Dom Monkhouse on how to become profitable

You don't start about the profitability, it's a great piece of work. A couple of books actually, Service Profit Chain and then rewritten as the Service Value Chain. And basically they say you can't go and generate profit. What you have to do is you have to start at the other end. And you've got to have a reason to exist.

You've got to hire people who believe in your reason to exist. You've got to make them happy. They in turn will, as a result of being happy at what they do, be good at it. Customers will be happy. They'll spend more money and tell their friends. Word of mouth marketing. And then you'll become profitable.

And it seems to me that that's really, really simple and straightforward. I can get my head around that. That sort of sums it up, really. Happy customers, more profit, happy staff, in any order. It's just a circular thing. That's what I've done. The other thing I've done is something that Henry once pointed out to me that I'm good at.

And that is, if I see something which is good and it works I'll steal it and I'll roll it out. I'll try really, really hard not to forget it on many companies. I go into either as a consultant or as an assessor, or in fact, businesses where I've worked. You see that there's a bit of the organization that does something really, really well, and the whole company used to do it and then large chunks of it forgot it.

And somebody calls that a doctor who moment in their business. Where you turn around thinking that this is a way we did it, and it was great. And then all of a sudden it was too hard, or it was too difficult, or they hired some new people, and it wasn't written down, so, well, they just stopped. But what I do is I give people a blank sheet of paper and a packet of coloring pencils, and I say, spend ten minutes, draw me a picture, what motivates you and inspires you.

I leave the room, let them get on with it, come back in, and then I spend twenty minutes talking to them about their picture. You know, they just tell you everything. I mean, they tell you stuff about, you know, their husband, their wives, their parents, their kids, their house, You know, where they went to school, what they want to do when they retire.

I mean, everything. One guy even told me he had a drug habit. He wasn't, I don't think he was going to tell me that when he came in. That wasn't on his plan. But, I said, why did you leave the job? Was it all sex, drugs, and rock and roll? And when we'd, when we'd ruled out, it wasn't. Anyway. You can see that and people just sort of open up.

And they can't, they haven't prepared for it. So, it becomes really. And the thing is, I don't want to hire dull people. I want to hire people that I want to go to the pub with. At least that's Because they're not going to get more exciting when they talk to our customers. And I want people who are interested in something, I don't care what it is.