Feed the Addiction

I admit to having caught the tail end of The Apprentice last night. This hammed-up but fascinating series continues to annoy and delight in equal measure.

Making and selling sausages at a profit appears to have been the first task, which was lost by the boys team (I told you it was delightful). What was most fascinating though, was the team leader’s approach to management. “Standing around giving orders” seems to have been his management style – an approach most of us in business would find amusing if it wasn’t mixed with so much aggression and swearing.

The Apprentices do play up for the cameras, as do the Board, but beneath all the play acting are some serious business conundrums. How do people work when they are under pressure and haven’t had enough sleep (for whatever reason)? Do they rise to the challenge and help their colleagues or do they turn into bullying slave drivers? No wonder large companies wine and dine would be employees before deciding whether to send a job offer – they want to know what’s beneath the gloss and bravado. They want to see what kind of person they are really brining into the fold.

It’s no surprise Alan Sugar has indicated that underperforming bullies have no role in any of his companies, whatever the stresses and strains. His job was made easier by the so-called Sales Director’s inability to sell sausages. I hope his decision would have been the same if he had sold several pigs-worth of the things.

If you didn't see it, you can watch here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00v7sg9

K&H: Metrics to make accountants happy

Key performance indicators have a dramatic effect on one professional services firm

Kirkpatrick and Hope was, until 2003, a very traditional sort of accountancy firm. They could do your accounts or handle your tax affairs as well as the next accountants. Which is a problem for many professional services firms – how do you differentiate yourself from your competitors and resist pressure on pricing? In this case it took a ruptured Achilles tendon and extended leave from the office to give time for strategic planning. Kirkpatrick and Hope was reborn as K & H with a new identity, a new affiliation to the AVN network, and a new enthusiasm for the future.

In 2005 a group of partners led a management buy-out after the last founding partner decided to sell. They had new ideas and a new vision. After years of lacklustre results, low morale and disagreements, they had a new strategy and a new way of doing business.

Andrew Gray, Chairman of K&H, explained to me how they implemented their new strategy.

“Our mission is to improve the lives of small business owners. Many entrepreneurs work incredibly hard for their customers and don’t have time to step back and consider their own business. Important issues such as pricing, marketing, or increasing profitability don’t get much of a look in. Whilst accountancy is still the heart of our service, we take every opportunity to encourage owners to think about their results, and how they can improve their businesses.

The culture change within our own firm has been dramatic. Advising on planning, profitability, pricing, and business development are now a core part of our service, not an add-on. And internally we had to learn to walk the talk, which meant putting in place new processes and performance metrics to measure how we are doing.”

When I asked Andrew what was the single most important measure, he smiled.

“That has to be our happiness score - when you have a team that works well together, so much else falls into place. Every month we ask everyone to complete a 360 degree feedback form, and score their happiness at work on a scale from 0 to 10. We have seen a dramatic shift from the early days, when the average was around 5. Now we consistently score a happier 8 or 8.5. We are not romantics though – it is still work and there will always be some parts of everyone’s workday which isn’t particularly enjoyable. We don’t aim to protect people from that. We frequently challenge people to push outside of what they might feel comfortable with. But as a management team we are now agreed on values, we have clear objectives, and consistently measure our performance using key performance indicators. It really does have a big impact on people’s happiness at work, and their performance. It has made more of a difference to our overall business performance than I would have guessed.

It hasn’t been plain sailing, of course, and I’ve learnt that you can’t change people. If they don’t agree with your values and direction, then it’s best just to part company. That’s a lesson I wish I had learnt a lot earlier.

On the plus side, however, our “one page plan” has really helped focus everyone on what is important. We use it to report results each month and whilst it wasn’t easy agreeing what to measure, it has played a major part in turning things around. I couldn’t imagine running the business without it now. Whereas before we would focus 100% on financial measures, now more than 50% of our metrics are non-financial: staff happiness, lead generation, and what type of services our clients buy from us, etc.

We have seen the difference that good metrics make to the business, and are now prepared to invest in new systems to cut down on the time we spend collating them.”

I asked Andrew if he thought other businesses make good use of metrics.

“I think people often measure some aspects very well, but are blind to other areas. Many people don’t have the time to think about what results they really want, and how to get there. Some people are specialists in their own business, but don’t know where to start in putting a measurement system together.”

So to finish, I asked Andrew what his advice to business owners would be on performance metrics.

“Start small – just choose one or two measures and report on them consistently. Don’t be too ambitious in changing things.” He smiled again. “Which is funny really, because we dived in and introduced more than 20 measures all at the same time!”

Andrew Gray, Chairman of K&H,heads up a team of 19 happy accountants, tax advisors and business advisors all of whom are passionate about helping ambitious business owners/managers create a better future for both business and for their families.

What would you wish for?

I was asked a really interesting question yesterday. “What might small businesses measure if time was no object and metrics could be produced instantaneously?”

An earlier posting Why performance measurement is worth the bother talked about how business metrics are not freebies. They take time and effort to determine, collect and analyse. But that effort pays back handsomely; both in the performance feedback they provide and the focus they put on particular aspects of a business. So it strikes me that the question is not dissimilar to
“What sort of business plan would small businesses like if it took no time to put it together?” The answers will be as varied as the businesses.

The effort required to think through a strategy, articulate it as a business plan, and then communicate it to those who need to know, is actually of more value as having the business plan. And so it is with metrics.

All plans and strategies are different. And the measures required to keep businesses on track are as varied as the plans. Measures are a reflection of strategy, not just what is available or easy to measure.

I suppose the hidden question within the question was “How do you encourage small businesses to use metrics to grow and improve quality?” I know from my own experience that many small businesses pay close attention to the financials, but not much more. Yet the number of large businesses that have sophisticated performance measurement systems suggests there is a high correlation between success and the use of metrics.

So what is stopping smaller businesses? Is it time as the questioner was suggesting? Is it lack of knowledge of what and how to measure? Or is it just plain lack of energy with everything else that has to be done? It’s an interesting question.

Having said all that I think there are some measures that many businesses would like, if they were not so time consuming to gather and I’ll post my thoughts shortly. In the meantime, what would you wish for if time and effort was no object?

Why performance measurement is worth the bother

Have you ever set out to do something badly? Ever carefully planned to fail? At one time or another, most of us have monumentally screwed up. By accident, though, not design.

We normally try to make a success of our work, projects, and relationships. Most of our planning efforts go into things we want to succeed at; most of our thought goes into what we want, rather than what we don’t want.

Yet when things go wrong, it’s normally because we haven’t paid enough attention. We didn’t bother to think through what we were aiming for, or to put plans in place to meet our objectives. Stuff goes wrong because we couldn’t be bothered to give it the time and trouble it deserved – whether it is a work project, a committee, a personal relationship or a personal goal. How many New Year resolutions were made and then forgotten just as quickly?

Of course not everything is worth the bother of doing well. Sometimes we try to do too much and have to let things go. But projects or relationships that are important to us need time and attention, and are worth the bother - which is where performance measurement comes in.

Measuring and tracking performance, and learning when things go off course, is time consuming. But it means that those projects go well. Those projects get the attention they need. Performance measurement and improvement isn’t a freebie – it takes a little time and a little effort but is well worth the bother. At least it is for those things that we want, or need to get right.

What do high performance organisations do differently?

A white paper recently highlighted the importance of metrics in high performance organisations.

Research suggests that high performance organisations excel in managing their people, and are expert in using metrics to gauge the success of their initiatives. Three key differentiators were highlighted:

1. Metrics are used to assess the success of people-management initiatives
2. Metrics have a clear owner
3. Metrics are reported on frequently

In other words, high performance organisations have a data-centric approach to the success of their people. Before they even start out on a project they figure out how to measure success, and carefully determine which metrics will work best.

It’s hardly rocket science, but sometimes challenging to do well, and consistently. It’s also a short, sharp and on-the-money checklist for people and project management.

Visual performance indicators for knowledge workers

I think it was Peter Drucker who first coined the term “knowledge worker”. It is now a term we know and understand well. At least, we understand vaguely what we mean by a knowledge worker – someone who does something that we don’t quite understand. Knowledge workers are a difficult group to manage, as their output is often long term, difficult to measure and not totally understood by whoever is “managing” them. I say “managing” them, because so much has to be done on trust and on outcomes, some of which will be influenced by a myriad of different factors.

However, employee engagement and job satisfaction has been shown to rise when people clearly understand the organisation’s mission, and are actively involved in improving performance: whatever level in the organisation, and whatever the work.

So the key is to ensure that appropriate and visual performance indicators are displayed for people to see, challenge, discuss and use in their work. Without that engagement it is too easy to allow people to slip into thinking that no-one cares, no-one is watching and no-one is interested, which is mostly very far from the truth.

Of course, creating good visual performance indicators requires careful thinking, but it can and is done very successfully by many companies who understand how important it is to keep everyone engaged.

Be a great team player

Peter Drucker (1909-2005) once said:

“So much of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to work.”

Thank you

Thank you are two words that are heard all too seldom in business, yet they make such a difference.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been dismayed and delighted by those two little words.

I had done some writing for a business friend as a favour and when I sent it over by email I heard nothing back. Not even an acknowledgement, never mind a thank you. I was upset and outraged. What rudeness, I thought. Maybe he didn’t like it and didn’t want to say! I was starting to feel paranoid, but he should have at least said thank you … I worried away at the incident like an out of sorts terrier.

Then the tables turned. First of all my business friend hadn’t even seen the work I had done for him, and when he did was profuse in his thanks. It was a silly misunderstanding.

Then two commercial thank you’s arrived.

The first was a letter from British Gas thanking me for not moving my contract. They didn’t try and sell me anything, nor upgrade anything. It was just a thank you. Short and sweet. I was slightly taken aback.

The second was from my bank manager. Now I was suspicious!

I had been livid with the bank over a mistake they had made. Even as a business customer I felt helpless against the might of their systems and policies. It seemed there was nothing they could or would do to get the problem resolved as fast as I would like.

On Monday morning, before my first cup of peppermint tea, the phone rang and someone gave me all the necessary details that sorted out the issue. I felt better. Maybe I had been too hard on them. They had responded. My week wasn’t going to be a nightmare after all.

Then the phone went again, this time it was my bank manager apologising for the problem and assuring me it had all been put right. By this point I felt as if the bank did actually care that they had messed up.

But when I received a bouquet of flowers as a thank you for my patience during the incident I felt suddenly and uncharacteristically fond of my bank manager. The huge, faceless Barclays had done something deeply human and warm. Crumbs!

Thank you is so powerful, so effective, and so underused. Thanks Lynn, the flowers are still lovely. (No, not all bank managers are men!)

Data Centred Decision Making

Making decisions can be tough: so many choices and no guarantees of making the right one. I’ve recently seen the decision-making process behind two decisions and both were instructive.

The first was for a social group where an interesting ethical question came up. The question and replies batted backwards and forwards. There was no right or wrong answers, but plenty of indignation and lots of opinion. Then someone sent a simple email containing the data relating to the problem. They had gone to the archives and dug up the relevant history and presented it clearly and dispassionately in an email. It was strong stuff and illustrated beautifully the uncomfortable feelings that everyone had about the dilemma. Getting the information took a bit of time but the effect was convincing and helped the group enormously.

The second was a decision at work where again feelings ran high. My co-Director had one opinion and I a different one. We discussed and argued the point but couldn’t get agreement. We decided to break the meeting to go do some research and analysis. When we came back together the decision was obvious – the data spoke volumes. We went away with a clear decision and no hard feelings.

Data centred decision making takes more effort because you have to go and get the data. Sometimes that takes quite a long time, but better decisions come out of the process. When you look at the two examples above, I think both were solved faster and more amicably by having good data.

Not all decisions lend themselves to data-centred decision making, but it’s worth asking “what data is available?” even if it only contributes to the process. Sometimes the results are surprising.

How's your business heartbeat?

Does your business have a heartbeat? A rhythm that you work to? A monthly or weekly routine that punctuates other work?

I’m referring to regular work in your schedule that absolutely, definitely, no-question, must get done sort of stuff. Many businesses have set dates for status reports, month end accounts, marketing communications, or even expenses claims. I certainly remember during my younger days resenting such deadlines – they seemed bureaucratic and always came at the worst possible time. But over the years I started to understand the benefits of such schedules and to appreciate being able to plan my work.

The most obvious example of this is statutory reporting of results. The larger the business, the more onerous and important the process, but most organisations have some statutory responsibility to disclose their financials.

If you work in a small or micro business, it’s up to you to set business deadlines and to ensure they are adhered to. As a result, many people don’t bother, and important things either never get done or get done so infrequently as to damage performance.

So what are the advantages of setting a regular schedule for regular work?

1. Things get done faster if they are done regularly. Any job is a lot easier if you have to do it weekly or monthly rather than quarterly or even less frequently.
2. People know what to expect. Communicating with customers and prospects, for example, is best done to a regular schedule so they know start to expect your communication.
3. It simplifies decision making and therefore increases the chances of the work being done. Decisions about what needs to be done are made well in advance so that everyone knows what is expected.
4. You can plan. When you know what’s needed and when, you can plan your days and weeks accordingly. This also means that bigger blocks of work can get done over a period of time.
5. You can measure compliance. This is not an advantage if the activity is pointless, but you shouldn’t be doing it if it’s pointless. So meeting the scheduled time for the work has benefit, as does measuring compliance until it becomes a habit.
   

The biggest disadvantage with regularly scheduled work is that people keep on doing it after it has ceased being useful. Whilst this does happen, I think it happens less than enforcing the schedule work that could benefit from a disciplined schedule.

The view from the top

Ever wondered who runs the top US companies? Forbes published a list in 2008 of the top 500 Chief Executive Officers in America, ranked by their remuneration, and it makes instructive reading.

I decided to take a closer look at the top 100 amongst this elite bunch and this is what I found:

• American corporations are not run by college graduates. On average they are 58 years of age; the most junior is 43 years old and the most senior is 80 years young.
• They have worked at their companies for an average of 22 years and almost a third has worked for their companies for 30 years or more.
• They have been in post for an average of 11 years.
• They get paid an average of $40m per annum. Trust me; you don’t want to know how much Larry Ellison gets paid. Even the lowest annual remuneration of almost $18m is eye-watering.

They are, of course, running some of the largest and most successful companies in America. So what are the qualifications for a successful CEO? Well it seems that staying on at school helps: two third of these CEOs has a post-graduate qualification:

• 45% of America’s top CEOs has an MBA, with Harvard the business school of choice
• 5% have a PhD
• 14% have another post-graduate qualification.

One third, of course, has no post-grad qualification at all. And some don’t have a first degree, the most famous of whom is Larry Ellison who dropped out of college to start Oracle.

Only 12% of these CEOs founded their companies, the rest have either risen through the ranks or been drafted in to run the company. 75% have been with their companies for 15 years or longer.

So it seems that if you want to run a large corporation, sticking to knitting definitely helps. As does concentrating in strategy class.

Managers Behaving Professionally

I have personally seen two examples recently of Managers Behaving Badly. Unfortunately, unlike the TV series Men Behaving Badly, which was truly hilarious, bad behaviour at work isn’t funny. It’s stressful, worrying, and sometimes can have devastating effects. Only recently France Telecom was in the news for their abnormally high rate of suicides amongst their employees during at time of reorganisation.

So what constitutes professional behaviour from a manager? How can stress be reduced at times of change and job losses? With our own postal strike rumbling on, these seem like particularly pertinent questions. Some thoughts on managers behaving professionally:

1. Define what constitutes a job well done. By thinking through in advance what you need from people, and what they need to do the job, everyone’s chances of a good outcome are increased.
2. Acknowledge good work. Jim Collins in his book Good to Great talks of exceptional leaders who took the blame when things went wrong, but never took the credit when things went right. They gracefully acknowledged the contribution of their team. Paradoxically the team held the leader in higher regard for his or her actions, rather than feeling they hadn’t contributed. It seems humble leaders are also good leaders.
3. Do what you say you are going to do. So simple, so effective, and so appreciated by everyone.
4. Be open and allow people to understand, rather than presenting a fait accompli. Stress is at its highest when things are being done to you, rather than you being in control. Many small businesses are facing very difficult times at the moment, but stress levels are managed because owners have all the facts and can work accordingly.
5. If training budgets have to be cut find other ways of getting information out to people who need it. It is stressful and very difficult to work without the knowledge you need to do a good job. Be creative and encourage knowledge cafes to share information about topics that might have been dealt with through a training course before budgets were cut.

It’s a pretty stressful time for everyone at the moment, but reducing the stress and worry out of people’s working lives as far as is possible, has to be a worthy goal.

Nuclear fusion - energy source for our children

As 192 nations prepare to debate What Should Be Done About Climate Change in Copenhagen, the world carries on burning coal, oil and gas and discussing targets that will not be met. Wind, wave and solar dominate the debate on renewables, unsurprising as those are the technologies we are currently working with. The future will need a better mix of energy sources and more creative thinking than we have applied in the past. The future will, however, need other technologies in addition to these renewables in order to replace the vast amounts of hydro-carbon based energy the world currently consumes.

Climate change is a long term issue, as the difficulty of weaning ourselves off carbon-based fuels is proving. It therefore seems only right that replacing the coal, oil and gas (which currently produce most of our electricity) needs a solution commensurate with the problem. France, for example, has low carbon emissions because of their high dependence on nuclear fission reactors. Whilst traditional nuclear power does not pollute the atmosphere with carbon, it does pollute the ground and oceans with radioactive waste that stays radioactive for centuries.

The promising work that is being done in nuclear fusion in the UK and elsewhere promises carbon-free power without the long-lived nuclear waste. It could be an excellent solution to a tricky problem. The only difficulty is that we haven’t got it to work yet – despite successful proof of concept work. The research needed to find answers to a host of practical problems with this difficult technology are proving time consuming and expensive.

Despite all the difficulties, there is a big prize to be scooped by a generation that has done little but use up fossil fuels as fast as they can. And it is a prize that more of us should be fighting for. We owe it to future generations who may not be able to enjoy the cheap energy that we have benefited from all our lives.

So why isn’t nuclear fusion higher on the politicians’ agendas? Why are we not thinking longer term about such important issues? Politicians may be re-elected every 4 years or so, but this beautiful world will still be here in 40, 400 or 4,000 years time. The global nuclear fusion project at Cadarache in the south of France called ITER is in its initial stages and deserves more bullish backing than we are currently giving it.

All managers know that hitting targets requires taking actions that have sufficient chance of being successful to be worth implementing. Nuclear fusion is a strong contender and needs a higher profile, more public debate, and more money.

For those with an interest in all things climate, energy and fusion, the New Scientist is giving away a free poster all about ITER this week. Getting informed about energy and climate change is surely the least we can do for the children who won’t have the vast natural reserves we have used up with hardly a thought.

Today is Blog Action Day where bloggers of the world unite to discuss a single topic and spark debate about issues of global importance. This year’s topic is Climate Change.

Stick to your knitting

A regular reader asked what lessons could be learnt from the excellent Cafe Fish in Tobermory on the Isle of Mull. It’s a good question, because not everyone can be an excellent cook, but many of us want to run excellent businesses.

I think the answer he was thinking of was more imaginative than mine. As a long standing fan of Tom Peters and Robert Waterman’s “In Search of Excellence” my take would be slightly different. I think there is less creativity in getting it right – and more logic. Although many believe Peters and Waterman to be a little too long in the tooth for today’s strategists, I think one of their key messages is still as relevant as ever:

“Stick to your knitting.”

Cafe Fish was not started by two advertising executives or trainee call centre assistants; it was created by two sisters who had spent their lives in the catering business. They had grown up on the banks of Loch Fyne, famed for the excellence of its fish. In other words, before they signed the lease on the restaurant, they had a pretty good training in how to be excellent in their field. In other words, they played to their strengths.

Unfortunately they haven’t read Sunday’s Getting to Excellent blog post and called with the offer of dinner on the house, so I haven’t been back to sample their dishes again. But I have no reason to believe their tables were not as packed as they were on Sunday evening. So in this instance at least, I think that Sticking to their Knitting worked a treat.

The Restaurant at the end of the World

Here on the Isle of Mull everything appears to happen in half time. The roads around the island are single track so no one can drive too fast. The otters appear when they want to, and not until. And the restaurants are few and far between: but no matter, because quality always trumps quantity.

All of which is a long way around of saying that Cafe Fish in Tobermory on the Isle of Mull is well worth a visit when you are next passing. Which makes the restaurant sound less excellent than it is, because no one passes Tobermory, everyone comes here on purpose. Which of course is the best way of doing anything, but not how things always work out.

Cafe Fish is proud of the freshness of its fish, and the high standards in their kitchen. Their culinary flair is reflected in the high numbers that get turned away from their doors for not having booked. “The only things frozen are our fishermen” is printed on their Cafe Fish T-Shirts, and on their business cards and the freshness of their shell fish are on display. For a corner of the world that does rugged scenery better than most it is an enterprise that has succeeded where many others have failed. The restaurant business is every bit as treacherous as the rocks around the island, but Lindsay and Carolyn McDonald have succeeded in building a reputation that resonates for miles around. Good quality fayre, cooked well and served with a smile appears to be as popular with tourists as it is with locals.

Restaurants by their difficult nature are always interesting - as a customer it is the details one notices, but as a business it is the quality and word of mouth recommendations that make the difference.

The Restaurant at the end of the World almost made up for the complete lack of otters in Tobermory harbour this afternoon. Although tomorrow, said Scarlet, is another day.

Are you an Imagineer?

Walt Disney once famously said “If you can imagine it, you can do it.”

Disney was certainly not the first to realise that before anything of value can be created it must first be envisioned. Someone has to imagine what the world would be like with their idea.

Walt Disney did not employ engineers, he employed Imagineers: people whose job it was to make dreams come true.

It is tempting to think we are best employed doing things; after all there is always a myriad of things to be getting on with. Day dreamers are, on the whole, not highly thought of. What’s required is action – getting on with things and getting things done. Of course that’s true, things do need to be done, otherwise no one would realise their dreams.

By all accounts Walt Disney was a persistent chap – by the age of 22 he had failed in business already. He didn’t let it stop him, though, he just started over again, even more determined to succeed.

It’s worth taking a leaf out of Disney’s book – and letting our imaginations have the time and space to think about what the world would be like if our dreams were realised. And perhaps asking whether enough determination is going in to make those dreams come true.

The Feynman Index

Someone asked me an interesting question about measurement:

“If what gets measured gets done, are we measuring the right things? What would happen if we started to measure different things?”

What indeed?

It nicely encapsulates the problem of measurement. For any given objective we can identify things to measure – many of which either have, or appear to have, a bearing on the problem. Sometime they move us closer to our objective, but sometimes not quickly enough.

Those averse to measurement love this, because they take any weaknesses as a reason not to measure. But that’s missing the point. Any valid measurement is better than no measurement, even if it’s imperfect. Why? Because without a measure you are left with subjective views. Subjective views will be different each time you look, and provide no clear benchmark for whether things are improving or not.

But the original question was interesting – what if we started to measure different things? What if we measured things that appear a little crazy?

I have been quite inspired by reading Richard Feynman: a brilliant chap who was constantly curious. What a marvellous quality – to be constantly curious. Most of us work hard at being blasé about how much we know – experts at this, experienced at that. Few of us want to expose how little we know. Yet here was an acknowledged genius who was quite prepared to admit what he didn’t know – and was always curious to find out more.

One of his life’s ambitions was to visit Tuva – a Russian republic in Siberia. As far as I can make out he had no better reason than that it sounded like a place that didn’t exist, was in an obscure location and therefore had a huge allure for him.

Here was a dedicated and brilliant physicist who devoted a great deal of his life to physics research and teaching. Yet he also had a number of seemingly unrelated obsessions. Did his obsession with Tuva teach him anything about physics? Did his love of playing the bongos help him to relate to his students better? I suggest they did.

Feynman, as a physicist, understood the importance of measurement. In physics measurement makes the difference between something being properly understood or not. As Feynman points out, something can appear to be correct when in fact it is not. It is the accuracy of measurement that exposes the error.

So The Feynman Index takes a sidelong, mischievous swipe at the problem/objective and asks “What Might I Measure Here?” What curve ball or seemingly off-centre measurement might teach me something I don’t already know? It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t work – replace it with something that works better.

Sometimes the “Feynman Index” type measurements tells us more about the central problem than we might possibly guess from the outset… In addition, not instead of, the mainstream measurements.

Dorset Opera - amateurs behaving professionally

Amateur Dramatics are normally suffered only because a friend, relative or offspring is performing. The shakiness of the production is tempered by the delight of seeing our friend/relative/small person perform in ways we never thought they could.

What a contrast to the professional standard seen from Dorset Opera this weekend. With a mix of professionals and amateurs they give themselves the seemingly impossible task of rehearsing in only two weeks. As many of those amateurs are youngsters, some still at school, it appears to be a recipe for disaster. It is not. It is a recipe for the best to come out in young and old, professional and amateur. Even the audience were, for the most part, well behaved.

I’ve nothing against Am Dram – its great fun to do and sometimes hilarious to watch. But seeing well produced opera is pure joy. Why else go unless you want to come out feeling that human beings are capable of creating something wonderful, beautiful and magical?

Dorset Opera’s mission is to educate young people about opera by giving them the opportunity to experience professional opera for themselves. They come from all over the country, and abroad, for an intensive and educational two weeks of rehearsals. During those two weeks these unsure ducklings are turned into confident swans. Then they strut their stuff in front of a paying and discriminating audience. And they do it very, very well.

So what makes the difference? What do the professionals bring to the show that the amateurs cannot work out for themselves? Here are six differentiators between professionals and amateurs:

1. Mistakes – the pros have made lots of them - and they have learnt from them.
2. Problems – the pros have seen most problems and have solved a good many.
3. Knowing what works, what doesn’t, and what isn’t worth risking. Professionals have the edge over amateurs who are either too cautious or too inclined to try the ill advised.
4. Management – professionals expect to manage and be managed. Management makes all the difference and the single biggest factor in achieving anything of value.
5. Hard work – professionals know how much effort is required to make something work. They are more likely than amateurs to keep on going until they get it right.
6. Standards – professionals were selected because of their talent and can recognise talent in others. They not only keep standards high but push for better all the time.

Not too many of us are called upon to give a rendition of Cav and Pag with just two weeks’ rehearsal, but perhaps that’s a shame. I’m guessing that most who take part come out of the process a good deal richer for the experience.

And it's worth reflecting, as professionals in our individual fields, how much of the above list we can or want to identify with.

Work the problem

Anyone who has not been in a coma this last week will know it is the 40th Anniversary of Armstrong and Aldrin landing on the moon. Whatever your views on the space programme it is hard not to be impressed by the scientific and engineering achievements this milestone represented.

As footage of the space missions is played over and over again (at least in my house) one phrase is heard repeatedly:

“Work the problem, guys.” “Work the problem.”

I can find no evidence that the words “work the problem” were uttered with the regularity that the film footage suggests, but I can imagine something similar might have been said.

As tempers and personalities flare and flash it is tempting to get defocused with who did what and why, instead of what needs to be done. NASA couldn’t afford to defocus; this was a critical time for them. They knew the eyes of the world were upon them, and that they were working with difficult and untried technology. They also knew that mistakes could mean the loss of life of their colleagues. I can’t imagine anything with more pressure.

So those 3 simple words encapsulate quite a lot:

• Stay focused on the issue
• Don’t let irrelevant details take attention away from what needs to be done
• Keep focused until the problem is solved

Having a process to solve problems can save time and tantrums, and improve the final outcome:

• Identify and define the problem
• Determine possible causes
• Agree the cause of the problem
• Evaluate possible solutions and select one
• Implement the solution
• Check that the problem has been solved

Not all our problems are rocket science, but that doesn’t make them any less important in achieving our goals.

6 tips for meeting deadlines

Deadlines focus the mind.

Going on holiday, sitting an exam, or a key client meeting are all examples immovable deadlines that result in higher than normal performance. By the time I’ve finished getting ready for a holiday, I absolutely need one, and strangely enough I’ve never missed a flight. Amazingly teams work to get everything together for an important meeting that somehow wouldn’t happen in the normal course of events.

So deadlines are an important aspect of performance management. But how do we make them work in our favour? Going on holiday, sitting exams and crucial client meetings are all deadlines that work wonders without too much additional management effort. They are external, often imposed on us (apart from the holiday!) and everyone understands their importance. Yes, one has to be organised, yes, one has to plan ahead, and yes, knowing exactly what needs to be done are all important. But the bigger the deadline, the more focused the mind.

What about the internal project planning deadlines? What about those deadlines that would massively improve our overall performance if we could raise performance to the same level as the pre-exam focus level? Here are 6 ways to ensure interim targets and deadlines are always met:

1. Meet smaller deadlines. Be on time for meetings. Get weekly reports in on time. When the smaller deadlines slip it sends out a clear message that deadlines are unimportant. The army stresses the importance of being punctual, because lives can be lost when people are not. Not all civilians have that discipline, even though projects are often lost through missed deadlines. Practice meeting all deadlines, no matter how small.
2. Communicate the importance. If no one thinks the deadline important, then no one will bother to meet it. It is, after all, hard work to meet deadlines and extra hours are often involved. The importance of a milestone needs to be communicated so everyone understands what the impact will be if it slips.
3. Don’t set trivial deadlines. The opposite of ensuring a deadline is communicated, is not crying wolf when deadlines are not important. Save your thunder for the key things that do really matter, and ensure those deadlines are met. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Have fewer, but more important deadlines.
4. Follow up. Follow up whether a deadline has been missed or met. Praise for a job well done and investigation when milestones are missed. Just never let a deadline pass with no acknowledgement of it.
5. Work together to solve problems. Any deadline of any importance will likely have difficulties. So get together with other team members, or another colleague, to talk through the difficult stuff and find new answers. Sometimes just articulating where you are stuck can free things up.
6. Communicate the vision. There are no magic answers to making things happen. Deadlines are a key tool in performance management but they need everyone to believe in what is being aimed for. Communicate the big picture and get everyone committed to the vision.