About a year ago I attended an introduction workshop to Investors in People (IiP). With people at the heart of Surevine, achieving a ‘Standard’ that recognised that seemed like a great idea.

The IiP Standard is focused on people and people engagement. “It isn’t about systems, it’s about communication.” “Success lies with the management team.” “It is about impact, not process.” “The Standard is a framework that brings together best practice.”

It sounded like a dream come true!

About 30 minutes later, anxiety was creeping in. The Standard talks about Top Managers, Managers and People. There was talk of committees and peer groups and Line Mangers.

“But how can we find time to talk to everyone?” the audience demanded, “there are 500 people in my company!”

500?! Oh dear. There were only 12 of us! There are 23 now, but I still don’t think we are coming close to facing the problems these other companies have.

With this ticking over in my mind and becoming an ever-increasing bugbear, I decided to do something about it.

The Plan

I am going to work through each step of the Standard, working out what that step might look like for an SME (or a micro company even!) and start to make those changes to the way Surevine works.

I hereby pledge to share every step of this journey on this blog; and at the end, sit down with someone at Investors in People and see if we can make a change – something more like a match made in heaven?!

My first job… define what these management terms mean to an SME / small / micro company, and map out my journey.

Every good journey starts with a map…