Henry Stewart – people work best when they feel good about themselves

So this last session is about creating a happy workplace. Which is a philosophy which fits very closely, I think, with beyond budgeting. Because it's about trust and autonomy. I have a confession to make, though. We do still have budgets at Happy, but we might not next month. At the moment, we still do. So Happy, how, any of you know Happy already? Before this? Oh, a handful. Oh, good, good. Okay, we are a training company based in London, a little bit smaller than the companies we've been talking about so far. Five years in a row we were in the last 20 in the best workplaces. It is looking a bit dated, they kept putting the price up, so we stopped entering about four years ago.

But the great thing about going in for those awards is we got to meet all the other great workplaces, the Googles, the Gores these kinds of people. So What I'm going to be talking about today is very much based on our experience and the experience of some of the great workplaces. And my aim is to challenge you, even though I know we have a hugely enlightened audience here, committed to throwing away budgets and things. My aim is still to challenge you and leave you with some things to put into practice about how to create a great workplace.

But let me start with our basic principle. How many people have read Now, have you read the Huff Manifesto? Okay, some of you, good. As I say, you'll all get a copy of this once you do your evaluation. It doesn't depend on what you put on the evaluation. So the first principle, the key principle, hands up if you'd agree that people work best when they feel good about themselves.

Okay, that's just about everyone, okay. If that's true, what then should the focus of management be? Make people happy, make people feel good. Okay, my next, my first challenge to you is hands up if that is the focus of management in your organisation. Good, we got some, we got some. Oh, we got quite a few actually, okay.

Normally I get about one or two in a, in an audience of a hundred or so. But the other day I was sitting on the platform with a chair of an 80, 000 strong British retail company who put his hand up. They said, yes, in my company. That is the focus of management. Any guesses? Which that company was? British?

80, 000? John Lewis absolutely ? No, it wasn't Tesco, certainly.

John Lewis, which some of you from outside UK may not know them that well. If I was to ask who gives best customer service, you know, people don't get the first question, they always get it then, because it's absolutely recognized as the best customer service. It's just overtaken Marks and Spencers to become the best.

The UK's top retailer. And Charlie May, who is the chair who put his hand up, said, Yeah, as an example, at the last board meeting, we spent half an hour discussing the numbers, and three hours discussing people and how to motivate them, and how to value them. That kind of balance is possibly slightly different to some corporates.

Certainly Tesco's, I would say. So, To give another example and actually the other thing about John Lewis is that's actually bound into their constitution. Decisions must be taken in the interest of the happiness of their associates, their staff. Because it's an employee owned business. Okay, another example, Nando's.

How many of you know Nando's? Do you have Nando's in Scandinavia? Anyone? No? Okay. Nando's is a chicken restaurant and they have lots of branches, 250 branches. So they thought that would be a really good opportunity to work out why inevitably some are more successful than others. Some are very profitable, some are growing, some aren't.

So they did a detailed analysis on what the difference was between the successful ones and the not successful ones. They found one factor which correlated most closely with commercial success. Anybody guess what the factor was? There's a slight clue here, but Anybody guess? Yes, how happy the staff said they were in the annual survey was the closest correlation they could find with profitability and growth.

So they even changed for a while their manager's bonuses so they were half based on, purely on how happy the staff said they were. Because even though they still wanted the commercial success, they realized that how to get it was through staff happiness. And in fact they did win the Sunday Times Best Workplace, the Best Large Business Workplace.

Audience Member 1: Well actually, it could be the other way around. They could be happy because their branch is sucessful, couldn't they?

That's an interesting question. That's, there's been quite a bit of research on that and the indications in the happiness research is that it can work that way but actually focusing on making people happy can create the results. My first question to you at your table is then a couple of minutes on this question which is, how would your organization be different if that was the main focus of management in it?

So, this is not a debate about whether it's a good idea. You can leave that till later. Just a hypothetical, how would your organization be different if the main focus of management was making people feel good? A couple of minutes at your table. Okay, any immediate feedback, just one or two words from tables on what it would be like?

Anyone? Shout out.

How would organization be different? Any thoughts?

Audience Member 2: More cooperative.

Audience member 3: You spend a lot of time together.

Henry: More pride. More risk taking. People are valued for what they do. Not what they don't bring to the table. Would it be a better place to work? Yes. Would it be more inovative? Yes. Would it be more productive? Yes. Does it make sense then? Yes. And there has been some, I've given you a couple of anecdotal examples, John Lewis Fernandes.

I can give you an academic piece of work by a guy called Alex Edmonds, who used to be at Wharton Business School, I think is now a colleague of yours. Yeah, he's at London Business School. He decided to look at the great places to work, because the great places to work list have been going for 25 years in America.

So he asked, he wondered what would happen if you compared the performance, and stock market performance of the companies in the best places to work with the standard stock market, over 25 years. Guess which did better? What it came up with, and the bankers might actually understand this.

My audience is very rare, I didn't either. They came up with a 4 factor alpha of 3. 5%. Anybody understand what that means? No? Okay, what it means is it basically did 3. 5 percent better a year. But what that means That's, that's a hell of a difference actually. So if you had a pension fund That at the end of 25 years, if it had been in the stock market and was worth 100, 000, if it had been in the best places to work, it would have been worth 235, 000.

That's the difference between their different stock market growths over that period, over a 25 year period. So, hard financial evidence. That's in the private sector. I can give you a public sector example. Where the King's Fund did some research on Death rates in hospitals, according to how engaged the staff were.

That means they didn't measure happiness, they measured engagement. But where you have a disengaged staff, there are 103 deaths for every 96 deaths in a hospital where the staff are engaged and on board. So it saves lives, having an engaged staff. And I'd say having a happy staff is a key part of that.

Make sense? Okay, so, let's look, start to look at what that looks like in practice, because I've got one colleague who decided, oh great, this makes sense, I'll delegate somebody to be responsible for making staff happy, and that person brought in hula hoops and games, and they played lots of things, and they measured happiness before and happiness after.

And guess what happened? Happiness went down. Because actually, that isn't what happy staff is actually about. What it's actually about is purpose. Mindfulness and meaning and autonomy and playing to your strengths. So one of the things they did afterwards was go around and ask everybody whether they were in the right job or not.

Several people moved, changed jobs, several people left the company because they decided, well actually when it comes to it. Actually things like that started to boost up happiness and made the company more focused. So another question for you. I want you to think back over your working career.

And I want you to think of a time when you were particularly productive. Yeah? A real example, not theory, but a real example. I know we all work hard all the time, but a time when you're particularly productive. Everybody got something in mind? Nod your heads if you have, yeah? Got a time in mind when you're particularly productive.

Okay? I want to ask you some questions about that. Hands up if it was a time when you were particularly well paid. Oh, we got a couple? We got, yeah? Oh, that's more than normal. Much because we've got so many Scandinavians in the room that we've got more. Hands up if it was a time when communication was particularly strong.

Okay, that's about 40 percent I'd say. Hands up if it was a time when you were challenged. Okay, that's, oh, 80 to 90%. Hands up if it was a time when you were trusted and given freedom to do it your way. Okay, that is not quite everyone. No, there's some, that's about 80 to 90 percent again. Now, I've now asked that question of thousands of people.

And the first question was quite high. Normally I get about 10 percent on when you're well paid. About 30 percent on when communication was strong. 80 percent normally on when you're challenged like today. And 90 percent or more on when people are trusted and given freedom. So the obvious question, if that is when you personally worked at your best and also everyone else, is that what you're giving to your people? Now, some of you will be thinking, but hang on, the first stuff is important. And for that, I will take you back. We've had already today Mintzberg, we've had McGregor. Who's missing? It must be Maslow, yes? You all remember Maslow? Yeah? What was in his hierarchy of needs?

What was at the bottom? Pardon?

Self, oh, you've missed, that's the next question. One second. Physical needs at the bottom and that wonderful term self actualization at the top. So the idea being if you haven't got them, those are crucially important. Be able to eat, sleep, have somewhere safe. But once you've got those, actually, they're not, it's necessary but not sufficient.

You need to go on to the, the higher needs of belonging, self esteem and being in control of your work. Okay? Let me reinterpret that one for management. So my management hierarchy. Is that, yes, you need to be paid. Although some companies don't seem to think so nowadays in the world of interns, but I believe you need to be paid.

You need to have some idea of what's going on, but those are necessary, but not sufficient. How to get great performance is to support challenge, freedom, and trust. Now which end of that pyramid do you think most organizations focus, the bottom or the top? The bottom. Where do you think the truly great workplace is focused?

And that's, for me, what it's about. Shifting. And that's why it absolutely ties in with beyond budgeting. Giving people the trust and freedom. Budgets and targets are just one part of where people are so often tied down. But giving people that trust and freedom. So, let's start looking at that practically.

How often do you ask somebody to go away and solve, or a group of people, and solve a problem, or come up with a new idea, or a new proposal, and bring it back for approval. Hands up if that's a common thing you do. Okay? So the idea, which some of you may already be doing, is very simple. It's you miss out the last bit.

You miss out the approval bit. What you do is you approve the solution before they've thought of it. Yeah? So the idea is pre- approval. How many already do pre- approval, approve things, yeah? Just, is that all? Just one? Two? A couple of hesitant, okay. This is our cafe, and the reason that's up there is because that's one of the things we pre approved.

We had a young 19 year old who wanted to jazz up the cafe, so we gave her a budget, made sure she understood the kind of style of the company, and I walked in one day and found it had all changed to that, which is very nice. Because I like colors, as you might have guessed. So it fitted well with me.

If you'd made it grey, I wouldn't have been so happy. But that was part of the principles. But let me explain this with a couple of examples. One of our trainers sent me an email saying, I love these three things you've done to make life easier. To make it easier to serve the customer. So I looked at these three things.

And the first thing that struck me was, I didn't know they'd happened. You know, they hadn't come across my desk for approval, so I had no idea. Very nice of you for thanking me, but I had nothing to do with it. But the second thing I noticed as I looked at these three proposals, was I'd have rejected two of them if they had come across my desk.

I set things up at Happy. You know I use my best thinking and I think, you know, I'm a good thinker. You know, I think I'm up with good ideas. Like, so many, so much of, so many managers, so many senior managers, Because we're embedded in the way things are, we are a block on innovation. And if something comes to you as a manager, it's very difficult just to ignore it.

You improve it, don't you? How many of you have put your ideas up to managers and have them improved by a manager? It's not always a great experience, is it? So the big thing we did those, the biggest thing we did it with is our website. Okay? Now, our website's pretty important. We don't have salespeople, we don't advertise, so the only way people find us is by word of mouth or through the website.

And for years I've been involved in the website, because I think I know quite a bit about the internet, you know, and marketing and things, and so I would always help for the advice and give suggestions or instructions or ideas to the website manager, who somehow didn't feel in completely control of the website as a result.

So this time we decided it would be pre approved. So we did do a branding exercise, so it was clear what the look and feel was. It had to be yellow, you know, that's crucially important to happy. We sent Johnny who was in charge on the best search engine optimization training we could find. And we set clear metrics.

In terms of, I'm trying to remember if they were fixed or relative, but they were, in terms of number of visits, they were number of visitors and the amount of income generated. And then I saw the website for the first time the night before it launched. When it was too late to do anything. And as I looked at the website, I thought, Oh, I'm not sure I like that bit.

And why is that there? And oh, I wouldn't have done it like that. Because if you truly delegate and give autonomy, you don't get what you would have produced. You get what they produce. And that's different, but it was completely within the principles. So it went live. And lo and behold, within a month, businesses had tripled and income had doubled from that website.

Even without my expertise, the benefit of my expertise. So, my question to you, my next question to your tables is, what would it be like to pre approve, either more if you already do it, or pre approve more important things if you do already, if you do already do so? So pre approval in your organisation, when you go back tomorrow, what would it be like?

A couple of minutes on that. In twos actually, just discuss it with your neighbour.

Okay. Where's the orange thing on? Can you throw the orange thing down? Throw it down, Adrian.

Audience Member 4: I know that you say that you put your website out and didn't pre approve it and then got a big fright the night before it went live. Well not, maybe not such a big fright, but that it was a good result in the end. What I'm wondering is, how many times have you given pre approval and it's gone wrong?

Henry: Ah, good, good question. Well we're talking later about what we, what our view on mistakes is. Obviously, it doesn't always work, but often when it doesn't, it's then going back, I don't need that as well, do I? I've got my own. We, it's a matter of looking, did we set the parameters? Did we make clear, you know, there was a time previously, about ten years previously, where we got some people to propose a website and gave no guidance at all, and they came up with something which didn't fit the happy brand at all.

So it is a matter, it's not about saying, do whatever you want. You know, I do sometimes say, I do have a friend, who got a three word job description, which was just, do cool stuff. And that was, that was it. That was for an internet company, you'd probably guess. Now, I'm not sure they're still around.

But that isn't what I'm suggesting. It's about having a very clear framework. So it's a matter of, A, you do have to assess whether the person's capable of it. At the same time as pushing and challenging. You have to give them the skills, make sure they get the training and the skills. And then working out if it didn't work, why not?

But not everything works. I mean, certainly one of the people that we work with, their principle is very much fail fast. Try lots of stuff and fail fast. And if people have got that mentality, there'll be a lot more innovation. But let me go on to then, what is the role of managers? And I'm going to draw on some Google research here.

Does anybody know, does anybody know Project Oxygen? Julian at the back does, but yes. Google decided to try and work out what were the most important management behaviours. And being Google, they of course didn't just bring in a consultant or something like that. They went and looked at the data.

And they looked at tens of thousands of performance appraisals. And worked out the top quartile managers and bottom quartile managers. And what they did differently, and what the effect was. And came up with eight behaviors. Your challenge is to work out which are the two most important. Of that list. Okay? These are all good to have.

There's a list of five things you shouldn't do. As well. So, good communication, especially listening. Express interest in your people. Be productive and results orientated. Empower, don't micromanage. Help with career development. Have key technical skills. Be a good coach. Clear vision. Again, quick chat at your tables, just a minute this time, which do you think are the most, two most important of that list?

Okay, you can vote. You don't even vote as a, you don't have to vote as a table. You can vote individually. So you get two votes, no more, no cheating. Which are the two most important? I'm going to go through and put your hands up. So good communication in especially listening, hands up. Oh, only four?

Five? Okay. Express interest in your people. Okay. Oh, six, eight, nine, ten. Be productive and results orientated. Just the two? Okay. Empower, don't micromanage. Oh, lovely, lovely, lovely. Help with career development. Okay. Three. Key technical skills. Is this Google? No? Okay. Be a good coach. That's about ten.

Clear vision. Okay. You're an above average audience. Okay. The best school yet was yesterday in Marseille from a French audience. They did amazingly well. But You got in power and don't, well let me tell you. Third was express interest in your people. Third. Second was empower, don't micromanage.

But the first is the one that about one in five of you got. Which is a high score because the first place, the most important behavior of management is, be a good coach. Okay? First thing to note about those top three, it's all about the people. Now, yeah, vision is in there, but it's number seven.

That's the big surprise for most people. In fact, I was talking to a group of charity chief executives, and not only did not one of them get the number one, but they then asked, why is that part of our job? Why, do they, people here, what does a good coach do? Who's had a coach? Okay, what do they do for you?

What did they do? That was good for you.

Audience Member 5: Teach me how to learn independently. Teach you to learn independently?

Audience Member 6: Guided me on stuff I didn't know.

Henry: Guide you on areas you aren't familiar with.

Audience Member 7: Reflected on my work and job.

Henry: Self reflection. Build your confidence. Build your career. A champion. Give you opportunities. All those things would be pretty good to get from your manager, wouldn't they? Yeah? I suspect we don't always get it from our manager though. But that's the clear message from Google. If you're a manager, think.

about whether those are the three key things you're focused on. Yeah? If you're responsible for a lot of managers, think about how you can build that kind of culture. And of course, does it fit with Beyond Budgeting? Absolutely. It's about giving people the trust and freedom, and then supporting and building them as their capabilities.

Yeah? So, let me explain, put this in I'll give you a model. We have what we call a job ownership model. And I'll tell you the story of Happy . We, you know, we started, it was me and my back room in Hackney many years ago. We were just IT training at that point. We now also train people to create Happy workplaces.

But at that point we were IT training and I was very full of myself and I thought I was a brilliant trainer and my big challenge would be to find other people Who did it as well as me. I was a bit lacking in the humility at the time. So I would go and watch other people train and make detailed notes on what they did right and what they did wrong.

Then feed that back at great length afterwards. How do you think that went down?

Lead balloon is a fair description. But have you ever had a manager who tried to get you to do it exactly their way? Exactly the way they did it. The clone approach. Where you can only ever be as good as them. You can't by definition be better. Or a system, do this, this, this, and this, and you'll get this result.

Well, not if you're dealing with people, you won't. But at the same time, we did not want to say, train however you like. Hands up if you've been on an IT training course ever. Ever. Hands up if you've been on a Some of you have never been on an IT training course. Keep your hands up, keep your hands up. Now keep your hands up if it was an enjoyable experience.

Did you come to happy? Yeah, I mean, generally, very few. One of the things I'm proud of at Happy is that 98 percent say they actually enjoyed their IT training and that's a key focus. So we didn't want to say, do whatever you want, because most IT training, particularly then, consisted of an expert telling you which buttons to press.

And it was mind numbing. So, the solution we found was principles, which in our training, are key principles, don't tell when you can ask. Our principle of training, don't tell when you can ask. Some of our clients have adopted that as a management principle. Don't tell when you can ask. Very good, obviously, coaching principle.

And then targets, or perhaps I should say relative goals. Is what we, but we described, we talked about targets. Which at the time was confidence capability in the software. So, there's a couple of other elements. One is support. Is support the same as management? Why not?

If management is telling, it certainly isn't the same. You could say to the, if we're going to the coaching management staff perhaps, that even so, it's the person who decides. Where do I get my support from? And the other bit is feedback. How often do most of us get feedback in our jobs? Annually is normally what people say.

Somebody said daily, did you? Okay. That's very rare. Yeah. The words in what form? Say that again.

Audience Member 7: It's just a principle that we have adopted that we just give feedback to people all the time, verbally.

Henry: Okay. Grand. And where should the feedback come from? From the individual, from the manager or from where?

Everywhere. Everywhere. A particular customer. Particular customer. So, okay. Who should decide the principles? The individual or the organization?

Well, that one, I'm relatively happy with it being the organization, although there should be involvement. Because, one of our clients is Amnesty, and if I go to work at Amnesty and I turn up on the first day and say, Hey, you know, I quite believe in the death penalty. You know, it doesn't work. There's certain principles as there are in all the organizations.

Who should set targets, an individual or an organization, whether they're flexible or whatever? Individual or the manager? Anybody? You've ruined the next two questions, Dan. normally everyone says, The answer I normally get is either the manager or the two together. And the two questions I then ask are, Who sets, who according to research sets the tougher targets?

Individual. When are they more likely to be achieved? When the individual sets them. So it makes sense for having the individual to set it. But it absolutely may, I mean I'll give you an example in line with what Beate was talking about, flexible. Okay. Targets. We have a young woman called Natalie, who was put in charge of cost control.

Natalie's a little bit scatty unfocused at times, but can be brilliant when she's focused. So, I sat down with her to set targets. You know, at the time we were owed 135, 000 pounds, which is quite a lot for a small business like us. What do I do? Do I set a target for a year's time? Do I set, well, what I decided in the end was, I asked Natalie to send me a spreadsheet every two weeks.

And the spreadsheet would contain the three key numbers, which are how much she's owed, 30 days and 60 days, and her target for two weeks time. Okay, so the first week she sent me a ridiculously ambitious target. Then two weeks later when she hadn't achieved that, she sent me a ridiculously conservative target. But every week, every fortnight it changed.

And over time, It became much more realistic, and she became very focused on achieving it. And when she went off for maternity it was down to 35, 000. Which is far lower than any target I would have set, if I'd been setting. And I think, is that a method in line with Beyond Budgeting? It's a flexible one, it's in the person's control.

Yeah? No, it's the amount owed, the credit control. It's the amount that, that clients owe us and haven't yet paid us.

So it's money that we, that she persuades people to paid to us. Okay, so let's say you have this clear framework, you have trust and freedom, and something goes wrong. We then get on to the principle of celebrating mistakes. Which, actually no, you didn't, you all vote, didn't you all vote to avoid mistakes in the vote this morning?

Do we want mistakes? Well then, why did you say avoid mistakes? Why do we want mistakes? We learn from them. If I say, my department's made no mistakes in the last year, what do you think about my department? Conservative, or I'm not being honest. Now at a group like this from a company called Huntsman, any of you know Huntsman?

It's a chemical company in Middlesbrough. I got a very interesting story on this, which is, at Huntsman's a chemical company, and on the wall in Huntsman they've got a big red button. Which if you press, it discharges all the chemicals into the local river. Which isn't a good thing to happen, by the way.

And one day they had it in the scaffolders. And you're probably guessing what happened. The scaffolder nudged the red button. Yeah? And his scaffolding company sacked him for doing it. Because obviously it was a very bad thing to do. But what was interesting was the Huntsman reaction. Huntsman insisted he be reinstated, insisted he be sent back to work on their site, and actually held a little party to thank him.

Why?

Drawn attention to a problem? Yeah? I did miss out a bit of it, which was nobody saw him press the red button. He could have scarpered. But instead he went in the control room and said, I pressed this button, there's some light flashing. And that meant they could solve it within 30 minutes.

Instead of 24 hours. Minimum environmental damage and no fine. Because the problem is very rarely the mistake. The problem is the cover up of the mistake. If you create, and that, that story spread like wildfire around Huntsman, that we are now a no blame culture. They could have put that in their mission statement all they wanted, but it wouldn't have had the same effect as that simple action of having that party and celebrating that mistake with that individual.

So celebrate, so who would celebrate, who's in favor of celebrating mistakes? Come on. Okay, let me come on, because we're drawing sadly towards the end of our day of Beyond Budgeting. Let me come on to what I always say is our most radical belief at Happy . I believe you should choose who manages people based on how good they are at managing people.

Because what are they normally chosen on the basis of? Yeah, core skill. Skill in the core job. So if they're a brilliant engineer who's been doing brilliant engineering and been there a long time, they'll be made engineering managers, because that's sure to mean they're also good at people. Yeah, makes sense.

It wouldn't happen at a place like Google and Microsoft. Is it getting a bit cold in the room? Can you nudge that thing up to 23? The thing, the little box behind you.

Now, for me then, there's a basic fault. Let's look at the roles of management. Let me suggest you strategy, decision making, supporting, challenging and coaching are key, key roles. What's odd about that combination that we expect all managers to have?

Yeah, and in particular what is odd about that combination...

yeah, there's a big difference between strategy and decision making. Role A. Supporting, challenging, coaching. Role B. Which one are people generally promoted on? And if people are rather important to us, which one is rather important? B, isn't it? But it's okay, isn't it? We can promote on A, and train them in B, because B's really easy to teach people how to do.

Absolutely. We'll do you a course in it. What was said there, you still have to have A. I would challenge that. I would say the fault at the heart of management is the idea that you have to do both.

How many of you have had role A managers who aren't any good at B? Do you know, 49 percent of the UK population, according to CMI Survey would take a pay cut, to change their manager. . Okay. Now, let's say somebody comes to you and says, I love my job. I love the people I work with. I'm even happy with what I'm being paid, but I can't stand my manager. Have you been there?

Anybody been in that situation? What is the standard? What generally happens as a result? They leave. Okay. At Happy , it takes five minutes to resolve. We simply say. Who would you like instead? At Happy we believe you should be able to choose your manager. Who better to decide who can motivate, support, challenge them than the person themselves?

We're not the only people to do it. Anybody else do it here in England? No? Okay. You know, you know, who knows W. L. Gore? Yes? They do it. If you don't know them, you know their product, which is Gore Tex. You know Gore Tex? Okay. In fact, we're a bit conservative compared to Gore. In that, when we say you can choose your manager, you've got to choose somebody who is a manager.

At Gore, you can choose anybody to be your manager. Or, I think they call them champions. Because there the principle is, if you want to be a leader, you'd better find some followers.

So what do you think? The key, how can you get to the point of choosing your manager? It becomes very easy once you separate the two roles. Yeah? Because the problem is that for most people, to get promoted and be paid more, what do you have to do? In most companies. You have to manage people, don't you?

Even if you're no good at it or no interested in it at all. I mean, Do you know when Apple was first started? Steve Wozniak, who was the technician who created the thing, tried to, first of all, refuse Steve Jobs request and said, No, I'm saying it at HP. I like it at HP. I'm fine at HP. Do you know what changed his mind?

When Steve Jobs guaranteed him that he would never have to manage anyone. That he could spend all his time doing the engineering that he loved. So let me give you an example, a case study. We were working with a company that had a brilliant marketing director. Brilliant at marketing, but lousy at managing.

And she lost half her people every year. So the company came to us and said, What can we do? We want to keep her marketing skills, but, you know she's destroying the department. 30 seconds at your table, what's the solution? Keep her marketing skills, keep the people.

Actually, I think everybody's come to a conclusion already. You don't need 30 seconds. Okay. I can tell you our solution, which was, we got the marketing person to change your role and just do marketing. We found the person in the team who was best with people, or I can't remember, we might have got them to choose it.

How many people came up with that solution? Well, roughly, yeah? Oh, not everyone, okay. How many of you could do it in your company? Could take that person out of their marketing role and leave them in the senior position? Is that only one, two, three, four, five? Okay. Oh, that's all you could, good. Guess who was happiest with that solution?

She loved it. She suddenly lost all the stressful bits and got to do what she was great at all day. What a good idea. Get people to do what they're good at. Which is another radical idea, which according to Gallup surveys, guess how many people say yes to the question, do you get to do what you're good at every day?

What do you say? Twenty percent here, any others? Ten? You know what's really sad about this question? I don't know. Nobody ever gives a high number. Nobody out there is thinking the world is full of people working to their potential and doing what they're good at. Everyone assumes the world is full of people who don't get to do what they're good at.

It's actual answer is 17 percent in the UK. But nobody's ever surprised. We follow something called Strength Finder. Anybody here use Strength Finder? Yeah, you do? Anybody else? One or two? The, the principle behind Strength Finder, I can express by, say you have an appraisal, and you list all the things you're good at, and all the things you're not so good at, what normally happens next?

Improve, what's the alternative approach? Focus on what you're good at. Now yeah, there's some areas you might want to develop, but, the more you can focus on what people are good at, the more A, they get to, they get to be happier, they get to have more purpose, and the more that you get to achieve what you want.

A very simple idea, get people to play to their strengths. Strength Finder, incidentally, there's a book called Now Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham, which for a tenor you can discover your strengths and we do it with teams to find out what people are good at. So for instance, last week we were working with directors of a multinational where the IT director did his Strength Finder and said, oh, hang on, I spend about I spent a quarter of my time micromanaging the budget.

And it's not one of my strengths. And with which his colleagues agreed, actually. But he was brilliant at IT. And so by deciding there and then to give that to someone else and spend his time doing IT, think of the impact that would have on the company and on him. Just by discovering, by focusing on what he was good at.

Okay, I'm going to draw to a close there. But I'm going to, as you know, first of all I'm going to ask you Just at your tables, one thing you like about these ideas. And also remember page 36 in your book, the virtual green page where you put down things you want to take away from this, or Beate, or from previous sessions.

So one thing you like about these ideas, two minutes on that. Then we'll close, have a few questions, and go for drinks. Okay, everyone! Okay,

questions, who wants to catch the box?

Audience Member 7: So my question is, if you have, autonomous, autonomy in your organization, so you allow individuals ultimate freedom in making decisions about how they do the work they do, then do they need managers?

Henry: Now, I would say they need coaches. That's what they need. But remember, built into that, this is accountability.

I mean, I thought the great thing about Handelsbanken, was they had a very clear metric, and then gave freedom within it. If you can have an absolutely clear metric, and even better if it's relative if it changes like, like Natalie's credit control target, but yeah. Give people that clarity, but then the managers are coaches.

I mean at Happy, people actually see their managers every couple of weeks. It's like Innocent, where they see you, it's an absolute rule, you must see your manager every week. But it is a one to one coaching session, that people look forward to. Other questions?

Anyone? No!

So it all makes sense, yes? Okay, well in that case, we'll come to a close. What I, what I certainly am seeking to build is a movement for happy workplaces, which I think is very closely aligned with Beyond Budgeting, and I'd encourage you to join that as well as joining Beyond Budgeting because they fit very closely together.

I want to get to the point where a happy workplace is the norm and not the exception. And I, I think that would be possible because it makes absolute sense In terms of, of what makes people more productive, what makes companies more successful. If we can move towards this place where they aren't all these things imposed from above.

Just think how much more time you'd have as a manager if that, in that kind of environment. How much more you'd be able to focus on the good stuff. So, I want to encourage you to join that, and I thank you very much.