Who would have thought it 20 years ago? There were inclinations of what was about to happen 10 years ago, The Cluetrain Manifesto more than hinted at it. Now that it’s upon us why do some people still not get it? The world is a changing and we better get to grips with it as soon as possible. If you are not already, you need to be understanding social media and crowdsourcing like there is no tomorrow.

People from around the world are gathering in places to converse on subjects they are commonly interested in. They share information, collaborate on projects and trade knowledge for little or no money. They will probably never meet face to face but trust, respect and a genuine relationship is formed sincerely.

Everyone now has a vehicle to explore their latent talent. That same vehicle can provide an audience for that skill whether it be creative, specialised knowledge innovative new products or a craft. The barriers to entry are almost non existent.

And, what that brings is the ability for people to find their own voices again, often for the first time in a work environment. Without the constraint of corporate speak and culture, people are conversing with all sorts of people. Barriers are breaking down. Language is losing its spin.

The web, social media and the crowd doesn’t care what qualifications you have, whether you went to Harvard or Cambridge or Exeter. It couldn’t give a damn the colour of your skin, where you were brought up or what gender you are. The traditional pre conditions of working with certain people is evapourating except, of course, quality.

People in old school company structures are bored. Sick of being suffocated in a contradictory world of systems and procedures where the work is about money and position. People are banging on the door of their prison, sorry office and asking to be let out. To be free to contribute and do something meaningful and different.

These tools, some newer than others do not, in fact isolate us, far from it. It does the opposite by allowing us to share and colloborate on levels and in numbers never seen before and, hell, this is just the beginning. It means huge changes for every business, and I mean every business. Old, traditional models don’t need scrapping overnight but they will need to be very soon.

It has huge implications. There is a new meaning to outsourcing, competition, teams, the way you use talent, intellectual property, business models, innovation, marketing, customer service, leadership, motivation, inspiration the list goes on. We are not talking about little changes in practice here but significant, huge shoves. Burying your head in the sand won’t make it go away.

Small businesses once they start to grow can begin to adopt ‘corporate’ tactics. Rather like when we get older we start saying the same things our parents say!! It’s easy to fall through the trap door of building organisational structures, implementing systems and creating job descriptions in the belief it provides us with control. Actually it can do the complete opposite.

As we grow we fear making the wrong decisions, expect no mistakes from our employees and build a structure that defends us from being human and imperfect. We create defined roles and responsibilities that constrain a persons ability to be innovate and then silos emerge. Teams fragment and become protective, fearful of looking stupid and pointing out the obvious. People start saying the ‘right’ things to directors and, finally, managers start using their positional authority by trying to control the uncontrollable, people. Low and behold anyone dare to expose their fallibility.

Everyone starts feeling crushed and accept this is the ‘way things are done round here.’ It’s no wonder that after an initial spurt of growth, small businesses begin to plateau and growth slows dramatically. We just sucked the life out of our business. As owners we tend to focus on growth being measured exclusively by the figures when it’s actually about the employees growth. In the past we recognised and praised their initiative, now afraid of loosing control, we stifle it.

For once, forget job descriptions, get rid of structure, deliberately allow teams to work together on joint problems to prevent silos and ditch those job titles. It’s not about keeping control that you need to be worried about, it’s the growing inertia business expansion can bring.

Linked to the post on ‘Allow mistakes’ yesterday. For one idea to be great, you have to have tens of duffers. You’re people know where your business is screwing up and many of the ideas/improvements shouldn’t really be coming from you.

The more staff, customers and followers you have the less you control your business. Get real, other people are orchestrating it’s future. Be sensible enough and have the brains to create that environment where your people can offer those suggestions and solutions.

People at the ‘coal face’ and ‘on the shop floor’ often have more valuable knowledge than the control freaks at the top. Let go, free up their time to think. What they come up with may be scary, but there again, that’s my point!

The UK Government has launched a new tool to help small businesses manage their employment obligations. It’s free (Chris Anderson will be pleased) and you can download it at:

www.businesslink.gov.uk/employmentlaworganiser

Thanks to Adam Stones for informing me of the launch.

If you strangle someone they will die. If you restrict movement, innovation and ideas, people will get de-motivated and their bright thoughts will remain deeply hidden in the recesses of their brain. All this manifests itself and then you start loosing people, the good ones!

Put such tight rules in place where mistakes are punished, no one will step out of the zone. People start rocking up to work protecting their backs rather than feeling free to create. This is when ‘work to rule’ and ‘I only do what I’m told to do’ come into play. Then companies complain that their team doesn’t show initiative….way to go!

Allow people the freedom to develop sessions that generate new ideas, allow mistakes, not lots of them, but at least some. Change doesn’t come from fear, or feeling constipated, it comes from the ability of your managers and people to feel comfortable enough to express themselves.

Finally companies are starting to recognise brains are in and brawn is out. Managing the human imagination, leveraging and developing knowledge is the small business owners number one job. But, there are a lot of people out there that still just don’t get it, really don’t get it and haven’t re-engineered their businesses to adapt to it.

Most of us don’t produce ‘atoms’ anymore but ‘bits’ even the human grey matter variety! It’s mostly about talent, competence, innovation and creativity. This isn’t optional anymore, it’s an adventure. Being able to harness the human power you have in your organisation is crucial. Recruiting the bold, the passionate and the best is essential.

Just as important though is the ability of your people to take on the responsibility and accountability expected and demanded of them. They will need to achieve extraordinary things in the future. In a fast, ever changing, rough, wired company, the very thing that may make or break it is the strength of trust amongst your merry ban of men and women. Take a look at the link below. If you haven’t read it before its a great guide to the future of trust. Click to download:

http://changethis.com/44.04.TrustEconomy

There are four key leadership skills; creating a common purpose, motivating and inspiring people towards that purpose, keeping up momentum by reinforcing the purpose and, finally, developing people to be able to deliver the purpose. Nothing new there, but when was the last time you spent any amount of time considering your credibility and reputation in being able to deliver the above?

Inspiration comes by way of this equation: Credibility + Reputation = Inspiration

As business owners we spend our lives attempting to inspire our customers through building our credibility and reputation, however, how often do we step inside our business, sit down and work out how we build credibility and reputation in terms of leading our people?

I’m not talking about mundane, procedural led appraisals (they need to be shot at dawn) but meaningful discussions, chats and vibrant conversations about where the hell you have been together and where the hell you are going together. We tend to be quite comfortable forming a deliberate plan on how to build credibility with customers but tend to ignore our most significant investment, our people.

Keep finding great people, fabulous talent, develop them, then let them get on with it. As William Coyne former Vice President of 3M said “ After you plant a seed in the ground, you don’t dig it up every week to see how it is doing.”

Don’t know about you but most companies bore me stiff.  They’ve become stifled in traditional business models where egos rule and play is non-existent. There are exceptions like www.outersight.co.uk who are doing exciting things, but, there are many out there wrapping themselves in dodgy Christmas wrapping paper, frigid, frightened to do anything too maverick, excited by something they think is special but isn’t.

I couldn’t work in one, scares the living daylights out of me. Yet these very organisations are supposed to be the leaders in their field, the innovators of our time. But they are not, because they haven’t abandoned the very things they needed to abandon. Its hard to see how these archaic ships of the past can change and change as rapidly as they need to before they perish in the rough seas ahead.

Enter the small business. Nimble, fast, lean, ideas led. But we need to act fast and differentiate where our advantage is now and in the near future….knowledge, expertise, skills, value and in the people we employ including ourselves of course.

Get two or three people involved in the business who are a little maverick, freaky, cutting edge even slightly mad and get rid of the people, including customers who are adding no value at all. People slightly off the wall are always full of ideas.

Spend an enormous amount of time nurturing your stars. Create individual employee experiences with them and don’t rule out ‘wet behind the ears’ graduates. They are quick, keen, technology savvy and haven’t been conditioned yet. Let people express themselves, snub anything that fosters traditional thinking and allow your people to be intrigued, curious and ambitious in problem solving and ideas generation.

Only work with customers who are going to challenge your people and, of course, have fun because work can be fun, we just need to encourage it. Let the big corporates and small inert companies be strangled by procedures, devoid of curiosity, saturated by ego, driven by tradition and ensnared by routine. Take a deep breath and jump!

I know you know this already but thought I’d post it anyway and make no apologies for repeating myself. If you are looking to become more efficient and, yet increasingly productive at the highest level; focus on your talent, core competencies and where you add value most.

Drop the low or non value adding activity and outsource it, such as bookkeeping and invest the savings in new product/service development or research which is the true source of your competitive advantage.