The control in a small business will begin to blur. No longer will it the one man/woman show it used to be. One week it will be in one person’s hands, the next another, depending on their specialism and the project. The owner co-ordinating and facilitating this rather than directing it.

As a result we will need to consider our human resource strategies in some detail. Retention will be a fundamental issue. An interesting challenge as many of us have very itchy feet. Strategies based on mutual respect, feeling valued, recognised, rewarded and a share in the business will need to be designed in to ensure our people remain satisfied with us and not someone else.

Our relationship with these people will need to be more significant, intense and trustworthy. Employees are already seeking out companies who they feel are sincere and genuine. Trust will be at the centre of every business owner’s attention. 

If our peoples imagination and delivery of product/service is the only differentiating factor, we better get going on how we are going to keep our competitive advantage.

The costs involved in being ahead of the game have always been considered a hindrance, a lame excuse for avoiding the risk. Now, however, the money required is a lot less, or is it that the risk is?

Being that one-step ahead, in the past, has been about your product. Is it the latest? Has it got more widgets than the competition? Is it using the most sophisticated technology? A lot of small businesses have tried to compete by investing in that product development, insistent that having their own product is crucial to adding value to the business and sustained success.

That might still be the case. But products move that fast now. They change so quickly that its hard for a small business to keep up, never mind have the resources to pump thousands (and the rest) into products that could be defunct in a couple of years or, someone else has been developing with a budget double the size of yours.

It’s not about ignoring or pulling out of product development; it’s about working collaboratively and in partnership with other people in your game. You can share the cost, share the resource and share the risk. Or, on another note, let some other person develop the product and you concentrate on customer acquisition and retention. Your businesses worth is just as much about your customer portfolio as it is about your product nowadays.

Products come and go, so do customers but there worth a hell of a lot more than they used to be and customer experience costs a hell of a lot less than product development. Today, doing it on your own can be like shooting yourself in the foot.

I’ve mentioned these before but if you are prepared to be challenged, want a different perspective or an insight into what is really happening, you can’t go amiss with these books:

The Long Tail – Chris Anderson 

Tribes – Seth Godin

Futurewise – Patrick Dixon

Beyond Branding – Edited by Nicholas Ind

Building Great Customer Experiences – Colin Shaw and John Ives

The Brand You 50 – Tom Peters

Certainly worth the time and effort!

Small businesses need smart people. It’s not longer permitable to recruit potential employees who aren’t at the top of their game, or at least will be, in the next 3 years. To compete and be world class (nothing less will do) small business owners are going to have to step back and get the best in the market. They no longer have the control, the power and all the answers. Nor are they the most intelligent or creative.

Small businesses will be required to operate more like a European football club, a baseball team and, perhaps, even an English cricket team (heres hoping!) Think about it, the technical skill is with the player’s, the innovation in delivery is on the pitch. They execute the plan. The players are paid more. They are the best in their field, they are expertly skilled in their game and they dictate a premium for it, because, they simply win or lose matches. But they are the best in the business.

Okay, a hell of lot of preparation and strategy goes behind that success, but the small business owners role will be very much be like this in the future. Recruiting the best players, attracting and keeping people at the top of their game and employing the cutting edge innovators. Whilst their role becomes less technical, their task becomes more inspirational. An amazing skill set based on leadership skills not creating the next software program, or designing a logo or cutting someone’s hair.

Being able to facilitate, motivate, corral, drive people towards a common goal and promote a culture thats truly entrepreneurial will replace the skills of control, organising, developing products and doing!

The expression ‘you get what you ask for’ has never been more prevalent. As small business owners we have an amazing opportunity to influence. Influence our customers, influence our prospects and influence the people that work with us. Just a few thoughts:

The mundane breeds the mundane, average breeds average, being cheaper just breeds more cheaper things, rules breed rules, convention just breeds more convention, control breeds more control, defensiveness just breeds defensiveness, competition breeds more competition.

Yet, creativity encourages creativity, knowledge breeds more knowledge, ideas encourage more ideas, inspiration inspires more inspiration, leadership encourages leadership, thinking breeds more thinking, revenue breeds more revenue, opportunities encourage other opportunities, value breeds more value, trust inspires trust, customers breed other customers.

Behaviour in business can get you very different outcomes.

Phew, we are almost ready to publish my next four e-books:

‘Leading whilst on your own,’ ‘Improving the customer experience,’ ‘Converting leads into customers’ and ‘Starting a business.’ It’s been an interesting journey, expertly designed by Andy Farmer.

Just need to get the technology sorted and we are there! We’ll be charging a small fee (it is small!) Keep a look out over the next couple of weeks.

The laws of supply and demand are changing. Rapidly, they are ceasing to exist and disrupting the way we have set up our company’s to do business. Corporate and small business alike. Business in the past was built on scarcity and we haven’t changed our businesses radically enough to cope.

It isn’t so long ago that to do any kind of banking, even to set up a bank account, you had to go into the bank. Now you can do it from the comfort of your own armchair. If you wanted to read a newspaper, or get the latest news, you either watched TV or wandered to the local newsagents for a paper. Now you can get news alerts to your mobile phone or read The Times online.

If you wanted to book a holiday, you used to have to go to your local travel agents and book something there. Not anymore. If you fancied a new car, you would normally test drive a model you liked, organise a loan and then drive it away a week later. Not now, a car is sold every 2 minutes on eBay!

Not surprisingly, if I wanted an Abercrombie hoodie, I would have had to go to one of the stores in the UK or make the trip to the US. Now I can buy online anytime I want 24/7. And, it’s the same for most small businesses whether you are selling marketing advice, gifts, clotted cream, kettles, wine, graphic design, IT support or garden equipment.

The only thing scarce nowadays is trust, great leadership and fabulous customer service. The very thing that makes us different, competitive and sustainable over the long term.

The challenge for all business is to shift from product orientation to developing business models based on trust, leadership and customers.

A fabulous and special piece of work showing how the new way of doing business is impacting. It gets you thinking about how you can change your business to meet the current demands of the digital age. Well worth the time and money!

Geoff Hoon says he broke no rules in claiming second home allowances for his Derby home while living in a taxpayer-funded apartment in Whitehall. The transport secretary lived in the flat in Admiralty House while he was defence secretary. He also rented out his own London home while there.

This, a classic example of believing that if you are not breaking the rules then it’s okay. What’s worse than Geoff Hoon claiming these allowances is the fact that he didn’t stand up and say this is wrong and change it.

Maintaining the status quo, challenging what is obviously wrong and questioning what we are doing is fundamental to progress and strong leadership. Leadership in terms of return on investment, in terms of ethics, in terms of authenticity and in terms of doing the right thing.

It’s a stark reminder to us all (none of us are exempt from this) that you can’t justify something if it’s plainly wrong and you certainly can’t hide transparency!