What makes successful people successful?

What makes successful people successful?

Feb 3, 2017 | Leadership

Success is driven by a combination of insight, common sense and hard work, not luck, knowing the right people, or having a rich father, although the last two can be a good start.

It is also a given that successful people are usually pretty smart, although pretty smart people are not always successful.

Looking at medium sized businesses  as I do day in and day out, I see a range of all of the above, and find that above all else, the characteristic that distinguishes the successful from the rest is curiosity.

Curiosity about the world around them, the workings of their own business  and those of their competitors and allies, about the drivers of change and behaviour.

Broken down further, Curiosity comes from a number of sources, and I tend to score those I work with, generally very informally, on a range of parameters, which gives me an insight to their ‘curiosity quotient’.

They do not guess.  Rather than be happy to guess, they tend to experiment find ways to form and test hypotheses about the causes of the things around them. They do not just jump to a conclusion, they employ what I learnt at school was called the ‘scientific method’, often unconsciously.  Jumping to a conclusion that offers an easy explanation delivers a seductive but almost always wrong answer, particularly when done without deep domain knowledge.

They engage with problems physically.  This probably sounds a bit mad,  but those who are curious need to see and feel a problem, engage with it physically in some way. Leading a large marketing team in a highly seasonal market, one of the ways I seemed to be able to predict those who would be successful marketers was that they were happy to get out in the peak season and pack shelves in supermarkets, talk to those supermarket employees who managed the shelves, talk to customers as they shopped, and tap into the wisdom of the part time merchandisers we had while they drove from store to store. They engaged physically with the competitive environment in which customers  and the myriad of things, often the unconscious choices that led the purchase of one of our products Vs an alternative. Somehow they could ‘smell’ the issues.

They welcome the thought that they do not know. By embracing their ignorance they are able to engage with alternatives, see things with fresh eyes, and make new hypotheses about the drivers of behaviour.

They look beyond the obvious.  The obvious explanation of some happening are often not the best, or even accurate explanation of the behaviour.

They make their own judgements. Right or wrong good people form a judgement, and are prepared and able to defend it, while taking into consideration any new or revised information that is provided, and absorb that into the views and change as necessary. They are flexible people, not tied to a set of preconceptions, while at the same time being decisive. Procrastination is not a part of the DNA.

They never assume that the past will be repeated. They consider the past to be a indicator of what might happen, not the driver, so they dig into the guts of a process, behaviour drivers, and science, to come up with the fundamentals that drive everything else. The psychology of behaviour has not changed much over the millennia, our understanding of the fundamentals has increased daily. Those with curiosity seek to sweep away the assumptions based on simple extrapolation.

They make themselves experts. Rather than relying on so called experts from elsewhere, they ensure they at least know enough to subject those so called experts to challenging and informed questions in conversations to test their expertise.

They remain focused on the issues, and are relentless in pursuit of information that informs.

They make decisions based on data rather than emotions. They seek the facts that underlie the data. Our lives are so immersed in so called data, stuff spewed out of computers that takes on a credibility of its own simply because it has been digitised, that it has acted to erode our own judgement of facts. Digital garbage is still garbage. The really curious seek the truths in the facts, not hyperbolic leaps of faith proposed by dodgy data.

 

What do employees really want?

What do employees really want?

Jan 9, 2017 | Change, Governance, Leadership

 

If I asked that question of 50 randomly selected medium sized business owners, the first answer would be something like ‘More pay’.

That would be the wrong answer.

‘More pay’ is the default when other things more important to them are missing, and there is no other reason to go to work each day. This is in Australia of course, a place where the necessities of life are covered, nobody is going to starve.

Employees want to work for a successful business, one that offers them security and a chance to learn and develop their talents and interests, as well as supplying the means to  buy the necessities of life. Nobody likes turning up not knowing if the business will be open that day, or if the receivers will be waiting for them.

When was it ever a better feeling to be on a losing team, than it was to be a part of a winning team?

Giving employees this reassurance is more than telling them that the business is profitable, although that helps. It is about taking them into your confidence as you would a trusted friend. Funny thing about trust, it needs to be earned by performance, and once earned, it is returned.

Trust given begets trust received.

Creating the environment where that trust becomes automatic and mutual takes time and effort, but success will put ‘better pay’ way down the list of employee concerns.

Following is the pathway I advise those I work with to follow:

Articulate where we are going. It is difficult to get people to buy into a journey  without telling them the destination. Try getting your young kids in the car just by ordering ‘get in the car,’ but tell them they should jump in the car, we are going to Luna Park, and you will be killed in the rush.

Paint a picture of the destination. Your kids have a mental picture of Luna park, fun by the harbour,  but your employees have no such picture of what success looks like, so paint it for  them, recognising that it is not just about the success of the business, it is about what success means for them, their colleagues, friends, customers and families.

Show them the journey. The kids know the way to Luna park, sort of depending on age, but your employees have no real idea of the journey you will share on the way, so lay it out. What sort of operating targets there will be, describe the workplace, the type of customer necessary for the success, what skills and knowledge will need to be deployed , and which ones will need to be developed, Who are your competitors, what are the expected challenges that need to be overcome, and so on.

Describe why it is important to get there. This is  not about profits and personal success, it is about what difference you are making to the community and people’s lives, a description of  the higher purpose, or the ‘Why’ of the business. It can sound a bit ‘mushy’ and new age, but when there is something that people can relate to at a gut level, the power of that is immense. Profit is an outcome of a job well done, one of the many measures of success, it should not be the primary measure of success.

WIFM. (What’s in it for me) while the objective is to engage with a higher purpose, there will always be a time where this question needs to be answered. When you have succeeded in doing the above, the answer will be  about the satisfaction of doing something useful, being valued, having control over your workplace, being a part of a community, learning and growing, and when those are satisfied, they may ask how much will be in the pay packet.

Personalised feedback. All of the above points are general, things that a leader  could and should do for the whole group of employees. However, employees are also individuals, and managing direct reports one on one is a core responsibility of leadership.  A one on one conversation can be many things, feedback on performance both positive and pointing out areas for improvement, assistance with a problem being faced, collaboratively addressing difficult problems,  advice of a personal as well as commercial nature, professional development,  and an opportunity to build a relationship of trust and respect. The meetings can take many forms, but they should be regular and formal, which means agendas and meeting notes, as well as diarised meeting times.  As a general rule, you would have these meeting with your direct reports, and encourage them to have similar meetings with their reports, indeed, coach them to do so.

When you do all that, you will build a motivated and engaged workforce, and that is a competitive advantage that is really hard to replicate. I can help with all that, having done it several times, and so know how to avoid the most of the traps.

How to easily solve the strategy jigsaw

How to easily solve the strategy jigsaw

Nov 23, 2016 | Leadership, Strategy

Imagine, your task is to complete a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle with one of your kids, but the puzzle is an old one, in a bag, so you do not have a picture of the end result to work to.

It is further complicated, as some of the pieces in the body of the picture  are also missing, some are faded beyond recognition, and others have been bent to be ‘force-fitted’ to other pieces that they were not designed to fit.

Not easy.

Building a strategy is not dissimilar.

The jigsaw is a good metaphor, because the steps to solve the jigsaw puzzle are the same as solving the strategy development puzzle.

Have an objective. Start by knowing what the end result should look like, or in the vernacular ‘start with the end in mind’. As they say, ‘without a clear destination, any road will get you there’. Without the picture of the completed jig saw, you are working in the dark.

 Find the foundation pieces. In a jigsaw they are the 4 corner pieces, in a commercial strategy they are your Customer Value Proposition, cash flow management, profit and loss account, and break even point.

Define the limits of activity. These are the sides of your jigsaw, obvious because one side is straight, and defines the edge beyond which there is nothing, but you still have to define the manner  in which they fit together. For your strategy development exercise, the side pieces are determining who your ideal customers are, how will you engage and service them, the manner in which you will be paid, what offer you will deliver them. In other words, your business model.

Functional grouping. The next step in assembling a jigsaw is to group like pieces together, Even without the picture, you can put together all those that seem similar, for example the blue of the sky, green of a field. It will take some experimentation and shuffling to get it right, but slowly, a few pieces will  start to be fitted together. Developing and executing on a strategy is again similar, but the pieces are generally functional. The manufacturing pieces all go together, as do the financial, sales, marketing, and other functional pieces, they fit together, but they also progressively fit as groups into the larger picture.

Build the whole. As the jigsaw picture emerges in front of you, it becomes possible to fit groups of similar pieces together, and you see the ranges of possibilities opening. Those 3 that you found that were blue, and fitted together, are not sky, they are the blue of the house that is emerging on the other side. Again the strategy development process is the same. You will progressively find points where groups of pieces fit together, where sales and marketing merge, the financial reporting systems  are adapted to offer performance metrics on the factory, and you measure customer retention and share of wallet.

Make it scalable. Throughout the construction of the puzzle, once you have found two pieces that fit together, that are a part of the bigger picture, you never take them apart, you move them around until you find others that similarly fit and together make the picture easier to see. In a business this process is more like the development of procedures that are repeatable and scalable. Once you know something works, don’t take the risk of breaking them up and losing a piece, make sure they stay together. Creating standard operating processes for everything that gets done regularly, so it is done the same way every time, is the commercial equivalent. Standard procedures remove variation, creating stability and predictability.

Of course, when you have the picture of the completed jigsaw in front of you, the task is 10 times, perhaps 100 times easier.

Strategy development is exactly the same. Start with the picture, define and progressively build on the foundations, then fill in the holes as you go.

Be prepared to iterate and experiment as you go, just like testing the fit of the jigsaw pieces until you find 2 that are just built for each other, then another 1, then group of several.

The essential 70/20/10 rule for business optimisation.

The essential 70/20/10 rule for business optimisation.

Nov 10, 2016 | Governance, Leadership, Management

Most of my time is devoted to improving SME manufacturing businesses. I do it for a living, mine and theirs, and I have an ulterior motive.

I want my grandchildren to have a better life than me, and while I have had a great life, the pace of  improvement has faltered noticeably over the last 25 years as the productivity of our economy has floundered, and the flow through benefit to living standards has reduced to a trickle.

I put it down to the decline of manufacturing.

We have taken the easy way out, as an economy and society, and taken the benefits before they were able to be sustained.

Short term gain, long term pain.

The evidence is everywhere, from the short termism of the stock market to the supposed microscopic attention span of millennials, self indulgence of baby boomers,  and the politics of who gets what of the tax take ripped out by the three levels of government and their acolytes.

I believe that without manufacturing, the process by which we gain leverage, the decline will continue. There are only so many baristas and hairdressers we need, and they offer no leverage, as you can only make one coffee at a time.

To the rule in the header.

Almost all small and medium sized manufacturers I work with, from those resilient few remaining who supply into FMCG markets, to those in engineering and service manufacturing (like printing) the formula for optimisation is reasonably consistent.

70/20/10.

70% of the time, effort and investment needs to be devoted to the foundations of the business. The numbers, financial and otherwise that deliver meaningful measurable and actionable planning and feedback loops on the allocation of their resources to their core business. In effect it is improving on the things that made you successful in the first place, but which have not evolved as quickly as the competitive  environment around them, so they are being squeezed.

20% of the effort and investment into adjacent areas. These are the places that will in all probability spawn the new product category, class of competitor,  demanding but value driven customer, and the emerging niche market that technology has enabled. This adjacency leverages some of the capability developed in your core market in a different way, stimulates capability development, and delivers you asset productivity.

10% of the effort is playtime. This is the messy, risky, scary, and significantly disconnected from your core, innovation and change initiatives. it is from this effort that the product and business model disruption that will change everything can emerge. Way better to be on top of the changes, anticipating and planning for them, rather than being taken by surprise and belted by them.

The numbers vary, and the nature of the resources allocated varies, but in rough form, 70/20/10 seems to hold across business sizes, models and market types.

 

October 5, 2016. Five years on.

October 5, 2016. Five years on.

Oct 8, 2016 | Leadership

Last Wednesday, October 5 was the 5th anniversary of the death of Steve Jobs, on October 5, 2011, aged 59 .

How time flies.

The words of the great Apple ad that started the ball rolling again when he returned from exile in 1997 to the company he created with Steve Wozniak on April fools day 1976 are  reproduced above by Hugh McLeod, the sage of the Gaping Void.

Having read Walter Isaacsons terrific biography of Jobs, I am glad I did not know him, but the world is a different place, and most would contend a better place,  as a result of him being here.

Not many of us can say that.

It is pure fantasy, but I wonder what else would have changed that now remains the same had he lived to the ripe old age of 65, which would only be a couple of more months from now, February 2017.

He has been missed, even by me, and I do not use Apple products at all.

The compelling essence of leadership demonstrated yesterday

The compelling essence of leadership demonstrated yesterday

Oct 2, 2016 | Leadership

Yesterday the Western Bulldogs won the AFL grand final.

I am not an AFL fan, my game is the one they play in heaven, sadly not much down here any more, but that game yesterday stirred emotions in even one who really did not care about the outcome.

For the Dogs to win they overcame the odds in all sorts of directions, too numerous to list. However, in overcoming the odds they clearly demonstrated the truth of the old cliché about the team of champions vs the champion team.

There is one word that describes how that phenomenon is achieved:

Leadership.

The single act of the Dogs coach Luke Beveridge putting his premiership medal around the neck of injured club captain Bob Murphy embodies all it means to be a leader.

The work of Simon Sinek in articulating this stuff is to my mind the benchmark. Do not bother reading the libraries of dusty academic tomes written, just watch the Sinek presentations to hear all you need to know.   The one linked above titled Leaders eat Last is a great story, distilled into one 30  second act by Beveridge yesterday.

If you were an aspiring AFL player, why would you want to play anywhere else?

My apologies to readers outside Australia, you will have no idea what AFL is. Does not matter, just watch Sineks presentation.