business

All business is personal

Why is it necessary to know people before you ever need them?

Remember that if you can build people up then you can build a business. In my experience I have found that sometimes people have ulterior motives with regards to the relationships they enter into. I think that when you create authentic relationships, you’ll see other possibilities to help each other along the way. My parents gave us the wings to try something new and they constantly told us that there is only one business and that’s the people business. It doesn’t matter what industry you work in, if you take the people out of the business, you’ll have nothing at all.  

Third quarter overview

c/o Nasdaq

As we enter the third quarter, it’s time for the annual look at your messaging and product offering. It’s time to break free from the myopic way of thinking to focus on what your customers or potential customers are looking for now and in the next 12 months. Whenever you next bring your team together, examine your organisation as it stands now. Revisit your mission statement, core values, your product assortment and ask yourself: What is the value your customers are seeking from your products? Why would people buy or use it?

It’s important to understand who your customer is in terms of psychographics, behavioural factors and to a lesser extent demographics. The world around us is continuously changing in a whole variety of ways, therefore, you always need to be visionaries and remain forward thinking to stay ahead of your competitors.

The Golden Circle defined

WHAT?
Every organisation knows WHAT they do. This is where the organisation now sell their products or services.

HOW?
Some organisations know HOW they do it? This represents the processes and strategies the organisation uses to achieve success. These are the things that make them special, in other words, what sets them apart from their competition.

WHY?
Very few organisations know WHY they do what they do. WHY is not about making money as that is a result. The WHY focuses on the purpose, cause or belief, it’s the very reason your organisation exists.

“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it!”
— Burrellism

The Golden Circle

In his book, “Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action,” Simon Sinek discusses the principals behind every successful person and business. It’s a simple and powerful model for how leaders inspire action, starting with a “Golden Circle” and the question “Why?”

“First why and then trust.”
— Simon Sinek


Leaders and organisations with the capacity to inspire, think, act, and communicate from inside out and that’s why they start with “Why?” And this drives decision-making and behaviour when we communicate in that way.

Will you remember me?

What’s the one thing you want people to remember?
To answer this question, I would have to think of a person that I respect and the traits they have that I really like. Vision and mission have been popular concepts, these terms are often mixed up and their differences are not understood. Let me clarify:

  • A vision statement is an aspirational statement made by an organisation that articulates what it would like to achieve. For example: What is the dream you have that describes an ideal future state of your business?

  • A mission statement is defined as an action-based statement that declares the purpose of an organisation and how they serve their customers. For example: What you do? > How you do it? > Why you do it?

You can't have one without the others

There are two things that you have to do in order to grow your business:

  1. You have to have a really good strategy based on your understanding of the market and competition, future technology, and anything else that is happening in your landscape.

  2. Execution and implementation. I think executing your strategic plan is as important, or even more important, than your strategy itself. Implementation is the process that turns strategies and plans into action in order to accomplish strategic objectives and goals.   

 

Strategy, implementation, and execution are synonymous and we need all three if you are to succeed as an organisation or business entity. One is about the plan and the others are about how to get the plan done, I don’t think you can have one without the others.

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Success is a skill

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One way that racism consistently shows up for me as a black man is in constantly being underestimated, and there’s something exciting about being underestimated. I know that success is a skill and the traits that led you to be successful where you are will lead you to be successful wherever you go. This is because the traits always include how to intellectually evaluate opportunities and figure out what forces to bring to bear on them. If you have succeeded before in whatever field, take a moment to evaluate and see what happened. I think that your evaluation process will always end up at some combination of observation, planning and execution. And in all these combinations, there is a thread of flexibility, intelligence and sticking to your values.

NB: Today is the first anniversary of my mother’s death and this blog is dedicated to her. It doesn't mark the end of grief, but it does mark a transition in my mourning process. See it > Say it > Write it ❤️

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Plan your project

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Whether you are a multinational organisation or a smaller business, the way we are working is changing. As strategy shifts in many industries to being more experiment centric, projects are going to become more and more critical for achieving excellence in execution. Many things in life are projects, therefore, I think project management skills touch every part of our lives and as a result, project managers will need a new approach and mindset. Contact me via e-mail for workshops and roadmaps on how to navigate a successful project and the common pitfalls to avoid.

Listen to the minority voice

I attended the Presidents Summit in Copenhagen on Monday, and I have now had time to reflect on how fortunate I was to be invited to this wonderful event. I was grateful for both the auditory and visual inputs from Linda Hill (Professor and Faculty Leader at Harvard Business School), Itay Talgam (Conductor and Leadership expert), Henrik Andersen (CEO, Vestas), Robert Waldinger (Professor at Harvard Medical School), Ashley Whilans (Professor at Harvard Business School), Daniel Pink (Author and Human Behaviour expert), Neil Strauss (Author) and Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez (Project Management expert). It's our nature as human beings to only remember 20% of what we hear and only 30% of what we see, however we remember 50% of what we both see and hear.

 

Linda Hill left us with some exciting questions:
1.    How much time do you spend on ”coulds” and ”shoulds”?
2.    How do you encourage diversity of thought?
3.    How do you get people to view reasonable missteps and intelligent failures as learning opportunities?
4.    How do you ensure that people don’t compromise to quickly – as opposed to working through differences – when making decisions?
5.    Are you developing talent to be value creators and game changers
6.    Is your team collaborative ready?  

Perceived value

Affordable luxury in simple terms means that luxurious products within the financial reach of a much larger buying segment than for example, in the case of Louis Vuitton or Chanel. In the past, luxury meant exclusive and privilege to the wealthy. Luxury has always reflected one’s personality, but nowadays luxury has become accessible. As luxury begins to target the younger population there will be a movement towards sub-labels and diffusion ranges, for example, Marc by Marc Jacobs, Armani Exchange, McQ, See by Chloe, etc. Sometimes there is very little differentiation on the product and quality fronts, but in most cases the logo and communication can create a perception of luxury.

Leading through the fog

Do you think that the market rewards people who are seen as have paid their dues?
I think those of us who have come onto the other side after a dip or misfortune are the ones who seem to be the best at what they do. For example, I don’t just listen to your words, I listen to your tone, I observe your body movements, your eyes, and facial expressions. I interpret your silence and I hear everything that you don’t say, and all these skills are learned behaviour. Whether you or I can turn this skillset into a revenue stream is a whole other question.

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
— Helen Keller

E is for evidence

What happens when you take time to appreciate and be thankful for those who have contributed to the abundance in your organisations?
I think that if you create an evidence-based mindset by using empirical evidence and value-based metrics. According to my dictionary the word evidence means ‘one or more reasons for believing that something is or is not true.’ So, to answer your question, perhaps it would be a good idea to include non-digital metrics and those measuring the strength and health of the organisation as well as short term data sets.

A is for accountability

As debate rages about restarting economies, one critical element is absent from discussion. In his Harvard Business Review article, Joseph Grenny suggests that the heart of a high reliability culture is immediate peer accountability. The predictor of our success or failure will have less to do with when businesses open their doors and more to do with how often people open their mouths. I think greater transparency is needed to generate respect, trust and support. Do you accept accountability for the actions of your organisation and for their metrics of value creation? 

Why does it matter?

While 80% of executives know that their companies’ success depends on introducing new products and services, the term “innovation” is often associated with geniuses turning start-ups into gold mines. Private equity firms place hundreds of little bets on start-ups hoping for the next Skype, Twitter, or Amazon. These bets on the next growth engine often depend on luck more than insight as many companies invest in or buy them, unsure what they’ll yield. What do you think happens if these companies dedicate insufficient resources to support innovation in the start-up phase? Contact me via e-mail for a deeper dive into the subject.

Simple is hard

People can explain away numbers, but anecdotes tell the emotional story. I think that it’s a good idea to have cross-functional teams sit in on interviews to hear feedback first-hand and include their questions to ensure customers dig into areas that matter to your team. Whenever possible, have some of the executive team join in as it can be jaw-dropping for someone in the C-suite to hear from a customer that the program they relentlessly pushed for creates a negative experience.

“The more you rehearse, the less rehearsed you sound.”
— Burrellism

Create, test and revise

I’m in London and have been reminded that future proofing your business facilitates scalability, flexibility and provides a fertile bed for transformational activity. I have a passion for leading business process improvement and transformational initiatives through smarter use of technology, high performance teams and customer engagement. I think that business value is achieved by delivering outcomes that provide an excellent customer experience and a product or a service that aligns with the customers’ need. I believe one must also remain diligent regarding current business needs, the processes, the systems, and the technology, and these needs are *iterative, and the channels of delivery must evolve in response.

* The iterative process is the practice of building, refining, and improving a project, product, or initiative. Teams that use the iterative development process create, test, and revise until they're satisfied with the end result.

Trial and error

In today's business environment, sustaining growth and profitability is never a guarantee. Technological and scientific advances shorten life cycles of products and services, business models change, and new competitors appear from outside the industry. This constant instability makes it necessary to seek new business opportunities. Once I have a good understanding of company goals and areas of expertise, the next step is to analyse the market, assessing consumer needs and how they are being met by yourself today.

“The harder you work, the luckier you get.”
— Gary Player

First, I hold a discovery workshop and then define a framework to help you search for opportunities, the third step is the development phase and afterwards delivery (4 D’s). Remember, the best planning can be replaced by good luck.

How to test your North Star metric?

I think that every single person in your organisation SHOULD have a very clear sense of understanding the reasons why the organisation does what it does AND why the organisation exists. The problem is that I do not think there are many organisations where this simple understanding actually exists. You can easily test the theory, go and seek ten employees at random in your place of work and ask them these two questions:

1. What does our organisation do?
2. Why does our organisation exist?


It will be fascinating to see what responses you get. If the responses are very similar, then it is possible that there is clarity of purpose in your business. If the answers are varied and different – perhaps not. Contact me via e-mail if you interested in me facilitating a ‘North Star’ workshop for your organisation.

Please don't silence your team

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon, M.I.T. and Union College discovered that good teams generally did two things:

1. When working on tasks, teammates all got the chance to speak, and no single person dominated the conversation.

2. Teams had high "average social sensitivity." In other words, individual team members were able to correctly interpret fellow teammates' expressions, tone of voice, and nonverbal cues. This led them to be more sensitive to teammates feelings during communication.

Contact me via e-mail if you would like to know how you can apply these findings to your workplace.