Summer Holidays

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?

I always know it is summer when I arrive at the office at 7 a.m. on a Monday morning and have to open some of the 18 windows to let the weekend heat out! And that was the case this morning!

What a weekend – although punctuated with the odd tropical downpour for some of us. Our sales suddenly jumped upwards last week in preparation for the forecasted warm weekend and long may this continue for all of us.

Certainly for Cotswold Fayre this promises to be a very busy summer, with all the usual activities going on: busy season for sales, trade shows, Christmas sell-in etc. and also for us this year a big new IT system going in, which will keep us all out of mischief for a few weeks!  All this has led me to think about work-life balance over the last few weeks.  Mine has gone to pieces recently, having been something I was relatively happy with a couple of years ago.  At present I am not sure I am doing anything particularly wrong apart from covering for a couple of positions that we are in the process of recruiting for, but it is something we all need to keep an eye on.

I have spent some of the last few weeks trying to sell the last raft of tickets for the summer ball.  I guess the disadvantage of having a summer event is that a number of people are on holiday.  That is fair enough but one supplier, who shall remain nameless said “your Ball coincides with my first 2 week summer holiday since I started in business some 32 years ago!!! (in fact only my 4th summer holiday since I began!)”.  Surely that can’t be good for anyone, I admire the commitment, but without enough holidays, days off and even sleep, we are less effective as human beings, our relationships will suffer and are actually less effective at running our businesses.  It is time away that gives us perspective and ability to see solutions to problems that we don’t see when we are in the thick of it.  I am sure I am preaching to the converted here, but make sure you have time off, even if you are starting a new business and don’t feel you can risk it.

In fact since the early days of Cotswold Fayre, I have always done exactly this, and it has helped grow the business!  The reason being is that other people have to do some of the tasks you normally do, and generally I found they did them so well I said they could carry on doing them when I returned from holiday.  So, you see, going on holiday propagates the art of delegation.

Have a good summer’s trading – even when you are on the beach!