“You have to be able to hear the grass grow” so said Bill Gates, he’s referring to the market place, and he went on to say, “If you wait for confirmed insights, all you will be able to do is scrabble for the crumbs with the rest of the procrastinators”.

I’d like to take that a step further and standing on the shoulders of the Mr Gates, aim this observation directly at business culture. Senior managers need to be able to ‘hear the grass grow’ in the primary market place of all leaders, their own back yard, the internal market, the one where Personal Brand & Reputation are integral to the internal consumers consumption of the ‘leadership agenda and communication piece’.

That’s right, ‘internal market place and internal consumers’, I have real issues with the manager who’s believes ‘we pay them, so they work’. I am at the same time still at 40yrs young, amazed when the ‘walk doesn’t match the talk’. Can you imagine a business leader (and if not I can introduce you) with turnover of up to 60% of it’s work force actually considering the delay of an Employee Satisfaction Survey, because as things are so bad, “why get told what we already know”. The answer sir is very simply, it’s not just about ‘listening’ to the grass grow (the analogy being the voice from your people), but you have to be (wait for it, revolutionary thinking coming up here) be seen to be listening, digesting, making changes and doing something proactive.

But of course this requires emotional investment, investment in relationship and worst of all time spent doing something that has on the surface an intangible output. I mean when (could take a year) will I see the difference? Where (turnover & employee satisfaction) will I measure it? How (happy staff do a better job and stay longer) will it save make me money?! This comes down to the cultural direction of a business, whether it is ‘values led or £ led’, whether or not the employee is ‘staff or colleague’.

Can you really say that you ‘hear the grass grow’ within your own business, if you can say yes to most of these then, well, then you should know your on the right path:

1.  You take the long way to get somewhere, enabling the business to know you are around.

2.  You have your own headset for the call center and pop in once a week (even if it’s to listen to 1call)

3.  Sometimes you just turn up at the depot and hop in a van for the day.

4.  You eat in the canteen.

5.  When you do eat in the canteen, which should be every day you are on a site, you walk up to people you don’t know and eat with them.

6.  On that note, you introduce yourself to every face you don’t know. For heavens sake they are in YOUR business.

7.  You don’t organise to visit any area of your business, sometimes you just turn up, see it for what it is.

8.  You ask people if they know who senior managers are and then when they don’t, you get your team to read this.

9.  Sometimes you have conversations about nothing of any consequence what so ever, if it’s the canteen, please don’t ask about figures.

10. If a face you used to see around the place has gone, you find out why and if they always seemed a decent person to you, trust that judgment and find out where they’ve gone. You locate their number, call them and find out for yourself if this is the case. Why are good people leaving my business!?