A recent seminar presented by Tom Peters, one of the authors of In Search of Excellence challenged the conventional view of customers.

His view is that it is the people in the business who are the more important asset. For certain, customers are important but, without any motivated employees, a business cannot deliver the product or services in an efficient and effective manner.

How many chief executives put their people high up the agenda? A straw poll at the seminar suggested at most 30%. How do you rate?

A study of general practitioners showed that on average, a doctor interrupts a patient after 18 seconds of explaining the symptoms.

A key competence for a manager of people is listening to them. The four most important words in your organisation should be “What do you think?” If you counted the number of times a day you say this to your staff, would you be using the fingers on one hand or more? It’s probably true that most managers are too busy fighting fires to find time to ask this question of their staff. However, staff are potentially the biggest and most under-utilised resource there is in a business.

It was the Hewlett Packard organisation that was one of the first to realise the importance of the MBWA (Management By Wandering About) technique. If you are not out there talking to staff and customers, how can you be in touch with what is going on?

What’s your management style? MBWA or management by crisis?

Are your people first or second?