I’ve always felt that when it comes to the game of life and we reach the pearly gates and start totting up the scores, it’s not the person with the most money but the one with the best stories that wins.
The thing I love about Ann Summers is that there’s never a dull moment; just ask anyone who works here and we’ll always have a new anecdote to share. The last few weeks give you a pretty good idea of what I mean: one day I was speaking at the IOD conference at the Albert Hall (and, yes, I still get nervous); the next I was doing the charity Moonwalk marathon with a team from Ann Summers dressed in one of our bras.
We’ve also been busy making headlines around the world. First came the revelation that one of our new toys was threatening Cyprus’s national security. Apparently the remote control signal that operates our ‘Love Bug’ uses a radio frequency shared by the Cypriot military, so the product is banned over there. I’m not sure whether they were peace protestors, libertarians or just enthusiasts for the products we sell but they came to our defence in the local media and a campaign began to make love not war.
Next came a story about Apple, our new ‘iGasm’ product and the ad we ran to promote it. This story has now been told on just about every computer-related magazine, website and blog around the globe, as well as in major tabloids on both sides of the Atlantic. The problem arose when we created a window poster to promote the iGasm that parodied one of Apple’s ads, to which their legal team took a rather dim view. The good news is that despite this killing our ad campaign, the resultant PR has seen us make lots of new friends in America.
Courting a little controversy, making a little mischief and having fun is part and parcel of a company culture that encourages staff to challenge the norm, make decisions quickly and act like entrepreneurs.
This is a lot easier to do in small firms when everyone knows everybody else and personal relationships and trust are strong. The tricky bit happens when your business grows to a size where it’s not possible for everyone to know each other personally.
At this point most companies typically resort to formalising the fun in an HR document that sets the parameters of what’s expected and what’s not. The problem is that these documents tend to focus on the things you can’t do more than the things you can, which makes the company appear very dull indeed. And because these tomes tend to come from HR, it makes them sound dull too, which is very unfair.
Expenses are a typical example of one of these policies. A senior executive at one company I know once told me that six people were involved in the sign-off procedure for expenses. Rather radically, and not without protest from some in the finance department, they decided that everyone would sign off their own expenses. The doubters felt this would give carte blanche to the chancers and cheats. The outcome? Nothing changed. Expenses claimed remained the same and five people could devote their time to growing the business.
In most instances, the instincts of your staff will be profitable ones but even if they’re not, as long as they’re constantly pushing the boundaries, you’ll end up with a great tale to tell and you’ll have created a culture where everyone loves working.
