What Have We Learnt During 2009 From Clients Dealing With The Recession?

This year has, for most organisations, been one of the toughest on record. For some, still being in business in December 2009 is a significant achievement. We thought it would be interesting to try to consolidate the challenges, circumstances and learnings some of our clients have experienced this year and group them into a set of themes:

1. Organisations that got hold of two key financial levers very early on are coming out of the downturn stronger; (a) Quickly reducing their cost base to reflect income levels and (b) Nailing their cash management.
2. It was critical to get close to customers who were going to spend money in 2010. These were rarer but they were (are) in the market-place. Those that took a cold hard look at their pipeline and focused their energies accordingly did very well.
3. Kept key people on-side. When making redundancies the people who you keep are often ignored, they can suffer from survivor guilt, restlessness and low morale. Organisations that made efforts to demonstrate how much they valued this group have reaped the benefit of sustained engagement.
4. Visible leadership. Low morale is a function of poor management. In times of difficulty it's leaders that people are looking for. This means creating a realistic but positive mood, being more visible, increasing communications, being open about difficulties, keeping people informed about the businesses health, and perhaps most importantly, being a role model for the changes being asked of everybody.
5. Maintaining a strategy. Yes, tactical survival is all that matters when you’re really struggling, but the future still needs to be thought about. Management teams that kept part of their thinking directed on the medium term can now think about growth with a serviceable plan.
6. Not expecting the recovery to be demand led. Organisations that are waiting to see demand come back will improve their business levels in 2010 over 2009, but only in relatively small amounts. The organisations that are already doing better are ones where they are seeking to take share, take a more compelling offer to market, or in some other way shake up their market place. Double digit growth will only be delivered by pro-active organisations.

These six themes have reoccurred throughout 2009. How did you measure up?

Connecting Great Leaders To Daily Business Behaviours That Demonstrates A Leader Mind-set

In a recent course on Leadership a wide range of inspirational leaders were suggested by participants. Ranging from the well-known ‘greats’; Sir Winston Churchill, Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King to the more controversial; Baroness Margaret Thatcher, Sir Richard Branson and Bill Gates. What do these inspiring figures have in common other than their ability to inspire others?

Which great leaders inspired you? Were they from the world of sport; Muhammed Ali, Pele, Stirling Moss? Or great explorers; Raleigh, Hillary, Shakleton? Or from the scientific world; Newton, Darwin, Einstein? What, if any, qualities or characteristics do all great leaders have in common?

Great leaders certainly inspire a lot of analysis and evaluation. There are numerous leadership theories around and shelves of books on the subject all trying to pin down those elusive qualities that make some individuals stand out from the rest. In reality, can these qualities be specified and, further more, can they be learnt by others?

These previously mentioned leaders are clearly very aspirational, larger than life characters. What about a more realistic view of what demonstrates leadership behaviour at the real world business level? When implementing leadership development work we always seek to understand why some people show greater leadership behaviour than others. We have found these exemplars have a particular approach to their work that is informed by a certain mind-set. We have distilled some of what these leadership focused people do into a 10 point checklist below, see how many you pro-actively do currently:

1. Keep a record of your accomplishments
2. Maintain an up-to-date CV, aligned to career goals
3. Have a credible walk away position from your current role/employer which you will action if you don’t believe you are achieving your career aims
4. Look to update your network and manage your contacts
5. Work to be the ‘obvious choice’ candidate for any new opportunities
6. Identify and coach your successor for greater future success
7. Work hard at getting along with people and having a reputation for being helpful, resourceful and supportive
8. Work at deepening your point of view about how your market sector and functional specialism are developing, and the likely changes they will be going through – you try to develop a personal vision
9. Take responsibility for your career and your current position
10. Work to further your professional training and development

Structured Training Open Courses 2010

Structured Training’s 2010 Open Courses Calendar is now available, and you can book your people on to courses throughout the year. Our transfer and cancellation policies allow you to plan ahead, whilst maintaining the flexibility you need to cope with changes in business demands. Booking your core training requirements for 2010 now gives you the confidence that your people will get great training which will make a significant difference to business performance, and will ensure that committed budget is not withdrawn.

To book places, or to talk through flexible approaches to your 2010 training budget contact us on 01789 734300.

Motivation – The First Principles A Manager Should Never Forget

Being a poor motivator is something no manager will admit to, so why is it when we survey participants on our training courses the poor quality of their managers motivation techniques is always in the top three of ‘my manger’s weaknesses’’?

What is also interesting, most experienced managers say they know about some theory around motivation, but what seems to be lacking is any practical application (assuming the basic understanding has been achieved).

Below we have pulled together what we consider to be the key principles that a manager needs to really understand and be able to apply in their interactions if they want to win the label of being a good motivator.

• Motivation is achieved by the promise of satisfaction of individual Needs, Wants and Desires (NWD).
• Everybody is motivated differently (because of their unique NWD profile).
• Each persons’ NWD is made up of a unique blend of Intrinsic motivators (things that satisfy an internal requirement like job satisfaction) and Extrinsic motivators (things that satisfy an external requirement like having a big boat). These two types of motivation can act on each other in dynamic ways. A large Extrinsic reward can displace an Intrinsic motivation.
• Each individual will demonstrate different levels of drive depending on their NWD profile.
• To be a motivator it must relate to the acquiring of something in the future.
• To motivate someone you must first remove any causes of demotivation. If someone is frustrated and angry with the poor work tools they have they are not going to be motivated to take part in winning a top prize in any incentive scheme.
• Removing the causes of demotivation does not motivate someone. When you have achieved an unmotivated state, a person becomes suggestible to being motivated.
• When someone’s NWD is satisfied their motivation will decrease.
• Money itself is rarely a motivator, think of it as mechanism for satisfying a person’s particular NWD. Someone with a highly aspirational or expensive lifestyle will be more money motivated than someone who has enough money to meet all their present and future lifestyle requirements.
• There is a level beyond which any further motivation won’t work.

You will notice a key underlying requirement. Knowledge and empathy of, and for, the people you are looking to motivate. The key to effective motivation is about understanding a person’s NWD profile. Without this you will see ‘one size fits all’ motivation attempts and money being used in very clunky (and expensive) ways. What is the key attribute of manager’s who can do that? - a high level of self awareness and insight into their own NWD. You cannot sensibly and sustainably motivate others if you don’t understand what motivates yourself.

Effective motivation is covered on all Structured Training’s Open Management Courses and is often designed as an in-company tailored programme.

Click here for more details on our open programmes or contact Claudine McClean to have an informal chat about how we can help your organisation’s mangers became better motivators.

Generating New Business

How do top sales people generate new business in a tough economic market?

In all the conversations we have with sales people recently their biggest challenge is winning new customers. So much so that many simply don’t do it and purely focus on their existing customers and hope they have built enough relationship equity for when the market picks up again. It’s a strategy – of sorts – but it’s dodging the real issue. The uncomfortable issue of ‘cold calling’. In a market where most customers are risk averse, and focused on reducing their costs, how do sellers break through this cycle?

And therein lies the rub. Whilst ever sales people see the market as ‘difficult’ and making those dreaded ‘cold calls’ there will always be something more ‘important’ to focus on. Sales people are by their nature resourceful and can always find ways of not doing the ‘unpleasant’ bits of their job.

However, given that customers are cutting back on their spending, it is those sales people who are pro-actively generating new business who will be in the most advantageous position as the market recovers. So what are those pro-active sales people doing to win new customers?

Stop ‘cold calling’ - this is a mind-set problem; top sales people don’t do cold calling, they have conversations with people they’ve not spoken to before to establish whether they are customers who would benefit from doing business with them.

Have a vision - top sales people have a very clear idea about what they have to offer and how it benefits their customers. They can articulate their value proposition in compelling terms. They know where they want to take their business in the long-term and which customers they want to be working with.

Have a plan - it is essential that they have a strategic focus to whom they’re targeting; why do they want to work with this customer? Is this an organisation that is known to use their type of product/service? How would this organisation benefit by working with them?

Have a reason for contacting them - top sales people do their research first and ensure that when they do make that first contact with a new customer; that they have something of interest to talk about, something that the customer will see as ‘insightful’ and a benefit to them

Use the tools available – what did sales people do before computers, spreadsheets and databases? They used index cards and diaries – that’s what! There are now many excellent tools to help sales people plan and track their activity and help to manage their pipeline. There really is no excuse now for not getting organised.

For further ideas on generating new business see our Selling...The Essentials For Success course.

Rotting Or Growing?

At this time of year, when the gardens are closing down for winter and the roses are being dressed with compost, it's worth reflecting on the similarities between a refreshing dose of well rotted vegetable matter and the resources of businesses looking to emerge from tough times!

After a spell of healthy growth and blooming results, things can turn a little flat; making use of well developed people, changing their utilisation a little and applying them liberally to the roots of success can give us a spur which energises and refreshes the product for the next season. Which of your staff are rooted in the business and would you ideally not wish to lose? How adaptable are they to the changing environment and different approaches that you find you need? How might you inspire them, put them in a slightly changed role and see their raw power give a kick start to the business?

To see how we can help you lead people through the change process, inspiring and motivating them to commit to your business performance, please contact us.

What Is The Difference Between The Average And The High Performer?

A recent project revealed some interesting perspectives which we share with you below. We looked to profile a wide range of executives, both managers and senior specialists, across the whole performance spectrum and looked at six approaches they use to inform their work style.

As you can see the differences are quite marked. The High Performer (HP) has a very different perspective compared to the Average Performer (AP). Our summary came down to three major conclusions:

1. The HP puts themselves at the centre of things. They are prepared to own their circumstances and then seek to influence them. The AP seems to be more controlled by their circumstances.


2. The HP has an agenda, not simply to survive in the role but to achieve something more. We found this a more complex issue than simply calling it career ambition. Many HPs don’t seem to be overtly interested in that definition. It seemed to be more about wanting to transcend their environment in some way, to make it better, more productive, more enjoyable, more something; but never to just accept it. Changing not maintaining their environment was a key driver.


3. The HP was more self confident about their ignorance and lack of understanding. The AP either tried to disguise it or to hold up their lack of knowing something as a badge of honour.

What is interesting, is when these differences are articulated, indentifying people by these approaches can become a predictor of performance as much as reflection.

If you would like to find our more about Structured Training’s work on developing high performers contact us on 01789 734300.