People Power

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?

This week I would like you to think about the people you have working for your company or organisation. It is obvious to say, but no matter how good your venue, product, service or retail outlet without a good team of people at the heart of it...

I am fortunate to have a great team of 40 people at Cotswold Fayre, the majority of whom go well beyond the second mile, and care about the business as much as I do.  However, this is not always the case with our suppliers and customers.  A couple of incidences in the last week have made this point for me.  The first one is members of staff working for our customers who aren’t looking out for the bottom line, but simply making their lives easier.  Every month, as many of you know, we run a group of generous promotions of around 12 of our brands.  Sometimes we have customers placing orders who order some of these products.  When prompted by one of my team on the phone that they only need to order one more case to get a free case, rather than jumping at the opportunity to make some extra margin for their owner, or, as we prefer, to pass on a better deal for their customers, they turn it down – probably for an easier life!  How sad is this.  I would be furious if people who work for Cotswold Fayre turned down an opportunity to “do a deal” – and they know that!

The second example is where the personality of the owner of a company pervades through the whole organisation and affects the culture of the place.  As you know it is our aim to work in partnership with our suppliers, and sometimes this is impossible because of the negative vibes coming from every phone conversation and e-mail from that company.  I had one of these companies this week finally admit that they weren’t interested in dealing with us any more, in fact probably never had been as the products they supplied us with were an unimportant side-line to their main business. They finally came clean and admitted the truth last week – and are no longer a supplier!

We are just starting our busiest 6 week period of the year where what goes out of the warehouse door (and comes in!) each week is more than double the average of the rest of the year.  It’s called Christmas, by the way!  We will achieve this with effectively the same team as we have the rest of the year.  So clearly we will be busy.  There will be strains and stresses amongst some of our internal relationships, no doubt.  However, as long as are striving for the same aims, which we are, then we will pull together and make it happen.  Most managers and business owners when asked what motivates their people generally say “money” as the number 1.  Actually this is not the case.  The majority of people are primarily motivated by wanting to do a good job and to please their boss.  (Yes – even sales people!) This is not to say we don’t reward people financially, but remember that at their heart they are good people wanting to do a great job.

Have a good, hard-working fun-filled week!