Forget Strategy. Get Results.: Radical Management Attitudes That Will Deliver Outstanding Success

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Fortune

“You are at least as likely to have good fortune by doing good things as by doing bad, and you will always sleep better …”

The Problem: A vicious circle

In 2000 I was sorting out ICL's mainframe maintenance company in Copenhagen. At the time ICL was a UK-based mainframe manufacturer – it made and repaired mainframe computers, that was it; and mainframes were a declining industry. The company wanted to change the business model, and move into outsourcing and managed services. But most of that work in the UK was with government departments and, as often happens, they could not get on the list of approved suppliers in Denmark because they had no track record in offering those services in that country. No track record, so no references, so no clients, circling back to no track record. In their efforts to crack this, the company had already been through four managing directors in three years. All of them had failed, and miserably, to turn the business around. The team was deeply demotivated.

I knew I had to win them over. An important lesson was brought home to me when I was working late one day and I heard the cleaner – who was an employee of the company, not an external sub-contractor – pushing a Hoover and coming closer and closer down the corridor. When he reached my office, I said “I'm sorry, would you mind not doing this right now? Could you possibly carry on a bit further down the way, because I am trying to concentrate?” He looked me straight in the eye and ...