In 2009 who are the new, important people you need to meet? Not customers though, you know, the ones that are going to challenge you, make you see things differently and give you a new perspective. Put together a list of four people across the country who you think will have a deep impact and then go get them. You never know what it will bring or where it will take you!

I’ve just read “Enough” by John C Bogle, it’s a must for your reading matter in the next couple of months. Interesting, challenging and so very right, it’s a look at how we have become obsessed with excess rather than having ‘enough.’ It’s an attempt to stop us in our tracks and understand what’s important in business, what impact we have and to start living by strong values that support humanity rather than driving towards the short term which brings about inevitable disaster.

It’s a book that has been published with great timing!

If we don’t know much about something we tend to conform to the ordinary, the average, or to put it another way….what everyone else is doing. If you don’t know much about fashion, you follow the trend of the moment relying on what everyone else is saying you should be doing and who are very often in the same position as you…they don’t know much about it!

And lots of us small business owners do the same with our companies. When we don’t know much about marketing we tend to do what our competitors are doing, in the false sense that this is actually what’s working or it’s because we are too frightened to move from the beaten path and forge our own route, direction or way of marketing. 

If it’s to do with the people that work for us, we follow the management practices of yesteryear using control (cos’ we are frightened), applying incentives (cos’ we don’t know how to engage with people) and exercising positional authority (cos’ some days it’s the only management tool we feel we have.)

The truth is that by getting up to speed and gaining leading edge skills in marketing and leadership you can find a sure way of preventing that conformance and really start the process of showing how you are different and not ordinary!

Think into the future (there is one I promise) three years from now. Look back and identify what are the big decisions you have implemented that have made all the difference to performance/growth/survival. You now know what to do next….!!! 

The two are distinctly different yet we use the two words far too interchangeably. As Professor Levitt said in his book “Marketing for Business Growth” in 1974, “Creativity thinks up new things. Innovation does new things.” He said it a while ago but its still as pertinent now as it ever was.

To our detriment in small business, we do mix the words up in our definition. Small businesses are usually a hot bed of ideas and creativity, it’s what makes them so special yet, quite often, we fail to implement the ideas. Both creativity and innovation are crucial to small business. They are the difference between an average and exceptional one.

Innovation in it’s most basic sense starts with constantly asking the questions about every aspect of your business. In it’s most sophisticated sense, it actually simplifies your business. Whilst creativity will generate lots of initial work, innovation should always make things easier for you, if it doesn’t it is actually complication.

Innovation turns lots of ideas into meaningful action. It asks creativity the question; will this add value? And it’s not just about customer interactions, production efficiency, product development or financial investment. Innovation can work just as easily when improving the way you deal with your people!

Innovation constantly asks these questions:

1. What is preventing us from doing what we talk about doing?

2. What do we need to do to improve and add value to our customer experience/employee experience?

3. What is standing in the way of me (owner) getting what I want from the business?

4. What is the best way to do this?

Not only does it force you to think about improving things, it’s a great way to invigorate a team by getting them involved and engaged with the process. Makes innovation a lot easier to implement too!

It’s a strange word and a perplexing one! On the one hand you need your minimum standard customer service to be consistent right across your business every time you come into contact with a customer. You need your people to consistently come into work each day. You need your marketing tactics to consistently happen throughout the year, yet, the the last thing you want is standard, boring or mediocre activity.

You don’t want repeat business or customer acquisition to remain consistent. You certainly don’t want your people to consistently deliver the same thing year in year out and you don’t want product development to stand still. As usual a difficult balancing act! There is a difference between being consistently average and consistently great!

Perhaps identifying what you want to be consistent in your business through basic standards, a minimum performance level might help. Embed that in your business, make it habitual and ordered, then let your people know where they can concentrate their efforts…..the more creative stuff that makes you great. But don’t let the minimum performance standards run the business or you’ll suck the life out of it. They should be natural, subconsious behaviour. Get that right then you can innovate to being great.

An employer pays his/her employee money in exchange for time. For that time an employee traditionally gets told what to do when to do it and within what parameters (job descriptions). There is a degree of control. It’s been a one sided affair for many decades/hundreds of years….perhaps I’m being a little unfair? But on the whole an employee is at the beck and call of us employers….why?

An employer may be giving a salary or a wage but the employee is giving up their time. It’s just as tangible, just as important as money and of equal weight, yet the relationship in many, if not most businesses, is lopsided. In the past that’s because employees had little choice. The employers factory was the only one in town and there were only a few people at the top who provided all of the employment in the surrounding area.

As this real life scenario rapidly dissolves it’s changing the ‘power’, things are becoming a lot more balanced. Employees have more choice. Employment is not provided by two or three heavy weights. Business is changing, we are selling intellect and less materials, we are managing our employees imagination not production lines and the business world around is changing very fast, small businesses themselves are changing but not as fast and the leaders of those small businesses, on the whole, are hardly changing at all.

We still see the employee as ‘ours,’ that they belong to us and that we say what goes. I’m not advocating breaking company rules or values but there is a shift. Employees really can choose where they work. They will increasingly make choices, understand where they fit and will leave quickly when they don’t fit.

Increasingly, small business owners will need to learn how to lead these changes and provide a working environment that is less centred on one person making the decisions. They must stop managing people and start leading, understanding that the employee has more choice than ever before. They can stop working and go travelling, they can stop working and do a degree, they can stop working and have a break from work and worse of all, they can stop working for you and go and work for the competition.

The balance has to be restored. As employers we must recognise that our employees can do a hundred things instead of being where they are with you right now. The relationship must not be lopsided and less based on control, order, authority and more on change, emotion, trust, influence and motivation.

Your people want the following:

1. To be part of something that matters

2. To do meaningful work

3. Be led not managed

4. Authenticity not selfishness

5. Influence not authority

6. Truth and ‘real’

You manage objects, processes, IT systems, procedures, quality, operations. Anything that involves people requires leadership skills, behaviour and attitude. Anything less results in you making your life a lot harder than it needs to be.

Another word! It’s linked to the previous post! A quote from Seth Godin “Change almost never fails because it’s too early. It almost always fails because it’s too late.”

Good point

I’ve cut and paste an interesting article by Tom Peters that’s shown below. Good point and very true. When was the last time we made our people feel valued?… (I’m talking about more than a pat on the back here and so is he!)

100 WAYS TO SUCCEED/MAKE MONEY
by  Tom Peters

---------------
100 Ways to Succeed/Make Money by Tom Peters. Copyright 2008

by Tom Peters. Licensed under Creative Commons

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0.Click here to view 

the license
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/legalcode

—————

100 WAYS TO SUCCEED #74:
C(I) > C(E)

This one waltzed into my life when I was speaking to GE Energy 

sales folks earlier this year. I've long said that "forming relations 

inside our own company is almost as important as the external ones." 

While it may not be at Universal, it struck me that in many cases 

"C(I)"--our Internal customers--are in fact...MORE IMPORTANT...

than C(E)--our external customers. In the GE case, systems sales, 

often to "foreigners," the salesperson (my GE informant who's a very 

successful salesperson) wants "an...UNFAIR SHARE"...of a host 

of insiders' time--engineers, logistics folks, the risk-assessment

staff, and even lawyers. Lots of GE dudes are selling lots of 

stuff--and need, yesterday, lots and lots and lots of Inside Help. 

I (salesperson) want to be at the front of the queue for the 

harried risk-assessment staffers time & attention; I want to be 

head of the queue and getting an unfair share of the engineers', 

who must customize the product, time and imagination and attention.

Hence my full set of "internal [customer] relationships” could end up 

being more important, even far more important, than my "external 

[customer] relations.” The applications of this idea range way 

beyond enormous GE systems sales. I, as a professional services 

person at the "client interface," want an unfair share--and 

posthaste--of the Graphics Department's attention when a hastily 

scheduled Presentation looms. As a junior purchasing staffer, I 

want an unfair share of the Legal Staff's time as I prepare even 

a medium-sized contract. As a White House staffer many moons ago, 

I wanted the various Gatekeepers to put my memo to the VP or P or 

Secretary of State at the front of an infinitely long cue of stuff 

from people who waaaaaay outranked me.

So, what have you done lately for your all-important "portfolio" of
internal...CUSTOMERS????? I(I) + C(I) > I(E) + C(E). My Investment in
Internal Customers must frequently outstrip my Investment in External
Customers. Think about it. Clearly. Precisely. E.g., when was the last 

time you took a C(I) to lunch or dinner? Or brought Flowers to the 

Legal Department after they'd done you even a wee favor?