I have something to share with you and you may not like it. You are misinformed if you think there is a glass ceiling…

I was chairing an expert business professional panel and some very talented and experienced women in their late 20’s and early 30’s explained to some more junior professionals that they’d never experienced a glass ceiling and didn’t think there was one these days.

Here is the reality for most talented hard working women in Professional and financial services.

There is no glass ceiling.

There’s actually a big concrete reinforced steel structure above them!

After the panel event I spoke to an award winning business lady who sat on the panel and was in her mid-30’s and I explained that I thought they were naïve. She agreed that there is often a ceiling on success, but they were too young to have experienced applying for senior management positions where they would start hitting it.

The problem is that people don’t take time to look up and actually see what is above them because they are doing these three things all the time:

• They are so focused looking down at those below them and trying to manage them and convince them to do things.
• They are so worried about the competition of their peers at the same level as them.
• They are politically manoeuvring to get to the next step up the ladder, and didn’t realise that if they look further than the next step, their ladder is moulded into a concrete ceiling.

A big concrete reinforced steel structure? Aren’t you over-reacting a little Matthew?

I attended an AGM of one of the most successful PLC companies in the UK. It is valued at over $1bn with massive growth potential. The Prime Minister has endorsed them as an example of the best of British Business. They have dozens of market related accolades and one of the most diverse groups of people working with them at the grass roots level. However, when the senior management team were brought out onstage for a standing ovation (which was well deserved), only one out of the fifteen was female. Unsurprisingly that lady was the HR Director. They were all white middle-class 30-55 years. I love the company, but was so disappointed with the lack of diversity of the senior management team. If a British forward thinking company appears to lack real diversity at senior levels then what opportunities are there in other “average” firms?

If you are a woman and you want to get to senior positions, then it is going to be difficult. Very difficult.

If you are fortunate. Very fortunate. Your organisation might be actively aiming for a 20% quota of women on its board. Yes, in Britain in 2016 it does seem unambitious to have a rather low level and yet we are falling short of even achieving that in many organisations.

You will have to be more skilled, more influential, more driven, more patient, more focused, more creative, more experimental, and more organised than your male counterparts.

This might sound a bit biased or unfair, and I’m willing to have my mind changed, but as far as I can see, this is how the UK works and it is how the game is played. I don’t agree with it, but that’s unfortunately life.

Tell me something I don’t know…

My intention is to wake up those that are prepared to seriously and intelligently think about this issue.

So what can you do?

Firstly, join an organisation where you are rewarded for the harder you work and where it is in your team’s interest for you to quickly get promoted. There are only a few of them, so this is easier said than done, but ask me if you don’t already know such an organisation.

Secondly, get seriously into P.R.O.U.D. I don’t mind if you develop these five skills from me or someone a lot less experienced, but develop them. To remind you the five fundamental skills are:

• Presenting
• Relationships & networking
• Outcome setting
• Understanding & influencing others
• Direction of Leadership

Here are some suggestions to develop these skills:

• Join a speakers club.
• Get nominated onto a voluntary board of an organisation you believe does valuable work.
• At work be proactive and setup learning groups of likeminded people and cross network i.e. book clubs.
• Network with as many senior people as you can.
• Get a mentor. Life is too short to make all the mistakes yourself so learn from others and make sure they are someone that will ask you the real questions that feel uncomfortable.
• Get a decent business coach. Not someone naïve enough to spend thousands just on a weekend course and only has a certificate to show for it. Twelve months down the line you may have enjoyed your sessions of coffee and chat, but you won’t have changed unless you find someone skilled enough to “listen to what is not being said”.

Change is hard. Change has to be uncomfortable.

And before I hear someone arguing that change is easy, then the simple reply is this. If it were easy you’d be doing the new behaviour. You wouldn’t even be talking about considering the change; you’d automatically be doing the new behaviour.

Change shouldn’t be hard, because physically it’s just a few neurones in your brain disconnecting and reconnecting to a new behaviour.

But it is. That’s life!

However unfair the environment may initially appear, if we understand how it works, then we can adequately plan and ultimately succeed within it and still maintain our own values and ethics.

Matthew Broomhead
“Raising the level of Business Skills in Britain”
Creator of Broomhead Business Channel

Apparently the Business-management consultant Joseph M. Juran suggested the principle and named it after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. Vilfredo observed in 1906 that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. He went onto develop the principle by observing that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas.

In my experience it is not perfectly exact, but it does give a good indication. For example, I believe that approximately:

• 80% of your profits come from 20% of your customers
• 80% of your complaints come from 20% of your customers
• 80% of your productivity comes from 20% of the time you spend
• 80% of your sales come from 20% of your products

Now there are obviously two types of people as well:

The 20% that produce 80% of the results

and

The 80% that produce only 20% of the results

So the question we have to ask ourselves is from today onwards which one have we decided to be?

Matthew Broomhead
“Raising the level of Business Skills in Britain”
Creator of Broomhead Business Channel

I was invited to attend a VIP tour of a SME manufacturing company in my region. I had just attended a Leaders panel discussion that morning where two thirds were Bankers and there was a distinct lack of optimism for growth within the area. So it was a welcomed contrast to be shown around a manufacturing company with an established history and appeared to be doing well in a very competitive global market.

These are ten observations I made that contributed to their success and you may want to see how they could apply to your organisation:

1. Strong Brand – The company had a long established and interesting history which was used in their branding to create a compelling story. The visit comprised of story after story of how they had got to be where they were and their client experiences.
2. Superior Customer Service – Most people know that for an organisation to succeed we have to have the attitude that everyone is in customer service. Helping staff to understand that everyone is in customer services is crucial. At the manufacturing company Cleaners understood that if they didn’t do their job to the best of their ability then if the product was a little dirty when it reached the consumer, then that would have an adverse effect on future sales.
3. Lower distribution costs – They were intelligently using logistics to reduce the ever increasing transportation costs.
4. Local workforce – They actively encouraged using a local workforce which had a number of benefits including reducing the environmental impact of commuting.
5. School links – Part of the reason why they could utilise a local workforce were the school links they had created. Allowing children to visit the company and giving them interesting school tours created a waiting list of school leavers that wanted to join the company as soon as they had finished school, instead of going to University. This reduced the need for external recruitment firms and their associated costs.
6. Access to pockets of differentiated knowledge – This consisted of exploiting “clusters” of R&D knowledge centred on leading universities and their research facilities.  By cleverly creating amicable relationships with University researchers saved substantial costs.
7. Investing wisely and using the latest technology – Even though the factory appeared to be over one hundred years old there was some sophisticated modern manufacturing machinery.
8. Very strong and active I.P. – Intellectual Property protection was crucial particularly as significant copying attempts had been made from rival Chinese manufacturing companies.
9. Understanding product pricing – Inspired by Seth Godin I have written and talked about this previously. There are two races now in the modern economy. A race to the top or a race to the bottom. The problem is who really wants to win the race to the bottom?
   They marketed their standard products against the competition by claiming to be superiorly manufactured and therefore a better product that justified the extra cost. As well as products that sold at the lower end of the market they also manufactured a product that fundamentally did the same thing, but because it was encrusted with diamonds and packaged differently, they had sold them for 800 times more to a global corporate. So as well as been positioned as a higher end quality product they also sought out new markets for what they did.
10. Financially reward staff for new ideas – I have mentioned this in a previous Article. Not everyone is motivated by money, but if your organisation lacks good ideas then rewarding people for new ideas whether they are used or not is an interesting concept.

Those are the ten lessons that I learnt from my visit. Remember that as an organisation, success is something we attract by becoming an attractive organisation. So you may want to mentally highlight a few of these points and explore how they could apply to your situation.

Matthew Broomhead
“Raising the level of Business Skills in Britain”
Creator of Broomhead Business Channel

Something major has happened in the UK since my last Article and the repercussions will be felt for the next decade, not just in the UK but across our European allies. The naivety of some people in this country has become disturbingly apparent and to see so called Leaders immediately recall promises that were made before the vote, is extremely disappointing, at best.

But let’s take a breath and what is done is done.

What I have been talking about for a while is that we all need to develop our skills and ensure that whatever changes happen in the UK economy, we are seen as the experts and clients still need the value we offer. What happened last Thursday just significantly accelerated that process.

As leaders we need to create reassurance and certainty in the marketplace for our clients. We also need to ensure the organisations we are currently investing our trust, time and effort in are able to maintain their value offering in the future, whatever happens. If we are unsure if they will, then now is the time to find something that will.

More than ever we need to be creating opportunities and coming up with good ideas.

How do I get good ideas?

Where do good ideas come from? How do we encourage new thinking? If you asked people in your organisation “when was the last time you had a good idea and where were you?”, then what answer would they give?

I’m suggesting that they probably won’t say “oh it was sitting at my desk with over 39 hours of paperwork that still needs to be done, listening to the phone ringing and getting interrupted by email”. It is more likely that people typically have new ideas when they were in the shower, out walking the dog, in a quiet place at home away from the family, or away from their desk when they had some quiet time to think. So how well is your organisation setup to actually let people think?

1) Not allowed to work on current project

Google and some other companies have famously created time where a percentage of an employee’s week is allocated so that they are not allowed to do work on any of their current projects. They can work on anything they want as long as it isn’t their normal day job activities. A number of Google products have been created from scratch with this process.

Another software company in Australia had a 24 hour period where developers were encouraged to create anything they wanted and then shared those ideas altogether with the rest of the company. The company owns the IP on anything that’s created, so it is very beneficial.

Just forget the logistics of doing that for a moment and really think what could happen if a director initiated this where none of the team could work one afternoon on any current projects, but had to come up with new ideas for improving the company and share those ideas with everyone. I’m just curious, would that exercise create more management thinking or more leadership thinking? And for your business to grow which one do you actually need?

2) Reward and recognise staff for good ideas

I visited a multimillion turnover manufacturing business and one of their initiatives was rewarding staff for coming up with new ideas. Any new idea that was suggested was rewarded financially with a set amount of money, whether the idea was used or not. This was for virtually any new idea that could be practically applied. For an idea that was implemented and made a profit for the company, then a percentage of that profit was shared with the person that had the idea. Whether it saves £500 or makes £150,000, new ideas are what are needed in this fluctuating economic climate. It’s surely better to have a choice of which ideas to implement, than no ideas or contributions from within the organisation.

3) Flexible working

There are some fantastic TEDtalks about the work environment. If your team were really open and honest with you, and you asked them “when have you got the most amount of work done?” and “when have you been the most productive?” The most common answer will NOT be “Sitting at my desk, being interrupted by the phone”.

We usually get the most done when we switch off the phone and don’t open email. It is usually when we are away from the desk and/or office. If this is true for your organisation, then what could you be doing to create more of this productive time? How do you ensure that the environment your team works in helps them to provide the best service to their clients?

Many people find they get more done by going in early to work before 8am, staying late at night after 6pm when the office is empty or working at the weekend. But this is limited in its effectiveness as people tend to do too many hours which then leads to them being less productive during that additional time.

Imagine that you were attending one of my talks that I was delivering in an organisation. While I am sharing valuable insights and ideas to become a better leader, every five minutes my phone goes off and I answer it. How would you feel? How conducive would the learning be?

Therefore how useful is it to allow phones to interrupt our teams?

I am not suggesting you disconnect all the office phones tomorrow morning. If you have SLA service level agreements, then someone will have to answer the phone and take messages. But what if someone could have 45 minutes of uninterrupted time? They have set times of the day when they return calls and check email, and that’s staggered between the team, so the phones are always covered. Just think about the potential productivity that would happen if they could go into a side office uninterrupted and just focus?

So what would be easier for you, a team that goes home saying “I have no idea where the day went today, I was busy but didn’t seem to get anything done”, or “I felt that I have achieved something today”?

The best Leaders will not join your organisations because they want to answer the phone, email and get interrupted from what they are doing. Leaders want to achieve; fix problems; build relationships; Inspire; create ideas and create duplication of their efforts. The environment you create will either encourage this or prevent it.

Matthew Broomhead
“Raising the level of Business Skills in Britain”
Creator of Broomhead Business Channel

In a BBC radio programme Peter day’s world of business : Companies without Managers, Peter Day investigated companies that no longer have a traditional management structure. Instead people are given autonomy over what they do. This Article is based on that investigation.

“We don’t have a management team. I think that management is not only dysfunctional. Management can even be destructive“.
(Owner of a Community District Nurses organisation)

Do managers breed administrators?

Is a lot of what managers do useful for the service that a company delivers? It is interesting how there can be such discrepancies between the people delivering a service/product to the client and what “management” think should happen. (A lot of this happens when the organisations purpose is not clear).

As a person in a management role requires information about what they are supposed to be managing, then they are asking for data which leads to pressure on the administration. Administrators are then required because they have to create all kinds of lists and information for the management. However, if the workers deal with the decision making and take responsibility, then overnight there is a dramatic reduction in the need for large overheads and back office.

In all organisations certain management decisions need to be made. For example:

• Delivery of output, whether it is a product or service.
• Ordering/purchasing.
• Deciding who gets hired.
• Compensation plans, bonuses etc.
• What happens if people aren’t delivering what was agreed.
• Settling dismissal and redundancy issues.

The question is, “Are managers the best people to do these tasks?” The difference in some companies is that the workers do these tasks instead of a specific manager.

You say Tomato, I say Tomato

Morning star is a company based in California and processes tomatoes. Back in the 1970’s the story goes that on the way to work the owner saw people dropping off their children at school and it occurred to him that outside of their day job, people are raising a family, getting married, taking out mortgages and managing multiple complex things. So if they manage themselves at home why couldn’t they do it in the workplace?

The workers are responsible for their part of production. “Who else is better placed to decide if parts need to be ordered than the person operating the machine?” says one of the workers.

They have agreement letters between each other for the level of their production.

If two workers have a disagreement and it cannot be resolved then a third person (a colleague) is brought in to decide. If that doesn’t resolve it then it goes to a group.

Compensation is decided by a small committee who are formed through consensus and anyone can ask to sit on it. At an appropriate time feedback is sort from colleagues and put together with a letter requesting a pay rise or bonus.

A worker describes that it’s not for most people as one guy joined the office and left within two weeks as he did not like the idea that other people were at the same level as him and that he could not tell people what to do.

Has it been successful over the last few decades that it has been operating this culture? Apparently it processes more tomatoes than anyone else in the world and has a turnover of $700m. Inc.com states that “Morning Star can pay 15%more in salaries and 35% more in benefits than the industry average because it’s not paying managers and productivity is so high”. So I guess, “yes” is the answer.

Buurtzorg

Another company that they explored is a community district nurse provider in Holland. Originally setup by Jos de Blok, a nurse who was frustrated with how the companies he worked for were providing service to patients and how nurses were been treated.

So starting completely from scratch with four nurses and himself covering nights and weekends, he started the company. It consists of small groups of 12 nurses that work together and make decisions based on consensus. The phone is passed around each day and therefore each member has the responsibility on whether they can take on additional patients. There is no manager. One group interviewed said that they agreed to come into work on their days off if they are busy.

They hire and fire within their teams based on consensus. They are also encouraged and coached to build relationships with the local GPs and hospitals themselves.

Is it successful?
Depends on your definition, but in under a decade it has grown organically from just the owner and a few fellow nurses, to over 9000 nurses offering community based (home) care services to more than 60.000 patients a year. They claim to be cheaper than their competitors even though they pay their nurses more, because they require such a small overheads. A back office team of only around 60 people.

When the CEO was asked what he does in a typical week then it seems he does exactly what a leader should be doing. Not managing things, but inspiring:

• He visits 3-5 teams a week to see how things are going, supporting them and finding out how things can be done better.
• Inspiring his people through blogging and spreading the ethos.

MattBlack Systems

The third example was based in Dorset and was a smaller British engineering firm. Each person is an individual project and they are responsible for everything including profitability of the project, ordering parts and audit. The owners say that it is paradoxical to say that they got rid of the management as everyone is now effectively a manager.

What was interesting is that no employees from the original firm (before it was taken over by the two new owners), work there anymore. So it definitely isn’t for most people.

An important observation is that people within these types of companies start to compete for recognition and being the person to be asked for advice. As they’re not competing for advancement up the corporate hierarchy, because there really isn’t one. A complete mind shift from “how can you help me get promotion”, to “how can I help you”. Fascinating.

Those people that want to self-manage, take responsibility and come up with ideas, work for these organisations and their competitors get everyone else.

I regularly write and talk about the need for us all to be more Entrepreneurial in this economy and move away from the old industrial model of expecting to be told what to do, however difficult it is for us. So it is interesting to explore companies that really have embraced the concept and are very successful.

Matthew Broomhead
“Raising the level of Business Skills in Britain”
Creator of Broomhead Business Channel