Are Women Better Managers Than Men?

Craig Cameron, IoD member and Atlas Group Director, considers the latest gender-based research.

A few weeks ago Kelvin Redmile and Craig Cameron from Atlas attended an IoD event entitled “out of the cave” in the fabulous surroundings of Booths Hall, Knutsford.

The speaker was top business coach Nick Robinson whose niche is coaching men in the leadership skills normally attributable to the very top women managers. Nick started with two startling statistics. One, women are responsible for 85% of all purchasing decisions. Two, according to research by Harvard Business Review out of 16 key leadership criteria, women are ahead of men in 15 of them.

If that is enough to make you want to tear in half this month’s copy of Muscle & Fitness magazine then think again and if you read to the end of this article you will find where to get help.

Have a guess what was the management competence where men excelled? It was the ability to develop a strategic perspective. Personally I would have thought it was Drive but apparently top women managers are 12% more driven than their male counterparts.

On closer inspection of the Harvard Business Review article, and I must stress this is a personal opinion, the true message of the research is more subtle, albeit it is an excellent headline that makes you want to read more. Taking the direct comparisons the gap between men and women for the sixteen competences measured is not that large; typically men upper 40% to low 50% and women low to middle 50%. Nowhere is anyone getting 70%, 80% or 90% so is a true reflection not that women are marginally less useless at management than their male counterparts? With scores of 49% to 56% women are not perfect managers either.

Also is there a definite gender bias or something else in the statistics? Again a personal opinion (research funding welcome if you want me to gather the facts) but my understanding is there are relatively few top-level women managers and any person that reaches these levels has to be a truly remarkable individual.

This could create the statistical anomaly where the average women surveyed is more senior, and therefore, more capable than the average man surveyed. What might be getting measured is that on average because the women are more senior they are getting better results. The fundamentals behind the results might not be to do with gender but with ability.

If you want to draw your own conclusions the Harvard Business Review article can be found at

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/03/a_study_in_leadership_women_do.html

Whatever the root cause there are things to be learned from how successful leaders operate and that is where Nick Robinson can help you to help yourself. If you are looking for a speaker for one of your company events I can recommend this man, especially if you want to create lively discussion.

On a more personal level, starting in February, Nick is running an online Personal Development Course that is one event per month for six months. Having spoken to Nick, and signed-up myself, the course material takes the best possible leadership advice currently available, from both sexes, and shows you how to apply it to your 21st Century workspace.

If you want to book the course details are to be found at

http://nickrobinson.org/courses/development-for-leading-men-1/

New Features for AFS Pro Users

Atlas are delighted to announce a new set of features for users of our popular Advanced Financials product, AFS Pro.

The latest .Net 4 version 6.04 of the product is now available for new and existing users. This version includes the ability to have customised layouts for your P&L account including subgroups of Sales, Cost of Sales or Overheads and to show Budget and Last Year variances.

The variance report format P&L Account is now a standard report within the system. You can also define a custom vertical layout based on an excel template so you can include % calculations and subtotals where you would like them.

If you are interested in this new version of AFS Pro or would like to discuss the product in more detail, please e-mail newsletter@atlasbiz.com or call Atlas' friendly sales team on 0333 666 3330.

We've Not Been Quarantined!

Contrary to recent reports (from staff), Atlas have not been quarantined, we are not the source of a new zombie outbreak, we don't think we are contagious, although it may look like all of those things and more are true...

Globe is merely undergoing a bit of a facelift, for which it has had to cover up. Please watch your step if visiting the premises.

Blown Away by Bentley

Sales manager Joe Jardine blogs about his trip to Bentley Motor Cars.

This month I attended a South Cheshire Chamber business networking event at Bentley Motor Cars. I got to meet plenty of business owners and influential people but the reason for this blog article is to tell you about the inspirational Bentley factory tour.

The event included a fascinating half hour presentation about the history of the luxury automotive manufacturer and how it continues to evolve, adapting to the latest challenges whilst still delivering their vision of developing and crafting the World’s most desirable high performance cars. This was followed by a two hour tour of their Crewe site. Unlike many other car manufacturers, Bentley design, build and sell cars from the single site, in a huge all in one operation.

Despite living less than 10 miles from the factory and having driven past it hundreds of times, I’d never set foot through the big fancy glass doors. The first thing that struck me was how spotlessly clean the entire site was. I was in a group of ten and at the beginning of the tour we were invited to stop any worker along our route and have a chat. Each individual we spoke to was extremely passionate and had a story or two to tell. These ranged from how their role has changed over the years to keep up with the latest technology and the extensive training they’ve been on, to the lavish customisation requests that they have received from rich extrovert celebrities. Personalised ‘his and hers’ crystal champagne flutes in the arm rest anyone? Or what about a £5k child seat?

Bentley are part of the Volkswagen Group. In 2011 they sold over 7,000 vehicles with the new Continental GT accounting for approximately one third of them. This is a huge vamp up in production compared to a decade ago when they were making a little over 1,000 cars. During the past ten years to keep up with demand they have introduced lots of new lean practices and machine automation to ensure everything runs efficiently. They have a number of quarter million pound machines that are programmed with certain shapes that are required for the interior trim. It was fantastic to watch the machine review a piece of material, recognise the pre-marked blemishes and then make the cuts to maximise the utilisation. That said, they still employ around 4,000 people with many more jobs at key suppliers dependent on Bentley.

Some interesting facts:-

• Subject to the amount of leather, it takes a highly skilled person between 5 and 8 hours to handstich each steering wheel.
• Bentley are expecting big things for their next car as they are entering the SUV market. Their concept car received the most amount of press interest at the recent Geneva show.
• Bentley is the jewel in the VW Group crown. The VW Group also includes Audi, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Porsche, Seat, Skoda and Volkswagen.
• Rolls Royce who previously owned Bentley, chose to build the factory in Crewe because of the good railway links, the skilled workforce and for the cloud cover to help protect them from bombing raids! At that stage they were building aeroplane engines to help with the war efforts.
• Bentley have won the Le Mons 24 hour race six times, 1924, 1927, 1928, 1929, 1930 and more recently in 2003.
• Bentley source their veneers from Atlas customer, Nantwich Veneers! Visit them and see the work they do at www.nantwichveneers.com

  

Bentley run organised tours for members of the public. If you’re interested in cars, luxury or manufacturing in general then I certainly recommend you take a trip. Click here for further details.

Right I’m off to sell lots of systems to earn sufficient commission so that I can afford the Bentley Continental GT.

All Tied Up

Liam Meadows wore a tie. We realise that a man wearing a tie perhaps doesn’t seem news worthy to most people, but when Liam walked into the office with his tie on it certainly caused a few dropped jaws. Rumours quickly spread about a court case but the real special occasion and reason for the tie was because we had allowed Liam out of the developer’s dark cupboard to join the sales team in a customer facing meeting.

This got us thinking... why do we wear ties?

After all...

• They seem to be a magnet for any spilt breakfast / lunch.
• They regularly take a dip in our brews.
• They are the frequent cause of “are you colour blind? / did you get dressed in the dark?” comments/insults from our colleagues on the very rare occasion that the colours/patterns clash with our shirt.

Would you be offended if we attended a meeting and didn’t wear a tie? We’d love to hear your comments.

Planning on moving office soon, make sure you let your ISP know in advance!

Our technical team blog about the importance of good communication with your ISP.


Over the years we've frequently seen customers suffer unnecessary and often lengthy periods of downtime on their broadband service after moving office. This is always due to the customer not advising us of the office move in advance, as they assume that transferring the phone line will automatically take the ADSL service with it.


Unfortunately this is not how it works, and by the time we find out about the office move, the customer has no DSL service and its too late for us to do anything about it. At this stage we can only offer to fast track the new order, at an additional charge of £150 to keep the period of downtime to a minimum. If we are told in advance, then we will always recommend the same process to avoid any loss of service.


First of all you need to ensure that a new phone line is ordered to go live at least a week before the office move is set to take place. Ideally it would be ordered to go live two weeks prior to the move, in case of unexpected delays. Once the phone line goes live we can then order a new DSL service on the new number, you would then effectively have two DSL services running at both the old and new office for a week, so the move could be done at your own convenience during this period.


Our DSL accounts are not locked to individual lines, so you would not need to reconfigure your router/firewall etc, and could simply unplug from one office and plug into the new office. As I'm sure you'll agree, this is a stress free way of moving your broadband to the new office, which is good, as office moves are often stressful enough as it is!


If you currently get your broadband through Atlas/C2 Internet, and have an office move planned for one of your sites, then please give our TSM team a call on 0333 666 3330 for further advice.

Milestone for Gary

Everyone at Atlas would like pass on our very best wishes to company director Gary Manktelow, who turned fifty during the course of this month. You're never too old for balloons!

Planning for the London Olympics

Craig Cameron blogs about the invisible technology layers we don’t see behind the Olympic games, how these layers might have been compromised in recent weeks and how better planning when it comes to employees could have worked wonders.

It is not the purpose of this blog to be controversial or highly opinionated but given the London Olympics is starting this week, and it is the biggest single sporting event that any of us are likely to witness in our lifetime, we had to include it somewhere.

If our purpose behind these articles is to be informative then what does a once in a lifetime event like London 2012 have to teach Atlas customers at large?
The company G4S has been in the news a great deal recently but we’re not going to focus on how or why they have allegedly failed to carry out their “believed to be” contractual duties. That is being covered elsewhere and we would have very little to add.

What we do want to highlight are the very real operational difficulties involved in getting 10,000 people from not-employed over to employed, trained, on-site, supervised and ready to go. Not only do we know about that but we are experts.

For example:-

• One of our customers carries out work on power stations, including nuclear ones. They have to recruit as many as 500 highly qualified people, each of whom has very high security clearance. This has to be done in around a two week period. How do they manage this? They use the Atlas HR Hub.

• Every February, and within a three week period, another one of our customers has to recruit nearly 500 seasonal staff, suitably qualified to work with children and vulnerable adults. How do they manage this? They use QlikView Business Discovery.

• One of our customers has 10,000 employees who have to be scheduled into, each week, nearly 900 different locations. It is a legal requirement for them to have minimum numbers of suitably qualified staff at each location before they can legally open the shop. A repeated failure to comply would result in a removal of the very licence our customer needs to operate their business; it can be that serious. How do they manage this? They use the Atlas Employee Roster Software, and frankly they would not have the operation they have without it!

• Another one of our customers who are in the food processing industry have to ensure that no-one (employees and visitors) who has been on a foreign holiday in the last three days enters their factory.

Then of course apart from employing hundreds or thousands of people you have to ensure they actually turned up for work. We have solutions for that also, including options that are activated by phone calls or smart phones messages i.e. no computer necessary.

Sadly none of this Atlas software or technology is in use at London 2012, but even without our super clever stuff, we are still confident the Games will be a success.
We know this will be difficult, but for a moment let us forget the London 2012 Olympics are happening this week.

Please ask yourself this question, how big a difference to the labour management in your organisation would some of this super-clever Atlas staff make?

Armed Forces Day is extra-special for Adam’s son (and new daughter-in-law!)

You may know Adam Wilkinson, TSM engineer at our Leeds office. His son, Thomas, was married on Saturday to Stephanie at a service & reception in Wetherby, north of Leeds.

What made the day extra-special is that Thomas is in the army and a veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan, and Saturday 30th June 2012 was Armed Forces Day.

Thomas wore his full military dress uniform for the service and displayed his medals proudly. A joyous occasion for all concerned and all of us at Atlas wish Thomas and Stephanie our warmest wishes for the future.

Compilation: Well Wishes for Joe

Sales Manager Joe Jardine collates all of the 'well wishes' he's recently received from colleagues...

As plenty of you will be aware, I recently broke my collar bone. I'm lucky enough to have a bunch of supportive and sympathetic colleagues who have been chauffeuring me around to meetings and making my brews. They've also been finding their own ways to wish me well over the past fortnight...

'Sorry to hear about your injury, but why the chip on your shoulder?'

'Welcome back to work, I hear you had a cracking few days holiday.'

'I heard you broke your arm in 2 places, I would avoid those 2 places in future.'

'A man walked into a bar. He now has a broken collar bone.'

'It couldn't have happened to a nicer chap. You're armless.'

'If you think I’m going to make you a cuppa you can ‘sling’ your hook.'

'You're armless for a change... you're usually legless'