Jane Sunley - Purple Your People: The Secrets to Inspired, Happy, More Profitable People

PURPLE
YOUR PEOPLE

JANE SUNLEY

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Purple Your People

Jane Sunley

This first edition is published in 2011 by Crimson Publishing, Westminster House, Kew Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 2ND

Crimson Publishing, 2011

Epub edition 2011 ISBN: 978-1-78059-080-6

The author Jane Sunley has asserted her moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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To the multi-talented Purple People who are, at the time of writing: director Jo, whos been here from the start (what would I do without you?); co-director Helen, ethical, expert, energetic; Emily P, whose fine editing helped with this book; L & D and service guru MJ; Jonners, who came for a year and has so far stayed for seven; Sol, the custodian of talent toolboxTM who also attempts to teach us Spanish; Sally, always so dedicated and professional; Emily M, who, despite being the youngest, keeps us all in check; newbies Todd, Marina and Jax; kind and caring Ben; wacky yet professional Caroline; Jodi, whos just flown the nest but is still purple; and, of course, the fabulous Miss Fi. And finally to all our very talented associates and partners who allow a relatively small company to make a very big impact.

why it matters

W ho wouldnt want and need their organisation to be as successful as possible? Put simply, nobody. We believe that business success is truly dependent upon three key Is:

Ideas: compelling innovations around which you can create an easily marketable brand.

Investment: capital for start-up and growth plus cashflow; the life-blood of every organisation.

Individuals: the right talented people, in the right roles, delivering innovations and high levels of service, working to their potential in a happy and inspired way.

These three are of equal importance, yet the third I is rarely given the attention, time, resources and investment it needs. There is a clear gap between recognising the power of people and delivering a robust people strategy in our fast-moving, ever more demanding and diverse world.

We love the courageous, determined and high-impact human resource director (HRD) who positions him/herself in a triangular relationship with the chief executive officer (CEO) and chief financial officer (CFO). This is the way to get things done, secure the necessary investment and create commitment from the top.

But this book is not just for organisations that are large enough to justify an HR resource. Great people-centricity can still be achieved if you know how to make it joined-up and simple thats what this book is all about. One of our most successful SME (small and medium enterprise) clients, turning over in excess of 25m and winning many prestigious people awards along the way, has no internal HR resource at all.

Why does the people stuff, despite the best intentions, fall by the wayside so often? Because many business leaders and owners are often so busy dealing with the day-to-day stuff and fighting to survive and thrive that the subject of people just falls off the bottom of the list. Consequently people drop in and out of the organisation at an alarming rate, costing time, hassle and money. Most organisations dont measure the cost of replacing a leaver its just too difficult, too scary or both.

For a start there are the direct costs of recruiting a replacement, such as recruitment fees, time, interim cover, induction and so forth. The big impact, though, is made by the indirect costs the expenditure people often dont even pause to consider.

Theres a great (true) story about a managing director who pitched the idea of recruiting a global HRD, for the first time, to his board of directors, only to discover they thought they already had one! This shows that (a) the board werent giving much boardroom time to the third I and (b) the expectations of said HRD must have been pretty low. We heard this from the person who was ultimately appointed to the role and then went on to take the organisation by storm. The board certainly knows it has a group HRD now.

These include:

Knowledge loss

General instability

Service disruption/quality

Customer relationships/loss

Increased threat of competition

People leaving as a result

Drop in productivity

Effect on morale

Disruption to team dynamics

Effects on reputation

You can probably come up with some more if you really think about it

The answer is not earth-shattering. Put simply, growth organisations and their leaders lack the time and resources to actually deliver on the people stuff. Its not that they dont know its important.

To prove what weve identified over the last 10 years, we asked an exclusive panel of over 40 leaders taken from our Purple Revolutionaries and networks associated with Cranfield Business School and Lancaster Management University for their feedback. Here are a few of the outcomes:

Harnessing talent delivering growth: learnpurple research 2011

100% of business leaders say you need a people plan

98% say developing people is vital

90% are convinced people create competitive advantage

86% admit to having no consistent plan

85% say managing the development of people to support business growth is a challenge

70% cite finance and time as barriers

and a third dont have a plan at all

While its great that so many organisations recognise that getting the people stuff right is the key to achieving objectives, there is clearly a gap when it comes to harnessing the power of individuals to help deliver business success and growth. In the majority of cases, it just isnt happening when it comes to putting in place a plan to support company milestones.

And that is what this book is all about.

For the organisations that succeed in this, and they are the ones at the top of the fastest growing or most successful organisation lists, making super-profits as they go, they strive to be strong in all of the areas covered in this book.

So while becoming people-centric cant and wont happen overnight, welcome to the start of your journey. By breaking the important stuff down into manageable chunks it really is possible to achieve and definitely worth the effort as you become more focused on your people and their development you will, no doubt about it, reap the benefits of an inspired, developing workforce that has the skills and personalities to progress the organisation further and achieve greater (and ever greater) business success.