The Recipe for Business Success

Fasten your seat belt - here goes....

1. Develop a 3 year business strategy: mission, vision, values, products, markets.

2. Do a S.W.O.T. analysis on the strategy. What do we need to really focus on to deliver success?

3. Identify 6 (no more) key strategic actions from the S.W.O.T.

4. Allocate actions, timescales and milestones to individuals.

5. Review progress on actions monthly - a non negotiable meeting!

6. Check that champions are focusing enough time and energy on their actions.

7. Keep going!

Build your business by getting the basics right

I am staggered by the number of businesses I have dealings with who do not understand the basics of doing business. So soap box time, here goes.....

1. Always return calls and e-mails promptly even if the answer is no!

2. Turn up on time for meetings.

3. Treat customers as you would your best friends.

4. Seek to delight customers by doing that bit extra and surprising people.

5. Send personal hand written thank you notes.

6. Keep up your network contacts, don't just call people when you want a favour.

7. Treat all contacts with dignity and respect.

There are lots more things to do to build a business but these are a good start point.

Suggestion..... send this list to the people in your network who drive you crazy!

Practice Mental Rehearsal

One of the findings from our Entrecode research programmes into habits of successful entrepreneurs is the power of mental rehearsal.

Mental rehearsal is rehearsing an event or decision before it happens in your mind and asking what ifs..... and thinking them through. What if this happens - what will I do? What if they do that - how will I respond? The process is very powerful in complex interpersonal situations i.e. selling, negotiating, appraising etc.

Some entrepreneurs ask "what would 'X' do in this situation?" 'X' could be Richard Branson or someone else they value.

Mental rehearsal is one of the techniques we call purposeful practice which is how people develop their talents.

Try it.

Lessons from Football

Recently I listened to Johan Cruyff explain why he believes Barcelona F.C. are a stronger team than Real Madrid. His view is that Barcelona take a broad stakeholder stance seeing themselves a part of the community including sponsoring UNESCO. Whereas Real Madrid, particularly under Jose Mourinho, are only really interested in winning in any way and almost at any cost. Football, Cruyff argues, is not simply about winning, it should have a more noble purpose including being fun, pleasing fans, contributing to the community and be played in a sporting manner.

"The European Cup semi final was watched by billions of people worldwide and footballers and managers have a responsibility to behave in a proper manner and be role models for young people" said Cruyff. "Barcelona is for the people, Real currently is about Mourinho's personal ego".

The lesson for me from listening to Cruyff was that it reminded me that a business has a responsibility to balance its stakeholder interests, customers, employees, and society as well as shareholders - the Barcelona way. Just making money for shareholders and banks is much less noble or inspiring.

Barcelona demonstrates it is not either noble purpose or success - you can have both.

Innovation Insights

1. 95% of all the innovations in products and services in the last 100 years have come from entrepreneurial firms employing less than 20 people.

Lesson: if you need to innovate employ or act like an entrepreneur!

2. When you put entrepreneurs together in a team and ask them to innovate the results on average are 6 times expectations.

3. Entrepreneurial Innovative Behaviours:

- Break rules
- Trial and error
- "Seek forgiveness not permission"
- JFDI!
- Seek inspiration from outside your industry
- Use customer problems to drive innovation

Innovation - Done!

3 Common Strategic Priorities

One of the things about being a consultant is that I get to see patterns in businesses that may be helpful to others. One pattern I have noticed is that most businesses (apart from the basket cases) have very similar strategic priorities.

These are:

- Win work
- Drive efficiency and cost
- Maintain their core culture

So the questions you might ask in your business are:

1. Are these our priorities?
2. If so, who is driving them?
3. How do we assess our progress towards them?