Welcome to the Summit Newsletter February 2011

In this issue:

• Succession Planning Gone Wrong?
• Goals, Goals and More Goals
• What is HR’s Role in Recruiting Sales Professionals?
• Travelodge Recruits Convicted Killers- A Good Recruitment Decision?
• Organisational Trust – When It All Goes Wrong
• Institute of Leadership & Management Accreditation
• How To Choose A Management Training Partner – White Paper
• Setting a New HR Standard in GCC Countries
• UAE 2011 Training Programme Venue Selected
• And finally

On 18th January Apple Co-Founder and CEO Steve Jobs announced that he would be taking an indefinite medical leave of absence. Whilst he remains CEO of Apple, responsibility for the day to day running of the company was passed to Tim Cook. OK, first question – how many of us know who Tim Cook is?

Not many I expect. The news of Mr Job’s impending leave was reported on a national holiday in the USA when stock markets weren’t trading. A well planned move that delayed a stock market panic and allowed Apple to communicate more detailed information to the most influential news outlets. But, the very next morning, when stock markets across the globe opened for business, shares in Apple dropped – 9% in Frankfurt, and the NYSE witnessed a 6% drop in Apple’s share value. Shares traded on the NYSE recovered to just a 2% drop by the end of the trading day. It’s strange timing that just a few days following Jobs’ announcement, Apple reported significant income and profit growth to the same markets – perhaps in an effort to lighten the heavy blow for age, if not somewhat nervous investors?

Since his return to Apple, Steve Jobs has overseen an amazing change in fortunes for the company. Fantastic, high ticket price, cool and fashionable items that customers just love to use – and be seen using. Some London based retail stores such as House of Fraser and Harrods are lucky enough to have hundreds of excited shoppers lining up from 5am on the day their ‘BIG SALE’ starts just after the Christmas holidays, but Apple fans go one mighty step further. They sleep in the street, just outside the Apple store overnight, sometimes for several nights, in sub-zero temperatures so they can be one of the first to purchase Apple’s latest gadget – AT FULL PRICE! Now, who says that ‘Customer Loyalty’ is just a myth?

Mr Jobs has been quoted as saying “I want to put a ding in the universe“, and he certainly has and will no doubt continue to do so. But in what form? If his health challenges continue, can he really remain the sole ‘face’ of Apple? If Mr Jobs stands down (which appears unlikely whatever his state of health), will loyal Apple fans remain so loyal to the Apple brand when their trend-setting leader is no longer at the helm? Can Apple promote from within by identifying a successor for Mr Jobs, not just in terms of technical competence, but also in terms of media friendly, consumer champion who exudes excitement, passion and loyalty to their ever-growing global customer base?

The challenges faced by Apple are faced by many organisations at some point, perhaps even yours. Much is written and spoken about the need for and value of a comprehensive, precise approach to succession planning, but all too often, little, if indeed anything is really done until a key employee states their intention to leave their employment or a serious health issue prevents them from undertaking their duties. And it’s not just charismatic leaders who you need to protect yourself against losing. Yes, Sir Richard Branson, Jack Welch and many others like them possess a certain persona which portrays a certain brand value that develops trust in consumers, but these two individuals haven’t played any formal, hands-on part in their organisations for the past three years at least. In Mr Branson’s case, his companies are led and managed by well-grounded, highly effective subject specialists, not Mr Branson himself. Yes, he may occasionally appear at launch parties to attract media attention, but he leaves the day-to-day running to competent executives who we may never have heard of.

And this is a growing challenge for many companies – when a highly regarded, high-performing leader or subject specialist either can’t, or won’t remain with the company, there’s a gaping hole to fill. And, if you fill it with the wrong candidate, the business could fall apart – quickly!

We’ll be covering succession planning in more detail during the coming months, but in the meantime, it could be worth you taking a few minutes to dust down your succession plan and review its accuracy and relevance to your organisation.

5 questions for you to consider about the effectiveness of your company’s succession planning process.

• How up-to-date is your succession plan and what 3 things could you to to enhance its value to your organisation?

• How are your high-potential leaders, managers and subject experts being developed to move into a potential new role? How can you improve this process?

• Is responsibility for ensuring that target employees identify and exploit new opportunities to learn and develop owned by HR, the employee or shared? How can you improve the effectiveness of this process?

• What are your top 4 high-risk potential roles that your organisation needs to focus on to ensure a seamless transition whatever the circumstances? What action can you initiate to minimise risks?

• What steps can you take today to maximise the value and effectiveness of your succession plan and protect your organisation from gaps?

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So, we’re now into February and the goals that we’ve set ourselves, and our teams will be pushing full steam ahead. Everyone’s engaged, motivated and eager to hit those challenging targets. OK, maybe not.

For many teams, the well-intended, aspirational goals that were set for the first quarter of 2011 will have dissipated or at least, not be going as well as was hoped or intended. Before you get too concerned, don’t panic, you’re not alone. Many individuals, organisations and teams set tough but worthwhile goals at the start of the new year only to watch them drift away as the day to day pressures of work seem to get in the way. We can easily make excuses why we couldn’t focus on achieving the goal, procrastinate and hope that the goal will somehow just go away, or at least be changed by the boss so we can absolve ourselves of responsibility for failure.

Setting and working towards achieving our own personal goals can be challenging enough, but in this situation, we are only responsible for ourselves. Responsibility for success or failure rests squarely on our own shoulders. But bring a team of 5, 10 or 100 colleagues in to the mix and then you really have your hands full. As if it wasn’t tough enough keeping ourselves focused, we now have all of these other people who may not share our aspirations, who just want to do their job, go home and get paid at the end of the month.

However well or badly your teams are doing in achieving their goals, it’s important to realise that with teams, just like success, failure is rarely achieved alone. And this is where promoting personal ownership of results comes into its own. It’s easy to blame external factors outside of ourselves for our failures. Whether it’s the technology, the timing, the customer or something completely different, we must understand that our results are up to us and nobody else. There’s an old saying that ‘Every time you point a finger of blame at someone else, three fingers point straight back at yourself.‘ When you help individuals and groups notice that they are blaming, it can be a turning point in their self-awareness and commitment to your cause.

Our video coaching channel will include 4 tutorials on how to engage teams in goal achievement, but for now, here are some quick tips:

• Don’t set too many goals at once or you risk diluting the perceived value of each goal in your team members’ mind.
• Set goals proactively and with structure rather than simply setting goals to respond to an unforeseen incident.

• Don’t brief large groups on the goals you want them to achieve. Why? More than 15 people in the audience and you don’t have an opportunity to keep the personal touch and respond to their questions comprehensively.

• Ask the audience in advance what support they would value from you to help them achieve their goal. This could be coaching, mentoring or something completely different and it develops shared ownership of success/failure.

• Deal with poor performance issues quickly and privately. When good performers notice that the manager isn’t dealing with a poor performer it can cause them to lose focus and motivation, so deal with it quickly.

• Catch people doing things right. Acknowledge when someone does something fantastic with a genuine ‘Well Done’ or ‘Thank You’, they’ll love you for it!

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The days of ABC or Always Be Closing as we know it are long gone for many organisations. With more organisations focusing on ‘do the right thing‘ rather than ‘sell at any cost‘ some sales forces and managers are feeling the strain. Regulatory bodies, consumer groups and government bodies are attracting more attention from broadcast, print and online media for their gallant efforts to stop consumers and businesses being misled or defrauded by sales force employees of other companies.

There are hundreds, possibly thousands of training courses, books and audio programmes available in the market about how to ‘Quintuple Your Sales Figures‘ or ‘Release The Salesman Within‘ and some of these programmes are well-researched and promote an ethical, win-win sales approach. But, even though industry specific regulatory bodies possess the power to impose heavy financial penalties on offending companies, some sales ‘professionals’ just won’t stop using dishonesty as their preferred route to market. Unfortunately, some of the dishonest reps are successful in their efforts because they choose their targets carefully and then force their targets to comply with their demands. A simple way of looking at the industry overall is that if people didn’t sell, there would be no economy. But selling itself is not the issue. The issue is more to do with how the selling takes place.

An example case of mis-selling

On January 19th 2011, Barclays Bank was fined £7.7 million by the financial regulator (FSA) in the UK for failing to give customers correct advice on two of its investment fund products. The original fine was £11 million but Barclays benefited from a discount because it agreed to settle the case at an early stage in proceedings. How’s that for a bankers bonus? As if the fine wasn’t enough, the FSA has ordered Barclays to pay over £60 million in compensation to the victims of their activities. Source: Sky News

But what roles does HR have to play when a new sales representative, or complete sales force is being recruited to your organisation? The traditional approach to recruiting sales professionals was HR leaving the recruitment process to the Sales Manager. After all, the Sales Manager knows what s/he wants and is the best judge of who is the right person for the job, right? Wrong!

The Risks

A Sales Manager is just that – an individual recruited, paid and trusted to deliver on, or exceed sales, income and profit targets. And that’s it. However fabulous s/he may be, however wonderful their sense of humour, they are in position to deliver specific outcome for your organisation. They are usually rather good at what they do, after all, that’s why they were appointed to their role isn’t it?

But Sales Managers are not HR professionals. They’re usually not aware of the legal requirements relating to selection and recruitment such as equal rights and the potential legal consequences of discriminating against one or more applicants (whether they intended to discriminate or not), how to spot a high-quality CV, structure a worthwhile interview or explore competencies. And, they’re rarely aware of the range of fantastic psychometric assessments available that could help them make a more informed, scientific-based recruitment decision rather than on good old ‘gut feeling’.

How does your organisation recruit its sales force? Does HR work in collaboration with the Sales Director/Manager to anticipate potential recruitment needs and put a practical recruitment and selection process in place to ensure that all bases are covered? Dealing with advertising channels, recruitment agencies and online recruitment sites can be a little overwhelming for a Sales boss if they haven’t dealt with them before. Or does your organisation just allow the Sales boss to recruit as they see fit and then HR undertakes the admin tasks such as issuing a contract offer and ensuring that the new employee’s induction is completed successfully?

Put yourself in the shoes of a Sales Manager for a moment

You need a new sales team member and you need him/her quick. The previous incumbent secured a better role with a competitor and you’ve asked them to leave your premises immediately, having already confiscated their company mobile phone and laptop so they can’t ‘steal’ your customers. Yep, it’s too late, they’ve already done it! It’s all stored on their memory stick to take to their new employer. But you’re under pressure to hit some challenging targets this quarter and there’s only 6 weeks left to achieve your goals – or there goes your bonus. And maybe a little credibility too!

Where is your focus? Is it on attracting the right person for the right role at the right time so they can contribute fully to your team? Or, is it on getting someone half-decent in ASAP so they can get on the phone or out on the road sharpish to bring in the numbers so you move closer to hitting the challenging income targets your Director set for you? It’s survival of the fittest right? Get the numbers!! And this is the time and place where HR can make a significant contribution to helping Sales Directors/Managers not just understand the essential basics relating to recruiting legally, effectively and efficiently, but also making the whole daunting process more palatable and easier for them. I guarantee all HR professionals this – If you help a Sales boss understand that you are there to support them and work in partnership with them, rather than being viewed as an obstacle who stops them doing what they want to do, the Sales boss will reciprocate in kind. In addition, the more high-quality recruiting decisions you help them make, the less involvement you’re likely to have in dealing with issues such as under-performance, complaints and the good old ‘compromise agreement’ with a decent (if not inaccurate) reference for the former employees next unsuspecting employer.

4 tips for HR professionals

• Book 30 minutes in with your company’s Sales Director to identify their future recruitment needs. It could save you lots of time dealing with problems and will develop more trust and collaboration.
• Educate recruiters on the legal aspects of recruitment and the consequences and costs of them getting it wrong in future. A little candid motivation to improve standards.
• Don’t let external recruiters impose costs and rules on your unsuspecting internal customer. Get more involved and you’ll be surprised how quality and efficiency improves.
• Deliver a 60-minute workshop for recruiters on how to identify a winning CV. Any applicant can write a glowing CV, but far fewer can provide evidence of some of their claims.

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Leading budget hotel brand, Travelodge has announced the recruitment of three employees who were previously convicted of murder. Is this a good recruitment decision or not?

The new employees have been appointed to work at Travelodge’s York outlet. Speaking of their appointment on SKY News, Travelodge Chief Executive stated that their company was committed to finding opportunities for the long-term unemployed and that the three individuals concerned had received the ‘all clear’ from the relevant authorities.

At first glance, the appointment of these employees is a headline grabber. And, it would be interesting to establish whether Travelodge actually volunteered this information to news outlets or whether the information was obtained from another source. From an independent perspective, such a recruitment decision may appear distasteful at best, or plain stupid at worst. From a media perspective – it helps to sell newspapers, from a Travelodge customer perspective, you may decide that you won’t be taking your children to their York hotel. But doesn’t HR need to view this situation very differently? After all, whatever your opinion on the recruitment matter itself, there is, in the UK at least, the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 that needs to be adhered to. Just imagine the adverse media attention and potential damage to the Travelodge (or your) brand if, after a transparent recruitment process, these three candidates were the best for the roles and you refused to appoint them based purely on their past indiscretions. And, indiscretions they have served their time for.

What we’ll probably never know about these three human beings is the full story around the facts which led, separately to each of them to kill another human being. But it’s not the role of HR to play Judge and Jury. It’s role is to be a transparent, expert resource that complies with the laws of the land and treats human beings with fairness – however difficult this can sometimes prove to be.

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On 8th January 2011, Member of Parliament for Bury North, David Chaytor spent his first night of an 18-month prison sentence in Her Majesty’s Prison, Wandsworth. Why? He chose to fiddle his parliamentary expenses. Less than five weeks later, a Member of Parliament of 24 years standing, Eric Illsley was jailed also for 12 months for making fraudulent expenses claims. In both cases chose dishonesty rather than honesty. They breached trust and there’s a price to pay for doing so.

Mr Chaytor’s downfall was virtually guaranteed following an investigation into invoices he submitted relating to IT consultancy (which were proved to be bogus) and payment of rent on homes…which were owned by his own family. But the issue of fiddling expenses isn’t simply about an individual choosing to act dishonestly. And, much like honesty, dishonesty is a personal choice. It’s as much about breaching the trust invested in MP’s, who after all, were elected to represent the welfare and interests of their constituents – not to launch a self-serving, get rich quick scheme! We’ll be covering trust in more detail in a later edition, but for now…

Did you hear about the American company invested millions of dollars in developing and promoting their new corporate values? Their values were:

• Communication
• Respect
• Integrity
• Excellence

The name of this wonderful company? Enron! (Source: Dourado & Blackburn)

How is your organisation doing in the area of trust? Do investors trust your executives to deliver a good rate of return for them? Do your front-line employees trust their managers as well as they could? Do your customers trust that your organisation will act fairly with them in your dealings? Have a think about how trust, or the absence of it is impacting your organisation on a daily basis.

If there were just 3 actions you could take to improve the levels of trust within your organisation, what would they be? And more importantly, when you know the answers, would you be courageous enough to commit to action?

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The Institute of Leadership & Management (ILM), is the European market leader in leadership and management qualifications. And now, you can gain them with Summit.

For over a decade, we’ve intentionally steered away from UK Government led workplace qualifications. Why? Well, there have been so many different marketing campaigns promoting NVQ’s then City & Guilds and then yet another flavour of the month, it seemed that qualifying bodies were competing with each other rather than complementing each other. Plus, some self-employed, target driven ‘assessors’ were more interested in hitting their sales target to secure their commission rather than in adding value to their trusting client.

Thankfully, we’ve identified that the ILM (Institute of Leadership and Management) workplace qualifications are the best value to organisations wanting to reinforce workplace training and development with a recognised, UK national standard qualification. With this in mind, Melanie Greenwood, who has run ILM Accredited Centres for over 4 years has joined our team to lead ILM accreditation for our clients.

We are pleased to announce we are working closely with Melanie to bring our clients across the globe national standard qualifications that are work-based and which help to reinforce and embed new standards and competencies in the workplace. The fantastic thing about Melanie’s approach to the accreditation process is that the assessment of competence is practical, easy to undertake and tied into actual workplace projects and performance rather than completing endless amounts of documentation. This means employers and managers can witness an immediate commitment from delegates to maximising their effectiveness as soon as they return to their workplace. There are short, medium and long term qualifications available to suit varying needs. Leadership, Management, Coaching are just some of the qualifications available and qualifications can be completed all at once or a modular approach can be adopted.

The wide variety and flexibility available gives individuals and employers scope to custom-build qualifications. The registration costs depend on the qualification studied and range from as little as £70 to £120. With the ever increasing need to remain competitive this option can provide your staff with nationally recognised qualification and help your organisation gain industry recognition for your company’s commitment to staff development. You’re welcome to get in touch with us to find out more.

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You may find on too many occasions that when you invite potential training providers to meet you, they’re more focused on securing their sale than understanding your unique requirements. The contents of this document were originally published in Scott’s book, ‘Win Every Time – Essential Lessons for Existing and Emerging Leaders’ and provides an abundance of tips on how to ensure that you can benefit from the highest quality, most cost effective partnership. The contents include tackling ‘Bait and Switch’ tactics, looking beyond the CV’s and focusing your provider on delivering tangible results, not just training.

Scott is regularly invited to present his thoughts on this subject at universities across the UK. On 4th April he will deliver this workshop for 30 students on the MSc in Occupational & Business Psychology programme at the University of East London.

To obtain your FREE Download please click here.

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Summit is pleased to announce its collaboration with Turning Point HR Solutions based in Riyadh.

During the past three years Summit has received many enquiries and requests for proposals from companies located across the GCC. We’ve been successful in delivering a number high-profile leadership and management development projects for clients in the region and the good news has travelled fast. Due to the need for Summit to have a local sponsor one country where we haven’t been able to contribute as we would like is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The good news is that we’ve linked up with Turning Point HR Solutions who have a long-standing presence in the GCC countries and Turning Points’ Regional Director, Mr Octavian Cucu is our local representative.

The Turning Point/Summit collaboration comes following an detailed due diligence process by both parties and our aim is to provide a superior quality HR development solution which incorporates expert consultancy and bespoke, results-focused learning for leaders, managers and teams.

If you would like to find out more about how Turning Point/Summit can support your organisation during 2011 please email Dirk@SummitTraining.co.uk or call Octavian on +966 (0) 507 559 330 (mobile) or +966 1 419 8000 extension 1245.

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