when you think about it. My answer was that ‘you don’t…what a silly question to ask me!’ (It is fair to say that my honesty was both a blessing and a curse in my early career)…mystery shopping was merely the measure….customer service was what we needed to improve. It’s the same with morale.
John the MD of a local business (the name has been changed to protect the guilty) told me that they had a ‘morale problem’ that was affecting productivity so they had got a group of staff together and asked them ‘what can we do to improve your morale?’ They implemented some of the things that the staff came up with (a new kettle, a fully stocked stationary cupboard, a shelter for the smokers) and yet the morale problem had got worse. John was perplexed…John’s situation is not uncommon… just like mystery shopping is a measure of customer service (along with other important measures such sales, brand recognition, compliments v complaints correspondence etc) morale is a measure of ‘employee service’ (along with employee retention, absence etc). What I mean by this is the level to which employees are cherished, loved, nurtured and well managed. It is about the human side of leadership. I would rather work for a good boss with a dodgy kettle than the other way round. For John to ask how he could improve his staff’s morale (or more specifically how Rambutan could do it) is a little ironic in this light. It detaches him from the problem when in fact he’s the problem or, put less harshly, he’s part of the problem and all of the solution.”
On further investigation David found John didn’t need to do a whole load of new things or spend a stack of cash to improve his staff’s morale. John just needed realise that he was asking the wrong question. The right question in his case was ‘what can I do to improve the way I treat people at a personal/human level?’ Remarkably simple solutions then started to appear. Here is John’s list. He only has 85 employees but how many of the items on his list are relevant to you?
1/ Take 10 mins each morning and evening to say hello/goodbye to anyone who is around �
2/ During this time resist all temptation to ‘talk shop’
3/ Avoid email to people who sit less than 100 meters away (just about everyone in John’s case)
4/ Eat in the rest room with the other staff not at his desk. Offer to make tea coffee for anyone who is in there at the time
5/ Find one person per week to say a really special thanks to. Make sure it’s not always the same person
6/ Make his voicemail message less formal
7/ Once a month go walkabout and show an interest in what people are up to and ask them for their ideas
8/ Once a week call as many people as are available around to ‘soap box’. Thank people for what they achieved last week, give them a 5 minute business update and leave 15 mins for any questions or points that others want to raise
9/ Once or twice a year be seen socially with his staff (staff Christmas party, summer fun day out etc)
10/ Give people odd/spontaneous time off in lieu without them formally earning it (costs nothing but has a massive impact)
11/ Make any emails he does send be less formal (use ‘Hi’ & ‘Cheers’ rather than ‘Dear’ & ‘Regards’ for example)
12/ Make it his personal mission to find out ten non work-related things about every member of his staff
13/ Smile and make eye contact…. all the time! �
14/ Send staff a personally written birthday card…better still hand deliver it to their desk/home
15/ Let his staff have silly/fun/dress up days for charity…let them decide which charity and join in the fun
16/ Introduce visitors/customers/suppliers to his staff. Let his staff show them around. Let his staff overhear him tell visitors how proud he is to have such great staff
17/ Never answer his mobile or check his messages in the company of staff
18/ Get rid of his special parking space…his legs are no shorter that anyone else’s
If you ever want to refresh the way that you think about problems and how to solve them, then take some time to observe children trying to work things out. They’re masters at it – they talk to each other, take turns, listen, try out all sorts of possibilities, then jump for joy when a great solution is found… how very refreshing!
One recent example that Sarah saw was when two friends aged 9 were trying to figure out how they could both jump across a field in the same sack without falling over – and eventually they did it, hurrah! She still has no idea why they should have chosen such an activity, but she’s very glad they did because it inspired this blog entry…
(PS. make sure that they don’t notice that you’re watching and listening or the magic will be over in a flash!)
Our thanks to Tom for sending in the latest photo of ‘Rambutans around the world…’ This time they were spotted in Melbourne, Australia!
What would cars be like if they’d mirrored the technology advancements of our laptops and desk top PC’s?
At a conference last year Bill Gates allegedly stated that
‘If GM motors had kept up with technology like the computer industry had, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon.’
Hmmm interesting… GM of course had a lot to say about this… here’s a few ‘gems’ from their press release:
If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:
• For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash…….. twice a day.
• Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason, you would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.
• Occasionally, executing a manoeuvre such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
• Apple Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive – but would run on only five percent of the roads.
• Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.
How often have you heard the phrase active listening? We use it ourselves on many occasions and train people to develop it as a skill because we believe it’s an essential one to have – useful at work, at home, on the sports field and in the pub!
But this blog’s not about that, it’s about active ignorance – a phrase that Sarah heard on a radio programme last week. It got her thinking (dangerous!) that in a world where we’re constantly bombarded with information, opinions, data and news, perhaps there are some things that it would be healthy to actively ignore – people who are trying to deflect us from achieving our goals? worrying about things we cannot change? the pile of washing up? A bit of food for thought… even if you choose to ignore it!
Many moons ago David was promoted by one of the UK’s leading retailers and became the proud manager of his own supermarket. After spending a decade climbing the ladder and learning from all the good, the great (and the decidedly pants) people he worked with and for, this was his big chance to finally put all the learning into practice. David was bursting with ideas about how he was going to manage people and how to make the store a success.
Having heard many people talk about ‘open door’ policies and agreeing with the principle, David wanted to make a statement about this to the staff on the first day.
“I arrived at the store on the first morning and after going round to meet everyone set about my iconic gesture…instead of an ‘open door’ policy I would have a ‘no door’ policy….beat that I thought to myself as I unscrewed the manager’s office door from its hinges and lumbered downstairs to lay it to rest in the skip outside the loading bay.”
“Some of the staff watched curiously and some looked very shocked but none were as shocked as me when, at 3am with me sound asleep at home, there was a knock on the house door. It was the store nightshift manager. He had look on his face that I can only describe as apologetic anger when he told me he was sorry to get me out of bed but had been ringing me for two hours and had finally phoned head office to get my home address. ‘What’s the problem?’ I said (thinking that the store had burned down or something of that nature). ‘Can you tell me what you have done with the door from the manager’s office because we cannot set the store alarm without that door being shut and locked? I was supposed to go home at midnight!’ ”
The ‘no door’ policy had failed but the story was told and retold so many times that it became a store legend (David’s boss never found out thankfully) so even with a door the message that he was open and approachable had hit home.
This taught David a powerful lesson about the myths and legends that surround leaders and just how important they are. It also taught him that PDIFM (please do it for me) was a much better option than trying DIY…a lesson he has consistently used ever since.
