Transcript for:
Upside Down Management Philosophy by James Timpson

most businesses are run from the top down so the people who actually serve customers drive trucks put money in the till are told what to do and have to follow lots of rules and processes and if they don't they get told off in our business those on the front line can do whatever they want whatever they think is right as long we only have two rules you put the money in the till and you look the part and the rest they can do whatever they think is right all we're interested in is are you happy are you doing everything you can to give amazing service and are you following our two rules hello and welcome to ways to change the world I'm Christian gir Murthy and this is the podcast in which we talk to extraordinary people about the Big Ideas in their lives and the events that have helped shape them my guest this week is James timson James is the CEO of timsons the uh the retailer and they include not just the shoe repair stores where you might get your keys cut or your shoes repaired but uh Snappy snaps and a couple of other big Brands where you might get your watches repaired um and he has written a book called The Happy index lessons in upside down management which is a delve into timpson's pretty well-known unconventional management philosophy which comes from James's father I guess so John is that right yeah sort of a combination of him me and picking up lots of ideas from other businesses we've seen and been inspired by really now um I mean let's get through the words first so um what is upside down management so upside down management is pretty simple most businesses are run from the top down so the people who actually serve customers drive trucks put money in the till are told what to do and have to follow lots of rules and processes and if they don't they get told off in our business those on the front line can do whatever they want whatever they think is right as long we only have two rules you put the money in the till and you look the part and the rest they can do whatever they they think is right and everyone else's job is not to tell them what to do but to support them and when you say they can do whatever they want just explain a little bit more about what that so imagine you're working one of our shops and um you want to give someone a discount you want to give something away for free you want to change the displays you order whatever stock you want you decide when you're going to have a break you can even paint the shop pink if you want it's your shop you do whatever you think is right to give amazing service to your customers they're own and so we all we're interested in is are you happy are you doing everything you can to give amazing service and are you following our two rules that's it and the idea is that a happy Workforce means a successful business yeah and every time we measure happiness that where where in our business colleagues are happiest we make the most amount of money so instead of trying to make lots of financial decisions around how you make profit just focus on our colleagues being really happy and that's how you make money it's much easier it's much more fun and it requires has much less much less cost of overhead and this is sort of a how-to book for people in business isn't it yeah for how how to manage so when you when you I you called it the happy index what is the happy index so the happy index is our annual colleague survey so in our business everyone's a colleague we don't do staff or teams or anything like that and the way we run the business is you know we I measure the cash flow every day you know we have monthly profits and the normal things that everyone else would look at but the one barometer with that is important is what is your happy IND score so if you're an area manager in our business probably have 100 120 colleagues reporting to you 40 shops something like that and on April the first all your colleagues will receive a survey and it's one question on a scale of 1 to 10 how do you rate your area manager for their kindness to you and if you want to write a comment you can and we get them all back and we measure the scores and if you get a really good score which most of our area managers do fantastic if you get a bad score we've got a problem because your job is not to make us lots of money your job is to make sure your colleagues are happy and if they're happy and all the acts of kindness and support you can give them they perform really well happy engaged team perform really well and give really good service so measure that don't bother on all the other controlling Financial factors because it doesn't make that much difference I mean this is not just about some sort of Genius management metric to create to create money is it because timsons is a family business you go back Generations I've heard your father talk about the philosophy of the the business many years ago um so tell me about how this really came about as an idea to run a business well we we've always been a paternalistic family business there's always been a culture of supporting everybody everybody who works in the business is part of the family and you treat everybody as part of the family and there's this story I don't know whether it's true or not there's a story that the founder in 1865 he he left his village in Northampton to go to Manchester to work with his uncle and to start selling shoelaces on his bicycle and he got on the wrong train cuz he never been on a train before ended up in Sheffield um on the train station slept the night on the station didn't know what to do didn't have any money and this man came up to him and gave him some money to get to Manchester so ever since then there's always been this philosophy is you help people who who need support and it sort of carried on as a sort of a very much a family business looking after people recognizing long service and then the business lost its way in the 70s the business was sold by my grandfather my dad bought it back and then when I started working the business when I was 15 16 years old because I was a boss's son I could do whatever I wanted because I no one told me off and I remember working can the our Canon Street shop not far from where we are here today and I doubled the turnover and then I went to the one on cheap side and I tripled the turnover and I wasn't the world's best shoe repairer I still not world's best shoe repairer but when I was honest and I think in cheaps side they certainly weren't putting all the money in the till but because I could do discounts and Deals and phone up the warehouse and they would send me what I wanted I could just take more money and also B because I could give things away for free more customers kept coming back and back so I thought well if I can do this and I didn't have to abide by all the rules why can't other people and then I started to look outside to other businesses I went to the states and there's a business called Rich of sounds that do Hi-Fi and Julian who's a good friend of mine now he wrote this book called The Rich away and every page I turned over was like that's how you do it that's how you do it he's the guy who gave the business to his employees yeah he did the the EOP yeah and he's amazing guy and I went to the state Southwest Airlines a number of other businesses so did it the same way and that gave me the confidence to sort of translate this freedom and giving people the trust to run their business and also how you how you incentivize them through kindness uh and then remember number of conversations sitting down with my dad saying how do we do this how do we communicate it and we just sort of went from there but it took a it took three years until people started to believe us and really it was 5 years from when we started that actually really started to happen but you make a profit it's not it's not that you don't believe in making money is it we're very profitable you know you're not a social Enterprise no we're not but but but th this is a strange form of capitalism which is the more you give your people the more benefits you give the the more days off the more dreams come true the more Holiday Homes we we buy for our colle leagues the more money we make so even when covid happened which was a disaster for us you know we're we're like the worst business for Co you know we paid everyone 100% all the way through we didn't sell any Holiday Homes we kept doing all of our benefits and your people recognize that and I think the customers who come into our shops in turn recognize that just to explain the Holiday Homes because you you you have Holiday Homes for free yeah so we have 19 Holiday Homes where basic basically if you work for a spre year you can apply to the holiday home team um with the dates you want to go and if you got kids you can go and you have preference to school holidays and it's all free and as long as you pay to get there and your food and drink when you're there it's it's all yours so a lot of them are on Haven holiday parks and sort of coastal areas we've got one in turkey and one in Northern Ireland and colleagues love it it's fantastic now um if if you're sort of asking people to measure their own happiness um I mean aren't some people just miserable yes for their own reasons yeah nothing to do with you or work how how does that interact with timson so we also measure happiness every week but not everyone does it so we basically have this survey that goes on a Thursday night says on a scale of 1 to 10 how happy are you and our average like we actually were down last week we're 8.2 last week our average is about 8.5 so what we're interested in that's incredibly high it's not bad it's pretty good um but what we're interesting is if you score yourself every week 10 10 10 10 10 and then you give yourself a four then it's then it your area managers your line manager job to phone you up to say listen I've noticed the score is low let me come and have a have a chat with you check everything's okay but on the other hand if you score Yourself four all the time which some people do and then you give yourself a 10 we're worried about that as well because we like people to sort of we that we know where they are so you you've broken this down into eight lessons let's just sort of spin through them briefly the first one is assemble a high performing super team and you will never have to worry is that just sort of a statement of the obvious well a bit yeah of course it is but I think really what we're talking about is how do you recruit people who get your culture because not everybody would like our culture not everybody likes to be trusted and have the freedom quite a lot of people like the boundaries and we don't really have boundaries and also in our business a lot of our colleagues are working in a shop on their own and they have to do everything repair shoes cut Keys develop photos so the way we do it is we recruit just on personality so CV for us waste of time you're not interested in the qualification not not zero name and phone number is all we need and we'll interview anybody because we can train I could train you to repair watches within four or five days but I can't train you to have a different personality than you have and is that same for for management and people who are sort of in your head office if you will everybody so predominantly we recruit from within so succession planning is a really important part of our job we're doing it all the time and so you you make you know so for our shops we're looking for people who are fun interesting engaging SP a bit eccentric is fine energetic um and that's the same for our it colleagues our finance colleagues and our online colleagues too because our culture is very specific it fits those kind of people so if you're shy and quiet timsons isn't for you it's not really for us I we don't think you'd be happy here you may be the world's best shoe repairer and you know really like our values but you you won't Thrive because it's not that kind of culture that that that'll work for you it's a good bias though I mean you know people you know you're kind of scoring people on their personality rather than their ability and some people you know it's not anyone's fault that they are the way they are they just are the way they are because the thing is when you go into one of our shops you won't remember whether the carpet was clean or whether all the light bulbs are on you probably won't remember how much it cost you you'll remember how good the person was who served you I'll also remember how good this the the shoe reselling is yeah um which might be really good from somebody with not a timson personal but the ones with our personality take the most amount of money right um okay well next if you build it they will come how to have a great company culture what does that mean so our culture of upside down management is the stronger our culture is the more successful the business is and one of our problems has been as we've grown that culture has been challenged a lot especially as we've done Acquisitions whenever we buy another business it's normally we normally buy businesses from the administrators because it's cheap and we I just find it easier fixing them um but culturally it's a real problem and again it takes three to five years to really integrate a business into our culture because it just it just takes a long a long time to make sure you got the right people but also they trust your culture because you can we can go along and say you know we give up you have your birthday off we have these Holiday Homes you can have a dreams come true but they don't believe it until they really experience it and so when you've taken over businesses and you inherit employees you must have a load of employees who are the wrong kind of person in your in your terms what do you do we we do it with kindness but what some of the things we do for example we we prefer full-time colleagues rather than part-time colleagues so we try and encourage everyone to join us fulltime everyone can do that some people leave and also we like our colleagues to be able to move around a lot so even though in one of our shops you may see the regular colleague over and over again actually about 80% of our shops colleagues are moving around quite a lot so we sort of test people in different shops and sometimes they Thrive and sometimes they don't but one of the things that I'm very enthusiastic about is when someone is not going to be happy with us we help them be happy somewhere else and a lot of a lot of companies don't like those difficult conversations but I don't think it's fair someone who's who's fantastic having to work alongside someone who isn't fantastic so how do you help somebody be happy somewhere else is you talking about references or references loads of time offer interviews we help them get jobs elsewhere um and we we just really support them and encourage them how can you help someone who you don't think is good enough to work for you get a job somewhere else how does it work by being kind so for for example um imagine um I'm your I'm your area manager and say right you know this is what we want you to do this is this is where we see the business going this is where we see your role going and we don't think it's right for you if you want to have a go that's fantastic but listen let's have this conversation now I think you'd be much happier doing something else but we'll give you the time and will'll support you all the way until you find it um I mean you've also written in here about how you deal with dishonesty and misconduct what's different about the way you deal with that we're quick you know our dishonesty is basically colleagues stealing from the till that's we don't really have customers you can't really go into one of our shops and steal something there's nothing really to steal and and it's about just being really really quick on it and if someone sort of goes against our culture act really fast and one of the things that we see in other businesses that that we take on or or we hear about as soon as you get involved with a long-winded HR process you're stuck you just want to have that honest conversation with people but no one wants to come home and tell their love ones that they've been been caught stealing so we help them do it graciously what does that mean it means Sal list right I think it's probably best if we part company rather than having this investigation yeah quiet exit yeah three is to get ahead you've got to get about yep that's for the boss yeah so the for me the exciting bit about the business is going around shops I love going around shops to two three days a week um meeting the colleagues serving customers finding out what's going on finding the problems looking for opportunities and whilst it's tempting to stay in the head office I think a Leader's job is to operate at the strategy level and on the shot floor and don't get involved in the middle bit and it's really easy to get sucked into the middle bit of day-to-day fixes operational plans and so on but the best ideas come from the colleagues who are serving customers every day can you give me an example I mean what what have you learned from being out and about following people oh well let me give you one big example watch repairs so we never used to do watch repairs and I remember going to West Brom 15 years ago and we had a new colleague who joined us called Glenn and he was working there and he had this little sign in the window handwritten sign saying watch straps and batteries 150 so so I said to him C I didn't know you did watch I didn't know you did watch repairs Glenn and he thought he was going to get told off and then and I said well how much should we taking this week said £250 I said this is amazing so now up until Glenn's Glenn's just retired but he at the end he was running a team of 70 in a workshop in wolver Hampton doing our Central watch repairs so the ideas come from there and even small on so let me give an example on car keys so we do lots of car keys um it's quite technical I don't really understand so we have a summit every quarter where we get our there are six of our colleagues in the branches who love KH keys they get really excited when they wake up in the morning they love car keys we get them together and say right what are all the things we need to do to help you take more money on car keys rather than us going to suppliers or or competitors they know and what's your approach to remuneration in terms and conditions and benefits and all that kind of stuff are you any different to the other retailers so I think on the basic pay we always pay above the national wage and that is becoming more and more of a struggle as it's going up so much um so we always pay above that but really the our our differentiation is in our weekly bonus so all of our colleagues in the in the shop in fact everybody in the business earns a bonus of some sort every year but the the big one is the shop bonus so if you and I work in a shop during the week um we we have a simple formula which is you add up our wages together and times it by 4.5 and that sets a sales Target each week anything over that we get 15% off so the average colleague is earning about100 a week commission but there are two incentives there one is to go for every week because a lot of businesses are based on courtly targets and annual targets our colleagues think by the week and the other is is to have the wages as low as possible so maybe that you're on holiday next week so I'll say right I'll just I'll cover for you so then my bonus Target is lower so that's how our and that's the drug every business needs a drug in your business it may be um fewe figures or whatever it is is the weekly bonus and then when it comes to benefits I want to do every benefit you can possibly have anywhere in the world because even though benefits cost you money the they the benefit far outweighs that cost um Lesson Four is the state and the street a story of government and business so give me an example of how tracking government policy has helped you well we could talk about prisons here we could talk about business rates so rates for example is is a mess uh the apprenticeship Levy is a complete a complete mess I've never met anybody who thinks it's it's workable at all and I think some of these are well intentioned but they just don't work and when it comes to prison policy some of the things that have happened recently around employment have been really successful but I I I feel sometimes that you know I'm trying to run a business with my hands tied behind my back I mean you've been a big champion of employing ex offenders tell me a little bit about that and what your lessons have been so one in nine of my colleagues is someone with prison experience I think is the laest word and it started as I just wanted to give someone a second chance who I met on a prison visit and then I got a bit carried away and wanted to help more and more people and it's got to the stage now where one in nine of my colleagues are ex offenders which means that there all I don't know who's from prison and who's not no one cares in our business we just want to recruit people who are talented and have the right personality and you don't care about their offense they might we do you do yeah we do so we don't recruit sex offenders we don't recruit people who've got drug and alcohol issues that mean that they can't hold down a full-time job and we don't recruit people who just aren't haven't come to the end of their criminal life so I would say if you were looking at 100 people leaving prison today I'd interview 20 to 30 of which I'd take on three or four so we're still very selective a lot of the colleagues who join us in for for for drug offenses um death by dangerous driving we do have some lifers we got high a high proportion of women from prison who work for us and um it's been one of the best things we've done not not not just because it's giving people a second chance because they're brilliant and they're talented and they're loyal and they work hard um even though some customers come into our shops thinking everybody in the business has been to prison including myself I haven't although I go to prison about once every couple of weeks recruiting or doing other prisons stuff I mean what is your experience of working with ex offenders uh made you feel about prison and sentencing we're addicted to sentencing we're addicted to punishment so many the people who are in prison in my view shouldn't be there a lot should but a lot shouldn't and they're there for far too long far far too long and that's just getting worse and worse you know I meet pres people in prison regularly who are serving sentences longer than they've ever been alive for already and I just think think it's just that this is this is common sense being ignored uh evidence being ignored um because there is this sentiment around punish and punish how would you change that I I would I would just look at the evidence so let me give you an example in in Holland which I know lots of people like to use the Dutch as example they they've shut half their prisons not because people are less naughty in Holland it's because they got a different way of sentencing which is community sentencing so people can stay at home keep their jobs keep their homes keep reading their kids' Bedtime Stories and it means that they far less lik to commit crime again I mean it's a cultural thing around punishment isn't it that we are kind of stuck in a sort of a Victorian mindset yeah in way you know you've done something wrong therefore you must pay the price yeah and a custodial sentence is not always the right thing for people I mean in a in very crude terms and you'll get people who completely disagree with me on this we have 85,000 people in prison it's going to go up to 100,000 pretty soon a third of them should definitely be there there's another third in the middle which probably shouldn't be there but they need some other kind of um State support a lot of them got mental massive mental health issues they've been in prison in and out prison all their lives and then there's another third and this a large proportion of women should prison is is is a disaster for them because they just putting them back in the offending cycle and given how many chers are working for you and what's what have you discovered about who goes back to offending you know what proportion of those people end up stealing from you very low or from someone else yeah very very low but when I first started it was higher because I didn't I was still working it out so for in in crude terms now we don't recruit men under the age of 25 from prison because they're just not mature enough and from our experience they won't stay and and often they'll get um back into their old ways um but female offenders from 19 absolutely fine um but if I if I recruit someone from prison they're more honest stay with me longer and more and more loyal and more likely to get promoted I don't know if you ever been into a prison but when you walk around you need people who've just got that they get to that point in life where they just want a job and they don't want to disappoint their family again they've got kids on the way they got somewhere to live family and stuff how would you go about that sort of cultural change to try and change the way people think about prison I think we need a government that's Brave I think we need a government that's prepared to take the politics out of sentencing and I think we need to have a government that is prepared to accept that we can't afford as a country to build four to six billion pounds worth of Prisons to to house more people so it just doesn't make sense at all okay well let's come back to to lesson five succession planning and the future of your business absolutely vital the for us succession planning our culture works when people are promoted up through the business whenever we recruit someone to a senior role from somewhere else and they could have be incredibly successful and amazing it just takes too long really to to get the culture so we so we we prefer to um recruit from within so we have loads of these succession meetings so virtually every every role of responsibility we want someone who is lined up to take on that role they're all we're training them up for it and then maybe even another one in that role as well and that's so so for me that's my sleep well at night management stuff as long as I've got someone lined up to take that job I I don't panic are you a product of succession planning yes I am your your dad worked out that you were going to get the job well I wouldn't say it was that logical did you ever have any doubt that you were going to go into the family business no because a lot of particularly in retail small retail you know loan loan Traders so Traders um the trouble is that their kids don't want to take over the business yeah and I loved it I loved it from day one when I was working in the shops I was 15 just Lov serving customers putting money in the till even now when I go into a shop I love that sound of just you know that the till going and putting money in the till U my sister wasn't really that interest tap on a machine though isn't it yeah I think 85% of our transactions is tap on machine now um my sister was never really interested my one of my brothers is a Tory MP not for much long he's stepping down and I have two adopted brothers who not really engaged in the business so in some ways I was really lucky that you know I had this opportunity but also I'd have actually really liked having a sibling to work along I've got a number of friends who work together in their family businesses and you know doesn't it's not without challenges but I I really like I would have really like that I wanted to ask you a little bit about family because again your parents became quite well known for having fostered a huge number of kids um while you were growing up what was that like like um chaotic and when I look back it was Bonkers some summer time I remember they when it all first started so my mom my mom died eight years ago and she was uh always loved kids she was a nanny before she got married and then when she had the three of us um I think she just had this my dad was away working a lot I think she just wanted to had wanted kids around so she signed up as a foster care in those days you only the maximum time they could stay with you would be 6 months and then they would go to somewhere else and I remember we turned up one morning for breakfast on school day and these two kids had arrived in the middle of the night and they were there wearing our school clothes and that was Simon and sha the first foster children and they stayed with 6 months and they went back to a children's home and then more and more came and more and more came and my mom just became really passionate about these kids and it was just the volume I think she had 97 foster children in in her fostering career and some were amazing some were great fun some used to play football with me in the garden some were an absolute nightmare the language some of them used we had pets murdered the green houses smashed up cars smashed up um some it was pretty high stress at times how old were you when seven when it first started so did you feel displaced did you feel neglected as a result or no my parents are always really good we we always were very loved and we always knew that we were the sort of the CORE family but we also had a responsibility to help my mom and my dad with these kids you know we're sort of part of the team so they weren't treated the same they weren't treated as if they were I think they would have children I think they would have they were they they came on holiday with us it was completely normal um but my parents were very good you know we we were we were very loved it I never felt that um I was missing out on my childhood when I looked back now I think it was amazing to share my life with these people who had you know I had a very privileged upbringing these kids had nothing you know I mean a lot of the time we were I was sitting outside style prison for hours was on end in my mom's car with my brother and sister while my mom took the babies to go and see the mom in prison you know it was pretty pretty fruity you know we you know we used to have methadone in the fridge all the time used to have a sign saying you know don't touch the methadone we could have the cow Poole but not the methadone well because some of the kids were on yeah and um how how did that leave you feeling about fostering yourself or doing something similar um I wouldn't Foster myself cuz I do think you bring damage you can bring damaged kids into your family and you got to be pretty robust to do that um I suppose my outlet has been on the prison side of things giving people a second chance that way and there's lots of other things we do around supporting children and especially Foster carers I do think it's a gamble but I do think it's incredible what Foster Foster carers do the big difference now is if you're a Foster Career you can keep children for for much more than six months it could be years they will become much part of the family and I think that um is probably a lot easier than than we used to have because literally they they become part of the family then just go and that was traumatic for my mom but also quite traumatic for us especially some of the good ones let's come back to the book then um lead by example easier said than done I think it's about consistency and about trying to communicate well so as a leader you know there lots of things I lots of things I'm not very good at but I just try and focus on the things that I believe are important and keep the culture alive so I'd say most of my Mo most of my time is about going around the business talking to people and communicating and can you you can do what you want as well presumably yeah the business it does help that that your boss is your dad I suppose yes I suppose but I but I mean you could cause chaos in that situation couldn't you in a management culture you know you could promote whoever you want or you know yeah then the rules for somebody or say we'll take three months off to deal with whatever it is yeah and you see that in family businesses where things things start going wrong so um two of our we have three children and they're all just now all left University all all in work our daughter works for Mars Spen is on their grad scheme and our two boys are both in the business and they know they have to prove themselves they need to work harder and achieve more than anybody else if they're going to get promoted what's your attitude towards executive pay then I mean do you think there's a a ratio above which it's wrong to go for top people I don't buy the argument that you need to pay someone5 million a year for them to um run a company it's a privilege to run a company and the way you earn decent money for me is is having a long-term plan and I worry about companies that pay high levels of pay because often they have to do it because people don't stay they've always got to keep bringing new people in all the time so my my view on Executive pay is is I I pay my colleagues the going rate for the job and I pay them a big bonus if we do well right navigating difficult situations in the workplace what does that mean let me give you an example so colleagues of concern every month I get a list of probably about 30 colleagues who are having problems health problems Norm normally health problems problems with kids um relationship issues debt issues and so on and it's our job to support them there've been good colleagues in the past there'll be good colleagues in the future but these factors that are impacting them away from work need to be supported so I have a colleague called Janet who's director of happiness and she spends a lot of her time with colleagues who are actually unhappy a number of our colleagues will get into problems with money um they can afford to replace the tires on the car but if the exhaust goes as well problem so we like to give them money lend money um but if they don't come to us and talk to us they get into trouble it's Janet's job to go and sit in their front room and go through all the bills work out a plan we pay off the loan sharks we do that quite a lot so it's a case of having a culture did you have your own lending scheme basically yeah oh we've got about 300 Grand lent out any one time virtually everyone pays it back a colleague um is asked for £2,700 because she's moving into a flat with no boiler she's getting carbon oxide poisoning and she's a really good colleague so we've given her £700 loan and given her £2,000 as a freebie as from us so it's our way of saying we'll get you out you know we'll help you thanks for coming forward to us um and what do other Business Leaders say to you about the way you run your business you know do do you get a lot of sort of like well it's all right you just do shoe repairs that's fine for your bit but we're in grownup businesses yeah I think there's um they think I'm really uncommercial they think I'm uncommercial because you know we have all these benefits and we pay for this and all and actually I would say I'm the most commercial business person you're going to come across I'm pretty tough but I know that this is the right way to inspire people to perform I also think that they think oh we're family business you will be oldfashioned and you know it'll be you know jobs for the boys that sort of stuff again no I'm always on the lookout for the best people to come through um but yeah but our business is different and we have a long-term View and I'm you know I've been the chief exective for 22 years and hopefully certainly do another I don't know 10 or something like that um so it is different but do you think these ideas are translatable to every complet completely what you know and I can give you not just business every workplace yeah I I can give you number of examples of businesses where they run along very similar lines successful business a lot admitt a lot of family businesses where it's easier to justify know it' be very difficult to if I was running a PLC to justify you know if profits are down why we bought another three Holiday Homes I can see that but actually when times are difficult you want to spend that's when you want to buy the three three Holiday Homes can you imagine what the daily mail would say if the Civil Service had a director of happiness in every Department it would be it would be difficult one to ask answer I think but ironically I I think the public service is not good at HR they've got so many HR people who you know I'm sure a lot of them are really good at HR but the culture of the public sector means that it's very difficult for them to do these things but these things work why what's wrong what do they get wrong it's very process driven it's very um it's probably regimented say someone um is turning up late for work they will just go down the HR process letters letters letters is um disciplinary disciplinary we'll just sit down and say uh Brian why are you late what's happening what can we do to help so we're quick and getting over them and what if Brian is just a bit useless we'll have that chat and and if he's not going to work out then we'll say why didn't you be Happ you know maybe we should help you find your happiness elsewhere then you find them get a job with a latest start by the way the the happiness Elsewhere One I I stole from Disney I spent a few days behind the scenes at Disney in Florida and they were brilliant at the whole HR stuff elaborate so let me give you an example so um everyone's a cast member there so they s big it all up and give you want standards so they're very particular on standards and everyone's job description at Disney you have to pick up litter from the chief exec to someone who's just joined um and just before you go out into the park they have a a big mirror and it says check check check you know hair and everything else and then they have a vending machine with Combs deodorant razors so if anybody's not perfect then so so now in our shops we have a no excuse box with deodorant spare ties badges hair brush and that sort of stuff and culturally there's so many great examples about how they have consistently high levels of customer service alongside consistently high levels of Standards your final lesson is give back to get more what does that mean I think and again this may sound really uncommercial but the more jobs we do for free in our shops the more profit we make make out of our shops the more money we give to support our colleagues and their Charities the more money we give to good causes the better we seem to do and one of the things that I believe that you know business is there to make profit but it's also there to do good things and one of the things that we measure is the amount of philanthropy that we can do as as a business to help the societies that we trade from so on on the free jobs so one we ask our colleagues every day to do a random act of kindness for two reasons one is actually good for your health to do random active carness every day and the other is great customer service um let me give you one of the examples that we do a lot in our Max Spielman and snappy snap shops we get a lot of customers coming in to develop a photo to put in a frame to put on a coffin for a funeral so they're walking in distressed uh grieving so we always we always give it for free and customers can't believe it and they always come back and it's a really nice thing to do for someone in your community and so we're actually encouraging our colleagues to do more more things for free holds in belts bit of a glue here you know someone's having a tough time free free free free free um and I just think it may sound really uncommercial but the more we do the more money we seem to make because you're building relationships with people building Rel and and no one does it anymore no one really gives you free Bid it's always you know you're part of a process so so one one of the things that helps is our tills in our shops as is basically a calculator with a cash draw they're not linked up to any head office there's no pre-programming it's just literally you press $9.99 shoe repairs that's it so it means they have the flexibility to charge what they like and and do your people have to account for anything that they've given away no not at all they don't have to enter into the till and say I gave somebody a 2 no we're not bothered insult no not not not at all so how do you work out well how do you do your your your your your balance sheet then I mean you know isn't there stuff that will be missing or inputs and outputs that don't quite up well when we do our stock take so so we know when someone hasn't given enough stuff away for free cuz their margin's too high so we do it that way so come on you're being a bit mean be a bit more generous so if you could change the world in any way how would you change it I would like all businesses and organizations to state every year what they've contributed to society as a percentage of their profits a percentage of their income a percentage of whatever they do and that way we can measure the impact that organizations have because I believe businesses should be a force for good in the world I think they really are a Force for good we employ people um we help people we provide a service to people but I also think that it's Hollow making money unless you give back and do you have those numbers for your own business so our in fact our our accounts are about to be filed I think next week and 4.3% of our profits we um contributed you know went in in philanthropy but then I think if we add in our all of the prison stuff we do it's probably near a 10% but um for us around about four to 5% is about where we want to pitch it I mean do you think there's a bigger story to tell here which kind of pulls together capitalism and politics and Society yeah around what you're talking about I mean you know you mentioned your brother in politics I mean you must have interesting dinner table chats about everything that's going wrong at the moment um do do you have bigger ideas or bigger Ambitions than live me personally well I mean I don't mean necessarily for you but I mean you must have bigger thoughts as well so so on my philanthropy so I've been to tr y 10 times about this saying why don't you just change the way because director's responsibilities are taken really seriously by directors you know you have to do whatever's in there you have to do it the Auditors won't sign off unless you do it so very simple on the front page of every account I have to put in now whether we make any political donations we don't but I have to State whether we made how many people we employ what we do in our profit and loss I also have to say actually what our charitable contributions have been but it's on page 297 no one cares no one looks at it it should be on the front page because if it's on the front page journalists will look at it um and our competitors will be able to look at it and they'll be able to see you'll be able to compare let me give you an example BP shell and Exxon if they all had to say on the front page how much they contributed to society then you can measure how much they are doing compared to the competitors and then you can judge how successful they are in other means because my my view is is the more you give the more successful the business or organization will will be I suppose what I mean is I mean your business rules are very much about um giving trust to your business and to business in general um and creating relationships between customers and and business and that is obviously the massive thing that is lacking in society at the moment uh particularly with our politics um do you have any thoughts on how politics could make itself more trustworthy right there I think it's about leadership it's about the clarity of leadership and it's about how our leaders are communicating and acting and you know I'm sure lot you've had lots sitting on on this chair before and you you're looking at them and you say yeah I know you're not telling me the truth you this is a line just just we we just tell us the truth but I don't know whether they ever will but I I think you know as a as a public you know the answers are often not that difficult and it's not always about money it's about vision and it's about a a a a a collective good feeling so the country feels it's on the front foot but when you're on the back foot it's hard to get back on the front foot and that comes down to leadership and it doesn't it's not about in my view spending money it's about a vision and um an energy around understanding what needs to be done and also avoiding the the the it's just just focus on the big stuff avoid all the little things that don't make much difference James timson thank you very much indeed thank you