20 lessons learned in 20 years of business
As EVS Translations UK approaches the celebration of its 20th anniversary in February, its founder and CEO, Edward Vick, joins us on the blog each week to speak about the business and life lessons learned from the UK chapter of his international business.
It’s a pretty good record but we strive for excellence and are all about improvement so let’s reflect on these three errors and see what we can learn from them.
Finding staff is very important when starting a company and at the start of EVS Translations, there was nothing, just a few clients, the front-room office and me. However, with the market we were working in and seeking to make our mark on, it was necessary to sell the company as a viable entity.
As EVS Translations grew, this meant lots of time doing HR work, job advertisements, interviews, contracts, inductions and sadly, some firing.
The wide boy
At the beginning, there was no money for recruitment consultants to assist with the hiring process. However, finally – at the recommendation of one of our bank clients, EVS Translations, with some 20 staff, decided to use one to find a head of sales.
We were presented with a short list, interviewed three and took one. He was very dynamic, but seemed chiefly concerned with his status in the office and having a lot of support staff – which in a company of 20 was irritating.
Worse still, sales did not come. Contacts did not come. In fact, even basic knowledge about sales and marketing certified by degrees did not seem to exist. In the end, I decided to do some detective work and discovered that the whole CV was fake – he had not worked for the companies he had stated, his degree did not exist at the university in the years he was there and all documentation was forged.
The recruitment consultant stated that as I had interviewed him, EVS Translations had the responsibility. It is worth noting that EVS Translations no longer uses recruitment consultants.
The rotten egg
At one of our offices, EVS Translations had a fantastic team of translators, equally talented, getting along well and doing great work. Keen to grow, we added another but unfortunately, from that fateful day, the atmosphere was poisoned.
One person managed to destroy the whole team by planting seeds of hate, dissatisfaction and disappointment which he shared from a previous life. It was an insidious process which lasted for years – by which time the team has completely broken up.
The helicopter manager is not a manager
As EVS Translations was growing, I was the one who moved from office to office doing the training. At the beginning there was a lot of winging it – finding things that worked in one office and one situation but then did not work quite so well in others.
The realisation was slow – training, processes, passing on responsibility and delegation – but necessary and even sometimes painful for all sides. Individual offices liked their independence and approaches, while at the same time it was necessary to find stringent solutions for all of our offices to ensure standardisation and absolute quality in a services industry.
Lesson learned: Many things have been done here but I would say the most important was the creation of extensive training and extensive processes – due largely to 3 separate ISO certifications. However, never lose sight of the power and potential of your people when you give them greater responsibility, albeit in line with your corporate structure.
