Build the relationships that build your business
This Week@Work, if relationships build and grow a business, but you’re not the one who holds those relationships – you’ve got to start building your own.
Author: Lindokuhle Ntombela
Elite Business: Remote work is for the birds
In this article, first published in Elite Business, Pavlo puts a question mark on remote working.
Businesses are about people. And people are about skills, thinking and action. If your people are less than that, you should be looking at technology to do that person’s job. It’s more reliable, dependable and far easier to manage. But it won’t create magic, innovation or culture across your business. People will and do. Remote working puts a question mark on that.
Here are some reasons why.
Troubleshooting
When a problem arises, the ability to immediately resolve it by pulling people into a room before it cannot be done remotely. And if the problem and its solution need a multidisciplinary approach, which most problems do, then the right people in the room can step out after and all do what needs doing to get the job done.
As your business grows, it is even more critical because the people in the room might have to coordinate and organise their teams to get the job done. It’s instant, and when it comes to retaining clients and building a brand (problem resolution builds a brand better than any marketing campaign), you need to get it done there and then.
Culture and value
Culture is nebulous, yet without one, your business creates a staccato experience for suppliers, customers, and employees. Values create the nous that enables your business and its employees to operate against an intuitive framework when needed. This intuition or unconscious response develops over time. It doesn’t build from the values stated in your website or reception wall but through living, breathing and observing the behaviour of all business employees, especially its leaders.
If values create the framework and culture of the behaviour about what a company stands for, the best way to learn it is in person. Imagine a scenario where an employee enters the office of a manager. The door closes. A few minutes later, the employee leaves the office, pale and slightly stressed. Your colleague sitting next to you asks what went down. You explain what that employee did, and through that, you learn the authentic culture and values of that company. A word indicating a value, be it integrity, honesty, etc. means very little until it is understood and witnessed in practice.
Learning and training
While aspects of employee training are best offered online and therefore accessible remotely, the context, the application and the improvement of an employee’s performance arguably cannot be. We learn by doing not online engagements and content. Observation and “show and tell” are far more impactful ways of developing capability in your employees. Imagine trying to learn kung fu remotely rather than in the ring. Only when a punch lands do you genuinely understand how to take the theory and put it into a useful practice suited to your inherent abilities. The same goes for riding a bicycle, managing a project, managing a team, collecting a debtor book or selling.
Growth
Beyond a job, why do people opt to work in your business? I’ll put it into context in a recent meeting with a global law firm specialising in tax. Their brand exciting and innovative brand operates across a federation of autonomous companies operating in 169 countries. In the past, they won recruits with their innovative approach to tax, assured learning and very quick exposure to exciting clients. Their vibrancy won them talent before bigger firms’ cold, hard salary packages. But, they have found that remote working has directly prevented the handover of relationships from senior partners to junior partners and associates. It has harmed the transfer of knowledge on the subject matter, the personalities making up a client, the industry, and it has stunted the ability of senior partners to pick junior partners effectively and for junior partners in return to compete to work with promising associates.
Remote working is a privilege, not a right. If you are attracting employees who demand it, consider moving on. They are there for their comfort rather than the well-being of the business as active, engaged, committed contributors who go beyond fulfilling a functional role.
When is there a case for remote work? It should be part of your business-building toolkit. How to use it, when and where and then how to manage it is a future article.
What’s your number?
This Week@Work, be bold enough to set your company enterprise value as your destination and revisit it every year with a view to have a 3-year path towards achieving that destination.
Positioning Your Business for Success: A Blueprint for Standing Out in the Marketplace
In the ever-changing landscape of business, where startups can skyrocket or vanish overnight, the journey from small business owner to industry veteran is nothing short of remarkable. What should you do when you’ve built a successful business over two, three, or four decades? Should you retire, or should you continue running the show until the end?
The Power of Positioning
Positioning transcends mere marketing—it’s the cornerstone upon which your business is constructed. It shapes your business’s identity, moulds its culture and values, and, when executed effectively, propels revenue and capital growth. To secure a competitive edge, business owners must understand their fundamental positioning and use them as a strategic guide to success.
Defining Your Purpose
Your business’s purpose is more than merely generating profits; it revolves around problem-solving. To unearth your genuine purpose, think about your skills, aptitudes, and interests Start by identifying the problem you aspire to resolve, its cost to your customers, and the impact it has on their lives. Your purpose should revolve around addressing this problem effectively.
Shaping Your Products or Services
Once you’ve ascertained your purpose, it’s time to craft products or services that harmonise with it. Instead of starting with what you can offer, initiate your journey with the problem you’re resolving. This method ensures that your offerings are relevant and invaluable to your target audience. A profound understanding of the problem’s cost empowers you to set the appropriate pricing strategy and generate added value for your clients.
Crafting a Memorable Customer Experience
Your business’s purpose and offerings should organically lead to an exceptional customer experience. This experience transcends a mere transaction; it revolves around your interactions with customers. When your purpose and offerings resonate with your clients, they will feel understood and valued. This, in turn, paves the way for positive engagement and word-of-mouth marketing, thus creating a potent cycle of growth.
The Art of Saying Yes and No
Discerning when to say yes and when to say no is one of the most intricate aspects of positioning. In the early phases of business, saying yes to every opportunity is a common tactic to maintain positive cash flow. However, as you acquire a deeper understanding of your purpose and problem-solving capabilities, you must learn to decline opportunities that do not align with your positioning strategy. This discernment is pivotal for sustaining your focus and establishing a robust brand.
Positioning your business for success involves grasping your purpose, aligning your products or services with that purpose, and delivering an unforgettable customer experience. By concentrating on these components and mastering the art of saying yes or no, you can differentiate your business from the competition and establish a distinct and compelling position in the marketplace.
To listen to the full discussion from the show:
Elite Business: Crack the skills crisis
In this article, originally featured in Elite Business, Pavlo explores the topic of the UK’s GBP6.6 billion skills gap, exacerbated by inflation and tech advances, demanding attention. To succeed, prioritise growth and talent. Build a resilient business model and hire system operators to navigate the skills crisis and pursue higher growth.
Skills are short globally. In the UK, the skills gap cost businesses an estimated GBP6.6 billion. The subsequent challenges of inflation, war in Europe, and the accelerated adoption of AI and other technologies can only have increased this.
This shortage of skills is not a problem if you don’t want to grow. There are two parts to this comment.
First, growth
If you’re not growing, you’re dying because your competitors intend to, and in a low-growth environment, their growth will come from eating your lunch. Add inflation, and you are eroding the value you have built thus far. If you opt not to grow, look to exit and realise your value before it whittles away.
If you want to grow, there are two options. First, grow to maintain what you have. This pegs your annual growth rate at inflation, the tepid country growth rate, and your industry growth rate. It approximates 8% per annum. At this level, you are maintaining what you have. To grow beyond what you have, your growth rate should add another 5-10%, depending on your ambition.
Next, talent
In the instance of growth, you need a plan, and that plan needs two things. First, and most importantly, your time and attention to focus on growth. Next, a business model and team that allows your time and attention to focus on growth. Both mean you need to have a good team on board of the right people doing the right thing at the right time.
Across businesses I visit the following constraints regarding human talent become apparent.
- I need help finding the right people.
- I have people in senior roles who don’t have the skills or mindset to get the job done without my regular support and guidance.
- It takes ages for new employees to get up to speed and wash their faces.
- My “rock-star” employee is constantly toying with other opportunities.
The employment challenge is here to stay. Demographically, each year sees fewer people entering the workforce. Over 2.8m working people are sick, waiting for operations. About 500 000 able, capable 50 years and older, experienced people opted for early retirement.
If structure determines behaviour, build your business to accommodate the skills challenge.
A business does not just emerge. It is built against an operating model. Your operating model must sympathise with the challenges of growth, size, and shifts in the economy.
However, the bones of the operating model that will resolve many of your human capital challenges remain the same.
It begins with defining your business in terms of the customer segments you serve rather than the features and criteria of your products and services.
Understanding these segments, what problem you solve for them, and what experience they want in the process forms the blueprint of your operating model.
Using the blueprint, build the operating processes and systems to deliver that outcome reliably. Systems are sequential activities that bring the experience of the blueprint to life, and that can be taught and measured. Do this across all your commercial functions that comprise that customer experience blueprint. In each function, these activities make up a job description.
You can now hire people, not because they bring some of their superstar ability to the role, but because they can be evaluated and trained against the activities in their employed function.
Hiring system operators, rather than mavericks and gurus, has several benefits:
Recruitment is simplified as you can assess through simple questions whether someone has the experience or capability to perform the tasks that make up the system.
Your employees are motivated and have a purpose as they know what to do and when to do it, to achieve a specific outcome. Their performance can be measured and managed.
Your business becomes less reliant on you, as the systems that underpin it are documented, trainable, and don’t depend on a few superstars to get things done.
This unlocks your time to focus on next-level growth despite the skills crisis.
Get your positioning right, to outcompete
This Week@Work, if you try being all things to all people you end up being nothing to anyone. So how do you decide who it is you wish to serve? And how do you decide who you don’t?! This is the difficult but essential work of positioning your business effectively to outcompete.
Invest boldly in your business today, to get ahead of the competition tomorrow.
This Week@Work, when the business environment is uncertain or challenging, it’s easy to delay investment in your business, while you ‘wait and see` what will happen with the country, economy, etc.
But growth requires investment, you have to be bold to be the last man standing on the other side.
Is there a case for AI in your business – or is there more froth than coffee in the AI cappuccino?
This Week@Work, AI has stormed into the mainstream with ChatGPT and similar tools bringing the promise of AI into every office and workplace. But what impact does it really have? Can it make tasks easier or business systems more efficient? Can AI drive business growth for you?
This Week@Work: To reach your business destination, answer two questions.
This Week@Work ask and answer just two questions to build the resilience and clarity you need to get on a track that will help build your business into your greatest wealth-generating asset.
BUSINESS LEADER: Dying at your desk should be lauded
In this article, first published in Business Leader, Pavlo argues that retirement is for the birds, certainly if you are a business owner. Creating a business is hard.
I was recently absorbed in a debate about retirement with a highly accomplished business owner. Having started her business 26 years ago after a successful corporate career of 12 years, we met to talk about growth. But that’s not how it started. Originally, we were meeting to discuss her company’s valuation.
Our conversation felt light, fleeting, almost whimsical. Something was wrong. It was as if she was going through the motions of the conversation that she felt she should have.
“You have no interest in selling your business,” I remarked eventually. She looked surprised at my comment. After briefly pausing, she said, “I’d hate to sell it. But I’m in my 60s, and the pressure is immense. Family and friends are asking why I want to carry on. The debates get testy when, in casual conversation, I talk about new products, new markets, and new opportunities.”
“What is the response when you do?” I asked. “When is enough, enough. Aren’t you being greedy? You have earned the right to retire and other such comments,” she said, smiling tentatively.
The business owner’s odyssey
These kinds of comments come from many sources:
- Peers who are corporate employees that either face a forced retirement, experience work as a political battlefield, or have lived a life in a narrow functional silo
- Friends or family who want more of your time or envy your achievements
- In family business scenarios, your successors may well want to lead and take the business in a different direction
- Other business owners who, as competitors or friends, have a different lived experience of building, growing, and managing their companies, and who, exasperated, want out and project their lived experience onto you
- Finally, the ‘Joneses’, where the collective view of life is that you work to earn your retirement and that is a key indicator of success.
But here’s the thing. Most business owners I’ve met do what they do for more than the economy. Through their business, they find inspiration, meaning, friendship and purpose. These are the ingredients of meaning. And when work becomes more than economy and meaning becomes the greatest driver behind why you do what you do, retirement is not a likely ambition.
The art of legacy building
It may sound idealistic, but I’ve witnessed it repeatedly. I think back to the first real client I had 16 years ago. A successful industrial baker who, after 27 years, had built a respectable £5.8m annual revenue business and wanted out. Unable to fetch the price he wanted, and a need to retire with dignity and pride, we met to discuss what needed to be done. I asked why he wanted to sell. “Every day feels like a grind, a slog, and as much as I have invested in my team, I’m square and centre of daily, weekly and monthly operations. I’ve tried to delegate and let go. I’ve tried to work ‘on’ my business, not ‘in’ it. I’m fed up. What I loved has become a choke around my neck.”
He vented for some time, and eventually, we mapped out a path to attract the valuation he wanted. 16 years on, with annual revenues approaching £100m, he remains fully invested and at the helm of his business. Each year, I ask him, are you ready to retire? He laughs and says, “Next year.”
If structure determines behaviour, how you build and grow your business will determine how you spend your time and attention. Should you find yourself experiencing growth that is stuck or stagnant, or alternatively, chaotic, and complex, you will tire, and retirement will be attractive.
It’s not how it has to be. The right blueprint to inform the design and development of your business will release your time to focus on the things that feed your soul.
John Milton’s (1608-1674) sonnet, “on his blindness,” captures the idea beautifully. He argues that everyone has a talent, and the job of life is to put that talent into service of humankind. Creating a business is hard. Building and growing it is hard. The trials and tribulations are what create meaning and value. Retiring such a talent robs us all of future prosperity.
Dying at your desk, then, indeed, is a life fully lived.