Jan 27, 2015 | Leadership, Small business, Strategy
Time to think
Those who run small businesses have some very common challenges.
Significant amongst them is insufficient time to get everything done that needs to be done, and no time left over for “self”
The old cliché working “in the business and not on the business” is a cliché because it is appallingly true.
Most, if not all have also heard about the “urgent but not important to Important but not urgent” continuum, certainly I have written about it in the past.
However, taking some concrete action to free up the time is harder than the easy clichés of business coaches and consultants, so here are a few added steps to take along the path. They come from the “Lean” thinking movement that has so profoundly altered the way we manufacture things over the last 25 years.
First: distinguish between policies and procedures.
Policies are the things that deliver a framework for activities an decision making. Think about it as Google earth focussed on a large region. You can see the shape and limits, but not the detail of the roads, railways and suburban areas. Procedures by contrast are a step by step expression of the sequence of activities that together contribute to the outcome. To continue the analogy, they are the GPS, giving you street by street instructions on how to get from point A to point B.
Second: Make a list of all the things that are recurrent activities, and priorities them against a list of questions you ask yourself:
- Is it required for the business to function efficiently?
- Are there repeatable steps with specific start and end points and efficiency/productivity metrics?
- Does the task have to be done by me, or could someone else do it
- Is it the best use of my time?
Third: Be ruthless about eliminating those tasks that do not add value that make no contribution to your ability to serve customers, and by delegating to others.
Fourth: write the procedures to make the tasks that remain routine, repeatable, and robust. You generally have two options in writing procedures.
- Have a roundtable with all those involved in the task, and map it out on a whiteboard, or butcher paper, capturing all the interactions that occur.
- Take a bit of time, and keep a record for a couple of times the job gets done, then whiteboard it to standardise, and eliminate the unnecessary loops and rework that almost inevitably you will uncover. Think about it like building a house. Start with the foundations, then progressively fill in the external walls, internals walls, followed by the details of the fittings and fixtures.
Once documented, test the procedure a couple of time to “stress test” it, then delegate.
Fifth: Outsource where possible those tasks that take a capability not readily available in your business, or where there is a specialist available who can do it better and quicker, and therefor in the long run cheaper, than you.
Voila! For most small business owners, 4 hours a day.
Jan 25, 2015 | Governance, Leadership, Personal Rant
Australia day 2015
On Australia day for the last few years, I have made a point of reflecting on the place we live.
The post on January 26 2012, called for a mature debate on the challenges we face as a nation, the real, long term issues, rather than the diet of puffery and bullshit we normally are asked to digest. Quaint idea that, asking for a national debate on real issues.
In 2013, I asked what it was we wanted the place to look like in another generation, and I guess some degree of pessimism came through the words, again nothing.
Last year, 2014, I focussed on what I thought would be the defining trend that would drive our decision making, individually and for the nation, Data, and the essential truths that data can convey. This turned out to be absolutely wrong, about as wrong as anyone can be, and is again a salient lesson to those with a crystal ball hidden somewhere. Small businesses have not embraced data, Governments continue to hide it, and politicians use it to distort, mislead, and often fabricate, and we still take it on the snout, in relatively good humour.
So much for the transparency to be delivered by the internet.
This year, 2015, I will not be so grandiose or presumptuous.
Nick Kyrgios has just fought his way into the Aussie Open semi-final comprehensively replacing Tomic the tank as our favourite tennis player, the Canberra shuffle is back in full swing, educating our kids seems to be on the hands of kids, the boom of the last few years is comprehensively over and the lack if intelligent and bi-partisan comment and policy development that would enable the economy to weather the coming storm is supplanted by another call from the opposition leader for a debate on the coming republic.
For heavens sake, can we be adult about this?
Australia is the greatest country in the world, our economy is for reasons of luck and good management 20 years ago in pretty good shape relatively, but we are still failing to recognise that the piper needs to be paid now if the prosperity we have enjoyed will be handed to our children, some farsighted decisions need to be made irrespective of the political cycle.
I guess I am asking too much, pass the bottle, please.
Jan 1, 2015 | Leadership, Management, Marketing, Small business, Strategy
happy new year
It’s been the Christmas and new year period, and over the break some introspection occurred, along with the pud, family connections and some nice wine.
One of the insights that emerged was the application of Clayton Christianson’s “job to be done” idea to marketing, and specifically the manner in which I approach the task of developing, selling and delivering Intellectual Capital.
As I thought about what is was going to take to be successful in 2015, I needed to ask, and answer three pretty basic questions:
- What is it that I do every day?
- Why would people hire me?
- How can I help them do their job better?
When I worked my way through those, the answer was pretty simple.
The job of a marketer is to discover, develop, and tell interesting and engaging stories to people who care, who may receive value from the experience an wisdom contained in the stories, and who may take an action as a result that delivers them some benefit.
The job is not to make ads, or create blog posts or posters, it is to identify the ways that as marketers we can bridge the divide between what people are looking for, the challenges and opportunities they face, and how we can help them with the task of “finding.”
I trust 2015 will be a good year for us all, at least better than 2014.
Our families, friends, colleagues, and those who are in great need around this shrinking world need some simple wisdom, helping hand and quiet counsel, and it is up to us collectively to give that to them as we can, in the best way we can.
Happy new year.
Allen
Dec 15, 2014 | Change, Governance, Leadership, Strategy
With thanks to Tom Fishburne. http://tomfishburne.com.s3.amazonaws.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/140505.pivot_.jpg
Strategy is one of those alters of organisation to which almost everyone offers lip service, and once a year in the planning cycle, receives mass genuflection. That does not mean we believe, just that it is a part of the duty of organisations, and as such, fails to deliver to its potential.
Over the years as a corporate employee and consultant, I have seen strategy implementations fail, sometimes with spectacular results. Usually however, strategy just whimpers in the corner, ignored and derided, but every now and again, I have been privileged to see, and be a part of successful strategic exercises. Below is a list of the most frequent sources of the failures I have seen, the good part of such a list is that taking the opposite gives you a list of what you need to do to succeed.
- Failing to understand that reality is not always what people tell themselves, self talk is too often tangled up with self delusion and adherence to the status quo. Recognising the hard realities as they actually are rather than the way you would like them to be is a remarkably common delusion.
- Believing self serving optimism and hubris are substitutes for achievable goals. It is OK, indeed admirable to work towards the BHAG, but allowing ego, management power based on the position rather than the person, and “group-think” into the room , and it becomes a different beast.
- Not seeing “Capability inflation” for the damming flaw that it is. Virtually everyone sees themselves as better than average at whatever it is they are doing, which simply does not work. Capability like everything else in life is spread across some sort of “normal” curve, in which the only thing that really changes is the height of the average, in relation to the spread of scores.
- Not recognising that competitors do not always react in an orderly and predictable manner, they are not a party too your strategies, and rarely react in wholly predictable ways.
- The factors often seen as “differentiators” are very often just the table stakes to be in the game. Asking management what are the “differentiators”, what characteristics makes any enterprise different, or its products different, and you usually get back a list of things that are just a cost of doing business, just like a watch has to tell accurate time before it is a watch.
- Failure to recognise and adjust for unintended consequences quickly. Usually this occurs because it is not in the plan, and plans are after all prepared by the bosses, performance measures are tied to the plan, and it is a great adornment on the shelf. (my time contracting to the Public Sector sees this blatant ignoring of unintended consequences justified by all sorts of complicated and cliché ridden language developed as an art form)
- Failure to believe. For a senior management to formulate spruik, and go through the motions of articulating and implementing a strategy, then not “living” it themselves means the strategy is doomed to failure. People watch what you do far more than they listen to what you say. Saying you believe is not enough.
- Underestimating the importance of “people“, their attitudes, fears, relationships, egos, and behavioural norms.
- Failing to recognise the elasticity of the status quo. Its durability in the face of logic, common sense and the blinding obvious (to outsiders) is just remarkable.
- Failing to understand and manage the essential paradox of “predictable” and “Innovation” . Customers like predictability, they come to rely in it, but they also expect their suppliers to be at the “cutting edge” to be finding innovative solutions to their problems, and the jobs to be done by their products. Nobody has managed this paradox as well as Apple over the last 20 years. Their products are all predictable easy to use, look great, and perform beautifully, yet they are always at the cutting edge, innovating with everything they do.
- Failing to recognise the sources and likelihood of disruption, and preparing as if it was about to happen. The commercial technical and competitive environment in which a strategy has to succeed is increasingly being disrupted in very hard to predict ways. Strategy is about the basic choices that make up the business model, and those are no longer models that are predictable across decades, they are evolving almost daily. A quick look through Jerry Owyangs presentations, writings and data bases outlining the collaborative economy is all the evidence of the shifts happens that are needed, but just think a few words: Air BnB, Uber, Amazon, iTunes.
- Failing to understand that loyalty cannot be built by money, and material benefits, loyalty is to people, and is very local. it must be earned by displaying and genuinely feeling respect, awareness and interest in individuals. Dunbar’s number plays a huge, largely unrecognised role in organisations. 150 people is about the maximum we can have relationships with on a face to face basis, and the smaller the group, the more intense the potential of the relationships that exist. In this context, loyalty is local, people relate to, work with, and support those who are a part of their local “tribe” against all those outside their tribes. This can often mean other divisions from the same business, or even the other function living down the hall. Believing this local loyalty can be leveraged or changed without real hard work is a common trap for strategists, particularly those entering a strategy that calls for organisation al change, renewal, and in the case of M&A activity.
- Failing to understand that data is inherently ambiguous, and swings between being of some value and intensely dangerous. It all depends on the assumptions that drive the analysis, wrong assumptions render the analysis at best misleading. Is that upswing in sales due to the insightful marketing campaign, or the failure of a competitor to deliver due to problems in the factory? Bet I know most marketing people will say.
- Thinking Strategy and culture are one and the same thing, with perhaps just a few nuances for each. Whilst they must be considered together, they must be managed as separate but mutually reinforcing entities, A degree of inconsistency here will see a strategy fail, as culture is always stronger. Attempts to change culture to align with strategy, rather than recognising the the power and reliance of culture, are doomed to failure, it is simply too elastic to be easily changed. There are really only two ways to change culture. The first is bit by bit, with a leader who demonstrates the behavior required, and is unprepared to accept compromises. The second is to fire almost everybody, if not everybody, and start again.
- Failure to recognise any of the above for what it really is, and calling it something politically more acceptable, thus ignoring the failure, and worse, taking no steps to correct the sources of that failure.
I would be interested in other sources of strategic failure you have witnessed, or been a part of, I am sure there are many I have missed.
Nov 21, 2014 | Governance, Leadership, Management
Courtesy www.cartoonstock.com
Planning is a fundamental building block of success, but planning like everything can be done well, and done poorly. Poor planning is probably worse than no planning, as having done the planning, the expectation is that the “do-do” will not hit the fan, so when it does, the impact of the surprise can be devastating.
So, a few tips for planners:
- Always test assumptions, and ensure that to the extent possible, a wide range of variables have been considered, quantified, and tested.
- Remove ambiguous and flowery language, all that does is camouflage accountability
- Abandon templates that substitute for thinking. Templates that aid thinking by assisting the process of covering most of the bases can be very useful, but once they substitute for thinking they can be disastrous. Often the difference is a fine line.
- Make planning iterative and inclusive. I really like having a rolling 3 month planning cycle which is long enough to collect useful measures of effectiveness, but short enough to adjust in close enough to real time to be able to grab opportunities, and mitigate unexpected challenges. I also like having front line staff involved in some way, as often they are the ones that pick up the whispers well before they become evident in the numbers.
- Ask difficult and confronting questions, particularly those that relate to scared cows, ingrown processes, capabilities required, and possible competitive reactions to what you are doing.
Get planning, and when you need some critical thinking, drop me a line.
Nov 7, 2014 | Governance, Leadership
Reflecting on the behaviours of the best people I have seen in leadership positions over my 35 years of playing in this area to a friend a while ago, it seemed to come down to a small number of discrete behavioural characteristics. I know there are libraries full of books on leadership, but this is the list that evolved during that conversation. Luckily, my friend was jotting a few notes for a workshop he was running the following week, and subsequently sent me the jottings.
Those characteristics were:
- They always take responsibility for their own actions, and those of the people who relay on them for direction. No finger pointing, excuses, and wasted energy playing “the game” ,
- The flip side, of the first is that they give credit where it is due, never taking the credit for themselves, even in situations where most would say that their leadership and decisions were the deciding factor .
- They do not let the status quo, sacred cows and the fear of change stop them. In fact these things offer opportunities to improve, and benefit by being first, different, and recognisable.
- People are not pushed into the background by technology. People run the technology, design it, implement, and use it, but so often the technology comes to be the king. Great leaders would never allow themselves to be distracted by a phone call when talking to someone who was relying on them, respect given is returned in spades.
- They are not imitators, they look for different paths, and follow them with passion. It may lead to a few more missteps, but it also opens the opportunity of seeing the emerging opportunities first. Being the same for the sake of some concern about being seen as different is of no importance to them.
- They know they are not always right, so are willing to be pulled up, corrected, and accept good council. You would never hear one say “I told you so”.
- They are collegiate, happily working with others, contributing their time and expertise in the way that best benefits the objectives being sought.
Finding ways to build these into your natural response mechanisms can only help you become a better leader, and coaching those with whom you work to be better themselves is in itself, the essence of leadership.
