"Clear changes of behaviour of a good proportion of the delegates was in evidence after the programme and improvements in working methods were made in some departments..."

Cathy Little, Training Manager

Leading in the Gardners Way

Gardners Books is one of the UK's largest wholesalers of printed and audio. At any one time it warehouses 5 million books - over 700,000 titles from more than 4000 publishers - ready for despatch throughout the UK and abroad.

The company employs over 800 people and uses the latest warehouse technology in Eastbourne East Sussex.

After several years of impressive growth for the company, the management team identified a need to help managers achieve first rate people management skills and chose Burton OD to carry out a two-year management development programme.

At a Directors workshop to provide the programme with objectives, the team was specific about what it did, and didn't want:

A programme that would help to support a "Gardners" way of doing things - a management culture that values:

• Better quality decisions and better implementation of actions
• Ownership of problems from start to finish. Moving ownership down from senior management
• Managing people to a uniformly professional standard
• Attitudes of  “can do” “do it now” “no reason not to do it”
• Making decisions and carrying things out willingly
• Delegating but not offloading too much
• Managers bringing their teams with them
• Managers setting departmental goals based on the goals, objectives and KPIs of the company - and achieving them in their own ways
• Managing upwards – clarifying things if they are not sure and making sure that timescales, resources etc are agreed.

• A "textbook" or "corporate" way of doing things that would change the unique Gardners way
• A management development programme with what one director described as "...silly games and the bog standard management training we have suffered before..."

Designing the programme

Dave Burton worked closely with the Training manager, Cathy Little to ensure that the Directors' objectives and guidelines for the programme could be met.

In line with the desired cultural outcomes, the emphasis was on practical sessions, with action planning and tasks focused on real work issues.

Gardners employs roughly 40 managers - some of them working night shifts - and it was agreed that each half-day module of the programme would be run three times so that everyone could attend.

Based on the outcomes of the Directors' workshop, it was decided that in the first year of the programme, the topics would be "leadership" and "communications" with the second year focusing on performance management.

The Directors agreed to provide very visible support - launching the foundation stage and contributing to each of the workshops.

The Foundation Stage

The foundation stage of the first year was launched by two Directors who described what they wanted the programme to achieve.

Delegates were asked to identify what they felt a good manager should be doing and carried out a short self-assessment of their own managerial competence and knowledge (to provide a baseline against which to evaluate their progress following the programme).

For the second year foundation stage, managers were asked to complete a short assessment of the people reporting to them, using a profile developed by Burton OD to identify opportunities for improved performance.

The Modules

Each of the modules - Leadership, Communications and two on managing performance - had a strong focus on Gardners issues and delegates planned actions after each and reported back to the next module.

The modules mixed tutor input, some video content and individual and group exercises.

Evaluation

The programme was evaluated individually by the delegates who noted a greater understanding of how to manage others and improved performance of their people as a result of action they had taken following the programme.

Directors noted positive changes in management behaviour.

Training Manager, Cathy Little said of the programme: "Clear changes of behaviour of a good proportion of the delegates was in evidence after the programme and improvements in working methods were made in some departments, so I feel the objectives were met."