The Control Freak

During a particularly protracted meeting, one of her employees remarked to Laura, in less than friendly tones, that she was a “complete control freak”.

After affording this unsolicited criticism due consideration, she replied, with absolutely no irony whatsoever, “Thank you very much”.

In Laura’s experience her willingness to control was a positive influence on her business.

She reflected with ruthless honesty, “How many times in my life or career when I took great care with a decision, project, or issue did things go pear shaped?”

“Conversely, have there been occasions over the years when I relaxed, failed to exercise normal diligence, or was persuaded I was fussing too much?”

Laura concluded that, in her experience, regrets only emerged when she compromised, or took her eye off the ball.

She had learned this the hard way.

Laura’s business had been started by her father, but she had invested the last seven years of her life helping the business grow into a thriving enterprise.

She was good at persuading clients to use her small logistics company. Customers were won over once Laura explained that her larger competitors, despite their huge automated warehouses and extensive resources, would never care enough about smaller customers to make them top priority.

Laura’s genius was in researching clients and identifying those with just the right profile to benefit from her company’s personal touch.

Dad had stepped down as Managing Director three months ago to become Chairman, appointing Laura in his place.

In Laura’s eyes her father could do no wrong, but she was less than impressed with one of his final decisions. Two months before retiring he promoted Ray to Finance Director, making him the only other director in the business in a position that also held voting rights.

When challenged, her father had explained that Ray’s promotion was a reward for years of loyal service, but Laura couldn’t shake the feeling that her Dad still felt she lacked experience.

To make matters worse, Laura felt the promotion had gone to Ray’s head. Though she was now Managing Director, and despite the fact that Ray only owned a token 3% shareholding, he seemed to be taking complete control of all matters financial.

Whilst this was annoying, Laura had bigger fish to fry.

Sales were booming and the infrastructure was showing the strain.

Laura concluded that she needed to extend the warehouse.

Out of courtesy, she discussed the idea with her father who was broadly supportive, but recommended she run the idea past Ray to get a financial perspective.

Against her better judgement Laura scheduled a meeting with Ray a few days later.

To her surprise not only did Ray seem aware of her plans, but had come to the meeting with a set of alternative proposals.

Laura’s intention had been to extend the warehouse from its existing foot print increasing the Company’s capacity by 40%.

Ray immediately pointed out that Laura’s idea was misguided and lacked ambition.

Despite her initial fury, Laura resisted the temptation to tighten Ray’s tie and listened as he explained that the land around the existing warehouse was extremely valuable.

The Company could sell the existing surplus land and the profits would not only pay for a much larger area on a green field site but there would be sufficient proceeds left over to make a significant dent in the costs of a new warehouse.

In short, Ray’s plan was that for the same investment the Company could purchase a larger, purpose built warehouse on a green field site to work in tandem with the existing warehouse.

Laura expressed concern that dividing the operation could lead to duplication of effort, an increase in overheads and loss of cohesion.

Ray countered this by pointing out that dividing the operation would expand the catchment area for the business and open up a broader base of potential new clients for Laura to exploit.

Rather than call a Board meeting chaired by her father, Laura called in on him on the way home that evening. It soon became clear that though she could always rely on his vote, her father felt she should think hard before squashing Ray’s plans.

Against her better judgement Laura worked hard with Ray in the months that followed to develop a robust business plan, including a much analysed cash flow forecast.

Finally satisfied that Ray’s ambitious plan made sense for the business she handed the development of the new site over to her Co-Director whilst Laura set about ensuring there was enough business to fill the new warehouse.

In the intervening months the project was a major source of discussion at Board Meetings. Ray presented figures that demonstrated the plan was proceeding on time and on budget. Laura and her father congratulated Ray on his stewardship of the development.

At one Board meeting Laura noted that Ray was now presenting the management accounts, and the figures surrounding the project, on spreadsheets. Previously, all results came directly from the company financial software.

Ray explained that figures were still derived from the normal source but, because the existing financial software was not sophisticated enough to handle the new warehouse development, he had to consolidate the figures on spreadsheets.

Laura also noticed a change in Ray’s behaviour. He hadn’t taken a vacation since her father had stepped down. Ray was always in the office when Laura got to work, and was still tapping at his computer when she left for the day.

She put this down to Ray’s elevation and his desire to show he was worthy of her father’s faith in him. Though his behaviour made her feel uneasy, she didn’t want to be accused of sour grapes and turned a blind eye to Ray’s recent eccentricities.

From time to time Laura would ask to see figures on the new development, and one day went to see the site accompanied by Ray. The ground had been cleared and the foundations for the new warehouse had been excavated.

The work on the new site had progressed broadly to the expected point, but Laura was surprised to see no evidence of work being done, or equipment at the site.

Ray explained that the team that had cleared the site and excavated the foundations had finished their work and the builders were about to move in.

Over the next few weeks Ray’s behaviour changed even more dramatically. Normally a gregarious, affable man, he snapped at staff and even his appearance became a little dishevelled.

Matters came to a head three weeks after the site visit.

The Finance Director from the company that supplied Diesel to Laura’s firm called the office and demanded to speak to the Managing Director.

Normally Ray would intercept any such calls, but on this occasion he was in a heated discussion on the other line.

The lady who had taken the call explained that Ray was busy and could Laura please speak to the angry supplier, who introduced himself as Chris.

Before Laura could speak the incandescent FD berated her for not returning his calls. He felt that she was disrespectful and that such behaviour would never have been tolerated when her father ran things.

Laura prided herself on her interpersonal skills and succeeded in calming her unexpected caller.

The Diesel man explained that the company’s account had fallen into arrears. Furthermore, Laura was only able to purchase fuel at Chris’ discretion, as he could no longer obtain credit indemnity insurance against her company’s debts.

Laura felt the ground lurch beneath her feet.

She explained to Chris that she would sort the problem that very day and ended the call with the barely placated supplier.

Laura then grabbed her car keys and rushed from her office, almost knocking Ray over as she burst through the door.

Ignoring his spluttering comments she headed straight for the car park and left the premises to the accompaniment of complaining rubber.

Upon reaching the building site for the new warehouse the lead ball in her stomach began to bounce around, and Laura felt certain she was going to throw up.

Not only were there no contractors in evidence but the site had been padlocked shut.

Ray’s figures had all added up until time was factored into the plan.

The cash just didn’t flow.

Far more cash than Ray had foreseen had to be paid out upfront.

To make matters worse the instalments from the purchaser of the land around the existing warehouse had been delayed.

The recently appointed FD had covered this up by presenting his management accounts on spreadsheets that he could manipulate before meetings.

The deposits and up-front costs had eaten up most of Ray’s budget and, as a result of slow payment by the land development company, he needed to make up the difference by slowing down payments to trade creditors.

Credit indemnity insurance companies had noted the sharp rise in overdue days and reduced their cover, causing more suppliers to demand payment.

The whole situation had spiralled beyond Ray’s control requiring ever more desperate measures to keep the problem hidden from the Board.

In fact, the company had enough liquidity to weather the storm and still get the new warehouse built. The rescue plan was only made difficult by the fact that Ray had tried to spare his blushes in front of the Board.

Laura had felt uncomfortable with the way the company was run since her father stepped down as MD. Had she been more experienced, she would certainly have challenged Ray’s appointment and insisted on having full control from the outset.

She would never again resist her intuition.

Following Ray’s departure, Laura moved her desk into the front office.

From there she could keep an eye on Jane, the new accountant, and overhear the calls coming into the business.

Laura ensured she was trained to use the company’s financial software, and often ran reports to answer her own questions.

Though there were no administrative functions in the new warehouse, Laura installed a desk there too, and the staff knew that she was likely to turn up at any moment and ask awkward questions.

The truth is no-one on the planet cares as much about your business, your service, or your product as you do.

Employee of Month

Business Schools teach that in a “post-manufacturing economy” people are our greatest assets, and this is probably true.

Some business owners will tell you that people are often a business’ biggest liabilities, and this is also true.

Hiring a new member of staff, be it a business’ first or thousandth employee, is a critical decision that requires extremely painstaking consideration.

Every employee hired will incur cost, management time and a degree of risk to the business.

One moment of incompetence, malice, or irrationality on the part of an employee can destroy a business that may have taken decades to establish.

Similar thoughts to these were going through Sandra’s mind as she drove to work through the dark to avoid the rush hour traffic.

She was the Managing Director and majority shareholder of a recycled products business in Cheshire that employed five members of staff, and Sandra’s part-time assistant.

In principle the business should have been thriving, but in fact sales were sluggish despite strong demand, and profits were disappointing because costs remained stubbornly higher than forecast.

Sandra reflected that every evening she would draw up a “to do list” of essential activities for the following day, but by seven o’clock in the evening it was not unusual to find that she had never even crossed off item one.

Quotations and proposals were late going out; new products were just not getting launched, or even developed; customer enquiries were queuing on her email account unread; complaints were not being dealt to the accompaniment of a rising chorus of customer invective; and efficiency measures were still firmly on the drawing board.

The list went on, and on.

Hang on a moment, thought Sandra, surely these postponed activities were the very essence of running the enterprise, essential business processes?

“What the hell do I do all day?” she asked the ghostly face in the rear view mirror.

As she drove through the wet streets the young proprietor wandered why progress was so difficult and resolved to record her activities during the day ahead, to determine what really consumed her time.

Sandra heard the phone ringing as she disabled the burglar alarm and opened the front door to the office.

Sprinting to her desk she was just too late to get to the receiver before the ring tone stopped. After pausing to deliver a stream of appropriate expletives, she noticed the LCD symbol indicating a stored message.

Having typed in the appropriate code she leaned back in her chair to learn that Roy wasn’t going to make it in today. One of the children had developed a bad cold overnight, and he had to tend the sick infant as his partner had to work today.

Whilst Sandra was trying to work out the knock on effect on production she noticed the rest of the staff arriving ready to start their shift.

She made a start trying to reorganise operations to accommodate Roy’s absence but there was a knock on her door.

Her Supervisor’s swipe card was missing and she couldn’t “clock in”.

Sandra looked up distractedly and promised Veronica that she would sort out her hours and make sure she was paid properly. In the meantime, she would prepare another swipe card.

After a few moments Sandra looked up to find Veronica still standing at the end of her desk.

Raising an enquiring eyebrow she fixed the supervisor with a quizzical stare.

“Its just my hours weren’t right last week”

It took Veronica twenty minutes to explain that something must have been wrong with the card anyway because it didn’t seem to be swiping properly. She had in fact worked 35 hours the week before but only been paid for 30.

Sandra realised she was referring to hours worked the previous week, but paid last week.

She promised to look into it and ushered Veronica out of the office in order that she could begin rescheduling the day’s production.

Sandra settled down to try and plan around Roy’s absence.

Hearing the door open, she looked up to see Veronica perching on the end of her desk.

It transpired Roy hadn’t turned in.

The young MD sighed and explained that she already knew and was, in fact, just in the process of trying to reorganise things. She would come and find Veronica shortly when she had finished her deliberations.

After a few moments Sandra looked up to find Veronica still standing at the end of her desk.

This time she tried to make her eye brows simultaneously quizzical and annoyed.

“Its just that this is the fourth time Roy has done this since Christmas” Veronica explained.

Sandra explained that, as an enlightened employer, she had to allow Roy time to deal with his children.

Veronica seemed unconvinced.

She went on to explain that, in fact, all the staff had children, but they managed to arrange child care without letting the company down. Furthermore, why couldn’t Roy’s partner look after the kids?

She informed Sandra that on one of the days he was supposedly “looking after the kids” Veronica’s husband had bumped into Roy in the betting shop.

Briefly Sandra wondered how Veronica managed to convey quotation marks without doing the universal four fingered gesture, but went on to consider the point.

“Perhaps his mum popped round and Roy took a break.”

“He took something alright but it wasn’t a break” was Veronica’s judgement through pursed lips, and with arms firmly crossed.

Again the young MD wondered if she was going to tap her foot too and complete an almost perfect imitation of Sandra’s mother.

“I will speak to Roy” and with that Sandra pointedly shuffled papers on her desk.

“You do realise it is affecting morale”

She began to realise that Veronica must be acting as an official delegation representing the entire workforce and Sandra’s talented eyebrows weren’t going to get her out of this one.

“I promise I will deal with Roy. Now if you don’t mind Veronica, I have a million things to do”.

As an afterthought she added “Have you got everyone organised”

“How can I” Veronica explained reasonably “You’ve had me stuck in here since eight thirty”.

Glancing guiltily up at the clock, Sandra realised it was half past nine and the factory hadn’t even started operating.

Briefly she explained what activities could be excluded to accommodate Roy’s absence and promised she would be out on the shop floor shortly with a more considered schedule.

Her agitated supervisor looked like she was going to argue but, catching sight of her bosses ominous expression confined herself to a parting shot as she went through the door.

“He’ll be in the betting shop”

She was about to settle to the revised schedule when she realised the wage run would need to be started soon, otherwise there would be no funds in her employees bank accounts this time tomorrow and then there would be more than pursed lips and folded arms. It might even escalate to tapping feet, she reflected.

Her part-time assistant Alison should be here by now to begin the process of collating the wage data from the software system and chasing staff to unravel the“ mis-swipes” and explain any adjustments.

The girl was usually late and it looked like today was going to be no exception.

Leaving the office door ajar in order that she could hear the main telephone line ring Sandra sprinted to the ladies praying that no important customer would find her incapacitated.

When she returned to the office she found a small mound consisting of tissues, nasal mucus and tears on the chair where Alison usually sat. The pathetic little pile shuddered and a sob emerged followed by a wail.

After lot of patting, there-theres, and a cup of sugary tea Sandra learned the source of her assistant’s disposition. Not surprisingly it involved Alison’s baseball-cap-toting-buffoon-of-a-boyfriend Gavin and a girl called Pauline who, according to the distressed girl, was “a, like, total slapper”.

Sandra found herself, as she often did at times like this, on the horns of a dilemma. Of course she thought a lot of Alison and hated to see her in this state, but on the one hand she was certain Gavin wasn’t worth the resulting dehydration, whilst on the other she would quite like to get at least a small amount of work out of her diminutive co-worker.

After a few more minutes of “agony-aunting” the conflicted employer gently steered the conversation in the direction of wages and how unselfishly helping others might take Alison’s mind off Gavin.

Sandra realised her mistake as soon as the words left her mouth. The mere mention of the tattoo-covered-would-be-Gangster-Rapper’s name induced another deluge of nasal mucus.

After a further 10 minutes Alison was finally, if distractedly, preparing the wages for payment. Sandra doubted anyone would get the right amounts this week though, of course, she would only hear about the under payments.

Sandra realised she had missed lunch and still hadn’t rescheduled production for the day.

After a further 30 minutes of adjusting and finessing the workload to match reduced manpower she was able to finally make it out onto the shop floor to brief Veronica and the rest of the staff.

As she went through the allocation of labour with her feisty supervisor Sandra was disturbed to see a triumphant smile beginning to form on Veronica’s normally downturned lips. The effect was like seeing a funeral director on a unicycle so alien was the expression on Veronica’s normally lugubrious face.

Sandra faltered and finally stuttered to a halt mid sentence.

“Well we could do that” said the beaming supervisor into the pregnant silence.

This time Sandra was struck by Veronica’s ability to express italics in an otherwise innocuous sentence.

“Could do?” She tried but the italics just wouldn’t come.

“Could do, if the person responsible had ordered the pigment”

“That person being  .  .  .  .?” asked Sandra, though she thought she now understood what had triggered the errant smile.

“  .  .  . in the betting shop” Veronica delivered the punch-line with obvious relish.

By the time Sandra had ordered the pigment and transferred wage payments to the various bank accounts it was almost five o’clock and she realised the revised schedule would never be enacted unless of course Roy failed to materialise again in the morning.

Over the next hour she opened the mail, caught up with her emails and signed off some purchase invoices in order that Alison could get off for the day.

Sandra just had time to wave goodbye to her staff, including the smug looking Veronica, and lock up the factory in time to join the rush hour traffic.

Not only had she failed, yet again, to get to her “to do list”, but she also hadn’t had time to record the activities that had prevented her getting to the “to do list”.

As she edged forward through the gathering gloom Sandra replayed the last 12 hours in her mind.

“What the hell do I do all day?” she asked the ghostly face in the rear view mirror.

The Long Game

After four decades of painstaking work Ben became an overnight success.

Ben never made it to University instead he spent his twentieth birthday jumping from a hovering aeroplane into the sea during a commando raid in 1945.

15 years later Ben was still fighting, protecting his country’s interests, in a different part of the World.

Finally, when most people were established in their careers, Ben was just starting his working life with no significant academic qualifications or appropriate experience.

The toughness that had carried Ben through the most harrowing of times drove him on despite rejection from civilian society.

Finding regular employment difficult to access, he explored alternative opportunities and secured an agreement to import and distribute niche adhesive products.

Ben was successful at exploiting a new customer base for his supplier and after a few years he was earning enough to get married.

Over time he was able to find new suppliers and add to his portfolio.

Ben’s business grew and so did his family.

Though never rich, he was able to provide well for his wife and children.

However, Ben grew increasingly frustrated as time went by.

He always treated his suppliers with respect and bent over backwards to satisfy his customers. Having observed the worst of humanity at close hand, he always adopted an ethical approach to business. This engendered tremendous loyalty from his clients.

However, when it came to the big opportunities, Ben’s suppliers were always reluctant to award him supply contracts for major products. Though it was never said to his face, Ben knew that his business associates felt he lacked a ruthless streak, the killer instinct that ensured success.

The former warrior found it deeply ironic that that the years of extreme aggression that had delayed his career were overlooked when judging his future opportunities.

Nevertheless, Ben stuck to his principles. He looked after his customers and painstaking built up his portfolio, adding new innovative products to sell to his loyal clients.

He had to be creative in order to build his business, because the established, prestigious products still eluded him. However, this brought him into cooperation with young, innovative people that also struggled to catch the eye of large corporations.

By the time Ben was 70 years old he had painstaking built his small business into a profitable, if eclectic, marketing company.

The design students and inventors that he had nurtured during their early careers where now established and successful businessmen. When three of them got together to collaborate on a series of new designs intended for the DIY market, they realised they needed someone to market the new range, and turned automatically to someone they trusted and respected.

Ben invested with the three entrepreneurs and worked hard over the next 5 years to establish the new brand in major retail multiples around the World, calling in favours and using contacts he had built up over the years.

In the year 2000, forty years after being sidelined by mainstream decision makers, Ben finally took charge of distributing a major product range.

Perhaps it was fitting that, in the end, Ben had to build the Global Brand up from scratch himself.

Eventually Ben and his younger partners were bought out by a large corporation. His share of the sale proceeds was in the region of £11 Million.

In the end it wasn’t luck or stubbornness that vindicated Ben’s approach.  He had always had the vision to see what others could not and the mental toughness to deliver success, no matter how long it took.

The old soldier died in 2009 an inspiration to every entrepreneur that was tempted to give in to compromise or self doubt.