What would be the impact on performance if organiser companies swapped employees, asks CloserStill Media and Nineteen Group chairman Phil Soar?

How often have you heard the following: “Our success is down to our incomparable staff” or “I dedicate this award to the people who really deserve it – our wonderful staff”

By and large, CEOs seem to believe it, though it may fit into the pattern of predictable pronouncements such as “Next year is looking great” and “My salary reflects a competitive marketplace for talent…”

I will put forward an alternative view – that it is the company which makes the people, rather than the people who make the company.

I think it is fair to assume that Montgomery, RX, CloserStill, DMG, Hyve etc all believe that they are working hard to appoint the very best people. But they fish in the same pool. And we know that many of their events have flat or declining revenues, never win prizes at the AEO or EN, and cause the CFO to tear her hair out – so on what basis are these people the very best?

Companies invariably don’t pick the best candidate

A close friend who ran Stork & May, the premier placement agency in London, says that companies almost invariably fail to pick the best candidate (at least 80% of the time). It was predictable. Whatever they said about wanting the best, they didn’t subconsciously mean it.

They would appoint someone who “fitted” their prejudices (i.e. often rather like them), not the person who was unusual but might make a difference. They had fantasies about what their business really was and found it hard to challenge underlying assumptions. They rarely knew what “the best” meant. They were incapable of taking risks on the very person who might change their futures.

(I should add that, from the age of 24, he told me I was unemployable – and he was largely proved right: I have had 25 face-to-face interviews in my life and failed 24 times – and the one exception was because the company was desperate for a warm body and I said I would start that afternoon).

If companies are hiring ten people, they might take a chance on one of the ten. If they are hiring just one senior person, they won’t risk the one who may well be the very best.

Have our big shows always had brilliant directors?

Shows like World Travel Market, Spring Fair and DSEi (founded by Bob Munton in 2001) have been massive for decades now – and all have seen a steady turnover of exhibition, sales and marketing directors. Were all these show directors brilliant? Were they all the “best of class”? They may be big, but are they as good as they can possibly be? Could the people be the cause of those shows’ longevity?

Or is it, perhaps, that the sheer inertia, the lack of competition, and the intense protection of the slot system, means that it is very hard to fail? And thus we cannot possibly tell how good, or otherwise, our staff really are.

Most of the time they are not really tested. Just as we often cannot tell what part of our marketing really works.

How often do our CEOs ask the obvious question: “Would I hire this person again?” 

It is better to promote people at random

Alessandro Pluchino analysed large company performance over a number of years. He found that it was generally better for a company to promote people at random than based on how well they appeared to do in their current role. An extension really of the familiar Peter Principle. And why was that? Generally because there are so many other elements which contribute to apparent success. Davies can come into an already successful event, one with very little competition. Or he can fortuitously find himself working on a show in a sector which is growing fast – and anyone average would shine as a result. 

Or Davies might happen to be in charge when the economy is swinging through an upturn. This was true in the period 2011 to 2016. It was a good time to run a show. Then it reversed itself after 2016 and for the next six years we tended to struggle – the post Brexit recession and then the pandemic. And the pandemic lead to several of our larger companies firing up to 40% of their staff and doing so largely without really assessing who were their best people.

Being in the right place is the key to success

Being in the right place at the right time is the key to most successful careers.

Praising our people is the inevitable cliché. We should try to employ good people. Of course – and who disagrees? But employing good people is really not the key. The key is what you do with your people after you have employed them. 

It is more often the company that makes the people, not the other way round.

But, crucially, turn the question in its head. 

Success in a company may be down to several people. 

But is there one person without whom the company could never have succeeded? That’s the truly defining question. And to give very personal answers. CloserStill exists today as one of the ten biggest trade show companies in the world because of Phil Nelson. 

Nineteen is what it is because of Peter Jones (which is not to underestimate the necessity of Alison Jackson and Jon Lacey to its success).

If you work for a company in our business, can you name a single person without whom the company would not exist in its current form (or perhaps at all)?

So what is it that makes our people successful?

My own life, and the lives of many of the hundreds of people I have worked with, have led me to believe that a large majority of us want to do something worthwhile, want to do it well, want to enjoy doing it, want to go home thinking it was a day well spent, and want to work with people who make it interesting.

One way that a company can inspire its own staff is to ask them about their own lives, to ask them about what mattered to them, to ask about the pivotal moments in their own lives (which college did they go to, who they married etc) and how their current jobs matched their own sense of purpose.

Oriana Bandiera of LSE and two Chicago colleagues conducted experiments of this kind with large numbers of staff (as reported in The Economist).

Their conclusions were that by asking people to place their jobs in the context of their own lives (and remember – we are all the heroes of our own lives) contributed to them feeling more positive about their roles. And conversely, some people recognised that their jobs did not suit them and left. In other words, good companies can ask their staff why their jobs matter to them, not to the company.

And, of course, the very act of paying real attention and complimenting an employee will always generate a more positive feeling.

Tip for bosses: always go to the employee – don’t demand they come to your office.

Can we judge how some companies are better than others?

Are there ways of judging how cultures/companies/personalities succeed relative to their peers? In truth, very few and mainly through anecdotes. One way might be “profitability”. But this is obviously flawed. Profit can be built organically or by acquisition.

Two of our eight biggest UK companies do not have a single event which they launched and grew organically. Informa has spent £7bn on acquiring trade show companies in the last few years. That obviously adds to turnover and profit, but does it add to company culture?

We might quote margins. Until recently, Emerald had the highest margins in the business – running at up to 44%. But take a look at the Emerald share price in the past few years.

Can we call this culture?

We reach for the word “culture” but what do we mean by that? It is not a word I like, but I cannot think of a more suitable one. Culture is a word so overused it has become largely meaningless, like woke or truth or charisma.

But it is a word we need to use. A company culture develops mysteriously. It can’t be forced. It comes from a lot of people in a single time and place. People clearly react to the standards, methods, culture and expectations of the company they join. It is then the company which makes them, not the other way round.

Could awards demonstrate culture?

How can we judge what makes a culture a success? One way might just be awards.

As a founder, past CEO and chairman of CloserStill (which has won twice as many awards as any other company in the past 12 years) you would expect me to say that. But awards surely tell us something about a company’s culture and performance.

Over a number of years, it must reflect how good that company’s shows are. Doesn’t the very fact of wanting to enter awards say something about how committed and involved and enthusiastic the people who run them are?

There are some smaller (in terms of turnover and staff size) companies which punch well above their weight in terms of awards – Raccoon, Media10, Nineteen. There are others like Terrapinn, Diversified and Easyfairs which warrant special mention.

While I don’t want to seem argumentative, the truth is that the bigger the company (Informa and RX being the biggest) the worse they perform based on an “Awards per Employee” or “Awards per Event” calculation.

Make of that what you will. Most of us work for things other than pleasure or culture – to pay the mortgage, to buy the children clothes. And we cannot begrudge that.

But to return to my hypothesis.

Let’s swap 300 employees between companies

It is the company and its culture (if we use that word) which largely defines how committed, caring, hardworking and enthusiastic its employees are. It is not the individuals per se. I would love to conduct an experiment by taking 200 or 300 or 400 employees from one of our major companies and switching them with the same number in another company.

And then watching what happens to the performance of both companies. CEOs might say that their staff will outperform. We will never know, but my guess is that the better company will continue to outperform and the lesser company will not change.

Anyone like to try it?