And did those feet….?

‘And was Jerusalem builded here, among these dark, Satanic Mills?’ Blake’s 1808 poem references a concern felt across Britain in the early 19^th century. Many who lived through the Industrial Revolution possessed a deep fear of new technology.

Not only could the new technologies be physically dangerous to operate, they rearranged the social and family structure, thrust mankind out of circadian rhythm and represented a threat to employment and livelihood. The smoke and fire from the steam engines were also reminiscent of the ‘satanic’ images of hell described from the church pulpit.

Today’s issues regarding technology might be slightly different, but they still exist. Data and identity theft, surveillance, trolling and cybercrime are all very real concerns. Though Google’s motto is ‘don’t be evil’ one has to ask why they assumed we thought they might be – ‘the lady doth protest too much’? It certainly reminds us they have the capacity to be evil.

The moral debate over technological progress will forever be with us. However, for SMEs and start-ups, technology can be your friend – not something to be afraid of.

New technology has helped to level the playing field – allowing small businesses to compete with larger, established ones. Consider the smartphone. With the device in your pocket you have direct connectivity with clients, collaborators and potential customers. You may not have a PA, client managers, marketing or customer service departments but you can control all those aspects of your organisation from your location.

For a growing business, when you no longer have sole control, technology is still a boon. Cloud computing, software and apps allow your team to operate with synchronicity – maintaining the slicker, more efficient edge over businesses weighed down by bureaucracy.

The main perceived drawbacks – where the fear of technology creeps back in – are cost and training. How expensive are these advantages and how difficult will it be for my team and I to get to grips with using them?

The answers are ‘not very’ and ‘not very long’. Take social media technology as an example. The major platforms are free, with an option to pay for a premium service or promote your content if you so choose. This allows you to familiarise yourself with the platform, measure the impact your engagement is having and decide whether it is worth paying for.

You will also notice that all social media operates in a similar way. Once you have familiarised yourself with one platform you can understand and utilise most of them. Terminology may be specific – likes may become favourites – but the concept remains essentially the same.

The same is true for many business apps. They are often free, with an option to upgrade and work in such a way that mastering one will allow you access to many. The key thing to remember for a growing business (which may have a ‘bring your own device’ policy rather than issuing staff phones, tablets and laptops) is to look for apps and software that work across operating systems.

If you’re looking to start your own business and build your own Jerusalem, technology is not a dark satanic mill to be afraid of but a valuable construction tool which can help you punch above your weight and operate with efficiency and fluency.

Good business habits and how to stop bad ones creeping in

Do you drive today like you did on the day you passed your driving test? Do you read terms and conditions with the same scrutiny that you did the first time you made an online purchase? As we become familiar with something, we don’t necessarily approach it with the same diligence we once did.

That said, how do you ensure that client 100 receives the same level of service as client 1?

Bad habits can creep in. They might not be terrible habits – though they can be! It is often a case of an outstanding service being reduced to merely a good one, which is bad enough. To return to the driving analogy, you don’t have to have become a menace on the road before you realise that you’re not operating to the same standards you once did.

The key to ensuring a consistently outstanding level of service is to establish a clear process. This is not about treating each client the same; this is about ensuring you respond to each client’s unique needs with the same level of attention and dedication. You’re not making them jump through generic hoops; you’re holding yourself accountable to a set of rigorous checks.

There are many aspects to the driving test, but if you remember one thing it is most likely the process – ‘mirror, signal, manoeuvre’. Required facts, such as stopping distances, are only applicable in one specific situation and gradually fade from memory. You are far more likely to remember a process, mainly because it works – it is applicable for every junction, roundabout, and lane change.

Whatever may have slid from your memory, you probably still check mirrors and indicate because the process has become habitual. It doesn’t involve treating every situation the same but ensures you run through the same checks in order to treat each situation appropriately.

To ensure that client 100 receives the same treatment as client 1, you need to be very clear about the process you put in place on that first occasion and endeavour to replicate it every time. To form a new habit such as taking up exercise takes roughly a month to become habitual if done every day. Given you may not be meeting clients each day this process may take longer to become embedded but over time it will.

Building your business around good habits is the best way of preventing bad habits. Your process needs to be firmly built around your goals and your responsibilities and flexible enough to incorporate new, beneficial habits you develop along the way. It needs to be rigorous enough to hold you to your own initial high standards but simple enough to teach and export, as others will need to learn the process if your business is to grow…

How agile are you and your business?

Strategy and tactics are not interchangeable terms. As you probably know, your strategy is your answer to the big question ‘what are you trying to accomplish?’ It relates to your vision for your business and your long-term goal. Tactics relate the smaller scale operations which achieve your objectives along the route to that goal.

Perhaps routes towards your goal would be more accurate. The world is complex and constantly changing. Whilst your long-term strategy needs to remain fixed, there may be various means of getting there and you may have to adapt your tactics accordingly.

If your goal is to provide poached eggs for breakfast, the strategy of poaching needs to remain unchanged. You can’t start frying or scrambling. However, the day-to-day tactics employed may vary. You might try adding vinegar to the water, creating a vortex in the water to crack the eggs into or invest in a specialist poaching pan.

To employ a more relevant example, you may well have a sound social media strategy in place. Perhaps you are using Twitter and LinkedIn to connect with potential clients and uploading content designed to draw them towards your website.

By making changes and experimenting with new methods (in this case perhaps altering the frequency of posts, the timing of posts or the key words and hashtags used) you are adapting the tactics within the strategy. Switching to directly selling your product or service through Facebook would be an entirely new strategy – a ‘back to the drawing board’ type situation.

Strategies should be fixed and tactics should be flexible. In reverse, this can spell disaster – a business with a fluid strategy is one with no sense of direction and a business with fixed tactics is unimaginative and constrained. Assuming you have your strategy and tactics in the right order, you also need to ensure that your business is structured to accommodate their different characteristics.

Anything aspects of your business structure which relate to your strategy need to be appropriately fixed or formal. Formal structures are laid out methods of operating and conducting business both internally and externally. They define the relationships between yourself, your staff and your clients and should clearly address the goal you are trying to achieve.

As tactics can be changed and adapted, a more flexible structure needs to be in place for relevant areas of your business. Flexible structures, by their very nature develop over time. New ways of doing things are tried out and new tactics formulated to take advantage of new technology.

If connecting with people is central to your business, direct human contact may be a key aspect of fixed company strategy. Perhaps research and surveys have suggested that your target clients feel more comfortable, relaxed and engaged when conversing with a flesh and blood human and you feel you can offer a better service when able to assess a client’s reactions whilst in their physical presence.

Rather than Skype sessions or conference calls, you want to ensure that meetings with clients are always conducted in the real world. Whilst no employee should deviate from this strategy, the tactics might vary. Depending on the client, this meeting might take place in an office, a meeting room or a coffee shop. The freedom to adapt this is critical as a client might not be equally comfortable in all three locations.

What are you doing? Meeting with people to assess and address their business needs. How are you doing it? The tactics will vary, depending on the individual. Strategic and tactical planning is essential in building a road map for your business. Creating the correct structure for strategic and tactical operations provides you with the vehicle to travel.

If at first you don’t succeed

Transforming a good idea into a commercial success requires determination – this is a universally accepted point. However, the amount of determination required is still sometimes underestimated. A quick look at the literary world makes this abundantly clear.

Agatha Christie (the most widely read author of fiction after Shakespeare) endured five years of publishing rejections, and J.K. Rowling (whose eventual combined sales were over £450 million) had her initial book rejected twelve times in a row. Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit was turned down so many times that she eventually decided to self-publish.

You might consider your business to exist in a very different world from that of authors and literature, but the frustrations encountered and determination required transcend the specific situation.

All of these books were clearly good ideas. Though they might not be on your personal reading list, time and experience has shown that the writers were on to something. There was nothing wrong with their thinking – they had written stories that there was a huge market for. However, the process of bringing that idea to the market was long and challenging.

Perhaps it is the culture of Dragons Den, X Factor and instant success that we are surrounded by which tricks people into thinking that, for them, it will be different – that their particular business idea is so innovative and wonderful they will fast track through the hard graft.

Whilst some individuals might get scooped up into instant success, the stories of these authors make clear that there is no direct correlation between the quality of your idea and the speed with which it gets noticed, accepted, appreciated and becomes a commercially viable product or service.

To depart from literature, both Richard Branson and James Dyson tell similar stories about the need for determination. They both credit their success more to being able to stick out the tough times and persevere with their plans rather than their initial innovations. Interestingly they both agree that a determined attitude is a quality which can be learnt and developed, not an innate ability.

Of course, your initial idea does have to make sense. However, if you have surrounded yourself with the right people, sought guidance and advice from trusted individuals rather than sycophantic yes-men and thoroughly thought through the detail then you can be assured that your course is worth pursuing.

The trick is to hold that course. If you have a business idea that makes sense, and enough determination, you can make things happen. If you keep working hard and are doing the right things you will create opportunities.

Perhaps it’s easy for people like Branson and Dyson to look back at their initial hard times as instrumental in developing a sense of urgency and determined work ethic now that they’ve established their empires, but if you read the biographies of successful entrepreneurs (and authors) across a wide variety of disciplines you will hear very similar stories across the board.

Determination is a required characteristic. In the same way that running not only gets you to your destination but improves your fitness while you get there, determination is not only needed in order for your idea to be realised but its implementation allows you to learn more about yourself and improve the way you work. Keep working, keep believing and good things will happen.

Don’t Panic!

‘Don’t Panic’ reads the cover of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in large, friendly letters. Not only is this the most helpful or intelligible thing anyone has said to Arthur Dent all day during the worst day of his life, it is useful advice in general.

Operating in a state of panic is never a good idea. However a sense of urgency is vital and the line between the two can become blurred – especially from an external perspective. There are times when you need to display a contagious sense of urgency to those around you without giving the impression that you are panicky or unintentionally inspiring panic.

Making the leap from a large organisation to working for yourself imbues most people with an essential sense of urgency. Firstly you (hopefully) have a real passion for what you do. Secondly, you realise that you and you alone are responsible for getting things done. Thirdly you are aware that, by leaving behind the ponderous bureaucracy of a large institution, speed and efficiency are now key advantages.

These factors combine to generate positive urgency. However, when you’re successful enough to begin to grow your business and begin recruiting new staff you can discover that not everyone shares your sense of urgency. Let’s not forget that to be in a situation where your business is expanding is a good thing. The need to instil a sense of urgency is one of the normal ‘growing pains’ people experience.

To inspire this urgency in others it’s important to set an example. However, you can’t expect your positive dynamism to simply ‘rub off’ on those around you. You need to actively model your behaviour. Not just performing with pace and efficiency, but making sure those around you understand what you are doing and why. It is a failure to do this which can often lead to others misconstruing your urgency for panic.

For example, when dealing with your own team, simply providing someone with a swift response might go unnoticed. Promising a swift response and then delivering it clearly communicates your method and ethos. Keep messages and meetings brief, be succinct and concise in conversation and ensure that you or your inactions are never someone else’s excuse for not completing their work.

Ensuring your purpose is clear demonstrates that you are not reacting to situations in a state of panic but working urgently to a well-defined plan. Declaring and sharing your intentions, decisions and targets makes examples of your own behaviour and providing goals and outcomes for your team can help this behaviour to spread.

Whilst it’s essential to have a long-term plan and a vision for the future, short term targets and objectives for the here and now can help prevent inertia from taking hold. You need to be sure your business is moving in the right direction towards a clearly defined goal, but if that goal is months or years away it can be hard to generate urgency today.

When it comes to igniting that spark of motivation and urgency in your team, you need to be mindful of the individuals it is comprised of. Individual targets need to be tailored to individual people, capitalising on their behaviours and preferences. Emotional intelligence is a key asset when encouraging and enthusing people, as is flexibility. People are complicated and you may have to adapt and change tactics in order to incentivise everyone.

It can be hard work, but building a workforce who share your passion, drive and urgency is a valuable endeavour. Keep working at it and don’t panic.