It is November. Half term is over. Mists, mellow fruitfulness, Halloween, Guy Fawkes and days getting shorter. I wonder what autumn means for you? Is it a gorgeous season of pretty trees and fruits or the start of the run up to Christmas? Yes, I did dare say that word. The list makers will be making lists already. The dreaded family plan of who is going where this year will have to be agreed soon and any flack it causes lived through. The restaurants, the shops and websites are starting to pressurise us. I have booked my supermarket delivery slot. (I say quickly, I have done nothing else and cannot see any other preparations happening any time soon). At least one young person I know is starting to make a list for Santa – not sure if he is trying to be good as well!
I have to confess due to unforeseen circumstances I still have not finalised my 2024-2025 accounts. So whilst I enjoy the winter colours and the pair of red kites circling outside my window soon I must get those documents into shape and start thinking about my lists.
I am writing this on Sunday in a place that is normally noisy. I said to someone “Isn’t it quiet”. The answer came straight back “It’s Sunday; no management”.
That made a million thoughts come into my mind; I guess yours too. The first one being if you have a 24/7 operation how do you manage it? The most important thing must be to show up on every working day and at different times. Someone happened to say to me a couple of weeks ago “What do the night shift do?” I felt like saying “Go and see”. A business does different things at different times; different shifts have different tasks and different tasks mean different types of people. A continual operation means people work the extra hour when the clocks go back and Christmas, New Year and all the other holidays. If your operation needs three shifts, seven days a week, 365 days a year then the demands on you as a manager are wider. It is so obvious but how often do people forget and fall into working 8 until 6? And you cannot do it if you behave as if you are make a state visit and just ticking boxes or auditing. You need to just show up and share the trenches in a useful way.
Some of you have heard me speak about the need for leaders to build their own legend. I did it once by mistake. I was a very young operations manager in a parcels business responsible for long haul operations, day and night, in and out of Berkshire. I admit I did not pop in as often out of hours as I should have done partly because I felt a bit of a spare part at 2am. One night I was on my way home at silly o’clock after a night out and there was one of my vehicles in a layby with a wheel in shreds and the driver standing alongside it. I stopped. I happened to know him. We waited together for the maintenance engineer. Talk about the grapevine. Word got around about me stopping in my own time (and in a party frock!). The word was good. It said that I took an interest and I cared. Suddenly I was the governor who was on the road! Pure chance, nothing clever but it made a good story and motivated people.
Now this isn’t the only way. You also need to trust your supervisors and not get in their way so it is a happy balance.
However the main thought is what do you contribute in your role whatever it might be. Do those who work with you see and rate your contribution? If not why not?
One of the hardest questions I was ever asked was when I was doing a tour of an operation to understand it before taking on my first role as a non-executive director. The guy who was showing me his fabulously effective operation knew why I was there. He asked, “What are you going to bring to the business?” That is a hard question to answer. What you contribute in the board room takes so many forms and at the time I only knew about it in theory. Now I am much clearer. A non-exec or in my case a business mentor (which is much the same thing for a smaller business), brings high challenge and high support.
So showing up whatever your capacity to nurture/support and develop/challenge your business ideas does not mean no Sunday working!
If this approach sounds interesting and you fancy someone in your corner to question, and support, to help you develop yourself and the business then please give me a call. I would love to explore the situation with you.
I have spaces in my book at the moment so it would be a good moment.
I love hearing about people’s lives and businesses, off the meter, to help them explore possibilities for making their aspirations a reality. I hope you will be one of them.
And wherever you are on a Sunday is it too quiet?