We can’t touch certainty anymore. Fluctuations in business activity will never be the same again after this economic downturn. Historically, we have spent enormous segments of time and money on protecting ourselves from uncertainty through risk management strategies.

We try to manage uncertainty by considering past events, but these will always look more certain than they actually were at the time, thanks to our ability to be struck by hindsight. How can you have a method for calculating future risks and uncertainty if the only thing we know for certain is uncertainty? And, whilst we are busy looking over our shoulder at the past, we have the possibility of tripping right over the future!

Boo! is what I hear when we talk about vision (actually it’s usually a depleted groan.) Why? Because small businesses either don’t do it or don’t share it. At best it can be often fragmented, at it’s worst, drivel. Yet vision, or should I say common purpose, is the starting block of being able to influence and shape the future not control it.

This common purpose isn’t a fancy, fluffy cloud in the sky. It’s based on expectations, market cycle, value proposition and future trends not backward looking thinking. It’s a way of motivating people towards at least some light at the end of the tunnel, some reason for what they do and, of course, meaning. Unless you know what you’re trying to hit, how the hell do you know where to aim.

Stop considering how likely an event is to happen based on previous experience and start thinking about what you are going to do if it does.

After Steve Yastrow’s thoughts on existing customers, thought this was an interesting post by Seth Godin on new customers…..

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/02/three-things-you-need-if-you-want-more-customers.html

The old sayings are the best!! It’s better to do a few things really well than a lot of things badly. Whenever we take something new on, something else has to go. A good look at what you are currently doing is the next step. You need to distinguish between real work and busy work:

-       Real work contributes significantly to the growth of your business, busy work stunts growth

-       Real work impacts positively on your bottom line, busy work distracts you from your bottom line

-       Real work utilises your skills, expertise and knowledge, busy work underuse’s you

-       Real work is challenging, busy work is mundane and boring

-       Real work only you can do, busy work is what anyone can do which is why you should outsource it!

If your work overwhelms you but doesn’t challenge you, you’re probably suffering from too much busy work! Put together a list of all the work that comes in on one day. Identify which is real work and which is busy work. You know what to do next!

I’ve been talking a lot about this recently, an interesting angle from Steve Yastrow at Tom Peters Company.

http://www.tompeters.com/entries.php?rss=1&note=http://www.tompeters.com/blogs/main/010869.php

It’s the most significant problem that small business owners face….not having enough time, spinning plates and juggling balls. Well, we can’t do everything and when we try, we fall straight into a huge chasm and little gets done. And, if we don’t watch it and keep it in check, we end up working in a unfocused, distracted and fragmented way. Indeed, it’s one of the most significant contributing factors to limited growth in a small business.

Work doesn’t come from thin air, it comes from the commitments you make. To reduce your work you need to reduce our commitments. You need to draw a line in the sand between outstanding work and today’s work. 

Try this….list all of the tasks that are outstanding, how long they have been outstanding for and how long they would take to do if you had no other work. Calculate it and then you know what you are up against. Put it to one side and then start each day with the first task on the list. Eventually, depending on how many outstanding tasks you have, the list will go!

To be an excellent leader you have to start with yourself. Leadership is an internally driven insight and an internal source of action. It comes from within and is as much about being in touch with your emotional side as your rational and logical one. Great leaders know where they get their results from…their people and ensure that this is at the forefront of their mind when it comes to growing their business.

Understanding yourself and the basis of your behaviours and attitudes is essential. Try answering theses thought provoking questions:

-       What do you believe about yourself?

-       What do you believe about other people?

-       What do you believe about life?

-       What do you believe about leadership?

Then when you’ve done that ask these intriguing questions, what does this belief give me? What does it open up? What does this belief cost me? What does it stop me from seeing? The essence of a leader will come from the answers.  It will start you on the road to becoming an authentic, inspiration leader where opportunities readily flow, your people become more productive and actually enjoy what they do. Do not underestimate the power of getting you ‘right’ first!

There is a sea of change spreading across business. In the past we celebrated people who had achieved and been successful. We measured it by their output. Nothing wrong with that however, we measured via how much money they had, how big their company was, how big their car was, how big their house was, or even worse, how many houses they had! 

What we didn’t think about enough was how they achieved that. How many people did they screw or screw up getting there? There are a few examples of that across the world at this moment in time! What we measured people by was how much noise they were making not necessarily their meaning or how they were thinking! 

What I mean is that its becoming abundantly clear that how you got there is far more important now. Did you enrich peoples lives or simply manipulate them for your own needs. How many people did you work to the bone through fear, control and using authority rather than through inspiring, influencing and motivating using an individualist approach?

Profit, in financial terms is not the only way we must measure business success in the future, it must also be about how an organisation has added value in terms of excitement, fostering talent, trust and purpose. We have spent the last few years in business creating egocentric value, where a few or one person has become wealthy rather than sharing that value and making all of our people wealthy. And by wealth, I don’t just mean money!

There has been a lack of moral measures, doing the right thing and concerning ourselves with the short term rather than long term output. We need to measure what’s really important knowing that it will produce just the same output, but be more wealth creating than what’s happened previously.

As Nassim Taleb comments in his book, Fooled by Randomness, “Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behaviour, not because they won or lost.”

There are lots of great businesses out there. They are successful, strong, credible and have a reputation to die for. However, a lack of lateral, intellectual thinking can get them in trouble quickly. Why? Ooh! A few things. As humans we have inherent flaws and as successful business owners we can lull ourselves into complacency and false security. A point:

Business owners who think they know best! Bosses who never consider that they may be wrong. That what got us to this successful point was all down to us, our fantastic decision making and our skill at spotting opportunity. And that will get us all through difficult times! We don’t consider that our success may be down to benefiting from a market cycle, being in the right place at the right time ten years ago, that actually this was all just coincidence or, even worse, just downright good luck!

What ever has made us successful in the past, may not make us that successful in the future. In fact, it probably won’t!! Continuing on the same track, with the same tactics and the same products isn’t a guarantee. In fact, we know it’s not. Take the briefest of pauses, often we see things differently then.

To be truthful, Blockbusters have missed a trick here. They should have produced this video and used it as part of a viral marketing campaign. The video is great fun though, if a little thought provoking…..

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/historic_blockbuster_store_offers

Are we missing potential opportunities in a downturn because we are narrow minded or lack the lateral vision to see things differently and spot potential benefits we have never considered before? It’s not meant to offend, however, there are fundamental shifts happening in our demographics and culture we need to at least pass the time of day with.

We are not being born nor are we dying. We have an aging population and a population that sees itself differently than previous generations. Some marketing aimed at over 50’s is downright out of date and indeed embarrassing but, the point is there is a huge market to possibly weave into your marketing segmentation.

In the UK, 14% of the population are registered disabled. The way we live is changing, single occupancy in homes is set to explode. People from an ethnic background (thankfully) are increasingly being seen in positions of authority with strong careers. Gay people are now not just integrated into society but are playing a leading role in progress. And, we all know the changes in the workplace that women leaders have made now they have entered the frame. 

Yet, businesses are obsessively focused on young people perhaps because most marketing decisions in business are being made by young people! We concentrate on a segment we think has the longest future. Yet who has the most disposable income? Who eats out regularly? Who spends money on the latest technology? It’s a myth that only the young are early adopters or the early mass majority. Often those very people can be found in significant amounts amongst the groups highlighted earlier.

As the population stabilises and we grow older and more diverse, those companies with the foresight to consider how they can meet their needs will have scored nothing short of a home run.