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Ask John: Our board meetings take two hours and, yes, we do have fun

Straight-talking, common sense from the front line of management "I plead guilty to presiding over plenty of pointless meetings myself" admits John Timpson. Photo: Tom Stockill

By John Timpson

12:15AM BST 15 Apr 2013

Q Can you divulge any interesting or amusing events in your company board meetings? I presume you do not just record the numbers of keys cut each month?

A Board meetings aren’t meant to be full of fun but I can understand why you asked your question. I still have nightmares about the tedious times I spent around various board tables. If my experience is anything to go by, millions of management hours must be wasted every month in nit-picking meetings that delve into the detail but fail to provide the inspiration and encouragement most companies need.

I plead guilty to presiding over plenty of pointless meetings myself. I have been chairman of our business since 1985 and for 20 years fell into the trap of allowing past performance to dominate our discussion. We got so bogged down analysing figures below budget there wasn’t enough time to talk about the business. I hope our recent debates have been more useful and more fun.

Management accounts can ruin a meeting, especially if current performance tops the agenda. Directors feel it’s their duty to spot every shortfall against budget, often with an unhelpful suggestion (“If each shop repairs an extra shoe every day, we will beat our forecast”!). The discussion is repeated each month with non-execs asking the same searching questions that put the resident team on the defensive.

The recent emphasis on governance and risk management hasn’t helped. Boards must exercise some caution but they should also have the courage to take a few risks and back the forward-thinking ideas of their management team.


For the most part, we ignore the accounts. Instead of trying to control day-to-day management, we concentrate on creating the company of tomorrow. The first item on our agenda is always “growth and new development”, which last month included expanding into supermarkets, more mobile locksmiths and a new shop that offers garment repairs and alterations.

This probably doesn’t sound like a bundle of laughs, but I can assure you it is more exciting than the standard risk assessment grid used by many boards, which measures the “impact and likelihood” of risk under 54 headings. We use a sharper way to highlight risk, I write a story about the 10 worst things that can happen, such as: “After the accident James was out of action for 12 months and we made the mistake of hiring an outside 'professional’ manager. The hottest summer since records began brought a dramatic drop in shoe repair sales and the new man started cutting costs.

“He cancelled the branch bonus scheme, sold our holiday homes and before reducing the field management team made everyone reapply for their job. It took us five years to recover …” By telling a story you bring the real dangers to life – much better than a sterile bit of box-ticking.

To make our meetings fresh we have only six a year and to hold everyone’s attention we aim to finish within two hours. We never take a decision! Our aim is to discuss, communicate and support the executive team, which then has the job of deciding what to do. PLCs might have to run their meetings according to a proper process, but running a family business is much more fun.

Q Your main customers must be the general public visiting your shops, but does your company ever have sales opportunities to visit customers?

A About 30 years ago, I had the idea of running a fleet of mobile cobbler vans under the brand “Heels on Wheels” but the dream never turned into reality. Until recently, I thought all our business would be done on the high street but the internet has changed the way we all think. Even key cutters can start to talk about “Click and collect” and our personal service has sometimes included delivering finished repairs to customers’ homes. We now have a fleet of vans but they are driven by locksmiths, not cobblers. When we started to develop a locksmith service, 12 years ago, we were told it would take five years to train a skilled craftsman. Consequently, we hired a number of qualified locksmiths and to cover the rest of the country sub- contracted jobs to our competitors. Sales grew slowly and we didn’t make money.

It took far too long to realise our mistake. We should have followed the lesson learnt from our core business and picked people on their personality rather than their Master Locksmith qualification. Things changed as soon as we recruited some of our existing cobblers who wanted to change direction. We set up an intensive training scheme and found they had grasped the basics within two months and in no time at all were bringing in more work than their “expert” predecessors.

The clue to this success was the high service ratings given by satisfied customers. At £5m a year the turnover is still modest but our locksmith service is now making money and growing rapidly (six more cobblers started our locksmith conversion course this week).

It took us 12 years to get going – I can’t believe it took us so long to realise that however skilful the craftsmen may be, they only give great service if they have the right personality. John Timpson







