In the next 7 minutes or so, I'd like to share with you the story of Amroze Technology, a software company which has had its fair share of challenges in recent times. These are challenges you may relate to as well in your own business.
Stephen Fox is the CEO of Amroze and for sometime now has seen his company's revenues stagnate, profits decline and the level of morale, motivation and overall feeling of engagement in his employees drop.
He's also noticed, that because things are not going quite as he'd like, some of his best people are starting to leave. On top of a small number of redundancies, things are not as good as they could be at Amroze.
However, behind these challenges is a solid company, with solid products and services which customers want and need. But Stephen knows that he needs to do more to turn things around and reverse the situation, and start to drive his company forward again.
In this presentation, I'll explain how Stephen did this with the help of Enterprise Mentoring - and how it all started with a cup of coffee.
One Monday afternoon over a tall skinny latte, Stephen has a conversations with Sarah, a line-manager in Amroze Technology. Stephen knows the direct link between people and profits and asks Sarah to tell him how the team she manages is performing. He asks her to give him a quick insight into each member of her team.
Sarah manages a team of five software developers, Sally, George, Michelle, David and Amanda. She has just completed the half-year appraisals of her team and has a good handle on how each team member is doing.
Sally is a lead developer and is performing well. She loves her work and is an example and inspiration to others around her. She's also saving up for a deposit to buy a new house and has that goal firmly in her mind. Even though times are tough at Amroze, Sally is still positive and it's very easy for Sarah to motivate and manage her.
George on the other hand is the opposite. George is working on a software project for the finance department at the moment, and is not enjoying it. His morale and motivation is low and his attitude is starting to have an negative impact on the rest of the team. His work is also taking longer than needed and is therefore costing more that it should.
Michelle and David work closely with customers, understanding their requirements. Michelle and David are not as passionate about their work as Sally, but nor are they as negative as George. They do ok. They are middle men and middle women who neither over perform or under perform. They arrive at the office on time and leave on time. And do the work which is asked of them, but little more. They are however influenced by the rumours in the company, and have found the current negative financial performance of Amroze a little unsettling.
From the perspective of customers who deal with Michelle and David, they neither receive an excellent service nor a poor one. they simply receive an OK service, if not a little inconsistent at times.
Lastly in Sarah's team, there is Amanda, who is manages software development projects. She is very good at her job. But Sarah thinks Amanda is looking around for another position because she's not growing in her career as fast as she'd like. The uncertainty over Amanda's future is having an unsettling impact on the rest of the team.
Sarah would be sad to loose Amanda, and knows it will be expensive to replace her in terms of recruitment costs. Sarah also knows the disruption of getting somebody else up to speed will have a disturbing impact on the performance of her team and will also have a massive impact on the development of future projects, especially the one Amanda is currently working on.
For Stephen as the CEO trying to manage a company, he knows that the key to turning Amroze around and achieving the results he wants to get in terms of growth in revenue, profits and company value lies in getting the best out of people such as Sally,
