Graham Hutchings
What worked for PBS might work for you
I have just taken an hour out of my Monday to have a walk around the sunny fields surrounding our new offices near Oxford.
I spent the time reflecting on and being grateful for the past 12 months at PBS, which has seen the largest profitable growth in the company’s history driven entirely by a more focused and engaged team.
Many of the problems we faced during the year will be ones you face in your own organisations. Perhaps the solutions – or at least what they infer – might work for you too.

Problem | Solution |
---|---|
Large Skills Gap | Fire fast, hire slow and invest in high potentials to build the best team |
Poor Decision making | Empower team members to take the lead wherever possible |
Burnout | Measure wellbeing weekly and implement initiatives which promote it. Ensure non-work life is given proper attention |
Gossip | Make giving and requesting feedback feel safe and normal |
Lack of accountability | Establish clear and agreed culture statements, processes maps, role definitions and performance objectives |
By far the hardest aspect of the above solutions is creating a culture where feedback is normal.
The skill of giving effective feedback is often absent in most teams, and masquerades as praise or criticism which is unlikely to yield performance improvements.
Our most in-demand game of 2022 was The Mosaic Game, which enables people to learn and practice giving effective feedback using the SBIA model.