Marion Janner, Director, Star Wards

Clive: Now, I've got to speak for about six minutes, I believe, and tell you everything about what we've done in the last 10 years of our journey at Cougar Automation. So I'm going to talk really, really fast and try and get through it very quickly. There's one thing I'm particularly going to talk about, which is what we've done with strengths based management.

We've had about a 10 year journey at Cougar Automation to deliver really, really, Fantastic service. That's what we set out to do. We didn't set out to make great workplaces. We had a big problem 10 years ago. Work was really hard work. We were losing lots of money and everyone was very unhappy, including our customers.

And so we said, how are we going to make a difference? And what we decided to do was to deliver fantastic service. There's only one problem. We had absolutely no idea how to do it. But luckily we started meeting some interesting people who started telling us some things and about two years into our journey.

As Kathy has alluded to, I was very, very privileged to meet Kathy through one of these awards that we'd entered and went on the EI training. And when I was there, Kathy said there's a book that you need to read, Now Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham. I went, well, yeah, that's interesting.

I like reading books. I'm one of these sad people that reads management books rather than interesting novels. My wife thinks I'm completely potty, but other people must do this because there's lots of other ones on the bookshelf that people are obviously buying them as well. So anyway, I put it on my list of books to read and then saw Kathy about, I don't know, six weeks later, something like that.

She Said, have you read the book yet? And I said, well, no, it's on my list. I haven't got around to it. You must read the book. So okay, I better go and read this book. So I went and got a copy of Now Discover Your Strengths. And it talks about this concept that is absolutely central to everything we do now, which is strengths based management.

And basically, the concept is very, very, very straightforward. It just says, We're all different, and we like doing some things, and we don't like doing some other things. So what might make work a bit better and more productive? Do the things you enjoy doing and don't do the things that you don't enjoy doing.

And as Henry alluded to it earlier, the Gallup organization, whose research backs up this book, they found that only 20 percent of people at work are doing what they actually are naturally good at and enjoy doing. So we started to kind of do something with that but without doing everything on the cheap.

So all I did was bought a box load of these books and put them in reception and told everyone there's some free books there. Notice the word free? That always means that they get taken up very quickly. Now we're an engineering company, so we're all very staid and logical people who don't do all this touchy feely stuff.

All those books disappeared really quickly. And it's got an assessment in the back. You can go and do this kind of strengths assessment online. There's a little code for it. And suddenly, everyone was doing this. And all around the business, all of these very staid engineers, like myself, we were all talking about what our strengths were.

Now, that was quite interesting. All I'd done was paid a five for a person for a book and done nothing else except put them in reception. Next thing that happens is a group of four managers in the business came up to me and said, you know what, Clive, we've realized we're in the wrong jobs. We shouldn't be doing these jobs.

We're not playing to our strengths. Now, you know, We all know as managers that we sit around having conversations about, you know, problem people, and we should have difficult conversations with them, but their performance isn't quite bad enough to kind of go and do anything about it. So one of these people, [ audience laughing] okay, that, that chimes a chord, that's interesting.

One of these people in particular, and I won't name any names had been a project manager for us. He joined us as a project manager, he was in his late 50s, he'd been doing this as his job for a long time, he was a professional engineer. And he said, you know what, Clive, I've realized that I really hate being a project manager.

I used to love it when I was doing the technical engineering, I hate being a project manager. And I'm only really doing it because I've got a good degree, I'm meant to go through my career, that's where my career path took me, and my wife expects me to be in this kind of job. And I'm thinking to myself, I didn't say this, I'm thinking to myself, well that's very interesting because you'd lose us a boatloads of money as a project manager.

So we've been wondering what we're going to do about this. But it's very, very difficult because there's lots of factors and well, can we really pin it on you? Or was it a dodgy customer or was it a difficult project or something like that? So anyway, so this guy went, changed to become an engineer and that was about, seven years ago now, and he's been one of our best engineers ever since.

Really well respected. So that was one of four people who made that change at that point. And when that change happened, our results shot up through the roof, our customer satisfaction shot up, and our happiness in the business shot up. This has been absolutely central to what we've done. And actually, it seems a bit trivial, kind of, you know, well, surely you'd do that, wouldn't you?

Let people do the things that they want to do. But that's not what we do in management, is it? We do the opposite . We have these kind of appraisals and performance management and, believe me, I used to do this stuff in the past, I used to do it a lot. And what we used to try and do, what I used to try and do, was change people.

You're not quite doing this job well enough, so what would I have done for this project manager? What had I been trying to do? I was trying to change him, get him to be the project manager I wanted him to be. And we don't like being changed. I certainly don't like being changed. I think most people don't like the idea of their manager changing them.

And what we do now is very, very easy. We don't try and change people to fit the job. We let people change their jobs to fit themselves. And that is so much more productive. And then everything else just became easy once we realized that. And we found that was the answer to most of our management questions.

And now almost any management question problem that I get put to me, I see an answer that is based in strengths first and foremost. There's lots of other things that are in here, but that is the central bit. Now, if I can Henry, I'm going to move this slide on. Downward arrow. Well, hey, there we are.

Okay, I guess from the laughter you can see what this is. So the guy driving the truck couldn't be bothered to get out and move the log, could he? You all heard of David McLeod, the employee engagement expert. I was privileged to hear him speak a few years ago. And he put this slide up, and he was using it to illustrate the importance of employee engagement.

And he was saying, you need to do all this stuff, which I know it costs some money, but this is what you get if you don't do that, if you don't spend the money. And I'm sat there in the audience going, I agree with what you're saying, David, But it doesn't have to cost any money at all. If you get the Recruiting for Strengths right, you're fine.

Now, I'm a little bit like this, but you know, there are people who like to have everything neat and tidy and straight, you know, everything's organized in the cupboards. You sit down at the table in a restaurant, you have to line up the knife and fork and that kind of thing. Yeah, anyone in the room that might admit to knowing someone like that or being like that?

Yeah, okay. So, could you do that? Could you drive round that log? Absolutely couldn't. So recruit for someone who has to have everything straight and neat and tidy. They would stop and get out and move that log. It hasn't cost you anything. Just when you recruited them, you paid attention to that one factor.

And actually, they go away having a really enjoyable job as well. Because they get home at night and they say, You know what? I painted some really, really nice, straight, parallel lines today. That was fantastic, wasn't it? And if you recruit for a few other things, like, They like being, maybe, on their own.

They like being autonomous. They like listening to the radio all the time. And you've got that key factor of the job that they have to, do nice straight lines, then it's absolutely fantastic. So, I've got a red card saying stop, so I will. There's a lot more than just the strengths, but strengths, as you can see, this is our philosophy.

It's absolutely central to everything we do. Thank you very much.

Host: Now, don't worry, because in a moment, you're going to be able to ask some questions. But before that, we're going to have not just one, but two special people come up to the front here. I'd like to welcome Marion and Buddy. And Marion has shown that you can change in all kinds of unlikely places.

Marion: Thank you very much. Okay so I have what can be described as an unwilling assistant here. So we'll see how this goes. I'm Marion Janner from Star Wards . And, I'm going to just briefly describe how Star Wards got set up and how we've been influenced by Happy. Thank you. About seven years ago, I was even madder than I am right now and ended up being sectioned to sort of contain the rampant madness.

I am a very, very difficult and expensive and high risk and rather nerve wracking patient. Oh, patient, right. So I'm a patient. Here we are, so just a bit of illustration. So here I was, resident in hospital, with my little dressing gown on. Yes, there we are, lads. So, I was in hospital and the staff in some ways were doing the equivalent of painting around the yellow line.

Although in our case, it was sort of, wasn't avoiding the log, it was avoiding us. It was very striking that we actually had staff there. They were right alongside us. But they, they avoided us. And it sort of, I could tell they were very, very nice staff, because when they did engage, they were great.

But there was extraordinary sort of paralysis there. Staff were just, just more paralyzed than the patients. So When I got home, I had a little think about thank you, oh thank you, there we go, about, good girl, about what was going on and what could be done. And I came up with 75 ideas, just small practical steps that wards could take to improve inpatient's experiences.

And having got those down, oh you're such a good girl, you're so pretty having got those down I then wanted to and having, we started to get those introduced into hospitals and they were having a very positive effect, and a positive effect on staff morale and so on, and And I thought, well, to give it real welly, what would be great is if we could convert these ideas into compulsory standards.

I'm almost embarrassed, ashamed to say the words compulsory standards. So not where we are now. Anyway, I had many conversations with Henry about it, a few arguments about celebrating mistakes, because mistakes can be a little spectacular on locked wards. But anyway, apart from that you know, it's a slight difference of opinion, but anyway

But I became absolutely convinced. I was already Henry had already introduced me to Ricardo Semmler whose book Maverick I saw was out there. Brilliant, brilliant book. So, I was sort of heading in the right direction, but just sort of going a bit diverted. I believed Henry. I trusted Henry and absolutely believed that really you know, these were good staff, these were good people.

I mean, they're fucking saints, really. I mean, it's a very grim job, you know and they were, you know, turning up to their shifts, but they, they just weren't able to flourish. And I got it, you know, the thing that what you need to do is to trust Equip and support staff. Not just Henry, there's a great book called If Disney Ran Your Hospital.

Sounds all very Mickey Mouse and so on, but actually, it's a super, superb book about, very much about that, trusting, supporting, and equipping staff. Now, if we had gone down the path of trying to get the regulator to enforce the standards, so we'd have been doing the whole thing about, yes, of Getting fierceness, using sort of fierceness and power and coercion, that's very good, Bud.

Very good, very good. Well, in fact, the staff would have been as happy as this. Not happy at all. It would not have worked, would it, Bud? No, because, well, for, no time to go through why, but because it's insulting, actually, we can say it's insulting, it's offensive, it's patronizing, and it's the very, very opposite of motivating.

And what was very clear to me and has been clear through these years working with staff is that it's all about their morale. In order for them to be able to support us and cope with us when we are really at our lowest morale, they need to have very, very positive morale. They need to be motivated. Now, let's try this.

Okay, buddy, sit. Sit. Okay. Nothing. Nothing at all. See? That was an instruction. It was going to be absolutely nothing. Buddy, sit. Hello. Hello. Sit. Yep. Well, she did. I did say please, but actually what always works for humans, of course appreciation and high fives and, you know, thumbs up and all the rest of it, but for a buddy, every time, yes, no, wait, wait, sit.

Good girl, very quick, very, very quick, instant results. So we went down that path of being genuinely appreciative. I'm very, very appreciative, appreciative of staff and, and what they do for us. And we're very We're very openly supportive and, and practical. We provide practical resources, practical, Oh, dearie, dearie me.

This is why we shouldn't have started this. Practical help for staff. And one, part of the feedback we get is that One of the things they like most is, I've got this quote, No management instructions. And similarly, why do they want to take part in Star Wards ? One of the reasons is because they don't have to.

I'm told this regularly, because they don't have to. Actually what it does it's all about self agency and motivational autonomy, actually enabling staff really to be, you know, to be themselves, to use their personal qualities and skills. Okay. I think one more point I'd like to make, which is that as a result, we think that ward staff are superheroes and we're very, very grateful to them because they are being allowed to, I mean, as the last speaker said, to do what they are best at, to be there, you know, professionally and personally.

Thank you very much. Well done, Bud .

Okay. So, what I'd like to do is to invite some questions from the room. So, a question either for Clive or for Marion. Anybody?

Audience Member One: Great, great speeches, both of you. Thank you very much for sharing your your experience. I have a question for Clive. When you say that people should be doing what they're best at, and what they most enjoy doing, I think, Some people really enjoy doing stuff.

They're really not good at it. And, and they're so good at some stuff that they won't even realize they're good at that. And they will do it so easily that they won't even realize how good they are. So how do you really find out about their real strengths?

Clive: Yeah, it's all, it's all very difficult stuff, isn't it?

And there's no easy answers. Feedback's been talked about. You need to have a clear sense of purpose. That's how we try and do it at Cougar Automation. We're very, very clear about what we're trying to achieve. We want our customers to rate us 10 out of 10. We want everyone in the business to be happy and fulfilled.

That's an obligation on each of us to everyone else in the business. And we want to eliminate all waste. If we do those three things, we think we'll be successful. We ask people to use their strengths. to do that, and we try and help and support people to discover that and we get help from Happy as well in doing that, and Cathy and, and the things that we do there.

But there are no, there are no silver bullets to it but we're convinced that if we keep working towards that end, we'll get better and better results, and we'll be a happier workplace as a result.

Host: Any other questions? Okay, coming to the back here.

Audience Member 2: Clive, you said that some people wanted to, wanted to change their jobs and you let them change their jobs. What about the compensation benefit packages they had in their previous jobs? Did they move with the same packages to the next job?

Clive: They just, they, they just stayed exactly the same.

Audience Member 2: Exactly the same.

Clive: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, no one's going to look for a pay, pay reduction, are they? Or is it better to have someone in a job where they're underperforming and being positively destructive? They need to save to do something where they're positively destructive. It was an easy choice.

Host: Just to add one other thing that Cougar did, which was actually what they introduced, was another way to get promotion, which wasn't just about being a project manager. So being male orientated, they came up, I don't know if you remember that one of the first pictures had a karate black belt guy?

One of the things was, you actually then had two paths, so you could become a really, really, really, really clever senior, senior engineer, Or a project manager. And actually that meant that there were alternatives and not just one route. And that is really about recognizing strengths.

So how can you do that in your own organization?

Clive: I would just like to push that a little bit further and say, you know, I mean, the way we come to understand that now, becoming a project manager isn't a promotion. We talk about that as being a role change. Everyone is on the same colored belt sort of martial arts style system.

If you become a project manager now from being an engineer in our business, because you believe that's your strengths line in that area, you stay on exactly the same belt, just as if you go from being a project manager to being an engineer. You go up through the belts, because you're showing that you're getting better and delivering more, in that role that you've chosen to be in.

So people have role changes, they don't get promotions. A promotion is going up through the belts, in whatever role they're in.

Audience Member 2: So you define the belts according to the development that people went through in themselves?

Clive: The contribution, you know, the results that they're giving into the business, yeah.

Host: Okay, got one more question at the back here.

Audience 3: Hi there, got a question for Marion. I love what you've done and I'm really interested to hear a bit more of your 75 quick win ideas or ideas for the awards which proved to be the most popular.

Maruion: Actually, it was a comedy evening interestingly enough. I suppose this is a bit of sort of classic for us is that a lot of television gets watched on wards.

We talked before about, you know, generally a lot of television is watched. But it's sort of watched very much by default and because there's nothing else going on and no one talks about it and it's basically it's used as an excuse for a bad substitute for activity and relationship building.

Whereas actually it can be very much the source of a positive activity in relationship building. So simply by, everyone getting together, deciding either to rent a DVD or even to see what, you know, comedy is coming up on you know, on the box. And they're making an evening of it. I mean, very simple things, you know, splashing out two or three quid on popcorn, for instance.

Very, very simple. Putting up a little notice. This is the film that's coming up. Bit of excitement. And exactly the same activity, you know, of watching a comedy film becomes an event and brings people together. And that's been taken up widely. I mean, we're hoping that will to develop into, you know, getting stand ups along and having gigs in hospitals and so on.

But that's a very, you know, simple idea of just sort of flipping things over a bit.

Host: Any other questions you've got?

Audience Member 4: can I ask Marion about the impact that your program's had? Obviously, there's impact in the wards that it's implemented, but is there a, is there a wider ripple, do you think?

Maruion: Well, thank you. Oh, well, thank you. It's a very nice question. I'm having a lunchtime seminar on this. I mean, um, Yeah, there are, so, the, the numbers are that there's about 800 psychiatry wards in the country.

About 650 theoretically members, although some will be much more active than others, and everything is voluntary. I should have made a bit more of a thing about this that, you know, all we do is come up with ideas and examples and validation. I can't stress enough this validation, and so, the first thing that happens is that staff get a morale.

They look at the 75 ideas, and they say very, very often, Oh, we're not doing as badly as we thought. It's a phrase we hear very, very often. So this is a bit sort of different, I suppose, in some ways, but, you know, quite a lot of the conversation has been about, so far, about successful companies becoming better.

But, you know, they're, they're, oh, bless you. Oh, funny, funny girl. Good girl. But, okay, a little bit of showing off here. Doesn't like me getting all the attention. So, in, in brief, the wards that do take part, look at the examples. She's a funny girl. And you know the effect has been up to transformational.

The most striking example, you know, public example is Lagan Valley in Belfast, where they went and they told us and they could share it, went from all the patients being in bed all day. Which even my dumpy old NHS hospital, you know, they managed to get us out of bed through to within two months. They just pick up our stuff, feel reassured, feel inspired, feel motivated, try one thing, it works, try another thing, it works, positive.

And within two months they had, you know, a full activity program, much better relationships with staff. In terms of wards not involved with us, one of the things we do is to is to protect the reputation of inpatient care because the reputation has lagged behind improvement. Things are transformed to what they were five years ago.

It's still much too patchy around the country, but infinitely better and When wards continue to be slagged off by, you know statutory services by charities, it makes things worse. It lowers staff morale, and the one thing we need is for it to be seen as a good service, an exciting service, a positive, challenging service for staff, so that good staff want to work with us.

So, that's one of the other things we do, is to sort of big up inpatient care from a genuine situation of appreciation and love. Thank you for the question.

Host: Okay, we have got time for one more question.

Audience Member 5: Hi, it's a question for Clive. So you were talking about recruiting for strengths. So, I was interested to hear your ideas about also recruiting for values or culture fit or attitudes and how those might work together effectively in a recruitment process.

Clive: Yeah, that's, I mean, there are, there are three things that we think you could look for in recruitment.

One of them is It's basically attitude, we'll sum it up as that. The other one is strengths, or you might call aptitudes, what you're naturally good at and enjoy doing. And the third thing is the one that Henry had on his slide earlier, which is the sort of skills and qualifications, sort of what you've learnt to do so far.

And what we do is we say, the first two I've mentioned are mandatory. You've got to have the right attitude to be a cougar cat to join our business, and you've got to have an aptitude for one of the roles that we have within the business, so you're going to be, have some chance of playing to your strengths.

The third part is entirely optional. You know, sometimes someone might just need someone with skills right now, in which case they will say, we will have to have that as well. But we'll never say that you don't need to have the attitude or you don't need to have the aptitude. Those two are absolutely fundamental.

And that's the kind of the, the bit where you can't change people. You know, you kind of like what you like to some extent. So if you get those bits, that's fine. And then the skills people learn very, very, very quickly. We find you can bring in someone who has no experience in our industry. If you've got the top two things right, within two years they'll be seen as an expert within our business.

Whereas probably, typically, traditionally in engineering, our kind of engineering, you think people have 20 years to be seen as an expert. So that, that's the key, and yes, attitude as well as the aptitude, the strengths thing is really, really important.