Relax: A Happy Business Story
Get more from your business by doing less
Happy's first book is a fictional tale of how a stressed out small business owner discovers another way to run a business. In just an hour or two, discover the key element sof our philosophy of how to create a great workplace. Read the Prologue and Chapter 1 below.
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Relax: Prologue
I should have been having fun. I really should. Sun, sand, sea, my wife, my kids, a beautiful villa right on the beach, just down from a bar that did great lobster - I should have been having the time of my life. But I wasn't.
I was trying to talk to my Sales Manager on my mobile, which was heating up in my hand so fast I thought it was going to explode at any second. The sound kept cutting out, and I kept having to say "Sorry? Sorry? Hello?" like some sort of demented parrot, my kids were crying because Daddy wouldn't build them a sandcastle, and I was getting a nasty sunburn on my stomach. In short, it wasn't going well.
Just down the beach a little way, there was some guy playing frisbee with his kids. Not a care in the world, he clearly didn't have a major, multi-national company to worry about. He'd probably won a competition or something. I hoped he would fall over and get sand in his shorts.
"Hello?" I said, for the millionth time. "Hello?" Hannah, my youngest, was tugging on my shorts to get my attention, and I'd just about had enough. "Stop that! Daddy's talking work now! Go and play with your brother." That was a mistake. She started crying. Helen gave me a frosty look, and swept the kids away with her into the villa. I was alone on the beach, with my phone, and the other family. To top it all off, the signal finally gave up, and cut out. I swore, and threw the phone into the sea, instantly regretting it. I slumped down onto the beach.
The other guy's frisbee landed near my head, spraying sand, and he came running over.
"Sorry mate," he said, cheerfully. "You all right? You look a bit stressed."
"Stressed? What would you know about stress?" I snapped.
"Ooh, lots. I know how to get rid of it, for a start."
"Yeah? Tell me one way."
"Don't take your mobile phone on holiday with you."
I laughed, then remembered just how much I had paid for my top of the line model. I put my head in my hands and sighed.
"Easier said than done. I'm the boss of my department, I have to keep in touch."
"Well I'm the boss of my department, and I don't need to phone them up while I'm on holiday and they don't phone me."
I stared at him. He didn't look like he was a boss. Healthy, tanned, relaxed - young...
"Yeah, well, my company's probably bigger than yours. It's TripleX. You've probably heard of it." I sat back, smug. That'd impress him. It didn't.
"TripleX? Not bad. I'm with Quad4."
I felt my mouth open, and closed it quickly. Quad4 was easily twice the size of TripleX.
"So how do you do it? How do you manage to stay so calm? How do you manage not to phone them every day?"
"It's not a big secret, but you have to be willing to change the way you run things."
"How?"
"What would your company be like if you completely trusted everybody?"
What would your organisation be like if you completely trusted everybody?
"What do you mean?"
"Suppose you didn't have to keep following everyone around, telling them what to do and looking over their shoulder?"
"But they won't get any work done if I don't!"
"They will. You have to trust them to do their job."
"Trust them to do their job? I can't even trust them with the stationery, we have to keep it locked away, otherwise they'll walk off with it."
"But what if they need a pen, or a notebook?"
"They fill out a stationery requisition form, get it signed by their manager, send it to me, I approve it, then the finance manager goes and gets the pen."
"Doesn't the finance manager have anything better to do?"
"Well, yes, but she's the only one I can trust with the key."
"Right, well, when you get back, the first thing you need to do is unlock the cupboard. Nobody wants to fill out fifteen forms to get a pencil."
"It's only one form... signed three times..."
"How much time is wasted, just getting someone a pen? Wouldn't it be better if they could just get up, walk over and grab one?"
"Yeah, but what else would they grab?"
"Trust them. Sure, some people will take six notebooks home, but others will be careful. It all balances out. In the meantime, they feel like they're being treated as adults, and don't have to waste so much time."
"And that'll make everything better?"
"That's just the start. If you really want to know more, I'll tell you how we do it. Give us a call when we get back, and I'll tell you all about it."
"When we get back? Why not tell me now?"
He smiled.
"Because I'm on holiday. See you."
And with that he scrawled his contact number on the corner of my notebook and then strolled off back to his kids, throwing the frisbee back to them. I watched him go, and for a minute I actually seriously considered taking him up on his offer. No filling out forms? People wandering around trusted, happy in their work, working together in peace and harmony?
Nah. Load of old rubbish. Certainly not the sort of thing you want to encourage in a proper business.
I waded into the sea to try to retrieve my mobile...
What would your organisation be like if you completely trusted everybody?
What would you have to do to get to that point?
Chapter 1 - About Trust and Information
When I got back to work, I fully expected things to be even worse than they had been before I left. While the cat's away, the mice will turn up late, fiddle their expenses and do sloppy work. How could I possibly trust that lot? I couldn't even turn my back on them for a minute.
But I was pleasantly surprised to see that things were going really well. Everyone was working longer hours than before, staying later and later to get the job done - now that's commitment. The atmosphere was quiet, intense; you could tell that people were working really hard. It was a great feeling, popping my head out of the office door at 7pm, and seeing everybody still there - well, except Mina; she had to leave at 5pm to look after her kids. I understood that she needed to be with her family, but I knew that when promotions and payrises came around, she would be behind other people in the queue, people who put the hours in.
After a few weeks, it started getting hard on my home life, as I was also doing the longer hours - but it was important, I had to put the work in to get the results. Sometimes we'd all go to the pub after work to relax. I had to admit, some nights I preferred that to going home. Domestic life was getting a bit strained. Helen didn't seem to understand the difficulties we were facing at work, I needed to be there. It was an intense, busy period. Then again, it always was. Luckily my people were up to the challenge.
Everyone was pulling together - we were really working as a team. And then, for some reason, we lost two big contracts on the same day, which threw me. I heard about the first one as soon as I walked in the door one morning, it was all everyone was talking about. The mood in the office wasn't good. Still, I thought, at least we had a good chance of getting the other one...
But we didn't. Yasmin got stuck with the job of telling me - she'd taken the phonecall, and nobody else wanted to be the bearer of bad news. Yasmin was a very good worker, but really, really quiet and shy. She would never dare to speak out on anything in meetings, but when coaxed, always came up with the cleverest ideas.
She could have gone really far if she'd had a bit more confidence in herself. She quietly crept into my office, and tried to break it to me gently. She did a good job, but the news wasn't ever going to make me happy. I asked her if they had given a reason for not going with us. She seemed hesitant to tell me, but eventually spilled the beans.
"They said we were too slow to reply to the tender," she said, nervously. "They said that they needed a more responsive company."
"Responsive? Why did we take so long to reply, then?"
"I don't know. Sorry. I mean, I understand you needed to take it on holiday to check over, and-" She trailed off when I glared at her. I hoped she wasn't suggesting it was my fault.
"Hmm. Did they mention anything else?"
"Yes - they said they were disappointed that we weren't a bit more flexible in our tender. That's the big buzz word now, apparently. Flexibility."
"Well that's ridiculous," I blustered. "We're running a business here, we can't bend over backwards and change the way we do things just to please them. Did you tell them that?"
"Er, no, they didn't seem too interested. I think they just wanted to get me off the phone, to be honest."
The tender had taken ages to do - I had to check and double check everyone's work on it, to make sure there were no mistakes. The trouble was, I'd been a couple of days late getting it back to them. I mean, I'm not a miracle worker, I can only do so much at one time.
Suddenly, Ade, the sales manager stormed into my office to find out what had happened.
"What's going on? Why did we lose the Jefferson contract?"
"What? I don't know, it's not my fault."
"Well whose fault is it, then?"
"Somebody else's."
"Why did you hang on to the tender for so long? You knew we had to get it in quickly."
That was when I blew up at him. Very unprofessional conduct, I know, but he had to remember that I was the boss here.
"They ALL have to be in quickly! I have to go through every single tender, report, and client summary before it leaves this place, and it doesn't get any easier. Everything needs to be done yesterday, I just have to cope with it."
"Why do you have to do every single tender? Why can't somebody else help out?"
"Are you joking? I can't trust that lot with anything, never mind a complicated tender. If I don't check it, it won't be done right."
And there it was. If I didn't check it, it wouldn't be done right. But if I did check it, it wouldn't be done on time. Ade just threw his hands up in the air, and walked out in a huff. Yasmin had gone white. She crept out, trying not to make any noise.
I thought back again to the odd stranger from the beach, banging on about trusting people. Maybe if we trusted the sales staff with the occasional tender, we could - no, no, that was the road that led to disaster and mayhem. There must be something else we could do to sort this out. This really wasn't the time to start experimenting with strange ideas though, the business was in too much trouble.
I sat back in my chair, deflated and tired. I picked up the latest copy of MoveIt, the industry magazine. If I read for a while, maybe had a coffee, then I could relax and forget about our woes for a bit.
But then I saw the front page article, and sat bolt upright. Quad4 had just won a major contract with Rhueven Training - not one of the ones we'd been after, otherwise I'd have been even more disheartened. There was the grinning stranger from the beach, with loads of his grinning colleagues, shaking hands with some grinning new client. I stuck my tongue out at them. They just grinned back. I read the article, and moaned quietly at the huge numbers involved. When I got to the last sentence, I slowly placed my head against the desk, and tapped it against the wood several times. It read: "Martinson, MD of Rhueven, said 'We are delighted to award the contract to Quad4. They are an exciting, forward-thinking company. Their responsiveness and flexibility were a major factor in winning the tender.'"
And so that day, in a moment of madness, I decided to give it a go. Why not? The crazy stranger seemed to know what he was talking about, unless he was lying, and just enjoyed destroying companies with silly ideas. But the grinning faces on the cover of MoveIt didn't look like Quad4 was run by a bunch of weirdos - rather, it did, but weirdos who knew what they were talking about. And let's face it, things couldn't really get much worse in my building.
So I gave it a go. I announced that from now on, the stationery cupboard was to be left unlocked, and that the forms no longer had to be filled in. I also abandoned the traditional way we approached new clients. Typically, the sales staff would come up with leads, which the sales manager would vet first. Ade, the manager, would do an analysis of the clients, and tell the sales staff which ones were the best to go for. I told him that from now on, the sales staff should be trusted to figure it out for themselves. He seemed a bit dubious, but was so busy I just about got away with it. Once everyone had got used to the extra responsibilities, we'd start sharing out the tender-writing duties.
Things worked perfectly after that.
For about twelve minutes, anyway.
I was trying to finish a report that was due in the day before, when a harassed looking Ade stormed into my office. I briefly cursed myself for not having the foresight to install a trapdoor system just inside, and asked him what the problem was. "The problem," he spluttered, "Is your brilliant new idea. More specifically, the sales staff who are carrying out your brilliant new idea."
He said "brilliant" in a pinched, forced kind of way, that suggested he didn't think it was brilliant at all.
"Go on," I sighed.
"Ned has spent all day trying to win over a new client, but the company doesn't have any money, has a history of bad debts, and doesn't have any use for what we're trying to sell them."
"I see."
"He spent over three hundred pounds on a lunch for them, trying to schmooze their business."
"Right."
"If we hadn't been using this fantastic new system, I could have spotted that they weren't suitable straight away. Now we've wasted all this time and money." He stood there, tapping his foot. He didn't look like he was going to go away until I'd given him a satisfactory answer. I wondered how much it would cost to install that trapdoor.
"I'll speak to him," I said. "Tell him to come to my office." He seemed satisfied by this, and flounced out. He was immediately replaced by one of the customer service people, telling me that someone had stolen all the pens from the stationery cupboard.
So much for trust.
I finished typing my report, and printed it out quickly. I had to get over to our southern city branch for a meeting by 4pm, and it was after half three now. The unfortunate Ned Harris who walked in at that point looked incredibly relieved when I said I had to go out.
"But I'll talk to you first thing in the morning, young man," I warned, sternly. His eyes fell, and he slunk out of the door.
In the cab on the way back from my meeting (which I had been late for, of course) I wondered what I had done wrong. I'd listened to the mad beach man, that's what I'd done wrong. I bet he was having a good laugh at my expense. You'll never guess what, he'd be saying to his workmates, I met this bloke on holiday, told him all sorts of rubbish, and he believed me! What an idiot!
Yes, very funny. Almost as funny as the traffic jam I was now stuck in. The cab driver leaned on the horn, which failed to make the cars move any faster, but succeeded in making everyone (including me) just that extra bit angrier.
I was furious with the beach stranger. If I ever saw his stupid, grinning face again- There was a tapping at the window. The beach stranger's stupid, grinning face was grinning at me through the window. He was on a bicycle, wearing some weird green and yellow outfit that made him look like an insect. I wound down the window, about to give him a piece of my mind, but he just looked so damned friendly, I didn't have the heart.
"Hi," he said, cheerfully. "Did you try trusting people, then?"
"Oh yeah, and it's worked out really well," I replied, sarcastically. "My sales manager hates me, we have no stationery left, and I'm even more stressed now than I was before. But thanks for asking."
"Really? What happened?"
And so I told him the whole story, him leaning in the window of my cab, and me sitting inside, sweltering. When I had finished, he smiled.
"Well, I can see what's happened - for a start, I didn't really give you the full picture."
"Oh?"
"Yes, you can't just drop this sort of thing on people and expect them to instantly change the way they work. You need to introduce it, explain what you're trying to do, help them to understand, and provide the training to enable them. Perhaps I could have been a bit clearer."
"Oh."
"Look, my office is just round the corner - why don't you come in and have a drink, and I'll tell you how to fix it. These cars aren't going anywhere, and your meter is just going up and up."
I thought about it, and agreed to go. The cab driver didn't seem too happy about losing his fare, but I thought he'd probably manage to put the pieces of his life back together somehow.
"By the way," said the beach man, "My name's Charlie."
"Howard," I replied.
We shook hands, and set off towards his office together.
Charlie's office was amazing; I thought we'd walked in the wrong door at first. Lush, green plants, huge windows, sofas, smiling faces, and a friendly young man on reception who waved at us as we passed.
We arrived in Charlie's department. More plants, open plan areas, and windows greeted me. I saw lots of relaxed, happy, friendly faces. Everything looked relaxed, but somehow not sloppy - there was something in the air, a buzz, a sense of excitement. There were lots of phones ringing, but they were all answered on the second or third ring. The people answering had friendly, relaxed voices, and sounded genuinely eager to help.
I gasped, and pointed, tapping Charlie's elbow.
"Look! That bloke's asleep! Asleep on the sofa!"
"Yes? He's probably tired."
"But... but... he's asleep..."
"Howard, Howard, Howard. He's tired. I don't want him to start messing up what he's working on. I'd much rather he took half an hour to get some rest. You can't work your best if all you're thinking about is getting some sleep."
"Yes, but - he's asleep..."
"Howard, let me ask you a question. Do you judge your people on the number of hours they work, or on the results they get?"
"I don't know. Hours. No, results. Well, there's this guy who always stays till after eight o'clock, he's a really hard worker, and-"
"And how do you know he's a hard worker?"
"Because he stays back so late."
"Maybe he's just not very organised."
"No, he - he stays late. He must be working."
"It doesn't matter what hours people do, as long as they get the results you want. See how many targets this guy meets, and compare it to someone who always leaves at five. I think you'll be surprised."
I shook my head. This was getting difficult already.
Charlie just smiled at me.
"One step at a time, Howard. We'll come back to that one. Don't expect to take it all in at once. Break yourself in gently. Come on, I want you to meet someone." He took me over to one of the desks, where a cheerful-looking woman sat, writing something on a notepad.
"Howard, I'd like you to meet Catherine. She's very, very good at what she does. Catherine, this is Howard. He's come to see how all our crazy ideas can't possibly work."
I grinned, embarrassed, and shook hands. It turned out that Catherine had started out as an assistant finance person with little to no ambitions, but a lot of enthusiasm. She had quickly worked her way up, impressing everyone with her positive attitude and seemingly never ending supply of great ideas. She absorbed information, software packages, and new ways of working, and was a bit of an inspiration to everyone there.
"So," said Catherine. "You're the beach man?"
I looked at Charlie, who smiled back sheepishly.
"I was telling her about how we met. Did you find your phone, in the end?"
"Oh, right. No, it's gone forever, I'm afraid. There's probably a lobster somewhere who's making loads of free calls to his brother in the Mediterranean Sea."
They both laughed, with me instead of at me, which made a refreshing change.
"Howard's been trying one of the things I told him about," said Charlie.
"Oh?" said Catherine, interested. "Which one?"
And so Charlie told her the tale I'd told him in the cab. Before he'd even finished, Catherine was nodding and smiling.
"So," she said. "You gave the sales staff the training to be able to judge whether the clients were worth following up, then?"
"Er... no, no we didn't."
Charlie piped up at that point, "Actually Catherine that was down to me, I only told Howard part of the story on trusting people - I got it wrong, I'm really sorry Howard." In my head I couldn't believe what I was hearing - Charlie was telling, no admitting to a colleague that he'd got something wrong - I couldn't wait to see Catherine's reaction to that one.
"I'm sure you didn't intentionally mislead Howard. Anyway, you were on holiday when you met - I bet you didn't want to get into a long conversation about work, however much you wanted to share some of our great ideas, so let's celebrate that one."
"Celebrate what?" I thought. That's when I remembered that Charlie had given me his number and asked me to give him a call to hear more - that's funny, why didn't he feel the need to defend himself instead of going straight to an apology to me? What a strange pair they were.
"Anyway Howard," Catherine continued, "You will need to give your sales staff some training, otherwise they'll just be guessing what they need to do. Get the sales manager to set up a day or two, he can tell them what he knows, and then, as a team, they can agree principles that everyone can work within. Without information, the staff can't take responsibility. But with information, they can't avoid taking responsibility."
Without information, people cannot take responsibility
With information, people cannot avoid taking responsibility
"You think that'll work?"
"Of course. Listen, we used to have to put our press releases through three levels of checks. Three people had to check and double check them before they went out, so of course it took three times as long to get them finished. The person who wrote the original text didn't feel like she was trusted to do it properly - sometimes she'd deliberately put in silly things to see if they were spotted. So we decided to let her write them and check them herself, to save time - but she had full training beforehand. She couldn't have known what to look out for, what to check - but once she'd had the training, she was able to do it all herself. With the result that when we needed a press release, we could get it out the same day, instead of two weeks later."
"Yes," I countered. "But what if she's off sick? You haven't got anyone to write your press releases." Let's see them talk their way out of that one, I thought triumphantly. "That happened during the first week we tried it," replied Catherine. "So we trained everyone in the department to write them. It had a great effect on morale, and we could guarantee getting a press release out straight away. Did you see the piece in today's MoveIt?"
"It caught my eye," I admitted. I didn't tell them that I'd thrown the magazine across the room, after drawing glasses and moustaches on their faces.
"One of our PA's got that coverage," said Catherine. "She was the first to hear about the contract win, and quickly did the press release first thing that day. That's why we made it into the current issue. Without the information and training, she couldn't have done it."
I didn't say anything. It was a good idea, a great idea, even. If the sales staff knew how to do what the sales manager did, then they wouldn't make the same mistake that Ned Harris had done.
"See if there are any other areas where you could cut out the extra step," said Catherine. "You'll probably find that there are loads of stages you can remove, saving time, money, and sanity."
"That's great," I said, sincerely.
"Told you she was good," said Charlie.
"But what about the stationery? We haven't got any pens!"
Catherine laughed.
"Well, buy some more!"
"But they took them all. We can't afford to keep buying them."
"Well, everyone probably needed a pen at the same time, or they just thought they'd grab one before you changed your mind. There isn't much money in selling pens on the black market, so they won't keep disappearing once the novelty has worn off. Give it another go. Trust them."
"Okay, I'll get more pens. But if we go bankrupt because of it, I'll be applying for a job here, I'm warning you now."
They laughed again, and Charlie said he was going to take me to meet some other people. He asked Catherine if she could send him the report once she'd finished it, and she promised to have it ready in half an hour. I waved goodbye to Catherine, and we walked into another area of the building.
"She's very nice," I said to Charlie. "Must be good to have such a great employee." Charlie looked puzzled.
"Employee? No, Catherine's my boss."
I was shocked. Amazed.
"Your boss?"
"Yup."
"But she just had an ordinary desk, in the middle of all the others."
"True."
"But you just asked her to send you a report when she's finished...?"
"Also true. I need to read the report, so I asked her to send me a copy."
"But..."
"Howard, we don't stand on ceremony here. I needed the report, so I asked for it. She wanted to help me out, so she said she'd try to do it quickly. We're a team here, we all try to help each other as much as we can. Just because she's my boss doesn't mean she has to act like she's more important. We're all important."
I shook my head in disbelief. This was going to take some time, like Charlie said. One step at a time.
Without information, people cannot take responsibility - with information, people cannot avoid taking responsibility
Agree principles that everyone can work within
Train the staff to do the jobs you're trusting them to do
Trust them to do it
Chapter Two - Celebrate Mistakes
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