The US Diary
Matt Anderson, Cradle UK
matt@cradleuk.com
Just a short one from me this month, as March was the month of travel.
I actually write this from the States - Virginia to
be specific. I’m helping a manufacturer set up distribution over here, therefore will be spending some over here, and to be honest having never been to the US before, I quite like it. Americans, to me, have mainly been brash and loud, and someone to try and steer clear of in queue, which to be fair is where most of my experience has come from. But I was surprised at how I have started to build relationships very quickly, is seems the US businessman needs the whole relationship/ likeability factor to do business. Once that’s in place, they are keen to work with you from the start.
Building distribution over here is another ball game. If you have a new product in the UK, there is some work involved in seeing the right people and travelling around in a car, and exhibiting at the normal trade shows. This company has done the trade show thing, and now need to follow up those leads, and get orders!
Just the distance thing is amazing; I was with a company in New York yesterday and now in Virginia, two hours away in a plane. Sure it takes its toll, but the experience is very worthwhile.
What a chairman does?
wrongdoing. Either way – he certainly wasn’t giving a lead to his employees about how they were expected to do business.
Andrew Large, Chief Executive of the CSSA
The contortions at BSkyB over phone hacking have been an object lesson in how not to run a business. As I write, James Murdoch has just resigned as chairman and with the Leveson Inquiry continuing, there is no knowing where the buck will finally stop.
I mention this, because it is instructive to our industry – particularly with regard to the skill of chairmanship.
It seems to me that there are three key lessons for any company in the way in which James Murdoch has chaired, and then resigned from BSkyB.
Leadership The first lesson is that of leadership. The allegation here is that Murdoch junior was either a weak leader or had connived in
I wonder if the chairman and top management of your business really lead. Have they set out clearly what the business does and how it should do it? Are there clear ethical standards? Does your chairman talk about the importance of profit and then accept lots of hospitality from a key client on a high value - low margin contract? Unless they can walk the walk, then they are not leading the business properly and other employees will soon start to behave as they do.
As an aside, it can’t have been easy for James knowing that his Dad is just around the corner. As an exercise in succession planning in a family firm – the Murdochs are a case study in how not to do it. But that is a whole other column for another month.
Knowledge Part of leadership is knowledge. James Murdoch’s goose was cooked right from the moment he admitted that he did not know what was going on and hadn’t read the emails properly.
The question for leaders in the cleaning
industry is just how much do they know about what is going in their business? What is going on with your sales force right now? Are you sure they are behaving ethically? Are you sure operations isn’t cutting corners? Cleaning has some of the flattest management structures of any industry and this puts the pressure on Boards and top management to really delve into what is going on at the coalface.
PR The last part of being a chairman is taking the public role. Here the Murdochs again score poorly. They virtually had to be dragged to give evidence to a Commons Committee. Once in front of it, their evidence was condemned by a former News International employee as “disingenuous”. Chairmanship implies being the public face of the business – something from which all cleaning companies could benefit. I wonder if your chairman is pro-active in championing your business to the outside world? They should be.
The world of newspapers seems a million miles away from cleaning. Yet I suspect that the issues writ large at BSkyB and News International are repeated in a small way in cleaning businesses up and down the country. Perhaps it’s time for that to change.
The future of our cleaning industry | TOMORROW’S CLEANING | 23 REGULAR
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