In some instances, physical practice isn’t always possible. A footballer may be able to spend 10,000 hours practising penalty kicks, but how can they practise taking one in the 90^th minute of a cup final in front of 90,000 people? How can they recreate the pressure of that one scenario? Physical practice is even more limited for business leaders than in sport or music, for example, and this is where mental rehearsal can come in.

You can practise a speech until the cows come home, but you can rarely practise it in front of 100 people. You can practise firing or disciplining an employee with a role-playing friend, but how can you simulate exactly how they will react? You can plan how a tricky negotiation with a difficult client might go, but there are dozens of ways the meeting might actually pan out on the day.

Mental rehearsal is a proven technique in neuro-scientific terms, often used in sport, which is readily adaptable for use in the business world. It allows the individual to use his or her strengths when it matters most.

People often associate vision as a key skill for business leaders that helps them define goals, make the right decisions and focus on a future outcome. Whereas positive visualisation might help them concentrate on a successful outcome, mental rehearsal is about the process rather than the result. Rehearsing and repeating a process in your mind creates neural circuits that make the physical act familiar and easier. Running through a presentation, how you will deliver it and any anticipated questions, will make it second nature. Something going wrong can also be rehearsed, along with a coping strategy. Mentally rehearsing how to open negotiations or get through a meeting agenda can help reach a positive outcome.

Impressive business leaders who look like they’re thinking on their feet and reacting to a situation as they go along may not be – their perceived spontaneity might actually be mentally rehearsed well in advance. Something worth thinking about?

It’s not the first time Chelsea have had success from a temporary appointment. The club has had 26 full-time managers in its history, but, interestingly, a further six “caretaker” managers – making 20% of those in the top job interims. In recent times, Guus Hiddink won the FA Cup and had an impressive 73% win rate in his three months in charge. Avram Grant, initially a caretaker stepping in from a board level role, lost just five games in nine months at Chelsea and was one kick away from winning the Champions League. This time, in a deliberate move to show the purposeful nature of the appointment, as well as how seriously they see the value of a temporary manager, Di Matteo has been given the title of “interim manager” rather than “caretaker”. More common in Europe where the term is readily used, he is the first caretaker in English football with the more correct, professional title.

Perhaps, given their experience with interims in business outside of football, it’s no surprise to the Chelsea board that Di Matteo has been an instant success. Organisations like Chelsea increasingly recognise the value of help, for a period of time, from a knowledgeable, senior executive or experienced manager who has delivered similar assignments before. As a former player, Di Matteo knows the organisation’s set-up well and needed no time to familiarise himself with the backroom or training facilities. When he was on the “shop floor” himself in the ‘90s, he was a star asset. A club record signing, he scored goals in three finals at Wembley, going down in history with one of them as the fastest goal scored in an FA Cup Final at the time. He also helped win the UEFA cup; was never on a losing side at Old Trafford; and had his career cut short by injury, all things that gave him legendary status with the fans and now total respect from the current players.

After Chelsea, Di Matteo went away and gained managerial experience, taking West Bromwich Albion to the Premier League, before coming back to his former employer in a new role. His step up from assistant manager to interim manager at such a vital stage of the season has had an immediate impact. The injection of his expertise and enthusiasm has brought the best out of the senior players, for too long not engaged or motivated. What was being hailed as an aging Chelsea playing staff is now being talked about positively, as experienced. The dressing room, allegedly lost by his predecessor, is now galvanised and focused. And the season that was formerly slipping away could now prove to be one of Chelsea’s most successful, all thanks to the timely appointment of an interim professional.

If they do complete the journey and win both finals, Di Matteo could be offered the job on a permanent basis. Or not. The owners may still prefer a big-name manager for the long term. If they do, getting rid of the interim won’t cost them (a fate that has befallen them on numerous occasions with previous permanent hires), as there is no severance package to discuss. Regardless of a future job offer, given the weight of expectation at Chelsea, the inevitable fate of almost all Premier League managers, and the kudos of great success in a short space of time, Di Matteo may choose a valid career as an interim and take his skills elsewhere anyway.

The Trust Barometer studies the concept of trust as it relates to business, corporate reputation and corporate communications among a very specific audience: college-educated, top quartile of income by age group, and follows business/news media and policy issues at least several times a week.

The key statistic that jumped out in the 2011 study was the importance of message repetition…

The more we hear something the more likely we are to believe it – 59% of respondents will believe the information they receive if they hear it 3-5 times. That will also apply to internal communications and reinforces the need for consistency in communication with employees, especially in times of change.

In addition, some recent research published by HBR showed that managers needed to ask employees twice (or more) to get them to do something. The study also showed that those managers without formal power (authority) deliberately planned their communications more carefully with little time between their first message and their second. In other words, they didn’t assume that one communication was enough to get the job done.

As an aside, the Edelman Trust Barometer says some interesting things about communication trends:-

• Corporate communication these days must be about social purpose and the broader public interest not just about profit
• We need new behaviours from corporate leadership. The Jack (Neutron) Welch style of leadership is being superceded by our need for ‘private sector diplomats’.
• Finally, the increased cynicism in Western countries such as the US and the UK means that people have to be told something up to 10 times before they believe it.

Given all that research about the importance of repetition, we will tweet this blog at least three times!

The result? Some attendees remain stone-faced throughout the day, others contribute sporadically, and a few loudly dominate the session with their pet ideas. Ideas pop up randomly—some intriguing, many preposterous—but because the session has no structure, little momentum builds around any of them. At session’s end, the group trundles off with a hazy idea of what, if anything, will happen next. “Now we can get back to real work,” some whisper.

It doesn’t have to be like this.  By undertaking better preparation and providing structure throughout a brainstorming technique, organisations can greatly enhance their chances of generating better ideas that will be implemented.

1. Know your boundaries

One reason good ideas hatched in corporate brainstorming sessions often go nowhere is that they are beyond the scope of what the organization would ever be willing to consider or to implement. “Think outside the box!” is an unhelpful exhortation if external circumstances or company policies create boxes that the organization truly must live within.

2. Ask the right questions

Build the workshop around a series of “right questions” that the team explores in small groups during a series of idea generation sessions. The trick is to identify questions with two characteristics. First, they should force your participants to take a new and unfamiliar perspective. Why? Because whenever you look for new ways to approach an old problem you naturally gravitate toward thinking patterns and ideas that worked in the past. Research shows that, over time, you’ll come up with fewer good ideas, despite increased effort. Changing your participants’ perspective will shake up their thinking. The second characteristic of a right question is that it limits the conceptual space your team will explore, without being so restrictive that it forces particular answers or outcomes.

3. Choose the right people

The rule here is simple: pick people who can answer the questions you’re asking. As obvious as this sounds, it’s not what happens in many traditional brainstorming sessions, where participants are often chosen with less regard for their specific knowledge than for their prominence on the org chart.

4. Use subgroups

To ensure fruitful discussions, don’t have participants hold one continuous, rambling discussion among the entire group for several hours. Instead, have them conduct multiple, discrete, highly focused idea generation sessions among subgroups of three to five people—no fewer, no more. Each subgroup should focus on a single question for a full 30 minutes. Why three to five people? The usual behaviour in groups of this size is to speak up, whereas the norm in a larger group is to stay quiet.

5. Brief them first

After your participants arrive, but before the division into subgroups, orient them so that your expectations about what they will—and won’t—accomplish are clear. Each subgroup will thoughtfully consider and discuss a single question for a half hour. No other idea from any source—no matter how good—should be mentioned during a subgroup’s individual session. Tell participants that if anyone thinks of a “silver bullet” * solution that’s outside the scope of discussion, they should write it down and share it later.

Also, whenever possible, share “signpost examples” before the start of each session—real questions previous groups used, along with success stories, to motivate participants and show them how a question-based approach can help.

6. Follow up quickly

Decisions and other follow-up activities should be quick and thorough. Of course, we’re not suggesting that uninformed or insufficiently researched conclusions should be reached about ideas dreamed up only hours earlier. But the odds that concrete action will result from an idea generation exercise tend to decline quickly as time passes and momentum fades.

Is it important that those who work under them trust their managers? And how do you find out if that trust is there?

A boss’s job is to influence and guide others, to bring out the best in a workforce to ultimately drive productivity and profit. This isn’t one-way traffic. To be driven along by an influential leader, an employee needs to be willing and that willingness will only exist if there is trust in the people above them.

Employees need to trust their boss to make the right decisions, both for the organisation and their own interests. They need to have confidence that the ship is being steered in the right direction and that you have shared goals. Without that trust, employees are unlikely to do what is asked of them, are unlikely to remain loyal to the company and are unlikely to be performing to the best of their ability.

The knock-on effects of this can be incredibly damaging to a business and to the manager’s own career. If a workforce is under-performing and profits are down, this reflects on the manager’s credibility and their ability to lead. If a team doesn’t trust its manager, the feeling is often reciprocal, which leads to increased monitoring and supervision, again unproductive.

The clearest way to find out if there is a solid foundation of trust from the workforce is to ask them. An inclusive team meeting where everyone is given a platform is an honest, open way to get to the bottom of any issues. Open environments, away from the boss’s office, are also a sure-fire way to maintain and reinforce trust. By listening to individual or team concerns, relationships can be amended and trust grown.

If there is a lack of trust from staff, then showing more trust the other way can have positive results. Handing over more responsibility or taking on board direct suggestions from individuals shows confidence in them and engenders trust in return.

Does your workforce trust you? Are you sure? Let us know!

As early as 1890, psychologist William James observed that emotions “leave a scar upon the cerebral tissue.”  Since then, the number of studies on the connection between emotion and memory has skyrocketed.

Only a small fraction of the business world, however, applies this widely accepted psychological concept to customer service programs. When a customer has an emotionally pleasing experience, it almost always goes to his or her long-term memory. Of course, the opposite is also true: an emotionally traumatic customer service experience won’t soon be forgotten – service failures stick like glue in customers’ memories.

The link between emotion and memory is critical when we come to Customer Engagement and brand loyalty. Trust plays a huge role in building loyalty, however, trust is one emotion that can be built or lost in a flash. Just one five-minute interaction might be enough to entrust a customer to your company for years to come—or to demolish any trust they had in you, and even drive them to complain about you to friends and family.

So what should companies do to take advantage of the fact that customers never forget? Committing to and delivering on their service promise is critical. This includes having an effective and responsible complaints handling process.

Collecting feedback that seeks to measure customers’ emotional response is useful including how customers are responding to the brand on a real time basis. Net Promoter is a customer loyalty metric developed by (and a registered trademark of) Fred Reichheld, Bain & Company, and Satmetrix. It was introduced by Reichheld in his 2003 Harvard Business Review article “The One Number You Need to Grow”.

Companies obtain their Net Promoter Score (NPS) by asking customers a single question on a 0 to 10 rating scale: “How likely is it that you would recommend our company to a friend or colleague?” Based on their responses, customers can be categorized into one of three groups: Promoters (9-10 rating), Passives (7-8 rating), and Detractors (0-6 rating). The percentage of Detractors is then subtracted from the percentage of Promoters to obtain a Net Promoter score.

Proponents of the Net Promoter approach claim the score can be used to motivate an organisation to become more focused on improving products and services for customers.This is something that we have started doing at BIE and it has produced some interesting results.  More on that some other time.

It’s fair to assume that day-to-day business decisions are guided by and aim towards achieving the agreed corporate strategic objectives.  However, many corporate strategies are defined within a narrow historical groove, often built ‘bottom up’ around the divisional or regional business plans, focusing too much on short term, often financial, objectives. As a result, we see strategies that don’t excite anybody; few believe in and don’t set organisations apart from the competition.

Clearly, increasing the economic value, through larger volumes, margins or market share, is the business imperative. However, without a differentiated strategy the desired growth becomes more difficult with each passing year. Developing a truly differentiating business strategy requires a more multi-dimensional market focussed approach.  This is reinforced by:

• In today’s 24-hour information culture and the dynamic global nature of business, CEO’s are being pressured by investors, the business media as well as the increasingly influential special public bodies, to explain their strategic direction and the benefits this will bring to customers as well as shareholders.

• Businesses should aim to shape their markets through their own inventiveness. In an ever-changing market it is important that businesses continually re-invent and develop new market opportunities. Otherwise the market will move on without them and their place will be taken by existing competitors or new entrants.

As a consequence, many companies are setting up, or increasing the scope and power of their business strategy teams to help the board define the future business strategy. Their challenge is to find ways of enabling senior management to understand the strategic options available and, importantly, the attendant consequences.  They should broaden their thinking to include identifying or creating the ‘white spaces’ in their markets and how they can dominate that space. However, business strategists struggle with this concept as:

• many of the individuals involved come from within the business and so reflect the existing corporate culture and the prevailing thinking and therefore find it difficult to effect change.

• the scope and remit of most business strategy teams is too introspective and the models they construct their strategy around are operationally biased and as such are too narrow for the increasingly complex and changing commercial world.

• in many cases the business strategy teams have no links with those in charge of developing the corporate brand who are working hard to establish points of difference for the business in the marketplace.

To affect real change a new broader multi-dimensional approach needs to be adopted – one that returns to the basics but also covers a wider spectrum of issues including the more emotive triggers.

A refreshed approach to Strategy Development

Marketing and business strategists will recognise the three facets of activity – operational excellence, product leadership and customer intimacy – developed in the mid 90’s. The view is that an organisation can realistically choose only one facet in which to specialize and focus all its expertise to achieve a leadership position – whilst achieving upper quartile capabilities in the remaining.  Achieving an expertise in any one of these will not automatically ensure future success – it’s the market that defines and determines success. The best strategies emerge from and reflect the combined behaviour of the organisation – covering the rational and emotional facets.  On this basis an important facet is missing - corporate philosophy. 

Businesses should adopt a broader, multi-dimensional approach – one that covers a wider spectrum of issues constructed around the combined behaviour of the organisation and the changing nature of the marketplace; business strategy should reflect both the functional and emotional aspect of the organisation; businesses should strive to take a leadership position in a clearly defined market space - one that reflects both the functional and emotional aspect of the organisation.

The linking of the business strategy to the brand strategy ensures a concordant approach to the business planning process as a whole; clear measures that can be used both internally and externally; a process that can be repeated to see how the business is performing and also how the business shape might change to address the changing needs of the market; an easy to communicate model showing how the organisation competes in its market and its peer group to ensure greater alignment throughout an organisation.

As always, we’d love to hear your opinions and experiences on strategy reviews.

Gaby Weidlich is an Interim Business & Brand Strategy Executive. For more information see: www.interimgabyweidlich.co.uk

But one important and often over-looked finding in the psychological research is that being happy takes effort. This may sound odd, but there’s a lot of truth in this.

In 2005, psychologists analysed the mainstream well-being research and identified that about 50% of happiness is inherited – i.e. genetic – while about 10% is down to our economic and cultural circumstances. The remaining 40% is believed to be down to effort. This means investing time in deliberate and intentional activities that will make us happier.

In other words, it is necessary to put effort into maintaining happiness, through activities such as being deliberately optimistic when problems crop up, or being consciously appreciative of our circumstances.

What is really interesting, though, is that psychologists Sheldon and Lyubomirsky (2006) monitored people over a period of several months to identify what impact these activities actually have on our happiness. They found that a change in circumstances, such as gaining more money or moving to a new area, made people happy for a limited time only. Clearly the novelty of the change wears off.

On the flipside, they found that those who invested time and effort in a range of ‘happiness’ based activities led to longer-term increases in psychological well-being. In their conclusion, the researchers stated that ‘both effort and hard work offer the most promising route to happiness’.

So, when the Government and the Church tell us to be happy, they – and organisations – need to know that this doesn’t just happen. It takes hard work that has to be sustained, supported and measured. In other words, if you really knuckle down and apply yourself, you’ll be a lot happier as a result…

What’s happening?

Archer Mathieson and BIE Interim Executive, two formerly separate companies, become one business from 2 April. The newly enlarged business will trade as BIE Group with two, tightly integrated divisions:

• An executive search team with a focus on finance, human resources, supply-chain & logistics and commercial roles.
• An interim management team focussed on matching senior-level executives from all functions and sectors to business-critical assignments, and a specialist team centred on business transformation.

Customers of either company can now find both focussed search and general interim services under one roof, gaining access to a bigger and higher-quality, combined candidate talent pool. The formerly separate teams of each company now work closely together with access to each others’ networks.

Candidates, whether interim executives or those seeking a new permanent role, will also find we can offer a wider and deeper level of opportunities.

What other changes will I notice?

Apart from the improved and more comprehensive level of service already outlined, very few. There will be some subtle changes to our company logo and branding as we become BIE Group, and a new website will arrive in the following weeks. We spent a lot of time thinking about the name of the new organisation and finally chose BIE because it’s a name with higher ‘brand equity’; one that most senior executives know and trust.

BIE Group will continue to operate from offices in The City, Birmingham and Windsor, with a   management team comprising key people from both former companies. Nick Diprose and Gordon Whyte jointly lead the interim division and James Aston heads up the search team. Rob Walker is chief executive.

What people have said about the merger

 “I don’t think this move will surprise anyone and I completely see the logic. The gap between search and interim has narrowed over recent years; organisations see interim increasingly as a very credible way of resourcing. It makes complete sense to bring these two offerings together within one brand.”

Richard Smelt, non-executive director at Hays Plc and former group HR director at Northern Rock Plc

“BIE and Archer Mathieson are two excellent businesses. The combination makes complete sense as the single-stop option for hiring executives.”

Leo McKee, chief executive of nationwide retail chain BrightHouse

“The merger achieves a strong cultural fit. Under common and strong leadership, the new BIE Group will be better able to serve its clients in response to the huge challenges currently faced by the business community.”

Katie Folwell-Davies, mergers and acquisitions partner, Deloitte

We met at the LSE where we were studying economics and we spent a lot of time talking about what we wanted to do when we graduated. We decided there was a market opportunity in the ‘what’s on’ and listings domain. The biggest player was Time Out, but even though it was a fantastic brand, it hadn’t done very well from a digital point of view and certainly didn’t speak to consumers of our age.

We started Spoonfed and managed to raise £400,000 from angel investors in June 2008. But we soon realised that launching a consumer brand is very difficult – not least one that relied on advertising for its survival at a time when advertising rates were going through the floor. It quickly became apparent that if we didn’t come up with something else we would be in trouble.

We used the relationships we had with 5,000 promoters in the UK to find out what they wanted from their online marketing. Through our research we were able to come up with the first iteration and concept of Bullseyehub, which is event marketing software-as-a-service. As a result we managed to raise a further £500,000 at the beginning of 2010, enabling us to launch last summer. We have actually just raised a further £600,000 for the business, all of which will go into Bullseyehub, which now has more than 400 customers, including household names such as Pizza Express, Hilton and Plaza Hotels.

We still have Spoonfed ticking along with its five editors – without it we never would have had the leads for Bullseyehub, and it continues to provide ammunition. We are looking at taking Bullseyehub to the States at the moment, but it’s unlikely Spoonfed will go with it. We don’t look at Spoonfed as a failure, but had we not iterated from that into something that was going to generate more revenue we would have hit the wall.

There are lots of examples of companies that weren’t the success the founders had envisaged them being, or companies that started out wanting to be something different. It’s about applying the right business models, as well as market opportunity. When you go straight into running a business out of university, you’re a little bit green; you have this naive optimism. But when you immerse yourself in the business and you learn more about the markets in which you’re operating, it sometimes emerges that there’s a bigger opportunity available to you. That’s how we managed to pivot successfully.