As we posted last week, Sir Gerry Robinson (ex Head of Coca Cola Europe and Granada TV) seems to be spending his retirement helping small family run businesses in financial difficulties.

And there is the first annoyance.

Most “Reality TV” these days seems to spend most of the time telling you what is coming next (“After the break..”) and what’s already happened.

Anyway, leaving that aside, what happened on last nights big decision?

Sir Gerry visited two businesses as follows

A family owned chair manufacturer in the North West and a pie and pasty manufacturer in Devon.

Both had sales problems but for different reasons.

The chair manufacturer had been in the family for a number of generations and the current owner was obviously feeling the pressure as his young school age son was the next obvious owner. He had employed a management consultant as Managing Director and to say the two didn’t get on was an understatement… They seemed to be at open warfare. But more seriously, they had done NO promotions or salesman bonus’s to stimulate activity.

The pie and pasty company had an owner/manager who seemed to be the ultimate “micro manager”

Both the production manager and office manager told of the same thing. Hearing half a phone conversation and then snatching the phone to finish it, “dropping by” a standard production run “just to check things”.
In short “general meddling” as Sir Gerry put it. All classical micro management symptoms (and watch out for a micro manager blog post shortly).

The last third of the program is where it started to lose a little bit of credibility.

As Sir Gerry observed, the pie and pasty company had never made a profit and the chair company would need AT LEAST £1.5 million just to stay afloat.

So what sort of businessman would invest?

In the case of the pies, the owner stood to lose his house and the chairs, around 80 people in one small village would be out of work crippling the local economy.

So maybe it is the “sob” factor that turns hard headed Sir Gerry into a cash cow for failing businesses.

Next week, (the last one I think) and Sir Gerry currently has seen 4 invested in 4. It would be interesting to see what type of business he wouldn’t invest in.

Business guru Sir Gerry Robinson, ex-head of (amongst others) Granada TV and Coca Cola (Europe) seems to be spending his retirement doing TV shows on ‘dysfunctional business’

(His  “I’ll show them whose Boss” was followed by the superb “Can Gerry fix the NHS”).

Last nights episode (the first in a 3 part series), featured, two independent Breweries who were days away from closing their doors.

Both parties stood to lose everything they had including the houses they lived in.

As one party put it “We will just lock up, put a chain around the gate, put the keys through the letter box and walk away.”

The Breweries were to be visited by Gerry and after he had looked around and talked to the owners and his usual tactic of going straight to talk to employees, he would make the decision of whether or not to invest (supposedly using his own money) in one or both Breweries to save them from going under.

The first Brewery owned by the establisher and his partner of 4 years, had actually stopped brewing when Gerry arrived. They had run out of hops and were unable to afford any more.
The head brewer cracked

“We couldn’t actually organise a ‘piss up in a brewery’ because we’d have nothing to drink.”

The second Brewery jointly established by a husband and wife team had a problem with their ‘management control’ systems. The owner did not actually know which of his award winning beers were making money and which of the least profitable to drop.

In both cases there was a management problem which, after thinking it over and having discussion with all concerned, Gerry suggested that the ladies of both establishments take charge for a temporary period of time.

At the first brewery this was met with disdain by the aforementioned Head brewer with

“Is that the best you can come up with?”

To say that to such a man with such distinguished business mind as Sir Gerry was disrespectful to say the least and he said to him

“If you worked for me, you would probably get a slap for that”

and went on to explore the possibility that  the guy might possibly want the business to fail.

His answer to this was that “turning up every day expecting the gates to be locked and you be out of a job might be likely to make you a bit cynical”

As it turned out, both women were very adept at the job and quickly diagnosed some of the problems.

The first Breweries biggest problem seemed to be in sales. It had been generally understood that the sales rep. was up to the job but he was in fact trying to sell the beer too far away – making logistics a problem and his selling technique meant that he probably required some in-house training.

He totally misunderstood the request from a re-seller, to take a look at the brewery and its beer, believing it to be a request for a tourist visit.

“Yes give us a few weeks notice and there will be a small charge.”

Fortunately the new manager had chosen to shadow him and actually made the pitch.

Finally at the end of the programme Sir Gerry had to make his big decision. Which would he choose to save?

In fact he chose both Breweries and left with as a majority shareholder in both businesses.

The voice over at the end told how well they were doing.

Good TV – with no shouting and stamping around by anyone as in The Apprentice.

Next week – Pies and Pasties….