Who dares, wins!

“Who dares, wins” is a very memorable form of words and there can very few people who haven’t heard the phrase. It relates of course to the SAS and immediately conjures up scenes like those some years back of the Iranian Embassy siege in London. Masked men with stun grenades taking inordinate risks to protect the futures of ordinary British citizens as simply part of their job.

But what, you may be wondering, does all this have to do with a business column in the Chester Standard? The answer, of course, is that bravery plays a larger part than many of us care to admit in just about every conceivable way in every conceivable business.

I’m reminded of this daily in my own business and all those I interact with, almost without exception.  If your business is to succeed you need to take action and very often at high speed. In fact it’s a basic tenet of business improvement that high-speed action brings with it many unseen and highly significant advantages.

By being brave enough to impose time limits on yourself and drive through what you instinctively know needs to be done, you will reap the rewards of bravery. Acting decisively and taking ownership of the agenda is very often the first step in becoming an effective leader. Speed of itself can be exhilarating and is also a self-perpetuating mechanism which leads to more bold action in its wake. A taste is developed for the new way of working and the boost to self-confidence drives you further on to even more rewarding and challenging areas.

But, of course, no-one can get to dizzy heights without first doing some training and putting in some serious mental effort. Any element of a business plan has to be thought through, planned and given a huge amount of commitment. With such attention to detail you will open up possibilities that your former meek self could only dream of.

 If all of this sounds a little bit pretentious why not give it a go and see if you still feel that way afterwards. I recently won a new contract by moving fast and taking a larger risk than normal. I did my due diligence but at high speed and by carving a niche in my day-to-day routine to enable me to bid. Having got myself into that position I was rewarded by an early meeting with the client at which many of my fears around the content of the project were happily dispelled. I like to think there was an element of divine intervention involved but the truth is probably more prosaic and, in plain English, I just got what I worked for.

Oh and by the way, it’s not just me who thinks bravery is a good thing to have in your business. I attended a local event recently to listen to the inspiring Vanda Murray OBE  speak about her prodigious business experience and reveal her suggestions of how to improve performance. No coincidence I think that the word bravery was right at the heart of her three-word exhortation to us all: Brains, Bravery and Balance!

What’s new?

What’s new in business – probably nothing!

Are we simply obsessed with the concept of new? We’re living in an age where recycling and re-using are seen by most people as sensible if not vital and yet re-using business ideas and processes is shunned as old hat. Trotting out ideas from 20 or 30 years ago is never going to work in the world of business, is it?

Well, I’m not so sure.

I was lucky enough to work for a client some years ago whose products were sold off the shelves of some of the poshest supermarkets in the country. In other words, it was a pretty safe bet that the consumers under discussion here were not unable to make evaluations and come to decisions by use of logic. And yet, by a process of trial and elimination we were able to prove by solid statistical analysis that what influenced sales positively for these particular consumers was the additional of a brightly coloured triangle on the top right of the pack with a jazzy word “new” in it. Just the addition of the word “new” to bring their attention to a product which had newly arrived on their shelves was enough to get them to take the first step and try the product. After that of course we were on our own and that new product had better be good but the important thing was to have cleared the first hurdle!

On the other hand, I was working with a new client recently in the home decoration market and new, up-to-the-minute digital campaigns for them were simply not working at all. In a field where people are constantly searching to buy the latest fashionable products, the word new did not appear to be having any influence whatsoever. It took an exercise into the four P’s of marketing (product, price, place and promotion) to help this business rethink its campaigns.

It was the four P’s which have been around forever which convinced this company that the campaign was not the issue but rather the whole marketing mix which influenced any client that bought into the offer and purchased products. The whole experience had to be right before the sweet fruits of success could be tasted. It was useful to think of the entire process of marketing as being similar to baking a cake of which the four P’s were the ingredients – leave any one out and the end result is a disaster.
The solution to the problem above is anything but new – the four P’s have been around for ages but that doesn’t make them any less valid.

In some cases, new is good and performs well but in others the tried and tested route may be your best option. Think of it this way – “old” could be the new “new” – that may sound a little odd but the bottom line in business is results so why not go with that if it works for you!

In the internet we trust

I belong to the generation that grew up without the benefit of the internet and google searches. Nowadays,  I guess it’s pretty much all of us who simply grab whichever keyboard’s nearest to hand when we want to check the derivation or meaning of just about anything on the planet. I privately console myself with the thought that my university degree would have been a lot better if I hadn’t had to haul myself off to the college library every time I had to check some facts, dates or generally read up on a subject for some badly needed inspiration!

What got me thinking about all of this was when I recently learned of an internet-related term called “clickbait”. For me it’s one of those words that manage to subtly but quite unwittingly convey quite a deep insight into the dangers of the internet.

Clickbait is something I’ve been responding to, like millions of others, for a number of years. Tired at the end of a long day, it’s easy to be lured in to the kind of internet twaddle that promises everything and delivers nothing. You know the kind of thing – “two things only terrible bosses say” or “the one word that ruins 90% of all CV’s”.  Our curiosity draws us in and in some cases we may even click further as there is often a trail of “clickbait” for the unsuspecting victim.

For me there are three reasons why this practice sullies the internet for all of us, especially business people:

• The practice is often concealed within a respectable looking blog or tweet so is little more than deception
• Offering more than you deliver is entirely the wrong way to go about business
• The concept of clickbait is now so overdone that it is generally seen as imitative and to be avoided at all costs

I have another internet term I love to hate and that is “lead magnet” which, like clickbait, is exactly what it sounds like. All these terms are transparent and rely on not being spotted if they are to work.

Clearly, they are commonly spotted, do not work and represent abuse of the internet. They unfairly detract from genuine use of what is potentially a marvellous tool for us all if we exercise caution.
By the way, the title for this piece is a very poor pun on the words “In God we trust” which I’m sure you knew. I checked my sources first on the internet so I know I’m right. I can also tell you the phrase appears on US banknotes and replaces the earlier phrase “ e pluribus unum”. Much as I love my Latin, I have to say that was probably a good call.

And for those of you who are thinking that google wouldn’t have improved my degree performance by much you’re probably right – the college bar was not very far from the library so I would simply have spent more time in there too!

Happy Birthday to Wrexham F.C.

Wrexham F.C., as I’m sure most of the readers of this newspaper will know, recently celebrated its 150th birthday.

Fantastic – sounds like something to celebrate and definitely an achievement. In this day and age, when we routinely replace things rather than make them last another few months, never mind years, surely it’s impressive for any institution to last 150 years.

I wouldn’t argue with that line personally but as usual I’m wondering what are the reasons behind our admiration – can we learn anything by probing behind the headline and making a comparison with the world of business.

There’s a very useful test in business that asks if a company or individual’s actions respond well to the query – so what? As usual with simple statements, if you respond honestly to the question you might find out something useful that you can build on.

In Wrexham FC’s case the answer might be something like this: for 150 years sporting excellence has been striven for and a whole town has been united behind the team as they strove to improve their standing in the league by competing week in week out. Many people have identified with the team and found a sense of purpose in a shared endeavour and also relaxation and an escape from the drudgery of the 9-5 routine. Fitness has been held up as something worthy and an ideal to pursue for youngsters who may have that sort of talent within their grasp.

So, yes Wrexham FC is a socially useful phenomenon without which the town would most definitely be the poorer but what of your business or enterprise. What would you answer to the “so what” question on your 10th anniversary, for example? I suspect that one may be more difficult to answer but hopefully worth the effort.

If you genuinely struggle to find reasons for why you were so keen to announce to all your business contacts that you had just crossed the 10 year milestone – think again. It may point to a lack of balance. Perhaps you have been one-dimensional in your pursuit of profit or never given a second thought to gender diversity or your position as an employer in the community.

Sounding off about a record just for its own sake clearly leaves you open to the charge of being lightweight or lacking in depth. Worse still, perhaps you lack objectives with which your wider customer base can identify. To grow a business requires shared goals and vision – no-one can achieve truly great heights alone and even what appears to be a cause for celebration might offer a good opportunity to reflect on that.

I like a celebration as much as the next person but don’t let the answer to “so what” be disappointing because your 10 years in business equates to the same year repeated 10 times over. Like Wrexham FC, aim for 150 years and aim for the pride that will come when your business community genuinely has good reasons to celebrate with you, even before you remind them to do so!

The power of the written word

There’s an old adage in business that says something to this effect - anything that doesn’t get written down is bound to get forgotten. For me that’s a good maxim and one that I have personally lived my business life to for many years now. In my humble opinion it’s even more valuable in today’s tech-savvy age than in it ever was.

Why? Because writing things down is way more valuable than serving as a mere memory-jogger. Putting pen to paper is one of life’s pleasures and it is a grave mistake to dismiss it as simply a chore or something to avoid at all costs. Sure, writing in a business context can mean a little dullness when it comes to content but no-one should underestimate the feeling of control and creative flow that any writing can give.

For sheer enthusiasm and commitment to the task it would be hard to find a better example of this than Andrew Marr. I know most of us don’t write on the scale he does but the feeling he describes as the act of creative writing gives another dimension to his knowledge is undeniably true for us all. Try it sometime and I guarantee you will be surprised at the results.

We are all of us better than we often give ourselves credit for and writing can reveal the true depth of what we know. It is as if another part of the writer takes over for as long as the writing is taking place.
“Getting in the zone” is probably how this phenomenon would be described in business-speak and that’s not a bad description. It conveys the sense of “somewhere-elseness” and it implies you are now in a special place where serious business will start to happen and happen fast. It engenders a very useful feeling of purposefulness, control and added dimensions that might mean the edge in business we are all looking for.

Be bold – express yourself with considered thought and it will give you a USP. This is especially so nowadays when the majority of business people run a mile from writing things down preferring to take comfort in the fact that we can talk hundreds of times faster than we can write.

I hope you enjoy this column – if you think it’s below par in any way that’s probably because I didn’t trouble to write a written draft before I produced it

Glad to be of service…

In the North West we have a thriving knowledge economy where service industries continue today to play a massive part in sustaining our futures. This is not to downplay the importance of other strands of pour economy such as manufacturing, engineering or exporting but it’s a fact that professional services continue to be one of the mainstays of our regional prosperity.

This link to knowledge, especially scientific knowledge, is of particular interest in the North West as we head towards 2016 when Manchester will become the European City of Science. The North West has been in the news quite often in recent months with the go-ahead for the new £235m science research centre at Manchester University to build on successes like the development of Graphene.

But I wanted to concentrate here on what is perhaps a lesser known but vitally important link of worldwide significance. Namely the link the North West has to Alan Turing who of course is only now starting to get the recognition he so richly deserves.

Most people know Turing was a fellow of King’s College Cambridge but how many of us knew he was also Reader in Mathematics at the University of Manchester from 1948 to 1954?

We’re closely linked to the man who helped to bring about a speedier end to the war, developed the mathematical theory that underpins modern computing and significantly advanced our progress in the use of artificial intelligence.

But, as is often the case with such geniuses, there is more to this than meets the eye and many more useful parallels with business than just the simple fact that knowledge and innovation are crucial to our sustained growth.

Turing was probably on the Asperger’s spectrum and no doubt written off by many as an eccentric. In the social atmosphere of the 1950’s there was no room for tolerance and a frightening readiness to ignore even valuable contributions of those who were different. This is summed up nicely by the catchphrase of the film made to commemorate the role of Turing in Bletchley Park: “sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine”

Less commendable is the way he was dealt with but I feel it’s important that that story is also told if we are to learn from our mistakes. We must all play our part if we are to continue to advance as a region– use your intellect if you are gifted, encourage others if that’s your role as a parent or teacher, engage and collaborate if you’re a business to help UK plc maximise the scientific innovation skills we have undoubtedly got in the North West.

There turned out to be more strands to this column than I anticipated but I hope it will add another feather to the balance in favour of a knowledge-based economy where all contributions are genuinely valued.

The January effect…

I believe I’m right in saying that Janus was a Roman God famed for his ability to look in two different directions at once. In my view, that is a very neat trick and one worth copying at this time of year whatever business you may be in.

Use the January effect to simultaneously look back on 2014 whilst focusing intently on what’s coming down the track for you in the New Year too. It’s probably an obvious thing to say but the benefits of doing it may not be so readily appreciated until you have tried it for yourself.

Because of the symmetry created around the end of one year and the start of the next, it’s possible and indeed very easy to make meaningful comparisons. For most of us the obvious one to make is between the final quarter of the year just gone and the first quarter of the year you are just entering. If your tax year coincides with the fiscal year, you have a final quarter left to either make up ground or press on and reach some loftier target.

Whatever state your business is in, this extra degree of focus is very useful and shouldn’t be ignored. I look on it as a great opportunity to increase motivation, remind everyone of where we are trying to get to and redouble efforts where some slippage may have occurred.

But there’s a second compelling reason why this is a good time of year to review progress of business against objectives. That is of course the chance to harness some of the optimism that always flies around at the start of a New Year. Don’t fall into the trap of those who take out gym subscriptions in January and give them up by the end of February! Make sure your plans are grounded and realistic – viewed against the backdrop of the calendar year just ended, are they achievable?

Use your comparisons proactively and put some real effort in now. That equivalent of a gym subscription for your business must earn its keep.  What do you aim to get from the outlay – be specific and realistic against the track record and then nail down some specific outcomes.

When the going gets tough, as it usually does, your objectives will bear comparison with what you know is achievable but will get an extra boost from the seasonal lift we all get from starting afresh. When you friends and colleagues start drifting away from their new regimes you will stick the course. Emboldened by additional knowledge and a doubly magnified fresh perspective, you can lead the way as if you had the strength of a God.