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CEO's Diary: June 16

16th Jun 2009
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June 16 – It’s usually the case that when visiting more far flung customers (and it has to be done) that I try to stack visits in the same area.

Today it as East Anglia’s turn (with apologies to all who live there for being described as ‘far flung’ – but let’s be candid, you only go to East Anglia because you want to – not because you’re on your way to somewhere else – and that sort of defines ‘far flung’ in my opinion).

This patch was always fertile ground for us when East was in charge. Confusingly (and you’ll have to read back here some way to find out why) East now manages the western division and Hitchin is in charge of the east. And East is getting better performance out of the west than the previous manager did but Hitchin is not making as much progress in the east as East did (follow that?)

What’s the point of saying all that? It’s this. Should I worry about this? Is it the case that East took over from a poor manager so got the better deal and Hitchin took over from a good one, so was bound to make slower progress? Or is it that there’s some luck in here? Or have I really got a problem to address?

These things I can only decide in two ways. One is by seeing what’s really happening on the ground – hence the visits. The other is by asking myself whether I’m asking the right questions (hence this agonising).

On the ground I was pretty happy. Hitchin is keeping people happy. He is holding his own with customers, as was apparent from the meetings. Converting opportunities to sales is hard right now. I really have no reason to doubt he’s doing his best.

So, it’s back to me. Should I apply the ‘comparison’ tests implicit in the approach noted i.e. this year was better than last, growth is not ever upward and so on (about which I’ve been asking a lot of questions of late), most of which say Hitchin is not as good as expected? Or should I simply appraise now and ask ‘do I think we have anyone who could do better?’

The real answer is that the data is misleading. The reality is Hitchin is doing as well as anyone might, I think. So I’ll politely ignore all the accounting data, back a hunch and offer him my praise.

But I have to work out why. Which is half the reason why I write this.

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