PEOPLE
UPGRADE
by
Richard Parkes Cordock
SMASHWORDS EDITION
Copyright © Richard Parkes Cordock 2009
First Published 2009 by ELW Publishing Bath, UK
ISBN: 978-0955298639
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First
Published 2009 by
ELW
Publishing Bath, UK
Contents
About the Author
Introduction
Chapter 1
What
Do You Really Want From Your Business?
Chapter 2
You
Can Have it All (When You Recognise That The Profit is in Your
People)
Chapter 3
IMPORTANT!
Mentoring Your Staff is The Key to Profit Growth
Chapter 4
How
to Get ‘The Branson Effect’ By Mentoring Your Staff to Think Like
Business Owners
Chapter 5
How
To Take Mentoring Out of The Boardroom (So Every Employee and Manager
in Your Company Can Benefit From it!)
Chapter 6
Here’s
How and Why Enterprise-Wide Mentoring Works (7 Steps to People &
Profit Transformation)
Chapter 7
How
to Turn an Enterprise-Wide Mentoring Programme into a New Culture in
Your Organisation
Chapter 8
Here’s
What Your Employees Will Look Like After Their Mentoring
Chapter 9
Your
Next Steps
Appendix A
Case Study: An In-depth Look at Hammonds Furniture
1. Richard
2. Justin
3. Matthew
4. Simon
5. Vanessa
6. Kathryn
7. David
Postscript
A Word About Using External Business Coaches
RISK FREE OFFER
Try The Enterprise-Wide Mentoring Programme Risk-Free in Your Company For 60 Days
Client Profiles
About The Author
Richard Parkes Cordock is the author of Millionaire Upgrade, Business Upgrade, Profit Upgrade and All Employees are Marketers.
He is also the creator of the highly acclaimed Millionaire MBA Business Mentoring Programme and Enterprise Leader Development Programme.
Richard is the Managing Director of Enterprise Leaders Worldwide, which provides coaching, training and people development for executives, managers and employees.
He firmly believes that the success of any organisation rests in the hands of its people, and with the right development and coaching of its staff, any organisation can dramatically and rapidly increase its revenues and profits.
Prior to founding Enterprise Leaders Worldwide, Richard spent many years in the software industry, and in a previous life was an accountant. He holds an MBA from the International University of Monaco and lives in Bath with his wife and two children.
Find out more about Richard at www.enterpriseleaders.com
Introduction
I would like to start by making a promise to you. It’s a big, bold promise, but I stand by it!
That is, if you embrace the ideas in this book, and take action on them, I guarantee you will transform the productivity, performance and passion of your employees, and as a result, transform the revenue, profit and value of your company.
I say that with full confidence, as time and time again I’ve seen other companies do exactly this. In fact, in Appendix A, you’ll read a detailed case study of Hammonds Furniture, who share their own story of people and profit transformation.
But before you read the case study, let me give you a quick overview of what you’ll learn in this book.
In Chapter 1 you’ll see exactly what you can achieve in your company when you train and develop your people using the same approach that Hammonds did.
In Chapter 2 you’ll see the clear link between people and profit (especially the importance of revenue and profit per head), and you’ll be left in no doubt of the need to grow your people to grow your business.
In Chapter 3 you’ll discover why mentoring is an invaluable and low-cost way of getting the best from your employees and managers, and in Chapter 4 you’ll be introduced to the Branson Effect, and the importance of business-owner-thinking.
In the final four chapters of the book you’ll learn why it’s essential to take mentoring out of the boardroom and into your entire workforce, and how you can do that at an affordable price with enterprise-wide mentoring and a low-cost MP3 player (or your employees’ existing mobile phones).
For you to achieve the same people and profit transformation in your own company, you must to know with all certainty one thing, which is this: 'your business is your people', and it’s your responsibility as a leader to get the most out of your people.
In this book you have all the tools and strategies you need to do that.
You and I may never meet, and I may never set foot in your organisation, but I know that if you make the decision to train, mentor, and develop your staff using the tools and framework I make available in this book, your business will irrevocably and positively change from this point forward.
So, with my one ‘big’ promise in mind, that you will transform your business (by transforming your employees and managers), let’s start by looking at what you actually want from your business — and make sure you get it!
Richard Parkes Cordock
Chapter 1
What
Do You Really Want From Your Business?
Over the years I've spoken with literally hundreds of business owners, managing directors, chief executives, divisional directors, front-line managers and key employees — ranging from companies with valuations of multiple billions through to smaller companies with as few as five employees.
As diverse as all of these organisations are, there is consistent similarity in what they all want, and I’m sure it’s what you want from your business too.
In this Chapter, I explain exactly what you can have in your business when you recognize the critical link between the growth and success of your company and the people in it.
There is no complex management jargon here, just simple fundamentals of business which you and every other business leader are looking to achieve every single day.
In no particular order, here’s what the business owners I meet want for their business, and it's what you can have too, when you make the commitment to invest in, develop and get the very best out of, your staff.
1. Growth in top-line revenues
Whichever way you look at it, your business is about customers and about selling your products and services to them.
As a business leader, you are charged day-in and day-out with the ongoing task of bringing new customers and revenues into your business.
That may be getting new customers to buy from you in the first instance, getting your existing customers to repeat buy from you, or turning your existing customers into raving fans who do your marketing for you as they tell their friends and family about you.
In all too many companies though, sales and new business development is deemed to be the responsibility of the sales and marketing team.
However, sales and marketing should be the responsibility of every employee in your organisation, and, with the right training and development, this can be achieved.
Bill Marriott, one of my all time favourite business leaders, says this about employees, "Motivate them, train them, care about them and make winners out of them. At Marriott we know that if we treat our employees correctly, they'll treat the customers right. And if customers are treated right, they'll come back and buy again."
Sales is usually the number one challenge of any business leader, and according to the data research organisation Dun and Bradstreet, lack of sales is the number one reason for company failure. When you make every employee and manager in your company a salesperson, revenue growth will never be a problem again.
2. Growth in bottom-line profits.
It's often said that, revenue is vanity and profit is sanity, and there's never been a truer statement.
It's profit which allows you to reinvest in research and development. It’s profit which allows you to grow your business to expand into new regions and markets, and it's profit which allows you to return dividends to your shareholders, to pay bonuses to you and your staff so you can all enjoy the fruits of your hard work.
In this book, I state many times that the profit is in your people, and in the following pages I’ll share with you the tools to get the greatest level of profit, performance and productivity from every single employee and manager in your organisation.
3. Increase in company value
As a business owner/leader, or senior executive, one of your main drivers is to increase the value of your company.
If you are a business owner yourself, then I'm sure you'll have one eye on your exit whether that's this year, five years, or twenty-five years from now.
Whether you are publicly traded, or a privately held company, I’m sure as a business leader you will be charged with growing the value of your company.
It is quite possible that your salary package will be partly based on the increased value of your business.
Perhaps you have shares in the company you work for, or stock options, or you are simply held accountable by your board of directors, but either way, growth in value has a significant impact on your company's own ability to raise additional finance and investment for future growth and expansion.
4. Increased cash flow and liquidity
The last of the key financial drivers which all business owners and leaders want, is improved cash flow and liquidity.
You might have great revenues and fantastic profits, but could still be financially broke because of the timing of getting cash in from your customers, because customers don't pay on time (or turn into bad debts), or a myriad of other industry and company specific reasons.
Many of these factors can be managed and even sometimes eliminated through having happy customers (rather than disgruntled customers), and as you will see in this book, happy customers come from happy employees who deliver extraordinary products and services to your customers.
A happy customer who is delighted and thrilled with your products and services is more likely to pay their bills on time, than one who has had an unpleasant customer experience from one of your employees — who didn't understand their impact on a customer’s willingness to pay on time.
5. More relevant products and services
In times of rapid change (and when are we not witnessing change?), making sure you are constantly relevant to your customers and in tune with their needs is critical.
As a business leader I'm sure you want your organisation to be innovative, creative and to adapt and respond to the changing needs of your customers.
But how flexible, agile and responsive are you as an organisation?
I know from my time consulting, that resistance to change is always a challenge and seems almost inherent in human nature.
But change you must! It was Darwin who said, "It's not the fittest or the strongest who survive, it is those who are most responsive to change."
Let me give you an example of one company which is the master of change, and has been around for more than 50 years and whose audience and customer base is getting stronger and stronger.
That is the James Bond franchise.
In the space of 20 or so movies, you can see change happen before your very eyes. You can see the company adapting and responding to remain relevant to its audience.
As fantastic as the early Sean Connery and Roger Moore movies are, when played against the latest James Bond epic, they show their age, look dated and, if they were released today, would be irrelevant to their customers.
Do you as a company change and adapt to the times… to the market… to your customers? Do your employees respond well to change?
6. Eliminate complacency
Business leaders around the world know only too well the kiss of death for their company is complacency or taking their customers for granted.
When companies become fat, bloated and slow, and are over populated with employees and managers who have lost their drive, passion and energy, they lose their competitive edge, and stop giving customers reasons to buy, repeat buy, or recommend them. In short, these companies are on a download spiral, and a fast track to failure.
Woolworths in the UK is an obvious and recent example of this. M&S were guilty of complacency in the late 1990s, but through strong leadership and a refocus on their core customer, have turned things around with tremendous effect.
On the flip side, there are companies like Apple who constantly look for new ways to connect with their customers, and whose loyal customers are proud to repeat buy from them and recommend them. Walk into any Apple store around the world and you’ll see passionate, energised and proud staff. It’s this level of employee passion and pride you need to create in your own business.
7. Engaged and motivated staff
Having staff who are passionate, driven, engaged with your company, who love their work, and who are positive, is the key to achieving everything you want in your business.
Happy staff lead to higher profits!
When staff are disengaged, disconnected, unmotivated and their morale is low, then more often than not, your profits will be low too.
8. Attract, recruit, retain and develop the best people
My message to you, which I hope will resonate with you loud and clear by the end of this book, is that the profitable growth of your company rests in the hands of your people, and it's your job as a business leader, director, manager, or supervisor to constantly get the most out of them.
The perennial challenge for any business leader is to get the best people into the company and to keep them there.
But you also need to get the best out of the best people!
Only when you can bring the best people into your company and each day get them to perform at a higher level will you see an upward shift in your profits.
Too many companies, however, seem to undervalue their staff.
They have the wrong people in the wrong places.
They make hiring mistakes and yet fail to get rid of wrong staff.
Too many companies accept employees who are unengaged, are negative energy in their company, or who have the wrong attitude.
Why should you have people in your company like that? If you do, you will forever struggle to achieve the results that you want and desire.
9. Excellence
It’s essential that you set excellence as the high standard for your company. In the world of management jargon, this is also known as Excellence in Execution.
When everybody in your company lives and breathes excellence, does a little bit extra for your customers — not because you ask them to but because they want to, because they are engaged and connected with their work, and they're proud to work for your company — your customers pick up on it. You become known in your industry for your high standards and value. Your brand stands for something and you become recognized as a leader.
We all know excellence should be the only standard, but delivering on that aspiration at all times is a never-ending challenge.
For this to happen, it requires your people to go that little bit extra for your customer, it requires them to be a little more creative when coming up with ideas for new products and services.
It requires you and your people to look for new ways to engage with customers, to reach new markets and to get more value for your customers and your business.
Excellence is a state of mind and it's your job as the business leader at whichever level you are, to set an example of excellence so that those around you can see what it looks like, feels like, tastes like, and change their behaviour to mirror your own excellent standards.
Other challenges
I said at the beginning of this chapter that these are the consistent ‘wants' which just about every business owner strives to achieve.
However, without a doubt, I am sure you will still have endless other challenges in your company. Challenges such as restructuring, dealing with the downturn, legislation, green issues, globalisation, regulation, controlling or reducing costs and succession planning to name but a few.
But when you get the basic fundamentals right, which every other business leader in the world also wants to get right, it frees up your time to focus on the other issues in your organisation which are more specific to your business or industry.
In the next chapter I'll explain in detail how you can get everything you want, and more in your business, by recognizing the fundamental truth that the profit is in your people.
Chapter 2
You Can Have it All (When You Recognise That The Profit is in Your People)
If you have a great product or service, which customers want and need, and you apply the ideas and approaches you read about in this book, there is no reason that you cannot become one of the very top companies in your niche industry, market, or region.
But for that to happen, you must recognize the indisputable truth that the profit in your company is in your people.
Let me give you a very simple example to prove this point.
If right now you took every employee out of your organisation, so that they were left standing outside your company’s premises — and there was no one left inside answering the phones, meeting with customers, developing your products and services, fulfilling your orders — how long would it be before your company ground to a halt?
I’m sure within a matter of days, if not hours, you would literally cease to exist as an organisation.
This is because your people are your business.
It’s your people who determine whether your company is profitable, successful, a market leader, or not.
Revenue and profit per head
The most obvious measure of success in a company is bottom-line profit. In stock market quoted companies, the equivalent measure of success is profit (or earnings) per share.
But there is another way of viewing the performance of your business which I’d like to introduce you to (or remind you of).
These calculations make a tighter connection to your people and your company’s results and are revenue per head and profit per head.
By taking the total revenue (or profit) of your company and dividing it by your total number of full-time equivalents (FTEs), you can calculate your revenue (or profit) per head.
It is a fascinating and useful way of understanding the connection between people and profit.
Let me give you an example
Years ago I used to work in the software industry and at the time our revenue per head was $200,000.
We were a very sales driven company, but sadly not overly profit conscious, so our profit per head would have been in the low thousands or on many occasions in negative figures.
What is the profit per head and revenue per head in your organisation?
This figure will vary dramatically by industry. Marriott Hotels have revenues per head of only around £50,000, whereas many other less people intensive companies have revenues per head of between £100,000 and £200,000. In 2008 Google had revenue per head of $1.4 million.
When you start to see that every employee in your company is worth £50,000, £100,000, £200,000 or more in terms of revenue, it soon becomes undeniable that not only is the revenue in your people, but the profit is in your people too.
Do you think by developing your people, you could add an extra £1,000 of revenue per head? I’m very confident you could do that as a very minimum.
Realistically, you should aim to add at least an extra £1,000 of PROFIT per head using the ideas contained in this book.
If you employ 100 people, that would be a minimum of £100,000 extra profit to your company each year. I say minimum, as I would personally be disappointed if you only achieved this level of profit increase.
That aside — and to give you something to aim for, you may be interested to know that in 2008, Nintendo posted a profit per head, (not just revenue but profit per head), of $1.8 million!
I can’t guarantee profit increases of this level for you, but there is no doubt that Nintendo (who created the Wii computer game) achieved these results because they are innovative and creative and they deliver extraordinary products to their customers.
Who Are They?
I use the word they here, but who are they?
They are the leadership, the management, and the employees within the organisation. It’s not just one person in Nintendo who is responsible for this success, it is everybody within the company.
When you look into a business which is successful and growing, you’ll find staff who are attentive and passionate, full of ideas and bursting to get those ideas out to improve the performance of the company, and to make better products and services for their customers.
You find employees who respect the customer, who believe in themselves and in their products and services, and put their customers’ needs first.
Conversely, when you look at an underperforming company, more often than not you find employees with low morale who don’t care about their work and who are indifferent and complacent. Consequently, the customer is taken for granted, innovation is low, change is feared, and there’s a lack of pride.
It is your job as a business leader to get the best from your people at all times, and to create an environment where they can thrive, where energy is tangible, and morale is high.
This doesn’t happen by accident.
This comes from great leadership, from recognizing the essential asset that your people are, and the direct link between your people and your bottom-line profits.
Too many companies fail to invest in their employees
Sadly, however, all too many companies fail to see this obvious connection and under invest in their staff.
They fail to train and develop their staff, and fail to get the best from them.
It’s fair to say in many organisations more is spent on the printing and stationary budget than on the people development budget to get the most from their staff, which in my opinion is lunacy. Especially when the evidence is so overwhelming that the more investment, time, and development which is put into people, the greater the results and the profits that come into an organisation.
It has been found that staff who have received formal training are up to 230% more productive than untrained colleagues working in the same role. (Source: Smith A., 2001, Return on Investment in Training: Research Readings, NCVER).
Another study showed that the medium revenue per head of employees who had 5 or fewer days of training per year was $137,931, compared to $210,380 from those who had more than five days. (Source: A joint research project by not for profit research organisation — APQC and IBM and Workforce Management.
Companies spend small fortunes trying to attract and recruit the best staff and they single out candidates who are well trained and have shown a keenness to develop themselves. So they clearly value training when recruiting, but don’t seem to like it so much when they have to pay for it for their employees!
Look at any company’s P&L account and you’ll see that salary costs are often one of the largest (if not the largest) expense, yet once an employee comes on board, many companies fail to continue investing in their staff, to take their performance to a higher level.
When I mention this point to managers, occasionally I receive the response of, “What if I train my staff and they leave?”
My answer to them is, “What if you don’t train them and they stay!”
Failing to invest in your staff is economic and business suicide.
It’s the same economic suicide to think that if you don’t service your car or machinery each year, they will keep on going and perform at the highest level. It simply doesn’t happen. Inevitably, problems will set in, components will break down, and performance will be disrupted.
It’s the same in any organisation.
Without people development, and investing in your staff, the direction of your company will be downwards. In a garden which isn’t maintained, weeds will grow and develop — and in people, bad habits occur and complacency creeps in.
People development is not an expense, it is an investment!
Many business leaders have the wrong perception of people development and see it purely as an expense.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The right type of people development, which works on employees’ attitude and mind-set, breaks down limiting beliefs, focuses employees on the goals of the company, and reinvigorates them and makes them customer-centric, has a massive payback for your company.
People development of this nature is not an expense, it is an investment, and quite literally every pound you spend on developing your staff should give you a return of 5, 10 or even 100%.
Failing to invest in your staff is without doubt false economy. All of the nine factors that we spoke about in Chapter One (revenue growth, profit growth, cash flow, creating company value, relevance to customer, etc) comes from one place: Your people.
Your profit is in the right people — not the wrong people
I said at the beginning of this book that you can have everything you want in your organisation when you recognise the indisputable link between people and profit.
I want to make one critical qualification here so that I can help you deliver on that promise, and that is: The profit is in the right people in your organisation, it isn’t in the wrong people.
It was Jim Collins, the famous management writer, who said, “You must get the right people on the bus in the right seats and get the wrong people off the bus.”
Brian Tracy, the highly regarded personal development and sales expert, said that 95 percent of your success will be determined by the people you hire for key positions, and that 95 percent of your problems will come from putting the wrong people in the wrong positions.
The ideas in this book have the ability to literally transform your business within weeks and months from now, but this is dependent on you investing in the right people (not the wrong ones!).
In your company I’m sure you’ll agree that you have a percentage of people who are eminently the right people and are doing everything that I’ve already spoken about. When you provide extra training for them, they welcome it with open arms and just get better at what they do. These high-performers set a standard and benchmark for others to step-up to.
I’m sure you’ll also agree that you have people in your organisation who are the wrong people and however much training and development you put into them, they will never change.
These people will drag your business down, and with all the will in the world, no amount of training and development will change them. They are the wrong people for your business and I encourage you to help liberate them and move them on to different and greater things which work better for them — and that they’ll enjoy working at more.
Someone who is taking up one of the seats on your bus is expensive and will drag down the performance, productivity and profitability of your company.
Middlemen and middlewomen — a real opportunity for profit growth
I would now like you to focus on the swathes of people in the middle of your company who I call middlemen and middlewomen, who neither over perform nor under perform.
It’s these people who have the greatest potential profit impact on your business, and by developing and training them, you can get the best out of them, and get them to perform at a higher level.
In the next chapter I’ll explain how you can do this at a low cost through structured mentoring.
Chapter 3
IMPORTANT! Mentoring Your Staff is The Key to Profit Growth
In the previous chapter, I made the point that people development is critical to unlocking the performance of your staff and the profitability of your company.
In this chapter, I would like to focus on one specific area of people development which is coaching and mentoring.
Although there are notable differences between what a coach does and what a mentor does, for the purposes of this chapter I'd like to use the two terms interchangeably and explain how, when you introduce a structured enterprise-wide mentoring programme into your organisation, the results you can achieve (within months, weeks or even days) can be transformational.
In subsequent chapters I'll explain how (using the digital MP3 structured ‘enterprise-wide’ mentoring programme my company provides, coupled with mentoring by your own internal staff), the results you can quickly achieve will be nothing short of spectacular. But first let me explain how mentors and coaches are used outside business.
The importance of mentors outside business
I'm sure if you are a sports fan of any kind you will have seen golfers, tennis pros, football players, Formula One drivers and Olympians — all speak about the impact their coach has on their performance.
The benefit of having an outside person to guide you, coach you and mentor you to improve your performance is invaluable.
When you are in the gym, a coach can push you further to lift another 10 repetitions, just when you thought you had nothing left inside of you.
When you are running, your own personal trainer can make you go the extra mile, when you thought you couldn’t run another metre.
I do not believe there is any way that Tiger Woods, or Roger Federer, would ever have achieved the domination they have in their respective sports without their personal coaches guiding them, directing them, challenging them, and refining their thinking and actions to the point where they have become true masters in their chosen disciplines.
Although not the most glamorous sport in the world, I do from time to time enjoy watching snooker on BBC 2, and for all the genius and innate talent Ronnie O'Sullivan has, it was only when he started working with his own mentor and coach, which was former Master Ray Reardon, that he really started to release his full potential.
It isn't just in the sports arena where people have mentors. In academia, students are mentored by professors.
In the performing arts, new actors are mentored by more experienced actors.
And in business it's widely regarded that senior staff mentor junior staff (or at least they should!). In days gone by this was often the role of middle management, where middle managers would mentor junior managers.
However, with the introduction of technology which has replaced much of middle management’s work, and the removal of many middle management positions, much of this human mentoring and guidance has been lost. Reinstating this senior/junior mentoring in a formal and structured way provides a massive opportunity for people transformation and business growth.
Attitude and mindset — not technical training
The people development I'm talking about in this book is not technical training in the way that someone should learn to technically do their job, such as an accountant learning to balance accounts, a receptionist learning computer skills, or an architect learning to draft a building design.
Although these job specific, technical skills and abilities could be taught by a mentor, this is not what I'm talking about here.
What I'm talking about here is developing the mindset and attitude of people (through an enterprise-wide mentoring programme), to give them the ability to think from a commercial perspective to grow your business and take it to another level.
Although there are many different forms of people development, mentoring delivers results in a way that few others do.
Here’s why…
Training workshops
Training has its place and a two-day workshop is a great vehicle for transferring knowledge but it fails to have the deep, long-lasting impact that regular interaction with a mentor or coach does.
Self-learning
Self-learning is a wonderful way of reaching lots of people at a low cost (and I’m a big advocate of it), yet even I know it doesn't give the mentee (or protégée) the opportunity to voice their thoughts and concerns and refine their thinking in the way that working with a mentor does.
Outside speakers
Outside speakers coming into your organisation have their place for a quick inspirational talk and motivation boost but seldom have the lasting impact that a relationship with a mentor can.
Mentoring gets results!
Whichever form of training and people development you look at, you will always come back to the fact that the personal one-to-one touch that comes from mentoring and coaching delivers far superior results than any other form of people development.
This face-to-face mentoring has the ability to get performance from your staff in a way that no other people development tool can.
It can take mid-performers and make them high-performers; it can make high-performers become extraordinary-performers. The extra little bit of performance mentors can get from a person can make all the difference between success and failure, or success and extraordinary levels of success.
Just as an extra degree in temperature can change water from a nice cup of tea to steam with the ability to power a locomotive train around the world! That is the role of a mentor in your organisation… to take your people to the next level (and beyond).
In the following chapter, I'll explain why mentoring your staff to think a little bit like Sir Richard Branson (or a business-owner) will have a dramatic impact on the performance, productivity and profitability of your company.
Chapter 4
How To Get ‘The Branson Effect’ By Mentoring Your Staff to Think Like Business Owners
The question I've asked business leaders and executives many times is this, "If you could bring one person (or organisation) into your company to help you grow your business, to get more from your staff, and to get more output from less resources, who would it be?"
I’m sure it will come as no surprise to you that I’ve never heard a business leader ask to bring in a consulting company like PWC, Bain or Accenture!
But neither should it be a surprise to hear that the name which is cited more often than not is the entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson.
Branson is held up and recognized as an inspirational leader, both in the eyes of employees and customers.
For some people, their first thought of Branson may be that he is all about risk, but be in no doubt about it, Branson is not about risk, he is about RESULTS, and it is results that all the business leaders I speak to are looking for.
Sir Richard Branson knows only too well the importance of his people, to achieve the extraordinary results he does.
His company is not just about him, it’s about this people and the many thousands of them who work for the Virgin group.
Branson or the Branson way of thinking?
Although Sir Richard Branson is the person people most recognize, is it actually Branson himself they want, or is it his way of thinking? Is it his knowledge, mindset and attitude?
What I have found executives want, is to get this entrepreneurial business-owner way of thinking and energy into their own staff.
Business-owner-thinking represents passion and drive; it represents excellence, urgency, creativity, and a total focus on the customer and their needs and wants. It is the way YOU as a leader think, and I’m sure it is the way you want all your employees and managers to think too.
Imagine what your business will look like when every employee and manager who works in it thinks like a business owner — rather than a traditional employee?
Imagine what your company will be like when your people walk a little bit taller and have that extra air of confidence about them? When they have a deeper level of belief in the products and services they offer, so that they can stand face-to-face with your prospects and customers, and look them in the eye with absolute total conviction and certainty that what your prospects and customers are about to buy (or invest in) is absolutely the right thing for them… just like Sir Richard Branson can.
Imagine what it will do for your business when your employees who design and create your products are as passionate about your products as you are... that they develop them the same way they nurture and develop their own children.
Imagine your marketing team being 100% in tune with your market and customers. Imagine your employees knowing in-depth what your competitors are doing and always being one step ahead of them.
All of this (and more) is possible when you recognise the fundamental principle in your business, that the profit is in your people and when you recognise that every employee in your company regardless of their job title, position, or level of seniority, must share the same passion, belief and desire as you do (and Sir Richard Branson does!)
But that will only ever happen when you as the business owner/leader instil that belief, passion, desire, energy, and ‘vibe’ within your company.
It must spread and infuse into every fibre of every employee.
Leadership at all levels
What we are talking about here is a mindset of excellence and a mindset of leadership. When you stand back and look at what Branson is, what you are, and what all great business owners are, you are all leaders.
But is there more than one leader in a company?
There are many…
Infact, there are as many leaders as there are employees — as every employee must first be a leader of themselves, and have high levels of personal leadership.
Let's take the example of a large multi-national listed company. Are there other leaders in that company besides the Chief Executive?
Clearly the answer is yes because he has vice-presidents, and directors who report into him. It's those VPs and directors who share the same vision, passion and drive, confidence, creativity, spark and energy as the chief executive.
But leadership doesn't stop there.
If these are the traits you want of your highest performing staff, do you want them beyond your senior executives?
The answer is clearly yes.
You want your senior managers to share your same traits.
But does it go beyond them?
Do you want your other managers to think this way?
What about your front-line managers and supervisors?
Of course you want everybody to share the same energy and spark as your senior leaders. In fact, you want that that spirit and commercial way of thinking instilled in ALL your front-line staff so that they share the same passion and drive as the most senior staff in your organisation. After all, they are the ones day-to-day dealing with your customers, or busy in the back office fulfilling orders keeping the machinery of your business working.
It is your people (at all levels) who are responsible for bringing your prospects into your company and turning them into paying customers, but you must not stop there.
It is your people (at all levels) who must understand the constant need to over-deliver, over-service, to go the extra mile for your customers, so that they become customer evangelists, raving fans, who repeat-buy, and recommend you to their friends, family, and business associates.
If you use Branson as the model, he is the epitome of business-owner-thinking. Customers ‘get him’; they relate to him and love him so much that the strength of his brand is intertwined with him.
When you go on his plane, you want those brand values to be extended through the Virgin employees. You want to feel that Richard Branson has a personal impact on your experience and that the person serving you has that same spirit as Branson.
In the next chapter I'll explain how you can bring the spirit of business-owner-thinking to your employees so you can teach and mentor ALL your staff how to think, act and make decisions like business owners.
When you couple this structured mentoring programme together with mentorship by your own senior managers to lower level managers and employees, you have a low-cost mentoring model which can be truly revolutionary and transformational for your own company.
Chapter 5
How To Take Mentoring Out of The Boardroom (So Every Employee and Manager in Your Company Can Benefit From it!)
It’s fair to say that the majority of coaching and mentoring which takes place in organisations happens in the boardroom or at a senior management level.
Certainly the business coaches I personally know work predominantly with board level executives. This is for the simple reason that one-to-one coaching and mentoring is expensive, especially when you bring in an outside coach or mentor. The typical cost of one session with a good coach could be around the £1,000 figure, if not more for a big name coach.
That said, the results an executive receives through his or her coaching and mentoring can quite literally be transformational.
It can take that individual’s performance to a level they never previously thought possible.
However, the net result for the company is one of wishing and hoping that the single executive who receives the personal coaching, can filter all they’ve learnt through to the front-line staff. They hope that the impact of that senior executive’s coaching has an effect on front-line employees who deal with customers, so the customers experience is improved.
That is a big ask!
Although it is possible, the chance of it happening with the full power and magnitude to make a significant difference to the overall company is slim.
The better answer to make a real difference is for mentoring to happen at all levels so that the person on the front-line receives their own mentoring experience.
For virtually every company, the reality of bringing in an outside coach who coaches every employee in the company is usually prohibitively expensive and financially unworkable.
There is, however, an alternative, which is very affordable, very do-able, and has been proven to deliver transformational results in companies.
That is to implement a hybrid approach between training and mentoring.
It’s to leverage technology as a training platform and to use internal managers to act as mentors to internal employees.
Let me explain with an example from my early career.
What has ERP got to do with mentoring?
In my former career, I spent most of my time working for a NASDAQ listed American software company.
The product we implemented was Enterprise Resource Planning software, usually referred to as ERP.
Through the use of technology (in this instance software) we were able to have an impact on virtually every employee in the company making their work processes more efficient, streamlined, and cost-effective.
If the ERP system had been used by senior management only, the results that would have been achieved from investing in our software would have been almost zero. Our technology only worked because it infiltrated the entire organisation.
These days, in my own company (Enterprise Leaders Worldwide Ltd), I still use technology to reach every employee in a company, but instead of software that works on computers, I provide mental software for the mind.
Through what I call an enterprise-wide mentoring programme, I’m able to provide structured mentoring for every employee in the company by giving them access to an online MP3 mentoring programme.
Better still, I give each and every employee their own physical MP3 player so that they can go through a 21-session programme of business and personal development.
By giving people a fundamental education in business excellence, you’re able to slowly but surely instil in every member of staff — from the boardroom to the frontline — a new language, a new way of thinking and a new set of behaviours.
For some people, this learning will be new and in itself will forever change how they think, act, and make decisions.
For others, what they’ll learn during this 21-session MP3 structured mentoring programme will be a reminder, but nevertheless a welcome, timely, and an important reminder to keep them at their highest level of performance.
In a minute I’ll explain how, using internal managers as mentors in addition to our MP3 structured mentoring programme, you can get the greatest results for your company.
But first let me answer two questions which often arise when I explain the principles and benefits of the 21 session enterprise-wide mentoring my company offers.
Question 1 — What do you learn from the programme?
The first question people ask is, “What do employees actually learn during the 21-session programme?” The answer is everything that we spoke about in Chapter Four.
In the enterprise-wide mentoring programme, I have taken the ‘best of the best’ thinking, ideas, philosophies and beliefs of some of the UK’s leading business leaders and business owners.
Your employees and managers will learn from people like Duncan Bannatyne and Simon Woodroffe from Dragons’ Den, and people like Sir Tom Hunter, Scotland’s most successful entrepreneur. They’ll learn from entrepreneurial giants like Lord Harris of CarpetRight, Luke Johnson, former chairman of Pizza Express and a regular investor, and Lord Bilimoria, the founder of Cobra Beer, to name but a few.
In 21 short MP3 audio sessions (each around 15 minutes long), each employee and manager will receive the highest level of business education as if they were being mentored directly from any leading business owner or leader.
It will be as if they had a bookshelf of the most important business books tipped into their minds, but in an engaging, fascinating and enjoyable way.
It will be as if they are being mentored by Sir Richard Branson himself, just as we spoke about in Chapter 4.
During the 21 session structured mentoring programme, employees and managers learn:
The essential principles of business growth
How to attract new customers
The importance of being relevant to your customer
How to maximise the lifetime value of your customer
How to turn your customers into brand evangelists who do your marketing for you
The fundamentals of business which are indisputable and are known to all high-performing business leaders
The importance of teamwork and team development
How to be part of a team
How to lead a team
How to motivate and develop staff to go the extra mile
The critical fundamentals of communication, so that the words your employees and managers say and how they say it will have the maximum impact for the benefit of your business.
How to be better leaders of themselves by learning the principles of personal leadership, but how to be better leaders of others in your organisation
And much, much more!
Question 2 — Why 21 Sessions?
The second question I’m often asked is, “Why is the programme 21 days”, and “Should the programme be studied over 21 consecutive days of learning?”
The answer is that in a 21-day period or a 21-session period you can deliver truly transformational change.
A good analogy to understand the impact that you can have on an individual in 21 days is a simple doubling analogy which turns £1 into £1 million in that short timeframe.
If every day for 21 days you took an initial investment of £1 and then
doubled it each day you would have £2 on day two, £4 on day three, £8 on day four and so on.
In 21 days that £1 initial investment would be worth over £1 million.
The same is true with your staff.
When you train and develop them for 21 continuous sessions they start to connect the dots, with each session building on the next, so that a compounding effect starts to kick in, and by sessions 12 to 15, you will start to see transformational changes in your staff.
The language your employees and managers use becomes more refined and business focused, they become more customer-focused, and the confidence they have in themselves starts to come through and shine.
When you put everybody in your organisation through a programme of personal and business development for 21 sessions, the impact it will have on your business is truly remarkable.
How to go from remarkable to transformational
To go from remarkable to transformational, there is one extra step which you need to take and that is to have your senior managers act as personal mentors for your junior managers, and to have your junior managers act as personal mentors for your front-line staff.
By adding a layer of personal, in-house mentorship, the enterprise-wide mentoring programme gives the greatest framework for transformational change.
In the next chapter I’ll explain to you exactly what this programme looks like and how you can implement an enterprise-wide mentoring programme in your organisation right now to deliver lasting transformational change in your business.
To learn exactly what is taught in our structured enterprise-wide mentoring programme, download and read Profit Upgrade.
In Appendix B of my third book, Profit Upgrade, I provide content of the actual modules in the enterprise-wide mentoring programme.
You can download Profit Upgrade, for free with my compliments, simply by visiting the website www.enterpriseleaders.com
Chapter 6
Here’s How and Why Enterprise-Wide Mentoring Works (7 Steps to People & Profit Transformation)
I certainly don’t claim to have invented the phrase enterprise-wide mentoring, in fact a quick search on Google will reveal a handful of other results.
That said, the terminology enterprise-wide mentoring is not commonly known and in this chapter I’d like to give you a clear definition of what my company’s enterprise-wide mentoring programme looks like and why each element of it is critical in making it work.
But before I go into detail, let me explain the difference between the structured mentoring programme I provide and regular, traditional informal mentoring that perhaps you’re more familiar with.
Traditional informal mentoring
The face-to-face mentoring which takes place in the boardroom usually lacks any real formal structure. A typical conversation between a mentor and protégé would go something like this:
Mentor: “So, what are we speaking about this week?”
Protégé: “Well, I’d like to speak more about…” and then the protégé would raise specific questions they have or focus in on specific areas that they’d like to learn more about from the mentor.
I have first-hand experience of this type of mentor relationship having paid a marketing mentor many thousands of pounds during the course of a year to speak to him every week for an hour.
What certainly worked in that relationship was the ability to ask questions to someone who had more experience than me in terms of marketing.
But what the mentoring arrangement lacked was any degree of structure, and from week-to-week we would bounce around from one idea to another, often wasting time and certainly not getting the most from each mentoring session.
This informal way of mentoring has no place in an enterprise-wide mentoring programme.
Structured enterprise-wide mentoring programme
I, however, take a different approach and believe firmly that to take everybody through an enterprise-wide mentoring programme and to bring everybody up to a standard of excellence (the standard set by the highest achieving business owners and business leaders we spoke about in Chapter Four) you need structure.
You need a programme which is consistent, in which everybody can follow the same path, learn the same fundamentals, develop the same language, and therefore achieve the same results.
The multiple-level learning approach I provide for companies within the enterprise-wide mentoring programme has seven core components.
1. Learn: MP3 Sessions: 21 MP3 audio sessions which give a rock-solid business education, and bring the ‘best of the best thinking’ consistent with all leading business owners (for example Sir Richard Branson).
2. Absorb & Apply: Workbook: A 218-page workbook, which personalizes the mentoring sessions back to your staff.
3. Discuss & Contextualize: Face-to-Face Mentor Sessions: Structured, interactive, human, face-to-face mentoring where a senior manager mentors a group of around five people.
4. Confirm: Summary Sessions: A Summary CD, which allows the protégé to re-listen to the MP3 mentoring programme in short, sharp bursts so that they can keep the lessons alive.
5. Demonstrate: Presentation: A final presentation, where the protégés present all that they’ve learnt (and their ideas for change) back to the senior executive team.
6. Teach: Protégée becomes the Mentor: The protégé becomes the mentor to the next group of people in your organisation so that the cycle continues.
7. Follow-through: Conference Calls, Get Together: Keeping the learning, practices and spirit alive (see Chapter 7)
Let’s look at each of these seven critically important elements:
1. Learn (MP3 Sessions)
I have found that the most effective and lowest cost way of educating people is through audio. With the introduction of MP3 technology and the low cost of portable MP3 players, any company can afford to provide all their employees with MP3 based training.
A portable MP3 player (or even an employee’s mobile phone), pre-loaded with 21 mentoring sessions which the employees and managers can study in their down-time, on their way to work or whilst travelling, allows employees and managers to get an essential business education at a time that meets their needs.
This little and often approach, which comes from short, sharp, 15-minute audio lessons, allows them to re-listen to the programmes many times, and to move through the course at a pace that suits them, either listening to one, two, or three sessions at a time or focusing on one particular subject.
The MP3 audio gives a high level of consistent education so that everybody in the organisation can hear the same message, learn the same subjects, and develop the same language of excellence.
MP3 based learning allows for a consistent rollout of a structured enterprise-wide mentoring programme.
Here’s a breakdown of the 21 mentoring sessions…
Sessions 1 to 5: Focus on Your CUSTOMERS
Session 1: Growth Through Innovation, Creativity and Change
Session 2: Gaining New Customers Through 'Word of Mouth Marketing'
Session 3: How To Maximise The Life-Time Value of Your Customers
Session 4: Why Everybody In Your Company Must Be A Salesperson
Session 5: The Six Fundamentals of Business Which You Must Master
Sessions 6 to 10 : Focus on Your TEAMS
Session 6: People! The Key To Unlocking Your Profit Potential
Session 7: 7 Essential Steps To Make Your Team Believe
Session 8: How To Maximise Your Results Through Communication
Session 9: 7 Proven Strategies To Get The Most From Your Team
Session 10: Motivation! How To Get Your People To Go The Extra Mile
Sessions 11 to 20 : Focus on Your EMPLOYEES and MANAGERS
Session 11: Half-Way Review and Introduction To Personal Leadership
Session 12: How To Develop Unshakable Confidence & Self Belief
Session 13: The Unstoppable Twin Force of Passion & Desire
Session 14: How To Eliminate Your Fears, Doubts and Limiting Beliefs
Session 15: How To Create Endless Opportunity and Make Luck Work For You
Session 16: How To Achieve Extraordinary Results Through The Power of Goals
Session 17: The 5 Advance Payments You Must Make To Reach Your Goals
Session 18: How To Achieve Any Goal You Set For Yourself
Session 19: Why Experiencing Failure Is Essential For You To Succeed!
Session 20: Your Role as an Enterprise Leader
Session 21: Summary and Review
2. Absorb and Apply (Workbook)
The audio programmes are supplemented by a workbook which the protégé completes after each audio session.
The workbook summarizes the day’s learning and provides practical exercises which challenge the employee and manager to apply what they’ve learnt to their own circumstances.
One of the key exercises in the workbook asks every employee the question, “If you were CEO for the day, given all that you’ve just learnt, what changes would you make to this business?”
Asking this question gives the employee ‘permission’ and the framework to ask radical, stretching questions that they might not otherwise have the confidence to put forward.
The ideas which are generated from these questions will be invaluable to your business.
3. Discuss and Contextualize (Face-to-face mentoring sessions)
Getting five or so protégés together in a room with one senior manager to act as a face-to-face mentor is the real key to achieving transformational results in your business.
Once each employee or manager has studied between two and five audio programmes and completed the exercises in the workbook, it’s critical that you as the mentor get your small team together behind locked doors and talk about what they’ve learned from the programme and how it applies to your business.
I cannot over emphasize the importance of this face-to-face mentoring step.
With the help and guidance of the mentor, the protégés are able to take their learning to the next level.
They’re able to interact with each other and to relate all that they’ve learned to their particular business, challenge each other, and really ingrain their learning at a level never before possible.
There is a significant benefit to the mentor in this process in that the mentor gets to hear first-hand from his or her protégés and they learn exactly how the protégé thinks.
They can see first-hand how the protégé has applied the learning back into their business areas, they can see areas that they’re excelling in and areas that they’re struggling with.
This protégé-mentor relationship is fundamental to the success of the enterprise-wide mentoring programme.
Over the course of the 21 mentoring sessions, the protégés and mentors should meet at least four times and if possible, as many as ten.
4. Confirm (Summary Sessions)
To keep all the audio mentoring sessions alive, each protégé will also find pre-loaded on their MP3 player 21 summary sessions, each of which lasts around three minutes.
These summary sessions allow protégés to re-listen to the MP3 mentoring programme at a summary level, keeping the core messages of the education alive for them so that the new language of business thinking becomes ingrained in their DNA, and every action they take, and decision they make is consistent with high-achieving business owners.
This allows your employees and managers to consistently do the right thing for your customers and company.
I was once told the story of a martial artist who was practicing for his black belt and failed one particular routine. He told the master he had practiced until he got the routine right.
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