Such an argument never ensued. Fraser Haran, Chief Exec of Westcrowns Group (they provide glazing products and flooring services) and Peter Vardy, Chief Exec of Peter Vardy Group (they are a fast growing car dealer business with Vauxhall, BMW and Mini marques) provided us with the unequivocal views that learning was at the core of who they are and what they are seeking to achieve as business leaders.

Fraser openly acknowledged that he had “begged, borrowed and stolen” what works as a leader and from people of all positions and none. Peter’s drive is underpinned through Servant Leadership. Both exuded the passion of students in love with their subject and hungry for more knowledge. 

Both have degrees in business and leadership, both have attended a range of programmes, both read or have read widely, both have sought to challenge themselves and be challenged, both are committed to what I would call the improviser model of leadership.

On a very frequent basis they are sounding out what is working and making changes to keep the company progressing whether that means listening to employees concerns about work life balance and hence not opening on a Sunday (this described as commercial suicide by other dealers……….but it hasn’t and quite the reverse) or focusing more on an individuals behaviour and commitment before performance and addressing head on those under lying issues.  The “mood of the camp” is not a cliche from their lips – it is central to their leadership of company performance.

As I heard them speak I wondered about what would be on their leadership agendas in a year’s time. I would doubt very much that it would be the same as today’s. It would be well worth reconvening in a year and finding out. The pursuit of progress sometimes feels like running through treacle. Fraser and Peter gave us an implicit motivation to demonstrate the we all need the spirit of humility to aspire to greatness. Thanks.

So it’s now tough and getting tougher. Spring roots are moot yet a Winter of discontent might yet be grumbling. The macro is for others to wring hands over – we have to respond to conditions as we find them. For some time now I have been working with directors to devise tactics in repsonse to the tough times. Here I suggest an overall strategic view………….

Boards – get focused on two inter-related things, they are: Value and Values.

Value in terms of what you are “worth” in marketplace terms, value in products and services, value in terms of the balance sheet and value analysis rather than cost analysis.

Values in terms of what you stand for or what you want to be renowned for. This applies for customers and marketplaces and for your people.

These two inter-related points are then applied in Financial Disciplines, Marketplace Offerings, Customer Relationships and Leadership and Culture.

How to apply these is what I have been engaged on of late across the boardrooms I work in. Green shoots and developments are happening. Talk to me about the specifics for your business and let’s get focused, get out there and get on with it. Spring can’t come quickly enough.

Last night’s Scottish Plant Owners Dinner provided me with a forum to share my views. A great bunch of resilient, doughty fighters against the forces of darkness (the Banks) as they are, they are out there at the sharp(est) end of industry – selling assets and people to produce and create, with a good number looking for respite or at the very least “give us a break!” Maybe that’s why their secretary Steven Mulholland of MPS introduced me saying that I would talk about coming out of the recession and the shape of the winter. Don’t worry Steven I enjoyed the talk aound the table and it won’t be too long until the longest night is over!

So if you are riding this out, surviving and on the odd sunshine filled day feeling that you may be seeing the dawn of some real new opportunities then you may be in a great position to find more customers and fill the gap that may have appeared. That is you may if the nature of buying hasn’t been radically shaken up or in fact new rules written. Perhaps there is greater conservatism in the buying process, more concern for the small print and getting the contract right.

Buying on price certainly prevails in a good number of scenarios and the pressure is on to offer value and be clear on that. Beyond that how do we win over the new customer or in fact court the previously somnolent one? The  offer of the latest, newest, fastest, would seem to hold less apppeal. The product or the service itself is becoming or is a “given”. What else will tilt the balance?

 TRUST.

“OK so the product service sounds about right for the price but who are these guys? What have they done before? What management resource are they putting into this? Who have they worked for? Who owns them?”

A series of trust questions are now elbowing into the sales and buying negotiation. Underlying this are a set of three elements of trust

1. Trusting competetence

2. Trusting reliabilty

3. Trusting their motives

The intention of all is not under question more an insidious worry about how they will deliver. Even in good times a ton of business is lost not because of fundamentals of business intention but by confidence and trust being lost by the neglect of the little things, the build up of small failures of delivery or the lack of caring response.

One major antidote that is working for clients is the use of “Customer Expectation” statements. These are a set of fundamentals for presentation and discussion with customers and a set of live or die conditions for managing your company’s delivery. As clients and I have been finding so few companies have such things and there is good news – this is a competitive opportunity and those who have been working with this are very well positioned to “Compete on Service”. Contact me to find out more about how to make this happen.

Listening to a number of MD’s recently I have been struct by the clarity and purpose many have said and demonstrated. Whilst never wishing to be in some of the circumstances they find themselves they appear to be reveling in the urgency and focus with which they are attending to their businesses. So what has the arduous months been revealing? Well if you were to be reading the FT this week you would have seen over its comment and business life sections you may have come across these nuggets……”half the the population now owns just 1 per cent of of non propertied wealth” and “from the world of high finance to local high street, regulators (eh define your terms EF) have created a model of competition that eliminates competitors”. Welcome once more to the real economy.

So while the “regulators” (?) of the macro economic world set about redefining capitalism, or not, we in the real economy have opportunity. Opportunity driven by the fact that the hunt is on for value in all marketplaces and business exchanges. Some fundamental observations arise to my mind about what shape the more successful companies will be in and so take advantage in market shifts, such as……

Those with strongest customer relationships and service delivery. Those were postive leadership is creating good morale. Those who are strengthening their key management capabilty. Those who are ambitiously marketing. Those where efficient cash management is in place.

In these current times the strategic question to be asked is whether the business is advancing in such areas and doing so more quickly than the competition. 

The most important question for the management teams….”What is adversity teaching you?” Once we catch the answers we might want to keep them as the guiding principles for the long term – way beyond recovery.

I am making light of what is the most unpredicatable set of economic circumstances we have ever faced – not as as nation but as a planet. Previously we weren’t in a global economy to the extent that we have become tied in knots with China’s GDP falling.  National debt and the value of the pound are this week’s focus……what is next?

We open the doors on Monday, say good morning to our trudging staff and hope to hold on. Hold on. Hold on and once more hold on. Hold on to our good customers, hold on to our (good) staff, hold on to your nerve and hold onto your values. Whatever was the value of your offer to the marketplace now is a time to hold onto the essence of that and build on it. Keep on keeping on. When the tide turns those who have held on will be stronger than ever.

For those in banking, property, construction, food and distribution the effects have been felt as direct hits – body blows and some fatal. Many sectors are now feeling the impact of the inevitable slow up due to the banking crisis impacting what we know as the real economy.

We privately owned companies ( chiefly small and medium sized) will find our selves on the receiving end of of tightening up on lending and a very real pressure on cash flow – unless there is structural and policy change in banking supported by government. We wait but continue to breathe………

Products and services continue to be bought, markets haven’t collapsed altogether and remarkably there are still companies growing!

I have survived and prospered in and through two previous recessions offering my services to ambitious, positive and progressive privately owned companies who grew in these times and grew well. 

The changes we are facing in these times will make the differences between companies more marked and customers will be on the hunt for real value. So the old shibboleths will surface and be more appreciated:

Value for money

Customer serving

Trust

Track record

Time for leadership in your marketplace? Certainly time to double your efforts in sales. Shrink back from this and you are doing yourself no favours and possibly be missing out on some of the best opportunities.

Meanwhile the people of your company may well be hyper vigilant for signs of difficulty in your business. The gloom and doom merchants may well be parading with placards in the corridors or stirring up depression over the coffee mugs.  Others may be going into passive mode – the human equivalent of stand by.

A time for leadership……….purposeful leadership about what you stand for in the marketplace and as a company……….strong leadership that creates confidence in the effort………..come with me leadership that says we are in this together and the stronger for that.

Cometh the hour cometh the man (or woman). 8 weeks ago “basket case”  Brown was being counted out. Now he is being counted as a world leader. “The Audacity of Hope” by Barack Obama is now made flesh.

Difficult times for sure. Bunker mentality has no place and fortune will favour the brave and the strong. Keep the faith.

It is his ability to help us with blue sky thinking and then translate these ideas into workable plans that we most value.

Alan Thomson, Managing Partner, Thomson Cooper

The cohesion that has come from this is particularly helpful. He is viewed as a sounding board, a facilitator and an advisor who is respected throughout the partnership. Due to all of these aspects we have had no need to go looking for any other consultants to help us. 

The recent work to create and support our own T&A Leadership and Management Programme has been a big step forward for us. Associates are now working very closely with partners and together we have a growing collective leadership approach. This has been shaped to our own particular needs by Eric’s non prescriptive approach and rounded views of what will work for us.

Martin Reid, Senior Partner, Thomas and Adamson

Bob’s injunction to his 8,500 staff, in 20 countries, is that they need to ditch the keyboard, pick up the phone or get face to face. I nearly cheered.

The amount of collateral damage I see happening in companies due to badly communicated email is widespread. The email format just can’t cope with the demand for speed of communication and the unacknowledged need for great subltelty of language.

Better sticking to my own maxim….NEVER send an email if there is the slightest chance of misinterpreting an emotion either by my inadequacy of transmission or the failure of the recipient to get it.

Bob’s views struck me as down to earth and sensible as one might expect from ” a loon fae Abeirdein” or I suppose with deference to Bob’s Border roots, a cheery chappy from Jedburgh. However Bob is evangelistic about communicating with his people – by any and all means.

And, there is more to Bob’s injunction. For those unaware of Bob and his remarkable story go to www.psnworld.com. There you will see some standard looking things including “Our Core Values”, seven of them: Health and Safety, People, Innovation, Relationships, Financial responsibility, Localisation, Integrity. Well they seem like standard things – things we are supposed to write on our corporate statements.

The fact of the matter is that Bob and his team run the business with these values…….that is…..RUN THE BUSINESS.

Bob tells us that he has never communicated his chief exec’s message on anything other than these 7 values (that’s since 2004). Not all done face to face though with video and indeed email from time to time. Bob’s hard bitten FD relates that the most important thing the executive team at PSN did amidst one of the biggest levered buy outs in UK industry was to hammer out the values they would use to drive the business. Hindsight is a wonderful thing as it was only Bob’s unshakable conviction ( with no doubt a heavy dose of “come with me” leadership) that got them off doing the deal to consider waffly stuff as “our values”.

Once they are in place how do you keep them there?My view? Be very visible and accessible to the people of the business….get out there and keep hammering home the messages. This of course is plain good sense but every one of you is strapped for time and frequently getting in front of the people (in one’s, two’s or ten’s) is well nigh impossible.

So it started me thinking about how email might be used not to “get someone to do something” but to engage the heart and mind. Any good examples…….please let me know.

I found one the next week….it is from Allan Ross, MD of First Independent Finance, the fast growing source of asset finance. Allan and his leadership colleagues are using the strap line “From Good to Great” from the the eponymous book. In Good to Great Messages they are helping to focus the company on the core things that matter to FIF. An excerpt of Allan’s recent email follows. It was written on the eve of the descent into whatever district of bedlam we are now in due to bankers and sub prime greed. See what you think….

After the dinner I took a walk up to the old RBS headquarters in St Andrews Square and then up past the HBOS headquarters.

It had been an eventful few days , talking to potential new recruits , funders , our staff , some customers and finally one of Scotland’s top business guru’s . It was 12 midnight … a new day .. and I was in a reflective mood … then I passed a marble statue which was inscribed with a quote from Einstein.

” Knowledge is great … Imagination is greater” 

Harnessing the imagination of the people in our business will be a major challenge us as we move forward . There are opportunities out there … lets find them! ..

Lets support those opportunities by finding more new customers whom we can give the opportunity of genuine asset finance choice.     

Kind Regards,

Allan