Things Go Better with Numbers

Believe the hype! Get some ‘Numbers' into you and everything just gets better…...

Performance is kind of bland and not as tasty without adding a dash of 'Numbers'

With regular consumption of ‘Numbers' you can;

  • carefully direct focus and prioritise effectively
  • energise your team
  • easily defend/win an argument
  • impress key stakeholders – the bank, shareholders, partners, suppliers
  • know whether to have confidence or act to change
  • understand – customers, products, staff, capacity, enable strategy, profit, costs, revenue, cause and effect - basically understand your business

How REFRESHING!

AND, 'Numbers' is a great MIXER and will go with just about ANYTHING...

  • discounts
  • promotions
  • marketing – time, channel, message
  • incentives – customer, staff
  • what fixes to business, what to change – people, process, technology, customer needs/tastes

Feeling adventurous  - try this cocktail, the "Fail Early"

The "Fail Early"

  • realise it’s not working – debate why
  • add a dash of ‘Numbers’ to add some kick and check your assumptions
  • project/forecast/predict the future - ‘Numbers’ goes beautifully with this as well
  • challenge prediction
  • decision point – fail yes/no?

Save – time, money and energy

Find somewhere shady and sit back and relax!...aaah

The Pareto Principle: just doesn't work without some 'Numbers'

If you’re not into 'Numbers’ you are missing out - energy and refreshment for every situation. Because ‘Numbers’ are the real thing!

Everything gets better with Numbers.

Build Your Own Time Machine

A nifty conversion by Doc in the movie "Back to the Future" turned this car into a time machine. Think about converting how you work so you can create time for yourself!

You’ve got the people and they work on all aspects of your business. But things keep falling over, unless you’re there to make sure they stay up. 

How do you get away? What can you leave behind to drive things in your absence, so you get time back and can create time for yourself?

You need something to get your people, process and technology to work together, without fail, while you’re not there.

Hoping everyone will do the right thing is pointless. State clearly how you want things done in your SOPs.

Document your SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures)

Why do it?
SOP’s – become your machine, to keep the spinning plates up

How do I do it?

  • think of them as a list of rules - how do you want things done?
  • must be written down - for you to be sure what you want and to be delegated properly
  • clarity over beauty – just get them down and worry about formatting later
  • use initial burst with a typist - brainstorming with someone else to get you going
  • then set time weekly to document rules - until you have enough
  • something almost perfect is better than nothing - waiting for perfection will stop you delegating

What's a nice example?

  • Tim Ferriss's processing rules (link)

What does a good procedure look like? 5 Levels of Maturity

  • level 1) does the job – instructions to do the job
  • level 2) to standard – checklist, forms, descriptions, colours detail the standard
  • level 3) low risk – pitfalls designed out
  • level 4) low-cost – cut steps out or automate
  • level 5) delight customer – build loyalty

How do I put them in place?

  • share - a walkthrough or training
  • monitor - review in meetings, reporting and audits
  • improve - if things aren’t working, change them

Clear the Clutter

Sometime the software of our mind needs and upgrade.

Limiting Beliefs: Identify them, be aware and don’t let them hold you back!

Sometimes the stories we tell ourselves are the thing holding us back, subconsciously.

Just raising our awareness of them can be an immense help to overcoming thinking that actually leads to us limiting ourselves.

Use the following checklist to see if you have some subconscious scripting that is preventing you from getting organised. Sometimes just being aware of these thought patterns is enough to allow you to fend them off. Other times it will take a bit more effort.

WHEN TRYING TO ORGANISE YOUR BUSINESS

  1. I am not ready
  2. It's not 100%
  3. There must be more to it - I am sure I am ignorant of something important - there are unknown unknowns surely
  4. People won't like it
  5. What will it do? What are the impacts?
  6. I can't take the risk
  7. I won't have enough money
  8. I don't want to tell people – as they may be upset
  9. I don't know how to tell people – so I won't tell them – it will be done poorly
  10. This is a commitment point – I'm afraid of committing
  11. I can't trust people – so I won't delegate
  12. I don't know all the detail – so I'll wait
  13. I've never done this before
  14. I've never done it this way before
  15. I thought I'd made my mind up but now I'm unsure
  16. It's okay to be undecided – everyone can wait for me, I'm the boss!
  17. Will my customers like it?
  18. It's too complicated for my staff
  19. I don't want to make a fuss
  20. Maybe there is a better way?

Is there anything we can do beyond just being aware though?

Adopting a "Growth Mindset" can overcome a lot a problems people experience with limiting beliefs. Dr Carol Dweck explains her work here (video link).

Try adopting a 'growth mindset'. See yourself as evolving, able to take risks, incorporate feedback and learn from failure. Embrace challenges knowing you're not perfect but willing to take risks that are necessary to grow. Feel inspiration from others rather than being threatened as you are improving all the time.

A growth mindset will help 'clear the clutter’ across many areas of your life…. if you’re looking for a good place to start it's a great thing to try.

Hammer the Basics

Winter sports are starting again soon. Superior performance in sport can often be attributed to getting the basics right.

If you are struggling in your business, use the following as a checklist to see if you need to revisit some basic concepts to allow you to improve.

SYSTEMS
1) Set clear goals and targets - everything will work more smoothly when people have clarity
2) Sell for more than what you pay - sounds obvious but do you understand the full cost picture? across all products? including overheads?
3) Build things that work - put some thought into designing how your business will run, don’t just accept what everyone is offering
4) Monitor cash flow and project it by forecasting - this is your heartbeat, check you are planning to stay afloat
5) Don't build your business to fail by aiming for lowest cost everywhere - the business wind up being brittle and you will fight fires continuously

PEOPLE
6) Get good people - a great process won’t work if supported by bad people
7) You are in control, so take charge - if you are complaining that your staff don’t do what they’re told, stop complaining and do something about it
8) Get rid of people and things that don't perform - be decisive about stuff that doesn’t work

CUSTOMERS
9) Know what your customer wants and design a product to meets their needs - have you asked them what it is they want?
10) Make it easy to buy - make your offer both compelling AND simple
11) Satisfy emotional needs with great product AND service - people remember how they are treated more than what they bought
12) Fix mistakes quickly to maximise the likelihood of referral - set expectations about identifying and fixing errors quickly

Between 30% and 60% of new businesses fail within the first 3 years. See the RBA report - see link

Between 30% and 60% of new businesses fail within the first 3 years. See the RBA report - see link

Many businesses don't make it past the 3 and 5 year mark. Avoiding obvious errors and fixing problems quickly can help alleviate a lot of the pressure business owners experience.

If it currently seems too hard for not enough reward it might be time to 'get back to basics'.

What’s Your Winning Move?

Assess your own as well as your opponent's strengths and weaknesses to come up with a way to win.

Jack Welch worked at GE for 40 years, 20 as an engineer and manager and then 20 years as CEO. It’s a company of companies and for 20 years he had to assess the strategies of each division. So he has lots of experience planning and identifying successful strategies.

In his book “Winning” he boiled strategic planning down to 5 succinct questions to be answered;

1 what does the playing field look like now?
2 what the competition has been up to?
3 what you’ve been up to?
4 what’s around the corner?
5 what’s your winning move?

I love question 5 - it’s asking "how do we beat the competition?"

Not time to read? Here's a link to 1 hour talk by Jack Welch - link

I can't tell you how many meetings and workshops I have sat in where this wasn't even on the radar - what a boring, pointless waste of time!

Hours can be wasted discussing things like;

  • fixing letters people don't want to read
  • fixing processes that should be made redundant or bypassed
  • working around systems and people that should be gotten rid of

This question is more relevant than ever because change is happening at an accelerated pace all the time. What was cutting edge 10 years ago my 13 year old daughter is studying a school. Disruptive technology is talked about by people who barely know how to turn a computer on. 

Asking "how do we beat the competition?" focusses you on what is key to survive. What are the right goals and standards to aim for as well as how do we achieve those. If you’re the best and there’s a downturn, you stand a better chance to survive that as well.

If you haven’t asked yourself this question it's time you did. Take the time to make your own luck.

Less is More

What to stop can be as important as what to do!

Trying to do more and more can reach a limit.

Instead of trying to do more try spending some time cutting out things that just aren’t great. Looking at what your business is focussing on with a fresh set of eyes can sometimes reveal great opportunities to re-focus.
 
There are so many ‘good’ things to do we can easily get swamped with options. There is literally no time to address all the ‘good’ things we could be doing. At work without clear guidance your team will definitely be doing things they think are great but may actually be a distraction from the best option available.
 
Try to grab back some time and energy - STOP doing the ‘good’ things.

"Good is the Enemy of Great" - Jim Collins, from his book “Good to Great”, Jim explains how to "Stop Doing" hear.[link]

On a personal level this can include:- doing things just to keep busy, doing low value tasks first things in the productive morning hours, doing rush jobs instead of delegating, working on too many projects at once
 
At work ‘good' things to STOP you and your team doing will include

  1. doing work instead of finding customers - focussing on admin or operations and neglecting sales, marketing and strategy
  2. worrying - stop over thinking or looking for perfection, find the best solution and act
  3. over servicing customers - too much conversation or exceeding expectations unnecessarily
  4. selling products with poor margins - cull and make space for better products
  5. endless discussions - working hard to improve staff performance when they are just not suited to the role

Your role as the boss and leader of your organisation is to bring clarity, order and harmony. Continuing to find great products and match them to great customers. 
 
Mindlessly launching into busy work, doing people’s jobs for them or concerning yourself with operational issues at the expense of securing your future is wrong.
 
Cut that out, delegate to the right people and free yourself up to perform your role effectively.

1% Better Each Day

It can sometimes seems so daunting looking at how much there is to be done. So daunting at times it prevents you from even making a start.

If you can't make a start try this. Commit to yourself to get 1% better everyday. Just 1%. [thank you James Altucher for this idea [link]

If you can't make a start try this. Commit to yourself to get 1% better everyday. Just 1%. [thank you James Altucher for this idea [link]

By 1% I mean a small habit change. For example;

  • It may mean on a personal level going to bed in time to give yourself enough rest

  • At work it could mean ordering that new piece of gear you have thought about for so long that will get things going faster

Or;

  1. The Paper War - shredding paper straight away instead of storing to shred later (saves time and thought later on - "did I want to keep this?")
  2. People - immediately giving someone feedback instead of making a job for yourself later (you don’t waste mental energy dwelling on it)
  3. The Big Picture - starting on strategic stuff first thing, instead of operational issues or even trivia (how often are the most important tasks left till last and not attended to?)
  4. Sales - call that potential client now, instead of waiting for some future potential ‘right time’ that never eventuates (forget being in the right mood, just do it)
  5. Delegation - putting a due date against actions, having metrics (a number) against otherwise fuzzy goals for your team e.g.: "improve customer service” (people need/want clarity)

That’s 5, a weeks duration. How much better would work feel if you adopted the above habits?

This approach overcomes the situation where you are the constraint to your business growing or working more efficiently.

Nothing is stopping you. Except yourself. No capital outlay, training time or agreement needed from anyone.

How much better would you operate if you added one each day for a week? AND imagine adding a couple of hundred more, one each day for a year.

If it all seems too much just change something small, consistently. The progress will give you energy and efficiencies will give you time back so you can face bigger tasks.

Lead Domino

You can easily choose which domino to start with when setting them up to topple in a line. But where to start when you want to improve your business? hmmm.....

The beginning of the year is the time people feel fresher and ready to go again, review goals and progress in building their business. But where to start?
 
I love the idea of identifying your lead domino.
 
Because of the laws of gravity and physics, and the way the dominoes are set out, a great deal of energy is released with just a small amount of energy to start the first domino falling. The lead domino.
 
Wouldn’t it be great if you could find the one place to work on in your business to unlock a whole lot of energy and growth?

4 Million Dominoes - everyone has seen the world record attempts with thousands of dominoes, like this one… link

Running in circles working on various initiatives without knowing with certainty what will deliver tangible improvements is draining at best and destructive at worst.

How much more time, energy and focus would you be able to bring to your work and your team if you knew with certainty how to get your business humming.
 
Understand Your Business as a System

  1. map the value stream - for a restaurant: menu design, interior design, marketing, ordering, cooking, serving, billing and dealing with feedback
  2. identify your lead domino - get honest, realistic feedback. Obtain an objective opinion about what your business capability is compared to other operators - the weakest is your lead domino!
  3. think, plan and act - seek and decide on some advice and an action plan to address the deficiencies
  4. observe how the improvement in one area will eventually translate into benefits across the business

Understand Your Work as a Leader

  • repeat (or run in parallel) the same process for your own personal management skills:- planning, organising, staffing, delegating, supervising, measuring, reporting and improving

Which one of these is letting you down? How much better would your delegation be if your were better at planning? How much more can you charge for food if your service was good?
 
We all have flaws. One reason we have them is because our ignorance of them keeps us blind to them in a vicious circle. Left unidentified we can be left in a state of denial and ignorance about our true abilities for years, or perhaps our whole life.
 
Your biggest personal or business weakness also presents the biggest opportunity. This year have the guts to find what they are and attack them first up.

You will reap the rewards.

Building It as You Fly It

Deciding to grow is deciding to change, and the impacts are pervasive.

Many people go into business with a lot of assumptions around what it will be like. Being a customer and not seeing the hard work that goes on behind the scenes of a well run business can be very misleading. 

Operating a business is hard. Growing and operating at the same time is even harder.

Growing your business can be seen as a series of projects that deliver something that grows your revenue - new products, stores, marketing campaigns, supplier and distributor relationships. Each will affect how you operate.

Outlined below are some of the differences between 'Ops World' and 'Project World'. You need to know what world you are in at the time and dance between the two to be successful.

Subtle changes in work type can have big consequences for you and your team. Plan for and expect challenges.

Getting things right once is hard enough. Doing that consistently and then adding in changes to how you do it can be draining.

Consider these 5 strategies to assist with growth;

  1. Know what world you are in at the time and act accordingly - steady or changing? 
  2. Tell your staff and make the distinction clear - are we operating a clock or attending a party?
  3. Link the project to your company strategy and goals - answer ‘what’s the point?’ for them
  4. Clarify their role and what the plan is - ‘where are we going, how do we get there?’
  5. Identify the risks and manage them - create mitigation strategies before something goes wrong

How Evolved Are You?

Businesses start and grow but don’t always keep up with where they should be in terms of systems and infrastructure. Let's look at this as 'systems maturity'.

Systems MUST be put in place to create a machine that will be able to grow without being constrained by the owners time and effort.

Are you spending 60%+ of your time on sales and marketing? If not you are probably spending too much time working IN your business not ON your business.

The concept of a 'Maturity Grid' was first used by Crosby ("Quality is Free" 1980) to describe phases of quality management system evolution and later modified by Paulk et al (download) to describe the evolution of software development methodologies.

The above concept of assessing your level of 'maturity' in terms of management systems I find valuable as it makes tangible something that for most people is very hard to see.

The idea of 'Maturity Models' has been around for a while now and the specifics have changed over time but the concept remains the same and can be applied anywhere systems are required. You can ask yourself "how evolved is my business?"

I really love the description of level 1 as “undocumented chaos” because that is just what it is. No rules, some rules poorly understood or a different interpretation foreach employee (my personal favourite).

If you keep having to repeat yourself, do work because you feel you can’t trust your staff to do it and find yourself continually too drained to work on growing your business you need to look at improving the maturity of your systems.

How? Simply make a start by;

  • writing down how you want your business to run
  • save it somewhere
  • share it with your team regularly

Make this a regular habit and you will be amazed at the improvement you can make over time.

You want a business that you run instead of it running you? Time to grow up.

No Time to Save Time!

You must block out time to think about and work on improving your business.

You need new systems and to improve the ones you’ve got, but tell yourself you don’t have the time to work on them.

Maybe you need to change how you allocate your time.

The trick is to block time out in advance to work on improvement so you commit to at least devoting some time to this all important task.

Spare time does not appear from thin air when you own and run your own business! Improvement won’t happen without setting aside time to dedicate to it. 

Build the following into your schedule to ensure you spend time on the strategic stuff.

Daily - Monitor

  • 15 mins - set aside time to openly discuss issues - morning kick off meeting or over lunch

Weekly - Monitor and Act

  • 1-3 hrs weekly planning and review meeting - make an agenda item for suggestions and monitoring progress
  • Set aside some 'think’ time by yourself over a coffee and jot down what comes to mind when reflecting on how things are going [very powerful technique and works better on a daily basis].

Monthly - Plan and Act on Larger Tactics

  • 3 hrs - monthly targets are essential and big actions are required of you are not meeting your targets

Quarterly - Bigger Changes

  • Up to 1 or 2 days - time to plan larger projects like implementing new IT systems or processes, hiring for new roles or sourcing new products

Time goes by rapidly when you are busy working in your business. Weeks and months can pass without taking even some simple actions to improve your performance.

Even if you’re not sure exactly what you will do, make time to reflect on and act to improve how you work.

Better performance will not happen by accident.

Out of Control

Unwanted action and growth can cause harm in our environment, our bodies and our minds.

Just 24 wild rabbits were realised in Victoria in 1859 - and have now grown to be a large problem in Australia. Photo: M W Mules/CSIRO. Link

Living organisms fighting to survive can upset the balance such as rabbits and cane toads in Australia. Cancer is uncontrolled growth in cells working to live and multiply but in doing so causing illness and possibly death. Worries and concerns left unaddressed can turn into ‘intrusive thoughts’ taking up our precious mental energy.

Uncontrolled activity in your business is also dangerous.

People trying to do what they think the right thing is but getting it wrong;

  • Over servicing customers
  • Continuing to sell once someone has indicated they are prepared to buy, not realising their job is done
  • High level quality where it's not needed (too many coats of paint, extra calls to customers, analysis to 3 decimal places when a ball park figure will suffice)
  • Aggressive sales tactics that ultimately end up 'selling badly' leaving you unable to meet your commitments undermining your brand promise

Or managing your risk for you and then avoiding taking action like failing to;

  • buy stock in case it doesn't sell
  • explain the menu because they are unsure they know it well enough
  • offer to help in case they can't fix the problem when a customer just wants someone on their side

This sort of problem is insidious and can cause a great deal of harm if left unchecked. 

It is especially prevalent in a ‘leadership vacuum’, where roles and tasks are not clearly defined and the team is not sure ‘where they are going’ or ‘how they get there’. A classic example is ambiguous priorities like is it profit or the customer that comes first?

Hundreds of decisions can be made by your team on a daily basis that are not quite right. That adds up.

Here is a list of 5 things you can do to avoid leaving a leadership vacuum;

  1. CREATE CLARITY - clear, written roles, goals and priorities for the team and business
  2. DECISION AUTHORITY - spell out budget limits and decision types with a path for escalating up the chain of command to resolve issues
  3. OPEN CULTURE - discuss issues with candour to surface hidden assumptions
  4. FREQUENT TALKING - forums to discuss what is going on (weekly and monthly meetings, qtrly workshops) and what is going wrong
  5. FEEDBACK - get a system to hear what your customer thinks regularly, so you know you’re getting it right

Nowhere to Hide

As kids we learn how much fun it can be hiding. But as adults hiding can prevent us from reaching our potential.

Qu: How did you go with <that thing> today?
Ans: Oh, I gave it a good go but <excuse of the day> happened so I’ll get to it tomorrow

The above conversation must take place millions of times around the world everyday between the boss and their team members - don’t you think?

This must be because people love having this conversation right? Or maybe not… 

Actually this is an insidiously wasteful conversation to have because it;

  • takes up precious time
  • allows people to avoid their responsibilities which they deep down probably don’t feel good about
  • potentially allows people to develop a sense that they are entitled to avoid their responsibilties

Its much more effective to monitor and discuss performance over time as;

  • looking at the history, if performance has rarely been obtained then something is obviously wrong
  • anecdotal evidence that there have been extenuating circumstances on a daily basis will become obviously pointless
  • putting the numbers on the table will short circuit 'excuse oriented' discussions

There is no hiding when you can see the trend over time.

Reports are not of themselves an ethical or unethical tool

  • In the wrong hands they can be used to do harm or create dysfunctional behaviour [behaviour against the best interests of the business]
  • in the right hands they can be a powerful tool to gain insight and understanding and enable action to further improve your 'money making machine’

Follows these rules around using reports to manage your team to get the best out of them;

  • seek to understand why performance may not be up to standard - is it partly your fault and have you done everything you can to ‘set them up for success'
  • praise publicly - criticise privately
  • reward against performance metrics [of outcomes]

Remember - Don’t leave anywhere for you or them to hide!

  • Being able to see the trend over time is often the most valuable way to view your business as positive and negative trends can be hidden by only looking at a point in time
  • Anyone can fail badly on a given day so poor performance over time needs to be visible before it can become acknowledged, accepted and manageable

There is no hiding when you can see the trend!

Billion Dollar Bow Wow

BIG BUSINESS: Australians spend about $6B on pets and pet services each year [ACAC Report 2010]. By this measure these little guys are highly valued, without even being able to talk! What value (or value destruction) do you provide when you're not talking? "Product Benefit" is how your product makes the customer feel NOT the features of the product.

It’s so simple what motivates us – it’s how we feel. People have different frameworks like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, marketers talk about value, as in functional value, but also emotional and social value. I think these all boil down to the same thing.

People buy things because of the way it makes them feel.

The better they feel, the more value you are providing and the more they will pay!

Let's compare some models. Maslow’s hierarchy is made up of five levels;

5) self actualisation
4) esteem
3) love / belonging
2) safety
1) physiological

One leads to the other. As we meet a lower-level need it then ceases to motivate and leads us to meet the need that is characteristic of the next level up.

But in general terms these levels can be described as feelings. Feeling hungry or cold, feeling fearful or anxious, feeling loved or respected, feeling good by giving back.

They are about feeling, how we perceive our state.

What about the marketer’s definition of value: functional, emotional, social

  • Emotional value would obviously be about evoking an emotion for a customer.
  • However functional value can largely be about producing an emotional, sensory outcome e.g. "I drive a car so I can easily get around and I’m not tired“
  • And social can also be expressed as an emotional benefit – a sense of belonging intimacy or fun e.g. "all of my friends are wearing this, I want to try it and 'fit in'"

The question is: "how do your customers feel?" and "can I control it?"

The answer of course is "yes!"

  1. Map the key contact points with your customer - verbal and non verbal
  2. Identify the key emotions they are seeking
  3. Build into your "customer experience" things that will evoke these emotions, using the 5 senses as a prompt

Delivering emotion is big value and if you are not getting it right you are missing out - BIG TIME!

Everyone Wants a Piece of Me!

People calling you too much? Forever wanting your time at work? Let’s look at why....

Communicating with others can be divided into 3 broad headings;
1) requesting information
2) giving information
3) asking for permission / decision

You’re the leader and need to show the way and stay in touch with your team, no doubt. But wouldn’t it be good to retain control WITHOUT having to speak to them as often? 

You can delegate many decisions you make by setting authority limits around decisions to be made. The limits need to suit the skills and experience of the person accountable for the role. Any decisions within the limits will be executed by others, e…

You can delegate many decisions you make by setting authority limits around decisions to be made. The limits need to suit the skills and experience of the person accountable for the role. Any decisions within the limits will be executed by others, empowering them and saving you time.

Exchanging information can be sorted out electronically and minimised using manuals and training for instruction. 

Decisions require your involvement, but does permission? And how many decisions can be made in advance, once, and become guidelines within your system?

Why not use the concept of ‘delegated authority’. That is, set guidelines and limits on what people can do. That’s like you being in the room to guide behaviour, when you’re actually doing something else.

Decision guidelines can be set around;

  • refunds - in response to complaints
  • discount levels - during sales
  • work hours - for the roster
  • budget - for marketing and so on

Remember to;

  1. put numbers around the authority level given (don’t be vague! use money, time, volume, weight - whatever can be quantified)
  2. state clearly the role that it applies to (names of the people doing the role can change)
  3. put a step in the instructions to leave tangible evidence of the behaviour (this give you ‘visibility’ of the action taken)

Using this technique you can save time and energy as well as empowering your staff by giving them more ownership and responsibility which is a great motivator. All while retaining control of your business.

If you are not using this technique you are missing out on opportunities to work ON your business not IN it.

Get started today!

Growth Requires Change

You may need to change the way you think to be able to create a business that can make you the income you want without working yourself into the ground.

Growth requires change. Change in many forms. 

You can’t grow if you can’t delegate.

  • In any business being able to leverage your time is key to being able to do more
  • Delegation is a core part of leveraging your time

If you need to improve your delegation you may need to start with your mindset. There are various definitions of ‘mindset’ but I like the one shared with me by Serena Sandstrom. Mindset is ‘the stories we tell ourselves’. 

Read through the below ‘stories’. If there are any you find that you tell yourself it may be time to change your mindset.

I don’t delegate because I tell myself;

  • I don’t need help – I am very good
  • I can’t trust someone else to do it my way
  • They won’t get it right
  • I don’t have time to delegate
  • I’m not sure what I want them to do
  • I’m in a rush and I’ll do it later
  • They’re not trained
  • They don’t have the skill
  • Its all too much, it’s too late, no time - I’ll have to do it
  • I’m faster
  • I’m better
  • I will just have to check their work anyway so I'll do it myself anyway
  • I won’t be able to control them or get them to do what I want done
  • I don’t know how to get it done, so I’ll need to do it – I don't have time to find an expert
  • I don’t understand the principles, so I can’t commit to starting or doing it their way (e.g.: when engaging an expert - architect, lawyer, financial adviser, accountant, chef, builder tradesman)
  • If I get someone else to do it I won’t be across the details if someone asks me something

7 Steps to an Amazing Customer Experience

Do you agree with these statements?

  • people will pay a premium for good service
  • people always remember how they are treated
  • referrals as a marketing method are free and very powerful BUT must be earned

Are your customers 'fans’? Are you delivering what they want?

You could be very close to taking them from 'satisfied customers' to 'evangelising fans'.

Michael Collins flew to the moon with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Apollo 11 mission but never landed or set foot on the moon. Sometimes you are very close to something great and some small changes can make all the difference.

Basically, people buy things because of the way it makes them feel. But, how do you ensure they get that feeling?

Fine tuning your business to evoke the right emotions may not take a huge amount of effort but can deliver huge benefits. 

You may be very close. If one more minute dealing with a customer was the difference between simply giving them what they asked for and turning them into a raving fan, it is time well spent. But you must do it CONSISTENTLY!

Seven steps below to identify and build the correct “emotional journey” into your business;

  1. MOTs – identify the moments of truth. These are key 'touch points' and times during your customer’s experience with you. "White Space” needs to be included (when you not communicating but they are waiting to hear from you)
  2. FEELINGS – identify how they want to feel - spend some time putting yourself in their shoes, ask 6 customers what they want to feel
  3. DESIGN - your business to deliver these feelings – document in your manual, design processes to get an end to end view so gaps aren’t left in your approach
  4. APPEARANCE - facilities and website – reflect the experience in your facilities and website to evoke these emotions
  5. TRAIN – to change behaviour
  6. SYSTEMS – to support your people for the new experience – IT systems and management systems – documents, checklists
  7. MEASURE and REWARD – to embed new behaviours

Check out a great explanation about being "2 mm away from success" (amongst other things) from Tony Robbins during his interview with Tim Ferris here [link]. Have a listen.

How to 'hack' at work

From www.urbandictionary.com - [llnk]

Hacking’ at something used to mean you were bad at it e.g.: a political ‘hack’. Now to 'hack' something means you’re clever.

It means to 'use something in an extraordinary way’...

Recently I used an example of a drawing and made some hand written changes. Then I got someone to mock up the new drawing.

This made the process very easy and fast for both of us (myself and the draft person). I was told “I like working with you”. 

Actually from my perspective I hadn’t done very much at all - I had modified an existing drawing and asked him to make the changes shown - quick and simple. I had used an existing drawing as a ‘template'.

You can find ‘templates’ for many parts of your business, modify them and put them in place. For example;

  • restaurant menu
  • job description
  • office layout
  • a process
  • procedures
  • branding
  • timetable
  • accounting system
Get something in place that works quickly and improve it as you go.Learn from experience and improve it again (knowledge from experience is called ‘tacit knowledge' - great explanation from Dr Nancy Dixon here -&nbsp;link)

Get something in place that works quickly and improve it as you go.

Learn from experience and improve it again (knowledge from experience is called ‘tacit knowledge' - great explanation from Dr Nancy Dixon here - link)

Customers are concerned about getting what they want, not that you developed every part of your whole business originally, from scratch - SO WHY BOTHER!

What you learn by doing is super valuable and should be added to your operating model regularly. Don't wait for perfection before making a start.

Build on the work of others and ‘hack’ away.

On a Mission, in the Dark

“The Blues Brothers” is a fun, iconic movie. One of the most memorable scenes from the movie is when John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd are sitting in the car about to complete their “mission from God”.

I think its funny because despite all of the issues they currently face, they firmly believe that simply committing to a mission, will get them to where they want to go. It’s funny because we can all relate to feeling this, whilst also realising that it’s kind of silly.

In the scene above they have 106 miles to travel, little fuel and some cigarettes “...it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses.” So, little resources and they are ‘flying blind’.

Having embarked on your own business I am sure you have felt this way at some stage.

One thing you can do to improve your situation is to get some visibility of what you’re doing. Turn the ‘lights’ on and regularly run reports on how you’re doing and where you’re going.

The take away for me is that “the most important assets you have these days are the intangible ones, assets that financial reporting really doesn’t deal with very well”. Hence the need for Balanced Scorecard.

Here is a great explanation of something called the Balanced Scorecard from one of its creators….Professor Robert Kaplan of Harvard Business School - link

If you are not reporting on key strategic aspects of your business you are effectively 'flying blind’. Worse still, if you are not reporting regularly on basic things like profitability and cashflow you cannot see what you’re doing AT ALL. You are literally driving a car with no headlights, no internal lights and no dashboard visible … at night.

Financial reporting is not enough. It’s doesn’t tell you how your customers feel about you and doesn’t give you visibility of the internal workings of your business (e.g.: best salesperson, most profitable products, turnaround time for a job/task, how effective your marketing is etc).

Simply deciding you are on a mission sounds fun but its not enough. Switch the lights on so you can see what you’re doing and where you’re going.

Back Yourself!

Back Yourself! But I would add the caveat "you should know you can afford to take the risk..."

It’s good to improve, this inoculates your business from risk because it;

- increases revenue
- attracts customers and staff

But you need to focus on it as it requires;

- time
- money
- staff
- goals – to know when you’ve succeeded
- measurement – to track progress

Improvements others don’t have...
Innovation means you are doing things the others aren’t, that customers want, which gives you a competitive advantage.

An innovation is an invention that makes you money. It is not possible to ensure or be 100% certain each time you try to make use of an invention it will make money.

So – it’s a gamble!

Is it closer to $2 each way?, $100 on the nose?

Risking money on innovation is not like either of these bets.

It is more like a progressive bet over time, that you can stop if it’s not working. If you are getting good feedback you can continue to spend in that direction, always knowing that a payout is at risk.

Responsible Gambling
You cannot devote time to innovation unless you know you’re in a comfortable position as it may not pay off.

Do you have money, time, resources to gamble?
You will only know this if you have a cash flow forecast. Your profit and loss statement, balance sheet etc will not tell you this as they are historical.

Without a cash flow forecast you will not know you can stop rushing around to simply survive let alone spend time focusing on the future. You will not know if you;
- have spare cash now to experiment
- can devote future money to new project
- can risk your money and perhaps lose it

Have a Plan
You and your staff are in a better position to enjoy the process if you plan these first;
a) understand the process – what are the steps involved, time and cost
b) understand what you need up front – before you begin
c) is it any good? - how to get feedback from customers

It’s worth a bet to ensure your future.