Management Excellence? Find it in Wales  
By Christopher Ward

Management is seldom if ever a neutral influence on a business. It’s a powerful force, whether it’s driving the organisation in the right or the wrong direction.

Business guru Peter Drucker once observed that “so much of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to work.”

It’s a cynical view but, unfortunately it reflects the daily reality in some cases of poor managers actually getting in the way of progress by applying arbitrary rules in a confused environment, which de-motivates and disables those around them.

Good management on the other hand can transform people’s performance, making competent ‘players’ good and good ‘players’ excellent, in a dynamic environment where all factors combine to deliver clearly understood objectives.

Make no mistake; it’s the quality of management that will make the difference for Wales in future. The battle for a place among Europe’s premier league economies will be won or lost in the field of management development.

This was underlined by the results of the landmark Future Skills Wales 2003 survey released recently. The report stated that “management” and “leadership” were identified by the 6,000 employer respondents as being two of the top four skills for which demand would increase most in Wales over the next three years.

This point was taken up strongly by ELWa’s new chairman Sheila Drury. In commenting on the results at the Sgiliau Cymru conference, she stated, “the ability of our managers to identify, embrace and deploy innovative approaches to productivity improvement will be a key success factor in achieving higher GDP in Wales.”

The good news is that our search for examples of the management excellence we need won’t necessarily take us beyond the borders of Wales.

The benchmarks and exemplars we require are already here. This was shown clearly by the outcome of the new “Best Managed Workplaces in Wales” listing, just published by Wales Management Council in association with Bangor University.

During an in-depth study conducted through the summer, researchers found examples of businesses and other organisations which Professor Dylan Jones Evans of Bangor University described as being as well managed as any in Europe.

Through imagination, commitment and intelligent responses to their own circumstances, these organisations had cultivated styles of management that consistently bring out the best in people and ensure that quality input from staff is translated into quality results for the business.

All of the top ten “Best Managed Workplaces” showed genuine commitment to good practice in areas such as setting clear objectives for individuals, appraising them regularly, giving them the support they need to do their jobs and giving them the flexibility to balance their jobs with the rest of their lives.

As you’d expect from exemplar organisations, each of the top ten had brought their own creativity to the equation and developed special features of excellence.

For example the Environment Agency has a highly advanced policy to enable staff to work effectively from home while at the same time ensuring they don’t suffer any ill effects as a result of being physically isolated from colleagues. Dwr Cymru have an impressive “talent profiling” system which matches the leadership talents of staff members to predicted needs in the organisation and grooms the individuals accordingly.

Smaller companies also demonstrated good practice. For example the Bridgend consultancy Concepts Wales, employing 12 people, shuts down for a “development day” for all staff once every two months and Welsh language training company Acen with 63 people ensures that its multi-ethnic staff can balance work demands with various religious and cultural observances.

The pay back of good management is also seen in the ability to hold on to people that a company has trained and nurtured. For example Tonypandy-based manufacturer Allevard Springs - another "top ten" company - has managed to retain a highly impressive 83% of its staff for more than five years.

The “Best Managed Workplaces in Wales” initiative is much more than a pat of the back for those who are doing well. It is a serious attempt to find and highlight living examples of management excellence, which can be replicated across Wales.

The real value of such practical examples is that they have been shown to work. For example Solutia in Newport have outstanding training and management development practices and they are happy to give these credit for a 100 per cent rise in productivity over the past five years.

Traditionally we in Wales have tended to believe that best performances are achieved elsewhere, not here. We have tended to look to London, mainland Europe, the Far East or North America for our inspiration and guidance.

But the results of the “Best Managed Workplaces” study shows clearly that top class management is already being achieved here in Wales and by many more organisations than we realised. We should regard this as a valuable resource for all employers in Wales.

Mechanisms such as “Inside Welsh Industry” already exist to allow businesses wishing to improve their management performance to visit and study exemplar organisations.

We must build on this, finding ways to ensure that as many organisations as possible in Wales are given both the opportunity to study what is being achieved by some of their well-run “neighbours,” and the inspiration to follow suit.

Christopher Ward is Chief Executive of Wales Management Council