Are You Investing in Your People or Just Your Business? - Angela Hodgson

speaker-0: So Angela, welcome back to What One Thing Podcast. You are our very first second time guest. Is that the right word? Second time guest. Yeah, two times.

speaker-1: Yeah.

speaker-0: Repeater bender. We're gonna bad.

speaker-2: Thanks.

speaker-0: Maybe. We'll see.

speaker-1: We spoke about a second what one thing that you would like to bring to the table. But before that, just give us a little bit of backstory if you will do as to what brought you to this moment, what brought you to this kind epiphany that was your what one thing.

speaker-2: without revealing the what one thing.

speaker-1: Well, I mean you can reveal it if you like. Angela, it's up to you. I don't want to put too much pressure on you. If you feel that you'd like to reveal the what one thing, you reveal it.

speaker-2: Drum roll please, because here is the reveal. The reveal is I strongly want everyone to invest in your people as much as you invest in your machinery. And what led me to this one thing is that I'm seeing so much from a manufacturing and engineering perspective in the industry where they are investing in machinery, investing in technology, investing in systems, hundreds of thousands of pounds to be invented about. And then you say, OK, so you've got really capable people to implement that. need leaders who can embrace that growth that's going to come from all that new technology, what's your kind of budget allocated for them? Budget for people? Allocating budget for people? And there's a kind of scratchy head moment because people, when they look at the budget, because they're getting squozing on costs, because they're getting squozing on all this commercial pressure, it's on those type of things that they're not considering investing in. But if you don't invest in your people, probably not going to stay, probably not going to be high performers, and you're probably not going to scale to the position that you want.

speaker-1: And I think the pressure to invest in people is as much the the capital outlay, but almost as importantly is is the time. I think that's maybe where people struggle because when you buy a new piece of machinery, you normally you run it side by side and you presume there's gonna be no downtime, or you buy a new piece of software and it's an immediate transition. When you talk to a business owner about taking somebody offline, shall we say. for six hours a week or three hours a week or whatever it is, you can already start to s hear them saying, Well, who's gonna or them or they saying, Who's gonna deal with those tasks? Who's gonna pick up that slack?

speaker-2: So I totally agree with your point and it is one of the objections that you typically get and that's quite a short sighted mindset that people have where they're thinking of today's problem, today's task, today's to-do list. Well, that is the fundamental problem with your business if you're thinking in that way. If you continue to operate like that, they're never gonna have the capacity, the head space, the capability to invest in changing how they work to change how the business grows. If they're not the ones doing that, then the people beneath them absolutely aren't. You have such a lot of leaders that are stuck in firefighting mode, managers and staff as well, because it all just trickles downhill. So one of the things that I always recommend is being really clear on how much time is actually required to commit to that training program. Cause it's no point saying it's going to be five hours a week and they're going to think, my goodness, I can't do that. Short bite-sized chunks is much better because you'll retain it, but you need to apply it very quickly. We've all been on those training courses where it's a week long or it's a whole day. And they're normally quite motivating training courses and you ask them after six months, or what change did that happen? What did you implement? I've got a file somewhere in me. can't quite remember what I learned off that.

speaker-0: What I thought was really interesting though was the last bit about the return on investment and what you actually take away from it and how you as a business make sure that's part of the part of the thing. It's not just you go on a training course and that's the end of it. Because that is the bit where businesses fall down. Do they do you think they just don't think beyond the the the what if or the what next or the so what? Do you think they just don't ask themselves that?

speaker-2: So let me take it back a little step. What they tend to think of is the solution, not the problem that they're trying to solve. So they'll say, everybody needs to be trained on how to manage people. So everyone trudges off and you go to this training course and then you learn how to do a one-to-one. You learn there are different types of personalities that people have in the way that they operate in the workplace. And you make a load of notes and you've learned all this theory and you've learned all these models, all these methods. But then it doesn't make sense. Well, how do I talk to Jimmy about that? How do I apply that to my team and my context and my workplace? So we need to take a step back because the step back will help you to understand the ROI. What is the problem in the workplace that you're trying to solve? Because if you don't know the root cause you're trying to solve, just putting someone on a training course is not going to make that root cause be solved. It's just going to give someone a load more tools, which probably is just going to overwhelm them.

speaker-0: Mm.

speaker-1: I think it's really complicated as well. So you do your week-long course and you go to implement it and there's a hurdle because the instructor told you if you do this, this and this, they will say this, this and this, and then you and because you've done rather than a two-hour week and you're trying to do that kind of incremental change, because you're trying to pull that change in, you hit a hurdle, you've got no support.

speaker-2: And that's where it comes back to this kind of different approach to learning. The starting point normally is you don't have any goals defined in the business. So if you want to be directionless and kind of trying to do everything. So the first point is what goal do you want your business to be at? So by the time that we get to the end of the program, you should have some wins. So there is a commercial ROI. So I would normally talk to the managing director. There's an example of this recently with one of my clients. They're in the rail industry. They once went to the energy industry. So that became a strategic goal. They are now focusing their resources, their energy, their effort, their roles and accountability towards that. And guess what? They secured a hundred thousand pound contracts in the energy industry, which if they haven't defined the goal, if they hadn't have aligned the roles, if they haven't set that up, they wouldn't have secured it.

speaker-1: Step one then, we need to define a goal. And is that a broad goal? Is that a specific goal? How would if we were a business owner tomorrow and we say, you know what, I want to start training up the staff, how broad does that need to be or how specific would that goal need to be?

speaker-2: So the goal starting point isn't about I need to train the staff because that's going to solution mode. The goal starting point is the business trajectory and the business growth. So fundamental ones that tend to come up in terms of manufacturing and engineering type clients are things like OTIFF, what on time in full delivery. So that's a very clear metric. Have your package, your product being made to the right quality and being accepted by the customer on the other side on the day that you said it was going to be delivered. That's called, that's OTIFF. So that's quite a key measure. You've either got that in place or you've not, you're on track or you're off track. What have you actually got a measure around it? Because one of my clients that had that OTIF measure, was started, it was just continually. They actually did have the measure, but they didn't have it agreed. So the managing director in his head knew what he wanted it to be. Could everybody else recall that number? No. Was everybody else lined up to deliver on it? No. Have they communicated it? No. So now they've got... clarity around it, it's embedded into their team meetings, it's discussed, people know exactly how they contribute towards that and the leadership gap or the people gap of how to deliver that was clear.

speaker-1: So talk me through that process then. So this we've got OTIF is our our ambitious goal if you want. The D says this is our goal. How do we then disseminate that through staff? And how do we then pick up where are the training gaps, where are the machinery gaps? How do we roll that through?

speaker-2: So with that other, with that same client, sorry, they've got OTIFF as a goal, they've got sales revenue as a goal, and they've also got margin as a goal. So they're quite broad goals, but they're also very measurable goals. So they now have it where they're reviewing that within their management systems or within their management meetings. They now have it that there's little posters around the business so that you can see what those are. They've linked their bonus and performance systems to that. So if you meet those goals, people get paid more as a result. So the training need was how do we set the performance system up in the business to embed this goal in our way of working? Now, because I've been doing this for 20 years, I've got standard toolkits, templates, methodologies, frameworks, I can help you with these certain bits and I'll train you on that. You need to know how to convert your specific measures into your specific business.

speaker-0: I was just gonna say, if we take a step back for a minute and just go back to the one thing of investing into the people as well as machinery. If you're somebody listening to this who's running running a business, what what kind of signs are there or things are there that they would recognise in themselves to think, Am I doing that or am I not doing this? What's the right balance?

speaker-2: think the starting point is an evidence-based view. If you looked at your budget and you saw, have I got a people budget? Yes or no? If the answer to that is yes, what's contained within that? If there is not a single penny of money in your business allocated to leadership development, management development or behavioral development, then you have a fundamental gap in your business because you are not giving people the tools, the mindset, the behavior or the support for them to grow as individuals, for them to grow the business. So the primary indicator is have a look on your budget.

speaker-1: As we look at that budget then, what is a rough percentage or what what would we expect to be investing into our people?

speaker-2: think it's variable for different businesses because you do have some businesses who actually they invest quite a lot. I see that quite a lot in engineering type businesses because they do have to have big annual compliance type training courses that they need to be on or accreditations or they'll be part of CNG and they'll have a professional membership that they're paying for and all that kind of stuff. So for some it's kind of skewed anyway because they're already investing in training. It's just the not, it's not the right type of training. So coming back to Hayley's question, there can be some other indicators like, When you look at your senior leadership team, do you look at them and you're like, I am so pleased that I've got these people around me. They are absolutely amazing. This is the best team I've ever been part of and I love this team and I trust everybody and I know that they're going to deliver. If the answer to any of those questions is no, you have a gap. And if you have a gap, you need to have a solution to that gap. But there is no point putting everybody on a course saying... go and learn how to work better as a senior leadership team, go and learn how to build trust. Cause they'll go and learn a lot of theory, but that's not going to change how they work. So it again, comes back to your point, Phil, of the wraparound support around it. How are people going on these training courses and being supported? So you can go external, someone like me who can help you, or you as the managing director or senior leadership team can think, I'm putting my guy on this training course for this reason, cause there's this problem. Therefore, I'm going to speak to him beforehand and say, this is what I need you to do to learn. This is what I expect when you come back. And this is the support I will give you to hold you accountable and to help you when you get stuck.

speaker-0: So I'm I'm gonna slightly change the step one because I think step one is recognising that you actually have the pro the gaps there. Yeah,

speaker-2: need.

speaker-0: because I think that Yeah, I like that. I think you're right what you said. I think the technical training it's a given. It's like with like in accountancy world, we have to do CPD. So that's just a given that you do it. But do we do I ever stop and think about the other bits around, you know, which For example, it's pointing case, isn't it? So I think step one is recognising that you have a gap. But if somebody asked me, I'd be Yeah, my guys are on training courses all the time. We do loads of stuff, but it's all technical stuff. So I think step one is recognising you've got the gap. Then we're gonna define the goal. Yeah. That might be alongside or adjacent to it. And then what's that?

speaker-2: Well, I just want to add a little bit onto number one. I'm going to sneak a bit more in because the first bit in terms of the defining the need or the problem, again, I'm all about evidence. You need to have evidence behind it. So one of the tools I use is called Belbin and that's a really, really, really useful tool that helps you to understand how you operate within a team environment. But it has a 360 element built in. So it takes literally five minutes. You can have six observers, your manager, a peer, a colleague, somebody who works for you, someone you work with in a different team, your external mentor, and they can give you feedback as well. And then you have a really comprehensive report that gives you insight into, I see myself here, other people see me here or here on these different indicators. So the evidence, it needs to be something people can resonate with. So just wanted to slip that in because it gives a bit more context into practically what we can do with this.

speaker-1: So step step one, we we look at our senior leadership team and we think, Okay, do you know what? Maybe we're not at peak. Or maybe we are at peak, but we want to measure further. Let's try and evidence this point before we move on any further. So we go on somewhere like Belvin and we we do that or we do a more kind of rudimentary version of that. So okay, so we we've got that now. We understand where we are today, so we can now move to step So okay, where's our goal? I'm with you. And then we move on. Go on then, Angela, what is step three?

speaker-2: So once you've actually moved on and you've got your goal, is then about enabling the conditions for success because you've been trained now. So again, another example, I trained one of my clients recently on capacity improvement and they all started the day with there's absolutely no chance. I'm a lean, mean machine. I'm really efficient. I'm really effective. You know, I couldn't do any more in my job. And every single one of them was chomping at the bit at the end of that session. Like, my God, Angela, I've actually found five hours. and every one of them smashed that half day target. But if we'd just left it there, I'd have left them in a motivated state. I can save this time, this is amazing. In a state where they've all learned these fundamental practical tools that they can apply into the business. But if I walk away or the business walks away at that point, comes back to Hayley's point, who's holding them accountable to deliver that? So step number three is creating those conditions for success. Setting it up beforehand, you're gonna be held accountable, you're gonna be given support. And also there's a goal of what you're going to do post you doing that. We then expect you're going to take this additional ownership. You're going to implement this particular thing. You're going to change that particular measure or that particular goal.

speaker-0: Don't think and I've been on a fair few training courses, I don't think I I anybody's ever done that asked that question or set that premise of this is like what are you gonna get out of it and how are we gonna see the results of that and measure that? Do you think that's a down a downfall in that I've just been on really crap training courses or is it You do things differently, is it in the like i i what's the

speaker-2: but they cause other problems.

speaker-0: Yeah, yeah.

speaker-2: So I think it goes back to what said earlier about you're going on technical training courses. So of course the expectation is you're going to learn about the new tax law and you're going to implement it into your ways of working. So it's inherent that you're going to it into how you're currently working. If you go on a Sage training course, for example, then you'll look at how to use that system and then you go back to the workplace and now you know how to print that report, add to that new column in. It's not explicitly said in technical training because it's just expected because you have to adhere to that because of a regulation or because of a standard or an audit or something that's going to measure it anyway. I'm talking about behavior based training and that is very, very different. This is you have to fundamentally change how you're communicating. You have to fundamentally change how you are operating, how you are working and importantly, how you are thinking. So that expectation has to be set from the start because They do come on my training courses, come on my programs, come on my workshops. Most of the time with a clothesline set.

speaker-1: It's a complicated one, isn't it? Because it I suppose you look at dealing with tangible and intangible. When you talk about we want to get a product ready on time, that's a very tangible goal. When you talk about the leadership readiness of my team or the confidence of my team to manage us, that's a very intangible goal. I think Haley gave a great example because you've got to have all of those goals set out and preset and you've got to know that they're measurable, that they are achievable. Yeah. And then you can look at the kind of the training of the mindset. How do you then approach your staff and work out what kind of training they want from a a mindset? Do they need positivity training? Do they need leadership training? Do they need confidence training? How do we work out what kind of training our staff would would require or would even would like?

speaker-2: So as part of the growth performance program that I've been launching this year, there's a fundamental bit that comes into step one on define the problem. It's a cultural and performance assessment. So it's a independent evidence-led assessment of your business, what every single person in the business ideally fills in. So it's a quick survey that they complete. And then there's certain indicators that I'm assessing you against. And I will give you a score and I will say you're either clusters high performing, you're stable, or you're at risk. And then from that, it's really clear to dig into these are your performance blockers. And it could be things like communication. could be things like leadership capability. It could be things like decisions are made too slow in the business. It could be one of many things. Handovers aren't done appropriately. There's loads of other indicators on there. So from that, we get this hit list of these top three things that are blocking the performance of your business. Therefore what I then give the people as a training directly links to those blockers we're trying to solve. So by the end of the programme, we remeasure the culture and those indicators should have increased and improved. And then that gives us the next roadmap, the next hit list to look at, the next training support that's needed as an intervention. So that's the cyclical approach. Very focused, very data-driven, solving the right problems at the right time, but with key measures behind it to see the impact and progress has been made.

speaker-1: And if somebody wanted to take that on as more of a DIY, they wanted to say, look, we're gonna do this in-house, how would they go about that setting those steps before I bring somebody in? You know, it's a little bit like AI, isn't it? Before I engage with an AI consultant and I get them to put all of that in place, how can I dip a toe in the water and see if this is something that we want to get towards?

speaker-2: There's a few things you can do. First of all, you can look at some of the measures that you data that you've already got within the business. So you'll probably already know staff turnover. So if you've got a lot of people leaving the business and that's an indicator you need to do something, you can look at an exit interviews, why people are leaving. Is there some trends that's happening in the business that's causing that to happen? You can have team meetings where you ask these questions, but the risk with asking it openly in an open forum verbally is that people just go, no, no, I'm all right. I'm all right here. afterwards the water killer, can you believe he asked us that as if we're going to tell him that you'd have that type of response. So there's a, there's a tool you can use, which is called slide or SLIDO. It's a free tool or you can pay for it. think it's 20 quid a month or something for a monthly piece. And it's a polling tool. I think there's tools available on teams and things like that as well, actually. And you could pose some polls. So you'll see how many people said one out of 10, two out of 10, three out of 10, four out of 10. So you'll see the distribution and the range. So even asking that one question anonymously in a safe way, that's going to give you evidence. But you've got to be brave to do that. Because if you put that slider up in a team of, I don't know, 50 people at an all hands tight meeting and everyone's on the phone and everyone clicks a button and it's skewed towards a very low score, you've got to be prepared to stand there as a leader and say, I am committed to changing this.

speaker-1: I think it is brave. It's also challenging as a COMD, whatever we want to say, that and it's a I suppose a little bit like the government, that what everybody believes within the company isn't necessarily right for the vision or right for the way that we're driving forward. You know, if you asked everybody tomorrow what the best policy is, it it's more taxes for everybody else, isn't it? And within your company is probably the same if we're to go to employees and say What what do you think is the biggest change that could happen? Well, their team could be quicker and if they sorted themselves out.

speaker-2: Yep.

speaker-1: How how do I really like the idea of starting with a slido and and just sending it because then that is that data piece, isn't it? What are the kind of key questions that you think they should be asking?

speaker-2: would ask, I would do it quite behavioural based to be honest, I would ask about high performance team, I would ask do you feel supported by your manager? And I would ask about the relationship with your team members and the reason for asking those fundamental, yes they're soft, intangible, tight questions but people have a feeling and a perception, again leading on what you just said about the perception based piece. If you don't have good relationships in the business, you don't have trust, if you don't have trust it's going to be a lot of blame. on they're not doing a good job, they could be quicker and doing the best that I could do, but it's them what over there. So it gives you a lot of kind of understanding beneath the surface when you start asking those fundamental questions. The second question about your manager and the leadership team, do you feel supported? Or even a question about, do you know, are you clearing our goals? Because if the answer to that is not clear, then you've got headless chicken mode, you've got everyone running around firefighting, trying to deliver something that is not in the same direction. So. I'd ask questions based on, as a leader, generally you have a feeling of what's happening in the business, what you think the problems are. Test the theory by asking the question because they'll either have a different view to you or they'll have the same view to you, or there'll be some surprising data. But the data is important because otherwise it is quite hard trying to change mindset, thinking, behaviors, ways of working. It requires energy, effort and commitment. And when you're in the hard trenches and you're in the bit where it's getting quite resistant, people just fully aren't buying it before it clicks into the next bit.

speaker-0: So And I'm very on board with this. But if I'm listening and I'm running a business and I'm like, well, this is all great. But actually, I've got 20 clients, 20 sets of accounts that I need to get out by the end of October. Got people screaming at me to know what the tax is. Blah blah blah. This is not true, by the way. This is just made up.

speaker-2: the caveat.

speaker-0: And I'm like, you know what? We just need to we just need to work. We just need to do it. And it's the same, like if I don't know, in Phil's world, if you got a midnight phone call saying, you know, some random things happened and everything's everybody's been hacked, he's not gonna like get up the next day and be like, Right, well, today we're gonna do do you know and I get the firefighter mode. But if you're in that at the moment, if you're if you're there in that place, it's very, very difficult to see and to start taking actions to change because You don't wanna let your clients down. It's your business. You know, you've got a massive amount of pressure. What would you what would you say or how would you help somebody get out of that?

speaker-2: So you've hit the nail on the head because that is a risk for every single person. And it's the reality for every single person. They are, the world is in firefighting mode. Everybody is in firefighting mode, trying to balance the demands of clients, your team and everything else. So that comes back to the beginning bit about the problem that you're trying to solve. And it comes back to set number three as well of the conditions for success. It could be that we wanna slow the pace down. So that's where it's got to be really realistic of how fast do you wanna go? How are you gonna go there? And do you have the right mechanisms around you? But it also comes to the launch. So we need to launch at the right time. We need to monitor it at the right level and we need to set the right pace. But all of that happens before, because if you don't do it before, people just get stuck in the trenches and they give up. So that's about, again, step number three, setting up the conditions for success.

speaker-1: So if we are an MD tomorrow who says, Do you know what? I want to 'cause I think the first thing is to test the water. So I want to test the water to the team. So I've got my Slido and I might be incorrect on the word in there. I'm gonna set these, do you think we're a high performing team? Do you feel we're supported? Do you feel part of the team? That's kind of my my initial three and we set that anonymously, we get the results back and they're not great. We then say, okay, as a business, here's our here's our goal. I presume we then broadcast that out to people and we say maybe we're gonna have some internal meetings and we're gonna try and understand how we can help you to achieve this goal.

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: Is that our starting point?

speaker-2: In an ideal world, yes, you'd set the conditions for success beforehand and that you would think about those things because, most people don't. Most people are like, listen to this podcast. And they'll probably have dialed off 20 minutes ago and not listened to this bit. So they've already asked this line or question like, everyone said that we're not great in this company. what am supposed to do now? So that's what happens with a lot of people. You read a quick article, you see something on TikTok, someone gives you an idea and you're like, I'm put that in the business tomorrow. But they don't think about what happens next. So they actually cause more problems that they... assessing out today. So your leaders have to be ready and prepared for the answers that they're going to get. But one other thing I'd add, and I probably should have said this earlier is there is, I've got a free resource that they can use anyway. So if you go, I can give you the links to the show notes. If they go onto that, gives you, a five minute mini kind of diagnostic on certain questions. So you can do that. And then you're not exposing it in front of everyone because it'll give you a personalized report. It gives you some quick wins and it breaks it down across certain indicators as a red and green assessment. So if you don't want to do it publicly, just do that. And then the things that are scoring red, ask those questions. So that's a kind of free and quick way that they can achieve that.

speaker-1: I really love that point because it's one of the things that I, as a numb nuts business owner that doesn't think through consequences, don't think about. Because before we release that Slido, we should be saying if we score between one and three, we're going to do this. If we score between three and five, we're going to do if we score so that when we do come to that point and other results come in, it's not an emotional decision anymore because we've said it before the emotions can slip in. Yeah. I love that a lot. If people have enjoyed this and if they've maybe they've got their Slido out, maybe they haven't got their Slido out, maybe they want to go pre Slido and talk to Angela, who would you love to speak to and how are they best to get in touch with you?

speaker-2: So I would love to speak to managing directors who are leading businesses that are between kind of one to 25 million pounds worth of revenue. And you've got between kind of 20 to 150 staff. If that's you and you sat listening to this and you're thinking, I've got loads of problems in my business. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Then I would suggest take my free quiz. It'll be in the show notes and you can book in for a free performance clarity call for 30 minutes as well. So regardless of whether you want to continue working with me. I have an absolute passion for this industry and the people in this industry and I want to help you to make a difference and make an impact. So even if you choose not to work with me longer term, I'd rather you're on the right path for how you're trying to improve than doing the slide and then thinking, my gosh, what do we do next? Have some direction, have some clarity on that pathway. You can reach out on LinkedIn or I can give you my email address. It'll be in the show notes. I also share lots of daily tips on LinkedIn as well with lots of different. Insights, practical tools, mistakes I've made, observations within the industry. So just follow me as they say on YouTube.

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: Phenomenal. Thank you very much.

speaker-2: Now I hope I get my badge for being number two.

speaker-1: You are. The first the first dual medalist, aren't you?

speaker-2: in double gold.

speaker-1: First second time, I like that.

speaker-0: So do you agree with that then, Phil? Do you think that businesses should genuinely invest as much in people as they do in machinery?

speaker-1: Do I think businesses should invest in much as much in people as they do in machinery? 100% yes. I think the differential is, and the hardest part for us, especially as managers, as directors, is that often it's our time that's the precious resource. With a machine, with a new system, I can throw five thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand, whatever amount of money it is. I can say I've got that money in the bank. I'm going to throw that and I'm going to get more efficiency. Whereas if you were to say I need to spend three hours a week, that's much harder to do because it means that I need to move meetings around. I need people to cover things up. And I think that's why as business owners, we often send somebody away on a training course to tick the box. Because it's much easier to invest a set amount of cash in their time. than it is to allocate some of your time and to go on that growth journey and to support your staff as much as that. So the answer is yes, with caveats. Do you think it is Hayley?

speaker-0: It is. I think it's easy. It's definitely easy to get caught up in the day-to-day of service delivery and business development and doing your accounts and and and sometimes the people side of it can get forgotten or left behind. Even just as simple as doing a monthly one-to-one with your guys of like, you know, how's it going? How are you? It slips the first thing that slips, isn't it? Or it can be the first thing that slips when you get busy. I definitely agree that there should be an investment into people outside of the technical training. For me, it's about the balance of it and probably I really like the return on investment piece, like the measurement piece of it. And but it's how that fits into every business. So for my business it would be one way, but for your business it would probably be a different way. For an engineering business or a manufacturing business, again, it's it's going to be different. Again, so I think and when you've got a big business with different departments, that's even harder because what you measure people in the warehouse on isn't going to be what you've measured the office staff on. So I think there's there's a lot there's a lot to it. And I think sadly you can probably waste a lot of money without feeling that return on investment. So I think doing the planning piece and again it always comes back to goals, doesn't it? Which irritates me but it does. If you know where you're trying to get to, then you can help decide whether that investment has been worthwhile or not. So I think it's joining the dots, isn't it?

speaker-1: You're completely right, because it's about vision. So here's our goal. It's also about values. Here's the way that we get to it. And this is always a stupid example, but if your goal is to lose two stone by the end of six months, you could chop off a leg. It wouldn't be the correct way to do it, etc. But that's so if your goal to your team is we need to make this amount of profit, what they might well do is some kind of horrific consequences that you hadn't a thought of. So they might buy in cheaper components. They might not spend as much time on each item. So you need to have that goal, that value, and then go down to the team and say, I'd like to spend a few hours this week with you and maybe half an hour every week or whatever it is, seeing how we can help you achieve this goal. What more development do we need? do you know? And it might be this little technical course would help me out with this. But it might be if we can understand how that next department works better, if we can understand how their productivity works, then we can come into ours and we can deliver better for them.

speaker-0: Yeah. And I think it's at the end of the day, you you your people and your team are what makes your business. And I I through and through believe that. And I you will have heard me say it, Corburg isn't me, it's them. That you know, they're the ones doing it, they're the ones, you know, delivering for clients every day. So there's you've definitely got to have a happy I don't think happy's the right word, but an an engaged team that want to do good for the business in the way that you want you want the business to go definitely but then there's also the reality side of it so you know we were talking earlier about the economic environment and how businesses are doing generally but if you're like to the bone and you're not making loads of profit and cash isn't flowing in well like you've got to make a decision do I fix this machine or do I to some degree it's a it's a luxury Do you think

speaker-1: Think some of that comes down to incremental change, doesn't it? And I think some of that comes down to the fact that you're gonna have to take a chunk of your time out to now work towards this goal. I think if your team is being hammered and you are struggling and you're struggling to be profitable, then the next obvious consequence is that your teams start churning and start going for higher paid jobs. And they start to say, why am I working here? So it's probably as important with those teams, although it feels horrific to do it, it's probably as important to set that vision to here's where we want to get to, because part of that is everybody's gonna receive pay rises. But we've had a few what one things now about that incremental change, about making small steps and I think with the people piece it's just the same. It it's it doesn't have to be I'm gonna send everybody on a week long course. I think one of the things we covered over in that what one thing was that a one week course is probably a sticking plaster that is gonna fall off very quickly three months down the line, two months down the line, even a month down the line after the course. And that actually incremental change is the way we want to go forward and taking a little bit of time every week or every month. To look at here's what we want to do, but also here are the bumps that my staff have encountered trying to get to that point. How can I support them and help them to move forward? And probably with most of us as business owners, how do I show them that this is a consistent long term plan and it's not gonna be fad of the month where, you know, when our sales figures drive up next quarter, we're gonna screw this off and we're gonna go and buy a nice new piece of machinery or we're gonna do this or that.

speaker-0: Yeah, it it it and well, it's like the chap that we spoke to who said he got the consultant in and he was like, You are the problem after the consultant had done whatever like I sometimes do think that business owners are their own problem, but that is digressing a little bit. But coming back to the incremental change, I think it's a conj it's being conscious about it, isn't it? 'Cause I think we can all sit there and Like today we'll probably be like, yeah, we should be going doing so, Phil, what are you gonna do next week in FMIT? How are you know, I'll phone Ronan up and see what he's you know, what's Phil done this week. But you get caught up in the day today, so it's how you keep yourself accountable to that, isn't it, as well? And it become I suppose it's it becoming part of the culture, isn't it? It that's probably what we're talking about, the way Just the way things work and the way the business works.

speaker-1: Yeah, I suppose it's like the gym, it's like running it's like everything that you need to start it off with a plan in advance. You also need a plan. So we've started within the Mighty Firm IT a mentorship. So I'm gonna spend three hours a week with one of the guys. But in doing that, I need to make sure that we can pull them off whatever they are doing, and there's somebody else to cover that. That people aren't on holiday, they're not on sick you know, if somebody's got a sick day, what are we gonna do? And so The first thing that we said was it can't just be a recurring appointment because a recurring appointment you could see three weeks down the line immediately was bashed out because I've got a sales meeting. And so that so it needs to be an actual conversation within the team to say, let's have a look at our calendar in three weeks. When is a good time to put three hours in or an hour or forty minutes or whatever? Let's all agree that you've got cover that this person is going to come off this job. And take over your job so that we've got that time and let's all consciously understand that this is this is a positive. And the biggest fear factor for me is always what on earth are we gonna talk about in that three hours? You know, are we gonna sit are things going all right? Yeah, they're good. Okay. So how do we set some yeah, how do we set some goals, some ambitions? What do we say? And as a manager, it's very daunting or as a business owner, it's very daunting because you need to be saying, Here's what I want to get out of this meeting but at the same time you're not always a hundred percent sure yourself.

speaker-0: Yeah. And that's when it goes full circle back to the goals, doesn't it? And what you're trying to deliver and achieve. And yeah, it's very I can never say that word.

speaker-1: Halistic.

speaker-0: No, that wasn't the way I was thinking of, but it will do.

speaker-1: I know what you mean, you mean circular, but there's a better word for it, yeah.

speaker-0: Yeah, that's exactly what I mean. Yeah. Clearly you don't know it either. Well, thank you so much for joining us. We hope you have found one thing to help move your business forward.

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