Forget PowerPoint, you’ll learn more on the shop floor - Sunday Times

Business leaders in search of a ‘light bulb’ moment should listen to their customers. They will spot problems earlier and opportunities faster.

The best meetings don’t feature PowerPoints or anyone dialling in with a dodgy connection, but are spent with customers who will teach you more about the business than most boards of directors can.

Last month provided a perfect example: at one of my regular back-to-the-floor mornings in the London office of HomeServe’s Checkatrade, armed only with a headset, I gleaned insights that will hopefully prove useful to our chief executive, Jambu Palaniappan.

Spending time shadowing sales staff, and hearing directly from customers, you stand a far better chance of having that “light bulb” moment. And I had it. Trades people are busy people, which is why we’re focusing on saving them time so they can concentrate on managing their business. Digitising the industry is the right thing to do — we’re going to remove the hassle so that finding a trade is as easy as ordering a pizza or booking a holiday.

I’m sure I could have learnt these and other things from a meeting with departmental heads, but by experiencing them for myself, I’m more certain about what needs to be done. Rolling up your sleeves and spending more time at the coal face means you will spot problems earlier and opportunities faster. The gap between thinking you know what’s happening because you read performance indicators and satisfaction ratings, and actually experiencing it, is very often a chasm.

No matter how senior (or junior) you are, you need to keep learning — and the best way to do that is get as close as you can to customers. It’s why new recruits at HomeServe have the chance to spend a day accompanying an engineer in their van, learning from the ground up.

I’m not alone. The chief executive of Marks & Spencer, Stuart Machin, recently revealed that his 3,800 staff will have to spend seven days on the shop floor — “proper work”, as he calls it — to pass their annual review. That kind of customer-first philosophy explains why Stuart, who started as a teenage shelf-stacker at his local supermarket, has transformed the company, doubling the share price and returning it to the FTSE 100 after a four-year absence.

One of the great joys of my new career as a business investor and chairman is that I get to work with founders and chief executives who are insatiably curious. Like me, they don’t need to be told or encouraged to get feedback from colleagues and customers. It’s an instinct.

Even when studying for my economics degree at York University, I was most absorbed by joining a student society’s visits to local businesses — a Buxted chicken factory, a coalmine in Selby and the Sam Smith’s brewery in Tadcaster, though my memory is a little hazy on that one! I could experience close-up how companies operated, the way staff collaborated, the conditions they worked under, the techniques used by management. These live tutorials, full of human experience, were far more valuable than lectures back on campus. Ever since, I’ve carried with me a fascination for how businesses are run and the way they engage with customers.

On the way to visiting potential business investments, I try to stop for a “mystery shop” at one of the stores, to get a clearer picture of what’s happening and needs to happen, bringing a series of pertinent questions to the meeting. And, if I’ve got time, I’ll pop into competitors’ stores or read about how other businesses operate, because opportunities for learning never stop.

Recently, at a charity dinner, while everyone was outbidding each other for a luxury villa holiday or a day’s shooting, I had my eyes set on a trip for 16 to Gillette, the razor brand owned by Procter & Gamble, spending the day with P&G’s grooming chief, Gary Coombe. I won it, so if you’re running a fast-moving consumer goods business and fancy coming along, let me know.

When the top brass return to the shop floor, it also has a positive effect on staff. They see the boss as someone who listens rather than tells — whose strategy is connected to their reality. The more they can relate to a non-hierarchical management, the more loyal and enthused they will feel. That said, try to make these visits unannounced so there’s no time to roll out the metaphorical red carpet.

The tech world has its own term for thinking like the customer when testing and improving products. “Dogfooding” refers to a 1988 email sent by a Microsoft manager who implored his team to “eat our own dogfood” to make the network service even better. It’s now a standard phrase for feeding back observations and then improving a product. Be honest, if you are part of an online business, when was the last time you placed an order to see how quickly it arrived, how well the product was packed and whether a cross-sell catalogue came with it?

It’s not just about doing all this in your own business; it is just as important to sample the operation of a parallel business that you can learn from. Perhaps consider one or two companies that aren’t competitors but could offer such insights. Make contact with whoever runs things and persuade them to let you peek under the bonnet.

Whenever I hear about consumers falling out of love with their once-favourite brand, it means there’s a disconnect at the top. And I’m convinced that you can’t lead unless you connect by watching, listening, engaging, experiencing and learning. Curiosity is one of the essential traits of great leadership. When the business comes alive in front of you, full of all the details that you’d never see from behind a desk, you will uncover insights no presentation can ever match.

Richard Harpin is founder and chairman of HomeServe and Growth Partner, and owner of Business Leader magazine