Dr Frank Dick OBE – Performance Management

Weds 2nd May 2007
Key messages:
• Maximising employee potential
• Coaching individuals to succeed
• Maintaining an individual’s successful performance





Coaching has been Dr Frank Dick’s raison d’etre for decades. As British Athletics Federation Director of Coaching, Dr Frank Dick has coached athletes to Olympic, World and European honours in several events, most notably in sprints and relays. Under his leadership, Britain enjoyed a period of unprecedented international success. He has also inspired world class performances from some of the top names in sport – Daley Thompson, Boris Becker, Gerhard Berger and Katrina Witt.

Dr Frank Dick explored the processes that contribute to the effective management of individuals in order to achieve high levels of organisational performance. His expertise derives from years of detailed research into how individuals succeed. Share insights with Britain’s foremost authority in applying the science of performance to effective coaching. Drawing direct parallels with modern business, Frank translated his wealth of experience with an informative and motivational approach to achieve long-lasting transformation of both individual and team performance.

Frank’s messages were challenging and inspirational, making uncomfortable listening for anyone prepared to accept second best.

Frank's Presentation

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Leadership Management Competencies

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Best Practice Seminar – Strive to Succeed

Individuals representing a wide range of tourism and hospitality businesses shaerd their experiences of successfully incorporated a performance management culture into their business.

Speakers included:
• Angela Wright MBE, MD of Crealy Great Adventure Parks
• Barry Cole MI, MD of Riviera International Confrence Centre
• Rupert Wilson, GM of The Seafood Restaurant Ltd, Padstow

The speakers shared their experiences, focusing on how and why they chose to place such importance on performance management. They explored the practices adopted, the benefits gained from instilling a performance management culture throughout the business and the challenges they have faced throughout the transition.

Angela's Presentation

Please click on the PDF to view the presentation slides.

Barry's Presentation

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Rupert's Presentation

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Richard Wyatt-Haines - Post Event Thoughts

Another great event, at which we were stimulated and inspired by Frank Dick. We experienced at first hand the challenges of implementation which were so eloquently described by our best practice speakers.

For me, a number of key issues stood out:
We all need to decide what is our role in our businesses?
Are we doers or we coaches?
Are we Valley people or Mountain people?
How do we connect the various bits of businesses together
How do we involve and communicate?

And then there was the challenge of growing our businesses. Is this about ownership by everyone across the business, transferring our beliefs to new sites or implementing robust procedures? In reality a mix of them all.

Lastly, how do we achieve peak performance from individuals and business without causing stress?

Frank Dick
“If you are not living on the edge, you are taking up too much room.”

Frank’s inspiring message was one about attitude and behaviour where the choice is to grab opportunities or to let them pass you by.

“Every time you touch the ball, imagine it is the most important touch of your life”

“Every mountain you climb is preparation for the next and tougher mountain. Keep climbing to prepare yourself for that next mountain.”

But the challenge is not just attitudinal; how do you connect the different elements of your business? Frank gave us the challenging image of an environment in which one player assists another.

“When you give away the ball, you take responsibility”

Therefore, you have to learn to appreciate your customer’s customer. Alongside, you have to make sure that your people have the skills they need to deliver quality. To do this you need to develop people by giving them challenges, but equally your people must take ownership for delivery.

“Miracles are unreliable people”.

“Getting the players is easy, getting them to play together is hard.”

I don’t know about you, but I know that I will have to put more effort and time into being a performance coach rather than just doing the job. What is your role?

The hexagons
Following Frank, we translated his wise words into principles that we can apply in our own businesses. I have inserted the pictures of the hexagons at the end of Frank’s slides. Key words that came out time and time again were:

Involvement, clarity, coaching, communication, teamwork and listening
Be the best and believe it
Be passionate and inspirational
Inspire people to raise their standards and their expectations

Barry Cole
Barry’s message was one of passion and belief; belief in his people to deliver something exceptional to their customers.

Yet, whilst he presents a strong case for everyone to be a leader, engaging staff in the joy of work and enabling people to perform, he also highlighted importance of systems which deliver visibility of the cost of errors so that people can see the implications of their actions.

Equally though, Barry sought to expose the talents of his people. He asked to review old CV’s to identify the latent skills in our staff and he encourages all his staff to attend sales and customer care training because to him, everyone is a salesperson.

Lastly, he recommended One Minute Manager, Blink and Investment in Excellence.

Angela Wright
Angela reminded us all how difficult it can be to grow your business, and in particular the challenges of growing a family business across multiple sites.

How do you transfer a business model from one site to another, especially when that model is so grounded in the passions and beliefs of the founders?
How do you get consistency of delivery seven days a week when your staff are part-time?
How do you delight, not just satisfy?
How do you become proactive, not simply reactive?

Centrally, the answer to these difficult questions is the people Angela employs:

Communicate what you want and use targets to reinforce your message
People love the sound of their own name, so use it
Believe passionately that people make the difference, so invest in them so that they can and will want to achieve your aspirations
“Stop trying to be mum – you can’t”
“Quit, whilst you are ahead” – Plan for succession
Create champions who can deliver the success to which you aspire
Establish a culture of excellence, but made people responsible to deliver

A recurrent theme of Angela’s talk was the underpinning principle of Crealy; “Making the most of the fleeting days of childhood.”

On the surface, this seems to be a marketing message to their customers, but in truth it is the guiding principle against which all her staff operate and deliver, because they believe in the message and can see their own individual role in making it a happen.

Rupert and Michael
The rapid growth of a business built upon the belief and fame of the founder can present substantial changes to those that follow in his shoes and who have to make his concepts work on a larger stage.

Rupert and Michael showed us how the growth of The Seafood Restaurant now demands the application of processes and systems so that resources and energies are focused on the right things. In a the business that employs 250 people the costs attached to having staff pursue their own agendas are too great and it is too much to ask Rick Stein to align their activities by inspiring rhetoric alone.

So Rupert and Michael highlighted the steps they are taking to implement systems and processes which will provide the structures on which managers can develop and focus people right across the business. However, both of them were conscious of the need to protect and preserve the culture of the business and not to undermine it. They recognized this challenge and the need to involve their staff and be flexible and responsive in the ways in which they make changes.

In many ways, they provided a different perspective to other speakers; but was it so different in reality? Every speaker during the day sought to maximise the performance of their business and their people and every one of them used a mix of approaches in order to be successful. The emphasis may have been different but the principles overlapped and belief in what they were doing was common to them all.

A great day and thank you to Frank, Barry, Angela, Michael, Rupert and last of all Jackie Richmond from Splashdown, who has bravely and without warning painted a great picture of belonging to the Tourism Skills Network and implementing the messages of all our speakers this winter

I look forward to seeing you again on 3rd October when we will be joined by Sir Gerry Robinson. As I say, it only gets better…