When we were doing some work with Eurostar a couple of years ago, I met a guy called Angus, in HR. He had previously been at Tesco, when it was still everyone’s favourite retail pace setter, rather than the Big Bad Goliath it now seems to have become.

He told me a really interesting way in which he used to measure his own performance in terms of ‘leading by example’ when he was at Tesco. He used to be in charge of a huge store in North London, one with two different kinds of traffic: the morning shoppers and the the post-work commuter rush. So they used to wait until the morning shop was mostly done, and then they would have what they called ‘a rumble’ – they would get as many of the staff as possible to go through the store tidying the shelves, restocking where necessary, making sure everything was spick and span for the second group of shoppers in the afternoon. He saw himself, as a leader, as needing and wanting to model the commitment to the importance to that every day, and so, even though he wore a suit to work, he was the first to pick up the broom after lunch and begin sweeping, to signal ‘the rumble’ had begun.

So he used to, he said, measure his commitment in terms of Suit Damage. If he really leant into Doing, not just saying, then he messed up his suit a little every time – cleaning up floors and shelves of food can be a messy business. If he wasn’t getting through a number of suits every year, he knew he wasn’t really leading by example enough.

I always loved that. Suit Damage. A simple, clear and measurable way to measure – to ourselves, rather than some bogus KPI the company puts in front of us – whether we are actually doing what we know we ought to be doing.

One Response to “Suit Damage”

1. uberVU - social comments says: April 24, 2010 at 9:32 pm

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