Customer Service, Customer Experience and Measuring How Your Company Feels: Interview with Derek Williams of the Wow! Awards
April 26, 2011Help the people of Britain save a million hours in the month of May
May 9, 2011
Here in the UK we have been lucky to have a couple of bank holidays aka long weekends over the last couple of weekends. In the week in between I was in London visiting a client, when I saw this article in The Evening Standard: There’s no calling time on ‘Spoons’ Mr Cool.
In the article, Simon English talks about an interview he has just done with Tim Martin, Chairman of JD Wetherspoon’s, who have just opened their 800th pub 32 years after Mr Martin opened his first pub in north London in 1979. Even though they have been opening pubs up at a rate of just over 2 a month for the last 32 years they are one of the best performing pub and hospitality groups in the UK. One of the reasons is that Mr Martin is a king of Swimming against the tide to help you stand out. According to the article:
“For a long time, the City couldn’t get ‘Spoons at all. Its way of doing things – invest for the long term, treat people well – is anathema to the Square Mile’s whole way of being.
Analysts still can’t understand why Martin doesn’t just cut staff benefits and shove up prices to take profits higher in the short term.
Martin prefers to lower rather than raise margins, offering good value that keeps people coming back, keeps sales going up.”
I think that one of the main reasons may not just be his choice of strategy but may be his leadership style, how that filters down to the rest of the company and its impact on employee engagement and thus the way customers get treated.
Simon English describes his conversation with and observations of Mr Martin as:
“In person, Martin is polite and friendly. You notice that a conversation with him is just that. He is still listening, still alive to the idea that anyone – the bar manager, the glass cleaner (though probably not the journalist) might say something he hasn’t thought of already. For a successful male executive of his age, that’s not usual.”
I’m a great believer that insight can come from anywhere and have written about it before in Leadership and Your Team: Open book or closed book?
It seems to be paying dividends in their results, returning customers and also creating a place where people want to work where Wetherspoon’s was named as the only pub company among Britain’s top employers in 2009.
However, when I read about Mr Martin and his style I wondered what his advice would be to all of those ‘successful male executives of his age’ in order to get them to listen more, to be curious and interested in the ideas of their people, to pay attention to their customers more. Would it be:
- Lighten up
- Have a drink
- Get out more
- ?
- ?
What do you think? What would you suggest would be the best way to get more leaders and/or senior managers to take a leaf out of Tim Martin’s book?
Let me know in the comments below.
Thanks to Trevor Coultart for the image.
20 Comments
Adrian,
That’s a great story and an encouraging one. My conclusion however is not and does not really help your final question.
I’m of the opinion that either you have ‘it’ or you don’t. Martin’s style is not learnt in a training room or via a book. It must have evolved of course, but it came from who he is as a person. So its natural and intuitive for him to think and act in that way.
Seems a shame that either such people are rare. Or few are inclined to spend their lives running businesses.
Hi Martin,
I suspect that you might be right but does that not have implications for how we recruit leaders? Or, is it that Mr Martin will always be one of the mavericks and we should seek out more of them to applaud them and ask them to inspire others?
Adrian
Or someone does the hard work to link long term investment philosophy to greater material gain to persuade the City boyz it is in their interest to back this type of growth strategy
Indeed! Sounds like a challenge that is worth taking up. Have you seen this: The Age of Customer Capitalism http://hbr.org/2010/01/the-age-of-customer-capitalism/ar/1
Hi! I think Mr. Martin’s idea of building a relationship with the people around him and to use that as a catalyst for employee engagement and many other things. I think it’s not really about the drinking but doing what it takes to communicate with the people around you and to turn that into something beneficial for everyone.
Hi there,
I think you are right. It is not about the drinking at all. I used that headline to pique interest in the overall article.
Thanks for dropping by and commenting.
Adrian
Great article Adrian and an interesting question.
I think it is important to find your style. If you really care about your employees that is great, but it is better to not care then to be obviously faking interest.
You probably need to find your own way, but if you at least listen and respect your employees you will get a LOT more out of them.
Hi Daniel,
Thanks for your comment. It seems obvious that good leaders care about their employees and that by acting that way they get more out of their teams. Given that knowledge, I wonder why more leaders don’t act this way. Do you think it is about incentives or culture?
Adrian
If I am to speak from my own experience I think it is a lack of knowledge that then becomes a culture problem.
Most leaders don’t know much about boing a leader and how to communicate so they watch other leaders, who often don’t know more either.
This causes a negative spiral.
It is a sad truth but most people just don’t get the coaching required to learn how to coach others.
Too many CEOs have done nothing, insofar as work outside of management/grooming-style jobs. In my experience, and having worked for a number of larger corporations, the CEOs and VPs that I have known have few people skills or knowledge about them. They’ve never worked serving people and their view of the world is skewed by the money they make and the crowd they run with. This is not, of course, behavior across the board, but there is a certain arrogance/entitlement that seems to be something of a norm.
Pearl
Hi Pearl,
Thanks for dropping by and joining the debate. I think you may be onto something. Do you think there is a growing pressure for change at the top or what do you think is the best way of developing these skills/mindset? Also, what do you think is the best way to developing serving skills?
I’d be interested in your opinion. Best wishes,
Adrian
Hey, thanks for using my photo and linking back.
Hey Trevor,
My pleasure. Great shot and thanks for making it available to use.
Thanks also for dropping by and saying hello 🙂
Best wishes,
Adrian
Hi Adrian,
When interviewing somebody for a job, one of the questions I ask myself is “Could I imagine standing at a bar, having a beer and shooting the breeze with this person?”
At Schwa, we try to go for a drink, relax and discuss this and that and it os very important to the way our business has developed and how our teachers perform.
I blame rugby for this attitude.
Derek
Hi Derek,
You old dog! Great to hear from you. It’s an old rule of thumb and one that bears keeping in mind.
Rugby has a lot to be blamed for and a lot to be credited for. I was talking about this very thing when I caught up with a London Scottish committee member I know only yesterday.
Too often we can over-engineer something that is, in effect, very simple.
Adrian
You write really interesting, the topics are great. I like your blog. For how long have you been blogging? How much time do you spend on this? I hope that I can use some of your opinions on my blog. Yours, Beatrice
No BS and well written, thank you for the info