Prosell CEO on improving profit through people

What are issues some companies comes to you with?

There are some common challenges in the marketplace. The need to move from pure service to business capture and customer retention, also they need to move from commodity sales to adding value and increasing customer loyalty. Companies need to deliver the brand promise with every customer interaction, every time. They must do this in a way that measurably increases customer loyalty and customer spend. Many executives are frustrated with the methods they use to try to achieve this and this is where Prosell steps in.

What exactly are their frustrations?

Smart chief executives recognise that if you have good people and are getting the best out of them consistently, then you will achieve competitive advantage and greater profitability. They are, however, uncomfortable with traditional tools such as heavy investment in training and more recent fads, such as leadership initiatives and change programs. They are frustrated by people performance issues and coping with change, which normally means staying competitive in a fast moving marketplace, which is how Prosell helps.

Can we explore those two things, peoples’ performance and change, in more detail? What are the issues with peoples’ performance?

Traditional tools are no longer effective. In 1975, it was shown that 53 per cent of skills training did not transfer into the workplace. In 2003 that figure had risen to 86 per cent. Yet companies still spend more on classroom activities than real workplace development. The problem is that businesses are time-poor, so training events have become shorter and content heavy. In addition there is no mechanism to support transfer of learning from classroom to workplace. Even worse, the HR world still contains many “fad surfers” who buy the well-packaged, latest events with no measurable return on investment. At Prosell, we see that smart directors look for a return on money spent in this area the same way they would measure an investment in technology. Many organisations are still using yesterday’s tools to try to solve today’s problems.

What about issues with change and change programs?

Prosell sees publications that are littered with alarming figures on how many change programs fail. Much of this stems from the way in which these programs are positioned, through company communications and seminars. Ultimately, these are one-way communication tools and don’t even try to engage people. People generally think they work hard, are intelligent and have a sense of right and wrong. To tell them that they need better competencies, better values and a need for a high performance culture is seen as degrading and insulting. Particularly when they see the opposite being modelled by their management. These tactics fuel the fire of the corporate terrorist and create more cynicism than enthusiasm.

What do companies need to do differently, according to Prosell?

With peoples’ performance, they need to drive development and improved effectiveness out of the classroom and into the workplace. There needs to be less discussing principles and ideas and more evidence of it being put into practice. It’s not the knowing, it’s the doing that gets business results. Organisations need to support, assist and coach throughout the hierarchy. Management must also be accountable for such practices. Until recently, people in most jobs were given the time and training to develop to a point of competence. In this furious world, this no longer works. The tools that work are practical, workplace-based and speedy development techniques.

It is critical that good performance management exists, as separate from just performance management systems. Companies seem to invest heavily in the systems and their implementation, but invest much less in the execution of good practices. These practices must ensure a clear line of sight between those at the coalface and the company’s strategy. Strategy is of course, important, but greater profitability is about execution.

What is the key to getting this right?

The big one that must be corrected is the break between strategy and execution. What you must always do and what we bring to the party for our clients, is to show the correlation between the right practices and the bottom line performance of the organisation. When it comes to measurement “the soft stuff is the hard stuff”. As a result some companies either don’t bother or don’t do so consistently. The other issue with measuring effectiveness, or people’s performance and the way management do or do not contribute to it, is that with measurement has to come consequence. Prosell is often amazed by how many organisations allow damaging attitudes and behaviours rather than deal with them. What is critical and what we do for clients is to get the quality of execution right and then create a strong and measurable relationship between consistently better practices and profitability. This gives organisations a blueprint for competitive advantage.

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