Funny - people, aren’t they?

Speciality Bites with

Paul Hargreaves

Chief executive of Cotswold Fayre

• Becoming a B Corp
• Top trend predictions for Christmas 2021
• Self-sacrifice: The importance of building a leadership legacy centred on others
• Undercover Boss
• Can/should bosses really be close friends with their staff?

Maybe I am getting old, or maybe I am just becoming a “grumpy old man”, but the longer I live this life, the more peculiar people seem to become! Or perhaps I am a keener observer of people and can see through masks better than I used to. Just a theory!

Last week we had our biennial Supplier’s Conference, and I was standing on the stage addressing 180 people I was thinking, including some Cotswold Fayre staff, we are a motley crew aren’t we?  That to some degree is the joy of being in this non-corporate sector – you really do see all shapes and sizes, metaphorically speaking, of course!

We tried a daring exercise, borrowed from others as all the best things are. We grouped suppliers into groups of around 6 and supplied them with different coloured post-it notes. On three different colours they were to tell us 1) What we should CONTINUE doing, 2) What we should STOP doing and 3) What we should START doing. They then had to take their anonymous “post its” and stick them on three large sheets of paper in the corners of the room. Pleasingly the START and CONTINUE sheets were thick with post-it notes, and the STOP was much thinner on the ground. The START was actually the largest and there were some great ideas there, which even if we implement some of them we will be very busy! There were also some rather dubious ones such as to give certain members of my team a pay rise, and as they were in the room, I suspect undue influence!!

It was a useful exercise, and helped understand where we hadn’t communicated as well as we might have earlier in the day. We will be sending out a newsletter responding to the comments and questions raised very soon. It is difficult keeping everyone happy as there were several comments from suppliers wanting more gatherings like this and a couple of grumpy comments such as “Stop forcing us to come to events so often”. Really? We have a Supplier Conference every other year and a Charity Ball in the other year. Hardly onerous I would have thought, and yes we do charge to cover costs for the Supplier’s Conference and any profits go to the orphanage in Kenya. £70 rather than the £600+ charged by supermarkets. And neither do we name and shame suppliers like some of the national accounts do apparently. Asking them to stand up and berate them in front of their fellow suppliers.

I am not even tempted, honestly! Have a good week.