How ‘upside down management’ will work wonders for any company

Straight-talking, common sense from the front line of management

QAs we enter a new year and decade, what do you think the business world’s new year’s resolutions should be?

ADuring 2020, I will be spending a lot of my time trying to persuade big organisations to abandon their current style of management and follow a simpler, more successful system that treats people with respect and makes the most of their talent. But I expect that 99pc will ignore my advice!

Too few executives realise that colleagues are the vital ingredient of every business. They mistakenly think that an organisation is run by head office administrators.

I agree that central teams must set the strategy and create a culture, but day-to-day decisions should be made by the experts: the employees who serve customers, drive trucks and raise invoices.

Sadly, most executives believe they know better and devote much of their time developing policies and writing procedures that tell the operators what to do, instead of trusting them to use their experience.

Consequently, HQS are full of rule makers who get in the way of real success. And it gets worse; they not only lay down the way that every job should be done, but they also measure performance and check that everyone is following their official processes. No wonder the UK is so inefficient and unproductive.

I want executives to trust employees to do their jobs in the way they know best. Head office should be there to help, not hinder. Good managers never issue an order; they help staff to be the best they possibly can by providing training, support and encouragement.

Instead of inventing rules, they should be sweeping obstacles out of the way. This is what I call “upside down management”.

I’m on a mission to help senior managers “get it”. Upside down management can’t work without the enthusiastic support of the chief executive.

Sadly, most organisations follow what they believe to be “best practice” and fill their day with data, appraisals, dashboards, mission statements and “deep dives” in the search for more processes. As a result, our office blocks are full of busy middle managers doing the wrong job.

Many organisations talk about empowerment when they really mean consultation. They simply ask colleagues what the company should do, but continue to control policy and ensure that every colleague sticks to the rules.

To improve their businesses, leaders must turn their thinking upside down by giving front line colleagues the freedom to choose how their job is done – and giving them the authority to make decisions.

This is true empowerment. Think about it: suddenly you have a company full of positive colleagues who are free to use their initiative and improve how things are done. I guarantee that it works, so long as your firm is full of positive personalities who rate 10 out of 10.

To get there, you need to say goodbye to any staff members who don’t enjoy their job; it’s unfair to expect anyone to work alongside people who doesn’t love the business as much as they do.

If you have great people, make sure you look after them with plenty of praise, kindness and recognition. We ended 2019 by taking 182 great front line colleagues on an amazing trip to Iceland – the sort of wow factor that shows how everyone is of equal importance.

My challenge during 2020 is to prove that upside down management isn’t just for cobblers.

“It’s all right for you,” some CEOS say, “but it won’t work in financial services, a FTSE 100 company or any sector controlled by a regulator.”

I disagree. It’s true that when we introduced this way of thinking, Timpson only had 1,000 colleagues, but now we have more than five times that – and it seems to work even better.

I reckon the way we look after our frontline colleagues puts an extra 40pc on our turnover, and by cutting out policy and process, we save loads of money that can be spent on making our people feel special.

In my view, the bigger the organisation, the bigger the benefits brought by upside down management.

So the big winner could be the NHS.