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Advice is for listening to, but not necessarily taking

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Ian Mash of Yeoman Consulting helps us to continue the theme of ‘practical ways to help your business life” by sharing some of his experiences of working at the coalface as a senior manager in one of the UK’s largest companies – BT.

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When I’ve been looking at new product development or moving into new markets, I’ve always been struck by how quickly folk want to get down to the design phase. Frequently I’ve noticed that the main design input has been personal bias or copying the competition. An old marketing guru of mine tore me off a strip for just such a view when he asked me why I had chosen a particular design. When I answered that it was what I would have wanted had I been in the market he used the phrase

‘Beware the sample of one’.

Given the cost of new product development and the cost of failure if you don’t get it right, a little time and effort at the front end using proper customer segmentation and needs analysis will save a lot of red faces later on. It’s our job as management or marketing professionals to do this spadework up front.  It doesn’t have to be rocket science.

Personally I like Kotler’s (Marketing Management, Analysis, planning and control) views of perhaps 3 axis segmentation e.g. gender, hair colour shoe size so that you can get to the segment of fair haired women who wear size 6 shoes for your better mousetrap. There are of course many others who write on segmentation, it’s up to you to choose.

This brings me onto my next thought. Often we are deluged with huge amounts of information or views from colleagues. As a manager it’s not easy to cut our way through, but I’ve seen an increasing trend from people of not wanting to listen to counter views and arguments because it takes up their time. This is a dangerous course and the time saved will be wasted in spades later when you re-appraise the position.

None of us are that good we can work in isolation.

I’ve always felt that advice is for listening to, but not necessarily taking

Consider the idea of writing a mail but not sending it until later, it’s useful to give yourself just a little time to consider what you know and what you don’t know. Sometimes this can be overnight, but if time is pressing, and it often is, it can be a walk to the coffee machine, just to get that processing time to make your own decision. You’ll find that decision is both easier to make and easier to communicate when you’ve taken this approach.

Ian Mash will be back with more pearls of wisdom in the next couple of weeks and can be contacted on +44 7860 621976 and via email at ian dot mash1 at btinternet.com
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5 must have professional skills

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Ian Mash of Yeoman Consulting helps us to continue the theme of ‘practical ways to help your business life” by sharing some of his experiences of working at the coalface as a senior manager in one of the UK’s largest companies – BT.

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I’ve had time recently to contemplate things I’ve observed which really don’t do business people justice on a day to day basis. Having the right professional skills is such a simple concept – we only have limited interaction with most people and certainly in new situations people tend to make up their mind in the first 10 seconds. Once that has happened it takes a while to change that view.

1) Returning calls

Many of us have answering messages on the phone or mobile which say that we’ll call back. Or indeed, when it’s not convenient at that exact point to talk we say “I’ll call you back at 4.o0, is that ok?”, and then don’t.  We’re all busy people and respecting other peoples time will result in them respecting yours. If you make a commitment, put it in your calendar and deliver on it.

Mark McCormack in his book  ‘What they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School’ said that he didn’t trust managers who couldn’t take their holiday. In his view, if they couldn’t manage to take their holiday, what else couldn’t they manage to do? I think calling back comes into the same category. If you don’t deliver on that commitment, what else won’t you deliver on?

2) Control your emotion

One of the key professional skills in a close knit office environment is controlling your emotions. When I first stated work an old and wise manager who was my boss sat opposite me. One day I had a run in with a peer and wrote a great letter saying what I really thought of him. I felt a lot better. I showed it to my boss and he said “What a great letter, he’ll really know what you think of him after that!” He also said “I tell you what, put the letter in your drawer and then when you come in tomorrow, if you still feel the same way, send it”.

Naturally when I came in the next day I looked at what I had written, put myself in the other person’s shoes for a moment, then ripped it up and threw it away.  The same applies for e-mails, but it’s tragically easy to press send too quickly. Take my old manager’s advice, save it as a draft until tomorrow, it might save you a lot of humble pie eating.

3) Take pride

I see many, many e-mails these days where basic spelling and grammar have been ignored. It’s to the detriment of the writer I’m afraid, and I bet you notice it when it’s done to you. Whether its lack of knowledge or lack of effort I’m not sure, but the time pressure on us and the proximity of the send button doesn’t help. Use spell check and if you’re not too hot on grammar, then look at Lynne Truss’s book “Eats shoots and leaves” which is great. I’m not suggesting at all that I am perfect and I’m confident that there are plenty of errors in this piece, but it’s something to think about.

4) Bother to follow up

I guess this is very closely linked to my thoughts above. I’m constantly frustrated by people promising in a meeting to send me something or to complete an action and then seeing that promise unfulfilled. Is it me or are people starting to get slightly surprised when people actually do what they say they are going to? This certainly applies in the faceless call centre. I’ve had a couple of experiences recently where an email has been sent to me as promised from a call centre and there was a small part of me which was shocked.

Clearly this isn’t a great reflection on society – but don’t fall into that trap! A tip for you – bother to write down the action, however trivial in your to do list and then actually do it as soon as you are able. You will delight people.

5)  Be helpful

There’s a school of thought which suggests if you constantly go out of your way to help others, then you will be set for life. In the time I’ve had to observe some of these business people traits – I don’t see this helpful behaviour happening too often.

I’m a big believer in what goes around comes around. Go and make an effort to help a colleague today – and I mean really help – spend a couple of hours doing something for them that they aren’t able to do. It will make you feel good if nothing else and over time, it will pay back.

Ian Mash will be back with more pearls of wisdom in the next couple of weeks and can be contacted on +44 7860 621976 and via email at ian dot mash1 at btinternet.com

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Guest post: Take it as a compliment when people poach your staff

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Ian Mash of Yeoman Consulting helps us to continue the theme of ‘practical ways to help your business life” by sharing some of his experiences of working at the coalface as a senior manager in one of the UK’s largest companies – BT.

Most businesses are people businesses in some shape or form. You rely on both the skill and intelligence of your staff in any given situation to keep the wheels rolling on the right track. That isn’t to say that those skills can’t be improved though…

It’s a part of any manager’s role to work with his or her people, giving them regular constructive feedback and helping to improve skill gaps. No end of year appraisal should be a surprise to the appraisee. These days there are lots of ways to address skill gaps from the traditional face to face course, through management books to the more modern and innovative online courses like The 8.45 Club. (unprompted – Ed).

Over the years I have only ever had one person push back about learning or improving skills, and that person was almost terminally self critical and lacking in confidence. Over time we addressed this by discussion and their attendance on a course on self perception. Later this manager was able to run and successfully manage a team of 40 disparate staff. The comment was made to me by the manager that they were now doing things that they never thought they would be capable of. It’s great to see this happen.

An important point from my perspective is that this isn’t about finding a course and putting the person on it. You can help to define the skills gap, but they need to take the action to select and get on the course. I hate it when the trainer goes around the room asking why people are there and someone says ‘my boss sent me’. Its not a good start and frequently those people just don’t get as much out of the training.

When you have a high performing team, you’ll know not just from the quality of the output but also from the fact that your colleagues keep poaching your people ‘because they’re so good’. It’s frustrating perhaps, but there is really no bigger compliment.

Ian Mash will be back with more pearls of wisdom in the next couple of weeks and can be contacted on +44 7860 621976 and via email at ian dot mash1 at btinternet.com

How to spot the trend

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We are pleased to announce today on Being Smarter another guest blogger, Ian Mash of Yeoman Consulting here in the UK. Ian helps us to continue the theme of ‘practical ways to help your business life” by sharing some of his experiences of working at the coalface as a senior manager in one of the UK’s largest companies – BT.

He starts today with a top tip on trend spotting.

Assimilating data quickly is a true management skill. Some managers can look at a page of figures (in for example a business case) and start asking deeply searching questions immediately. They can see anomalies and trends just from looking at the figures. However, not many of us can do this naturally and we have to rely on tools and techniques to guide us through.

Prior to working my education was science based but I didn’t have any business training per se until I did my MBA and that gave me a few tools to use.

But, the most useful everyday financial tool to me, is just a simple hand drawn graph to spot the trends.

You can do a very quick graph on excel if your drafting skills are poor.

It’s amazing how just say 4 data points drawn can show the anomalies in the trend that don’t immediately jump out of a financial analysis on the page and give you the leverage to start asking searching questions. Why does profit drop in year 3? Why is there a disproportionate capital spend in year 4? Etc.

It won’t give you the answers, but will start sensible digging with you and your team.

Ian Mash will be back with more pearls of wisdom in the next couple of weeks and can be contacted on +44 7860 621976 and via email at ian dot mash1 at btinternet.com

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