Take care of your people , I wrote yesterday, reflections from a call with a CEO who had focussed on that one thing since the pandemic had begun, a focus that has been key to their business entering 2021 thriving. In that discussion it felt clear that this was only truly possible as the business had been focussing on their people for years, it was the culture of the organisation already.
2020 was absolutely a very tough year, but for those that already had firm foundations focussed on their people will generally have come through it well. A, reminded of a quote: “Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” 2020 certainly wasn’t like sitting in the shade, nurturing the tree planted long ago certainly helped.
Now, yesterday I saw a tweet from a UK business leader who I admire and have written about numerous times, including this post that included this quote:
“…the more we care for our colleagues, the better the Timpson key-cutting and shoe-repair business seems to perform. Over the past five years, we have opened 1,000 new shops, sales and profits have doubled”
James Timpson of Timpson
So, what was James writing about yesterday? Trust. I certainly repeat themes around #OpenLeadership here over and over, as they are always relevant and worth repeating. Trust is one of them. Two past posts about Trust and Timpson specifically here and here. James was tweeting about getting rid of time clocks. Timpson stores are, very often, one-person operations with set opening hours. What better way to show you do NOT trust your people than to have a time clock in there. Ugh. So, over to you James.