Perchance to live in northern France.

Now that the sale of our house is well under way and the exchange rate against the euro is on the up, my mind turned again this weekend to trying to make a move to France. We already have a holiday home there and so have experienced buying a house in France before. Bit by bit, my french has got better but always we seemed stumped by how to make a living there without me having to cross the channel every week to keep up my consultancy work here.

Of course we have toyed with the idea of running a gite business but at the same time we want to minimise our mortgage commitments. Also, I am not sure that the location of our current holiday home would make for a popular gite.

So this week I am going to search high and low for some alternative options that might give us some potential to earn a reasonable income whilst living mortgage free in France.

For those of you that have some ideas of what I might do, drop me an email. Je vous en prie.

The Benefits of External HR Support

So today I was reminded of why my clients like having external HR support when they need it. As I know only to well from my days in house, it often gets emotionally draining when dealing with redudancies, disciplinaries and grievances from your own employees. It's not that they can't be dealt with internally, but it really helps having an external expert holding the client's hand throught the process.

Today I was dealing with a particularly difficult redundancy appeal. The client has some really strong feelings about the issues and often confused performance issues with the redundancy issues that we were focusing on. In addition, when we met the employee they were very down and dejected. It was as if they had given up on the whole process.

The client told me that I contributed in a very critical way to the process and ensuring a successful outcome. Firstly, because the employee wasn't one of mine I could be offer an opinion that was free of emotional baggage. Secondly, I had helped the client see the issues more clearly and make a rational decision about how we should handle the issues and respond to the points raised on appeal. Finally, I came up with a neat (relatively cost neutral) way of offering some more support to the employee to get them ready for the job market without putting the client in a position where he felt that he was admitting he was getting it wrong (and he wasn't!).

It's great to get feedback from clients. It's even better when they remind you of the value that you bring to their businesses. I get a real buzz from days like today.

Leadership in Uncertain Times - Part 3

For those of your concerned about ensuring that your communication with your employees at this time supports the positive future of your business rather than just leaving them to gossip about how hard things are getting, here's a great article that sums up the critical things in just four or five bullets.

Uncertain economic times require leadership clarity

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Leadership in Uncertain Times - Part 2

It's a short week this week, but already it's been an interesting one. All this week's challenges seem to be about getting difficult change in place in the organisations that I work with - especially difficult when the proposed changes affect what the employees get paid and the hours that they work.

It's never easy to set out and make changes, sometimes painful changes in the organisation, and most clients are often keen to avoid it. Challenging times makes the imperative to change all the greater and all the more difficult to ignore. The first task is to make a real decision to change the organisation based on a clear and compelling business case that meets the business challenges and issues head on. Sometimes, I am struck by the shallowness of the commitment to change amongst directors and managers even when the business case is strong. Although it's a cliché, beginning with the end in mind is absolutely critical to implementing successful change and seeing you through the difficulties that arise along the way.

Sticking to that clear message throughout the consultation with the affected employees is vitally important so that they are able to grasp the reality of the situation and the crtical nature of the changes that are proposed. This does not mean that the consultation is not two way. In my experience, many great ideas can come from getting employees involved in the solution. But new ideas need to be evaluated in the light of the business case and the outcomes that are required. If they are not reasonable alternatives, they can be addressed and responded using consistent references back to the business case you started with.

Keeping to a well defined timetable for the consultation and subsequent implementation of the changes is also highly recommended. Letting consultation and related grievances, which seem far more common these days, drag on unnecessarily just complicates and slows the process. Not only that but they are emotionally and physically exhausting for all concerned.

Using union representatives, employee representatives and other consultative bodies in the organisation also help to provide structure and process in the midst of difficult discussions and decisions.

But ultimately, it always seems to me that it comes back to leadership that business owners and manager show during periods of change that really determine whether the desired outcomes are achieved.

'And the greatest of these is love...'

It has been a hard day for me listening to and watching the terrible news from Ireland. Once again, victims of child abuse at the hands of the Church are left feeling devoid of justice as the crime is recognised and acknowledged but the perpetrators are not brought to book.

It brings back memories of the overpowering anger that I felt when the revelations about similar abuse by priests in the diocese where I grew up hit the press some seven years ago. Our glorious Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor failed to take responsibility then for the abject failure of the Catholic Church to protect children from child abuse at the hands of a member of the clergy when it had happened on his own watch as bishop of Arundel & Brighton. If only he had pursued the cause of children in his diocese with half the zeal of his pursuit of the dead end of ecumenicalism, then some children might have been spared the unimaginable pain and suffering caused by the ultimate betrayal of trust at the hands of an adult who you are obliged by society to respect. What a great legacy this would have been compared to his utter failure to bring about unity amongst the various christian churches in the UK. He didn't even have the courtesy to respond to the letter I sent him explaining from my own experience how terrible these crimes are.

Now, seven years on, I can bearly bring myself to watch as victims in Ireland are denied any semblance of justice following a catastrophic failure of both church and state to protect them and ensure that they had that very simple but essential thing - a happy and safe childhood. To suggest that a report that brings the reality of the abuse into the open, but without enabling any of the criminals to be brought to justice, is in some way a good thing for the victims shows the utter lack of understanding of the horror of child abuse.

Alice Miller's excellent tome cries out that 'The truth will set you free', but truth without justice is a terrible price to pay for children, now adults, who have already paid a price too dreadful to express.

Robert Ashton - New Series

For those of you who have never heard Robert Ashton speak on entrepreneurial businesses, he is well worth an hour of your time. His new series starts on Sky soon and you get the details here.

Making the most of your talented people.

In recent weeks, I have been particularly struck by one client who is taking a refreshing approach to his business in the current challenging trading conditions. Like many HR practitioners, I have spent the last three months advising clients on the 'dark side' of HR - on the subject of redundancy and, I can tell you, its definitely the worse part of the job. At wrose it saps the life and energy out of the organisation and makes talented individuals run for the hills.

One of my clients took me by surprise and when he said that he wanted me to facilitate a business development workshop with a mix of managers and senior staff as an antidote to tight trading on normal product lines. Only too happy to oblige, my colleague and I went to it with great gusto, got our designing hats on and put the group through their paces getting creative and coming up with ideas for new product ranges to generate new revenues this year. We rounded off the programme with Dragon's Den style presentations on the morning of day 2.

I have to say that I was impressed by the seriousness with which the group attacked the subject and the quality of the ideas and pitches that they came up with in just 24 hours! I know a good few product development teams who would say that the process has to be far more long winded than that to get it right. Maybe it was the stress of the presentations on day 2 that did it but some of the pitches even came with some supporting research. What is more, I believe that we created a buzz and excitement around the business that will last and provide benefits for weeks, if not months, to come.

And what did the Board think of the ideas that were pitched? They loved them. Better than that they committed money to developing four of the six pitches, including one idea that had been pitched before and had failed to attract Board support. Two of the ideas, in particular, could generate revenue in the second half of this year as they are based on taking what they are good at and doing it in a new way. The other ideas may be slower burners, but they really do have the support of management to make them work.

Will this approach stop them having to make redundancies this year? The truthful answer is that I really don't know but, if I were a betting man, I'd say that the energy, enthusiasm and commitment that this process has released gives them the best possible chance of coming out of the downturn ahead of the competition and having kept the team motivated and committed to success along the way.

Watch this space!

Leadership in Uncertain Times - Part 1

Working with a client today on some major changes to their business, I was reminded just how tough it can be leading a business in these uncertain times. I was particularly struck by the need to balance doing the right thing by the staff and doing the right thing for the business. And yet, when you really got down to it, some tough decisions needed to be taken that would affect a few if the whole business was going to survive in very challenging trading conditions.

No matter how much bullshit us HR people can talk at times, the bottom line is that leading the business through tricky times really comes down to just a few things, done well. Today what mattered was, firstly, really telling it like it is and being as honest and open as possible with staff about the state of play and what we all need to do to keep the business going. And, perhaps most importantly, how they could help.

Secondly, taking action swiftly and decisively and trying as hard as possible to avoid death by a thousand cuts so that you can get the business back on track as efficiently as possible.

Finally, the role of gut feel and instinct. On several occasions we found ourselves discussing the alternatives but coming back to what felt 'right' in this particular business or what felt 'right' for these business owners to do. This means that, depsite the pain of taking difficult action, the business owners really believe that what they are doing is right for the business and that they way in which matters are being handled is fair by the staff who have worked so hard for them in years gone by. Overall, I think that this thinking time up front before the difficult meetings next week is time well spent and means that they have just increased the likelihood of a successful outcome.

Putting a spring in my step.

A wise soul told me that my posts on the blog showed that I am stressed right now. Perhaps they are right. Perhaps I'm just turning into a grumpy old man at 40! So today we took a drive out into the country to take in the warm spring air and the glory of nature's leap into leaf and flower at this time of year.

We followed that with lunch in the garden, the smell of someone else's barbeque wafting across the fence and making me feel hungry again even after I had eaten. It is not just springlike today but positively summery and it was good to get some warm sun on my old bones.

It is so easy to get wound up as the business of the week propels you along that I am thankful to be reminded that it's just as necessary to take it easy and enjoy.

David, you're gonna feel this way soon.

Yesterday I was clearing up someone else's mess, and I was not amused. What should have been a nice piece of consultancy work had moved into the realms of nightmare. In the big scheme of things, it was not the worse problem I have ever sorted out but it was not one of my making and that's the point.

The situation reminded me why I took the decision to become self employed again rather than building up another business. Its not just that this government has increasingly removed the incentives to build an exciting new business, though they have, its that I have grown less tolerant of poor work and mistakes as I get older.

These days I prefer to work smarter and just focus on filling my own diary with work that I look forward to rather than worrying about feeding the machine. I get so much satisfaction from a client who loves the work that I do that I no longer want to take the risk of a colleague ballsing it all up.

Although David Cameron's task is going to be of a different order, I hope he is looking forward to the challenge of clearing up someone else's mess.

Gordon's taken us to the cleaners.

Is it me or are we all living in a parallel universe where the rules that apply to most hardworking human beings just don't apply to politicians? No wonder Gordon Brown was keen to get the rules on MPs' expenses sorted. He may have acted within the current guidelines but most 'hard working families' (his favourite group of people it seems) and certainly many of his constituents would struggle to be able to afford a cleaner, let alone have the gall to charge it to their employer.

Most employers would tell an employee where to get off if the bill for their cleaner appeared on the monthly expense sheet. However, the employers of Gordon Brown - us mugs called tax payers - are expected to roll over and agree to an expenses regime which, at best, is an abuse of MPs' power.

What's worse is that this is a Prime Minister who has lectured bankers about corporate greed, and made civil servants redundant to get Whitehall 'efficiencies' whilst he enjoyed perks and privileges about which most of us can only dream - and at our expense too.

Just to really make my day, I have remembered that no-one elected him as our PM (and I know the constitutional arguments about why this is not necessary) and we are going to have to suffer this man for another 12 months before getting an opportunity to remove him. Suddenly an army coup seems quite attractive.

Here's a great petition I found today - click here. Sadly Gordon 'You Tube' Brown is unlikely to take any notice of it.

Using the 'P' word in church!

What a refreshing change to hear a priest using the 'P' word at Mass tonight. It has been years since I heard a Catholic priest say the word 'protestant' in church or out of it. In fact, in England we have been so dominated by the misguided notion of ecumenicalism as defined by our current semi-retired Cardinal Murphy O'Connor that it has become heresy to mention 'heretics'.

In fact the priest, a Holy Ghost father, did not invoke some kind of sectarian hatred but was merely pointing out in a factual way the difference between his Catholic mission to Sierra Leone compared with the other missions there at that time. The simple action of staying with the people (poor people) during the conflict and not abandoning them on some health and safety pretext had set them apart and encouraged the government to support their work. The simple notion of being a 'good shepherd' no matter what the circumstances.

Inspiring, and good to remember that the Catholic church offers a distinct choice; a unique mission. It's reputation may have been sorely abused in recent times and misrepresented but, in my view, the desire to 'fit in' imposed upon us by Cormac's daft ecumenical creed has done more harm than good.