Monthly Archives: March 2008

Managing “otherwise” still works for John Lewis

March 6, 2008 3:32 pm by Adam Jones

Along with the National Health Service, the John Lewis Partnership probably represents the UK’s most durable flirtation with socialism. The department store and supermarket group is owned by its 69,000 staff, who are called partners. Today, it was announced that they would each receive a profit-sharing bonus worth 20 per cent of their salary after strong trading in 2007.

As in the rest of the retail sector, average wages are still low compared with other industries. However, personnel managers in other sectors would do well to consider the additional ways in which the group’s knowledgeable staff are rewarded and kept loyal.

Continue reading: “Managing “otherwise” still works for John Lewis”

Posted in Corporate culture, Governance/CSR, Managing others | Permalink

Top tip for bosses – take the lock off your office door

March 4, 2008 12:53 pm by Stefan Stern

Managers are supposed to be good at giving and receiving “feedback”. To help make this a reality the “open door policy” has many fans. So what to make of the action by workers at Michelin’s tyre factory in Toul in north-eastern France, where feedback consisted of the doors being shut on two senior HR managers, who were then held hostage for three days in protest at the company’s plans to close the plant?

This startling intervention by militant trade unionists raises two important questions. First, how long does an HR manager have to be held captive before anyone notices that he or she is missing? And second, did the terms of this imprisonment allow for the usual three-course lunch to be served?

There are, I suppose, other questions we could consider here as well, such as “are we entering a new era of muscular trade union activism?”, or “is the employer-employee relationship in the developed world bound to come under ever-increasing strain?”

The history of industrial relations weighs heavily on managers and employees alike. A collective folk memory is at work here, often at a subconscious level. Even as we try to look ahead and focus on future challenges, the tug of the past brings us back. As in other kinds of relationships, cumulative experience counts for a lot and colours judgments made today.

Which is all a rather grand way of saying that bosses are often on the look-out for signs of a resurgence of worker unrest – although actually getting locked in their own offices is probably not something they expect. You have to hand it to the French: it is a fine demonstration of how to make the element of surprise work for you.

Continue reading: “Top tip for bosses – take the lock off your office door”

Posted in Governance/CSR, Managing others | Permalink

Air miles – legitimate booty?

March 4, 2008 11:33 am by Adam Jones

Should government employees and politicians be allowed to keep the air miles they accrue on official business? No, roar the public-spending puritans. But if they aren’t allowed to keep them, why should business people be allowed to hang on to theirs? Don’t they belong to the shareholders who funded their travel in the first place? Couldn’t they at least be used to fund other corporate travel?

Michael Skapinker probes these ethical questions in today’s FT, concluding that it is a puzzle why people get so exercised by air miles when they are so difficult to use. But I have my own suggestion to add: companies could distribute the air miles accrued by their workers to those small shareholders who bother to show up to their annual meetings.

Given that most of these investors are retired, they have plenty of time on their hands to find ways of actually using the blasted things. And it would be a great spur for shareholder democracy.

Posted in Expat/travel | Permalink

Embracing the pedantic primates

March 3, 2008 6:18 pm by Adam Jones

Michael Hyatt is a brave man. Along with his fellow executives, the boss of Thomas Nelson, a private equity-owned publisher specialising in Christian titles, is compiling a book laying out the group’s long history – which dates back to 1798 - and its way of doing things.

Mr Hyatt decided to post a draft of the first chapter of the book on his blog with the aim of soliciting comments from employees and other interested parties that would help him to hone his prose. His post provoked a mixture of back-slapping and nit-picking. A response posted by ‘Nicole’ paved the way for the nit-pickers:

Fascinating story.

(Two copy editing errors in the final paragraph–first and third sentences.)

A second nit-picker claimed that the writing lacked creativity. A third suggested that the authorial point of view was inconsistent. A fourth fretted about whether he had missed out a couple of commas. A fifth claimed he had contradicted himself at one point. A sixth said the number “81″ should be spelled out and hyphenated. A seventh claimed his style was a little lacklustre.

Some bosses would never tolerate being corrected by their juniors in public. But nitpicking isn’t a bad thing if you view it from the primate’s perspective.

When primates pick nits out of each other’s fur, they are strengthening the social bonds holding them together as a group. Wittingly or unwittingly, Mr Hyatt has offered his staff a similar chance to demonstrate their shared sense of purpose by grooming him publicly.

Ook! An underling spots a split infinitive lurking near the ceo’s armpit, expertly nips it between her fingers and eats it. Ook! An incorrect usage of “that” is changed to “which” by another member of the troop. Ook! There goes a grocer’s apostrophe.

Precise use of language is central to any book publisher and no author is expected to submit an error-free manuscript. Given those two points, I can’t see how the public nit-picking could be harmful to Thomas Nelson and its leader. On the contrary, beware the ungroomed ceo.

Posted in Corporate culture, Leadership | Permalink

The art of second-guessing your boss

March 3, 2008 11:35 am by Adam Jones

Sir Lindsay Owen-Jones, chairman and former chief executive of L’Oréal, says the business of selling cosmetics is all about intuition. But in an FT interview today, he makes it clear that climbing the management ladder at the French company was also an intuitive task.

Before getting his own chance to run the company, Sir Lindsay had to answer to François Dalle, whom he describes as having been an autocratic yet brilliant boss. He says Mr Dalle was not the clearest internal communicator either.

“He spoke in riddles so he was a very difficult man to interpret. I think one of the reasons I got responsibility so young was that I could interpret the things he said, which often were the opposite of what he actually said literally.”

Also in today’s paper: the FT’s resident manufacturing guru, Peter Marsh, profiles a British toymaker that has stopped producing plastic parts in China and now gets them made in the UK. Although it costs more, Bedlam Puzzles says manufacturing locally creates fewer supply headaches.

Posted in Leadership | Permalink

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