Best-Practice Managers

I was recently reminded of a relaxing social London Sunday in the pub with a pal. I was given a neat refresher of the power of delegation and its ramifications for sales campaigns.

My friend went through a decade of managing pubs and as such was required to conduct regular stock checks. They were unannounced so as to verify whether any money was illicitly being syphoned off. Yet he alone in his company had never conducted one. He was potentially ‘exposed’ when someone realised that he didn’t know how to use the internal back-office computer system. Yet all his outlets had a clean bill of health.

People wondered how this could be the case as surely if unchecked, cash disappears from retail tills at an alarming rate?

The answer set him well above his peers. He’d long decided that such a task was not for him, so always created an unofficial post within his team of pub managers (typically totalling a dozen in his industry I’m told). The role was Best-Practice Manager. It didn’t provide any extra cash, but was positioned as giving more kudos and responsibility to the person in the job. And a guarantee that they’d always be “looked after” through any turns for the worse. Of the tasks required in such a role, one was to go around the other bars and check their cash through those surprise stock-takes. Furthermore, the individuals always seemed to love the role and were more than happy to do it.

As solution sellers we are always trying to schedule, shape and ship people. Project managing them to gain the most impact on our campaigns can experience barriers. I often see people that either could, or are meant to, help the cause insanely duck out of providing support. Perhaps appointing our own person into such a Best-Practice Manager role or aligned/adapted position could work wonders…