Prepare in advance. No secret here – but how often do you actually take the time to prepare a detailed agenda for the meeting – and think through all the points you want to raise?

Take notes. Depending on the situation, you might be able to have someone else take notes for you. Assuming in the worst case scenario there isn’t, the more comprehensive, yet concise you can make your notes the better.  A process I’ve been using for the last 18months and would highly recommend is[ilink url=”http://www.smartwisdom.com”]SmartWisdom[/ilink] . It’s described as advanced note taking – personally I’d call it mind mapping on steroids.

Take breaks and do remember to eat! Because people often haven’t planned properly, they become preoccupied with their hungry bellies and hope the meeting will wrap up soon. Plan breaks into meetings, and avoid providing a lunch of lots of bread/sugary snacks/crisps and soft drinks – they’re all concentration killers! If you’re worried about the cost of having something healthier such as salads or sushi – work out the costs of having the people there and the impact of the decisions you’re expecting them to take and put it in perspective.

Train your mind. While playing the cello, I’m frequently playing with others for four hours or more with only one break – and concentrating hard as I’m often going through music for the first time. What hobbies do you have – or could you have – that could be used to develop your concentration?

Build your physical stamina. Some of the most challenging situations I’ve found can be meetings abroad. You’ve probably had to get up at the crack of dawn and are either having to speak in a foreign language, or at least working with others who are, meaning you’ve got to work harder to understand them. I’d assert that if you’ve got good physical stamina, you stand a better chance of performing in these types of situation.

Read more:
Five Do’s & Don’ts of improving the productivity of your meetings

The environment is constantly changing, and actions you thought would lead to guaranteed results – might not turn out so clear-cut in practice. The sooner you spot problems, the sooner you can take corrective action and keep you business on track, or change direction if that is appropriate.

Your customers, employees or suppliers will not take it kindly if you drive your business on full steam ahead – only to have to call in the administrators because you have run out of cash.

Having appropriate measures also allows you to build up data to use in your planning. For instance, if you know that by spending £15,000 pa on advertising, you have regularly attracted 30-50 new customers per year, you can have reasonable confidence that, in the short term at least, similar levels of spending should produce similar results. You would then track the actual results to ensure that this did in fact occur. If not, it begs the questions “what has changed?” and “what are other courses of action available in these new circumstances?”

Until the 1990’s, much of the performance measurement in companies was based on financial accounting measures only. However there are better systems available now.

For example, an approach known as the Balanced Scorecard (by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton) grew out of research to find a better method of measurement, especially given rapid changes in markets, which could render purely historical measures obsolete.

The Balanced Scorecard is a management system to help organisations achieve long term strategic goals and aims to achieve a balance between:

• short and long term objectives
• financial and non-financial measures
• lagging and leading indicators
• external and internal performance perspectives

Whilst initially developed for large companies, its principles and structure are equally applicable to SME’s.

In the system, performance measures are categorised into four areas:

1)    Customer Measures

For example; customer satisfaction (evidenced by surveys, mystery shopping), repeat business from last year, annual client retention rate, monthly visits to client sites, order-to-delivery time etc

2)    Finance Measures

For example; revenue (by market segment, product/service type), profit (by market segment, product/service type [Gross margin, Pre tax profits]) Creditor days, Debtor days, Breakeven point revenue

3)    Internal Process Measures

For example; sales process: number of calls/week, order pipeline, sales conversion rate; new product development: time to-market, % of revenues from products < 1 year old; operations: output units/day, response time, cost/unit, scrap.

4)    Learning and Growth Measures

For example; employee retention, employee satisfaction, absence %, training days per year, employee productivity (revenue/person, value add/person), systems/information capability

Look at each of these four areas in terms of your business objectives, the performance indicators, and the action required.

By putting in place, even a simple system, for measuring performance across the different areas of your business you can spot problems before they become too big and quickly determine which activities are really taking the business in the direction you want.

The “Deliver Results in 100 Days” programme is available free from: http://hilarybriggs.co.uk/resources/deliver-results-100-days/

Read more:
Measuring your business performance in real time

Put simply, values are what’s important to the company. They’re what you’re all about and why you’re doing it, and they will drive the decisions you and your staff make.

Culture is, on the other hand, how these values manifest themselves in the day to day activities of the people within your company, and will drive the behaviour of your employees. Ideally, and for obvious reasons, your culture will be very closely aligned with your values.

Define your values

It is important to define the values which guide the business, and set these down in a values statement. This values statement will set out the principles and beliefs which will guide your business as it grows, and will be a source of reference for managers and staff to fall back on when the business faces difficult situations where there are no easy answers. Clearly stated values can help your company react quickly and decisively when the unexpected strikes.

A lot of companies are recognising the worth of publishing their corporate values on their websites now and you can easily access these online. For example, you can view the corporate values of Kellogg’s, Microsoft and Coca-Cola, to name a few.

So, what’s important to your company? On a sheet of paper, draw up a table with two columns headed, “Values that are important” and “Why the value is important”. Complete it as fully as you can, and be sure to incorporate it into your business plan.

Nurture your company culture

A company culture is an expression of the common attitudes, beliefs, and behaviour of the people who are involved in your organisation.

The existing culture of an organisation will be expressed in many ways. Some of these may include:

• Through the communication from the management team (do they communicate with their employees well, for example)
• Through the way the employees act (for example, how they behave with customers will be evidence of how ‘customer focused’ the business is)
• Through the way the employees dress (do they show care, pride and attention to detail)
• Through artefacts in the business (such as notice boards)

Cultures can be positive or negative. Whatever the particular culture, it is inherent in the fabric of the business, and once established, is difficult to change. So if you are starting a new business, aim to set the culture you want for your business from your actions at the outset.

Your company culture can be one of the keys to making your business plan work. Make sure that you demonstrate the culture you want to achieve by strong leadership, choosing people who support your values, and develop and promote from within to ensure that you can always rely on your people to do the right thing according to the company culture you wish to foster.

Read more:
Why are the values and culture of your company important?

To thoroughly understand your major competitors, you will need to take a really good look at the products or services they offer, their market share, their position in the market (for example, are they a low price operator such as Asda or a quality and higher price operator such as Waitrose?) and their strategies.

Who are your competitors and what do they do?

A good, solid competitor analysis involves:

• Identifying current and future competitors, and the intensity of competition
• Identifying ‘forces’ that influence the intensity of competition
• Determining their objectives and strategies
• Identifying their strengths and weaknesses, and
• Establishing how they are likely to respond to actions that the organisation may take

First of all, establish exactly who your main competitors are. Then, gather all the information you possibly can through their website, available information on their background and people, press releases and press reports. This will tell you, at least something, about the finances, objectives, products and target markets. Ideally you will also be able to read their mission statement and values document.

When you have as much information as you can track down, look for where the gaps exist. How can you address these gaps? And how will you monitor changes in customers and competitors down the line?

This may sound like days and days of work, but usually the gaps will be quite obvious, or you will immediately be able to see what you offer that they don’t.

If necessary, actively ask yourself the question – what do we have that they don’t?

Why is this so important? Well, in order to grow your business effectively in a competitive market, you must have a clear focus on your competitive advantage.  This advantage only comes from understanding and then clearly communicating to the market place what you have that others don’t.

Read more:
How much do you know about your competition?

When things get busy we often feel overwhelmed by what we have to do. It’s easy to let our energy become defused, and lose motivation and focus.

The trouble is – this is exactly when you need motivation and focus! So it’s important to take back control and move past overwhelm and back into being motivated and productive.

I’ve faced overwhelm a number of times in my career, and almost every client I have worked with has faced it at some point. So here are the five tips I’ve developed to help you get your mind and your motivation back on track:

1. Take a break. If you haven’t had a holiday in a while – take one – regardless of how busy you are. Spending some time not thinking about work and instead doing something you enjoy – even for one day, will make a difference. Anything that breaks your normal routine can stimulate new thinking.

2. Take care of yourself. Look after the basics – good nutrition, a decent night’s sleep and plenty of exercise. These are often the first things we let slip when we feel overwhelmed, but they are vital if we are to function effectively. So stop neglecting yourself. Make your health a priority and you’ll find you can perform at a higher and more effective level.

3. Refocus. There’s a great analogy that can help remind you of where your focus really is: imagine you and all aspects of you as the solar system. Who or what is the sun in your life at the moment, around which everything revolves? Where are you? And who’s orbiting you (that is, who’s looking out for you and supporting you)?

It should help flush out where your focus currently is. If this is different from what you’d like, it opens the route to explore why not, and make the necessary changes.

4. Find inspiration all around you. One thing I’ve noticed recently from a mix of a trip to the Science Museum, feeding swans in the park to an informal gathering of chamber music, is how skills and technology build continuously.

For example, the evolution from steam power to space exploration has countless examples of problems overcome, which create new problems, which are then resolved, and so on; birds have learnt how to grab bread out of people’s hands (and the smartest ones do it without nipping your fingers!); what can be a seemingly impossible piece of music succumbs to practice and gentle work, and allows you to consider tackling even more difficult pieces in turn.

5. Believe everything is possible! I learnt something important playing tennis a few years ago: imagine a fast return coming down the far side of the court. Your heart sinks and guess what – you don’t make contact.

However, when approaching the same fast return when I believed it was possible to get to it, I’d find myself moving faster, stretching just that bit more – and able to at least get a racket to the ball. It didn’t always go where I wanted it to, however, I was encouraged to keep trying and did start to win some points.

So here’s the learning – believe things are possible – until absolutely proven not!
By taking at least one of these five steps you will start to move out of overwhelm and if you can take two or three or even all five, then you’ll soon find yourself re-motivated, energised and back on track.

Read more:
Feeling overwhelmed? Five tips to get you past it.

Let me elaborate. Typical issues mentioned were:

• Good people are reluctant to move – and even if they do, they expect ridiculously large salaries
• In IT support areas there’s a proliferation of hardware and software systems, so staff need to be extremely flexible. Applicants tend to have specialised on certain products and so struggle to adapt
• People from big companies are used to more management and can find it hard to adapt to the SME environment which requires more self management and autonomous working

I recall a situation many years ago when I was in production management. The buzz at the time was all about “Cell Management”. New “Cell Manager” roles were created and the successful candidates would be “Mini MD’s” of their patch. On paper it looked great. In practice, my observation was that there just weren’t enough people with the broad range of skills to fulfil all aspects of the role specified. Over time, the roles changed and after about six years, we were back to something that was remarkably similar to the original Production Superintendent role, though of course with a fancier title!

So what’s the learning and how can it be applied to an SME environment?

I’d advocate applying a market focused approach to recruitment. Research the talent that is available, what they want, where they are and how much they’ll cost. Then design roles around this information, and support with systems and training to create something that will work. For instance:

• Some of the companies I spoke to were very active in automating as much as possible – i.e. reducing the need for staff in the first place, though requiring a smaller number of more highly trained people
• Others were using outsourcing for very specific aspects of their business
• I’ve seen other companies use intern programmes to bring in graduates for 3-6 months giving them specific projects. The pay tends to be low and requires the company to repeatedly train new people coming in. But at least it’s helping the graduates break out of the “we can’t give you a job because you’ve no experience” conundrum, and the companies get bright, keen individuals wanting to get stuck in (at least some of them are!)

I believe that there is lots of talent out there and that everyone has something to offer. The challenge as a business owner manager is being able to adapt to take advantage of what’s there.

Read more:
Finding the right staff

You’ve developed your plan to grow your business and you’re ready to go – now comes the implementation.

I’ll kick off with another cautionary note from the field of exploring – this time Sir Ernest Shackleton, the great Antarctic explorer. One of my favourite quotes of his, from his book “South” is: “I continue to marvel at the fine line between success and failure”.

My interpretation regarding business growth: if you’ve done the preparation and planning we’ve already covered (in parts 1 and 2), you’ll be in the right ballpark. However, success could easily slip away.

So here are my five tips for implementation:

1. Monitor the market and your customers extra carefully, looking out for any signs of trouble. For instance a wobble in orders from a significant customer might require you accelerate your plan, or cut back on expenditure.

2. Review your activities against your 100 day plan regularly – weekly or even daily. Are things going as expected? If not, why not and what can you do? Being able to assess the cause quickly is essential. E.g. was it an inherently bad idea (in which case improve your preparation phases for next time), or was it poorly executed?

Whatever the situation, figure out what needs doing now in the light of reality, get over any disappointments and crack on!

3. Maintain focus. There are two main tasks to carry out – keeping the existing business running and ensuring successful implementation of the growth project.

Depending on the size of your business, it might be you want to split those – and depending on who/what skills you’ve got available – you’ll decide where to put your focus. The other party needs to be equally clear where their focus is too.

4. Keep taking action yourself and ensure weekly (daily if required) meetings with staff and contractors to keep the momentum building. However, do stick to your equivalent of the “turn-around time” from the Everest example I quoted in part 2, rather than pressing on regardless if things are going off-track.

5. Celebrate successes. Note any problems and put the emphasis on fixing them in the short term. The enquiry about why can come second. And certainly avoid any blame game nonsense as it’ll shut people and their creativity down.

To set the context for all the three steps on the road to business growth, in my view, the only thing that’s certain in life is that if you sit on your butt, nothing will happen. Doing something will generate a result, though that might not necessarily be what you expected. It could be worse – or even better!

So the key is to have worked through the revenue and cost scenarios, made sure the worst case wouldn’t kill you or the business, and go for it.

The more you can break your business growth into bite-sized pieces, that you can test, measure and refine at each stage, and fund through variable rather than fixed costs, the more you increase your chances of success.

Read more:
Working out your next steps on the road to business growth: Part 3 – Implementation

In part 1, we covered the basic preparations you need to make to scope out your risks before embarking on growth. You’re then in a position to start planning.

For me, one of the key aspects to address in a plan is when to turn back. Perhaps it sounds negative, however with risk there is the chance of failure. Having a plan to ensure you survive the worst case scenarios means you can focus your attention on the positive side and making it work – without any nagging doubts.

Here’s an example from a real life and death situation to illustrate my point: I recall reading, in John Krakauer’s “Into thin air”, a chilling account of the disaster on Mount Everest in 1996 when eight climbers died.

The climbers had been given a turn-around time of 14:00 on the final push for the summit regardless of where they were, in order to ensure safe return to the camp below. However, on this occasion, many climbers got caught up in “summit fever” and pressed on, despite an approaching storm – only to freeze to death as they got stuck on the mountain overnight.

So in order to plan appropriately, what do you need to do?

Seven Steps for Planning Growth:
1) Identify the key priorities for your plan e.g. grow sales by 50% in the next 12 months (which might require a new sales person, telemarketing, a website with SEO and online marketing etc). It’s vital to have a clear vision of what you want to achieve.

2) Create a 100 day plan that will achieve your vision – or the first part of it – based on average to good outcomes from your preparation assessment. Take care to work through the cashflow, as lack of cash causes over 50% of business failures in the UK.

3) Have a separate plan for how you’d handle the worst case and keep it in the bottom drawer – for emergency use only. Establish your equivalent of the “turn-around time” on Everest.

4) Decide who you need on board to make the plan happen – for instance specialists on lead generation, web site optimisation, or additional staff internally to handle the increased business.

5) Have internal meetings that involve the key members of staff so everyone is not only aware of the plan, but have also been a part of developing it. Be open to discovering hidden talents in your people!

6) If new staff are required, ensure you have good processes in place first that allow the jobs to be built up from easy-to-understand tasks, so people can get going and adding value quickly.

7) Ensure you have the right mentality. Things will undoubtedly get tough at times as not everything will go to plan. Keep calm, then review and update your plan in the light of experience to increase your chances of success.

Sometimes, opportunities to take a step forward are presented to you and they may not be at exactly the right time – for instance the landlord would like you to move out to enable him to redevelop the building; someone is recommended to you and you’d love to get them on board now. The same steps for preparation and planning can be employed to assess whether they are worth taking – or not.

In part 3, we’ll look at the how to implement your plan.

Read more:
Working out your next steps on the road to business growth: Part 2 – Planning

One of the key challenges involved with growing a small business, is that it involves items of expenditure that are both lumpy and large.

Lumpy i.e. they come in one-off chunks rather than more frequent bite-sized pieces, and they are large relative to the company’s profits. For instance: the costs of moving to larger or better located premises, taking on an additional member of staff or buying a new piece of equipment.

In these situations I come across a number of pitfalls:

• The office move goes well, however the market crashes and what looked like affordable rent suddenly isn’t. Or not quite so bad, it takes nine months longer than planned to scale up the revenue leaving a hole in the cash flow.

• The new member of staff who joined with such promise, turns out to be ineffective. After six months of trying to make it work, and paying the recruitment company fees, the company and staff member agree to termination and it’s back to square one.

• A new edit suite is purchased on a financing deal to spread the costs. However, it involved a personal guarantee which gets invoked when the business has to liquidate 2 years later.

There are clearly risks involved with growth, so what is the best way to navigate yourself and your business through this potential minefield?

I’ll split the tasks into three categories – preparation, planning and implementation.

Preparation:
1) Review your business’s track record of growth – and future projections. How is the market growing? How are you doing relative to the market? Get all of these sanity checked by someone who can bring cool logic rather than passion and optimism (which hopefully you bring!).

2) How much of your business is based on repeat business – ideally on contract? For instance regular customers who come to you every week or month, or clients paying you on a retainer, or on monthly Direct Debit for services used during the month.

The higher your proportion of revenue from these sources compared to one-off project or individual sales, the lower your risks of taking on additional regular costs.

3) What are your options to expand? Most importantly, how much will they cost and for how long would you be locked into them (or need to give them for a fair evaluation)?

4) Work out best, average and worst case scenarios with cash flows.

5) Explore your financing options – through existing reserves, additional investment from yourself of others, or via a bank loan.

In summary, the preparation piece is about fully understanding the risks you would be taking on in pursuing the growth option. Do check out the fine print on any finance deals/investor deals/lease contracts, ideally with a professional, but certainly with someone with actual experience, to avoid any nasty surprises down the line.

In part 2, we’ll explore how to develop your plan, and in part 3, how to implement it.

Read more:
Working out your next steps on the road to business growth: Part 1 – Preparation

In my experience from working in and with both large and small companies, staff issues are normally symptoms of other problems, so I’d like to share my top five tips for ensuring you’re building for growth in such a way as to prevent staff issues from occurring in the first place.

Read more:
Building your business for growth

Read more:
10 Reasons Why Presentations Fail

Read more:
Making the most of the information you have. Part 2

Read more:
Making the most of the information you have

Deliver results for your business. Step six – review your progress

Results are what counts. And all the talk, endless effort and countless cash will amount to nothing unless you know how to deliver results.

From working with hundreds of SME clients over the last 10 years, and from 15 years of personal experience in multinationals prior to that, I’ve distilled out my six top tips to ensure you have the know-how to do just that.

The final step, number six;

Review progress weekly (or even daily)

No matter how good your plan is, things will change as you go along. Some people use that as an excuse not to plan, others recognise it’s a way to stay sharp as you become more aware of what’s working and what’s not. Especially with new ventures, there will be surprises. Some things may work better than expected, others not.

For instance on a recent project involving a big roll out of product in the retail sector, we experienced various problems with both the kit itself and the installations. Through daily reviews we identified the issues and developed solutions – adapting the overall plan as required.

Whatever gets thrown up in your reviews, figure out why, get over it and crack on with new insights.

Reviews should also consider individual and team performance. Thanks to feedback and evaluation skills developed as a member of Toastmasters International, I can only stress the importance of making a habit of commending people for what’s working. They’ll be much more willing to listen to you when you need to recommend changes to their behaviour another time.

It’s not rocket science, however how many people do you know who pile in with the criticism when things go wrong – and then can’t understand why team motivation falls through the floor?

These tips work together as a system to reinforce each other. Apply them to help you deliver your results more effectively.

P.S. Think you’re already doing this and not getting the results you want? I’m always interested in having my insights challenged! Drop me an email hilary.briggs@r2p.co.uk and let’s figure it out.

Read more:
Deliver results for your business; step six

Results are what counts. So how do you get the results you want?

From working with hundreds of SME clients over the last 10 years, and from 15 years of personal experience in multinationals prior to that, I’ve distilled out my six top tips to ensure you have the know-how to do just that.

This week, step five;

Take action!

When I was working with Honda many years ago, one of their people commented about a colleague: “NATO member”. “What did that mean?” I enquired, with the response, “No Action, Talk Only”. It stuck with me and I’m sure you too have come across countless examples!

I’ve also noticed that the people who say their too busy to do things will happily take ½ hour to tell you just how busy they are if you’ll allow them.

The point is that highly successful people find ways to use their 1,440 minutes a day more effectively than others. They do what they’re best at, and delegate or sub contract other tasks. They use those pockets of 5 or 10 minutes that others waste – to make that call, send that email, think about an issue. And once they’ve decided on a course of action, they push on rather than fretting about whether another option might have been better.

When you keep nudging a project along, the momentum builds and reinforces you and your team’s motivation.

Next week – review progress weekly (or even daily).

Read more:
Deliver results for your business; step five

Deliver results for your business. Step four – focus on key tasks.

Results are what counts. Nothing else matters as much as the results.

From working with hundreds of SME clients over the last 10 years, and from 15 years of personal experience in multinationals prior to that, I’ve distilled out my six top tips to ensure you have the know-how to do just that.

This week, step four;

Focus on the key tasks

This can be easier said than done and achieving it requires immense discipline (see my previous posts on How to Stop Firefighting).

It starts with having a realistic sense of what can be achieved in the time available. I’m sure we’ve all come across bosses who’ll keep piling straws onto the proverbial camel’s back… Are you doing this to yourself and your own company?

One easy way that I’ve seen to get focus that works for businesses of all sizes is to simply block out time in the diary. This could be anything from 15 minutes to a whole day.

Another trick – if you’re feeling overwhelmed with all there is to do – is to list all of these tasks, next identify the ones requiring immediate attention, and then select one of those to work on for the next ½ hour. Which leads to the next point…

Next week – Take action!

P.S. Think you’re already doing this and not getting the results you want? I’m always interested to have my insights challenged! Drop me an email hilary.briggs@r2p.co.uk and let’s figure it out.

Read more:
Deliver results for your business; step four

Results are what counts. And all the talk, endless effort and countless cash will amount to nothing unless you know how to deliver results.

From working with hundreds of SME clients over the last 10 years, and from 15 years of personal experience in multinationals prior to that, I’ve distilled out my six top tips to ensure you have the know-how to do just that.

This week step three;

Engage people and resources

When you’ve got the required actions mapped out, it’s time to figure out who you need on board to deliver them, as well as what cash will be required – for instance for any marketing activities. In micro-businesses, it may be you who’s got to do it all – in which case have you got the motivation to break out of current activities which might be in the way, or invest even more time for a period?

With larger businesses, it’s well worth investing ½ – 1 day depending on project size to bring everyone together and thrash through all the issues to ensure everyone understands what’s required and how it all fits together. Better to tease out blocks and barriers and work out how to overcome them at the start – than be quietly sabotaged because key people were ignored.

Next week – Focus on the key tasks.

P.S. Think you’re already doing all this and not getting the results you want? I’m always interested for my insights to be challenged! Drop me an email hilary.briggs@r2p.co.uk and let’s figure it out.

Read more:
Delivering results for your business: step three – engage people and resources

Results are what counts – not talk and hot air.

From working with hundreds of SME clients over the last 10 years, and from 15 years of personal experience in multinationals prior to that, I’ve distilled out my six top tips to ensure you have the know-how to do just that.

This week step two;

Create a 100 day plan

I’ve found this time frame works brilliantly – it’s long enough that lots can be achieved, and yet short enough that things can’t be put off for too long – avoiding the classic scenario I’ve seen with annual strategic plans where the actions are split between the first month and last month with nothing in between!

One client in the market research sector was approaching year end below target – with seemingly little prospect of turning things round. We set about creating a 100 day plan to build a sense of urgency and attention on bringing in new business, both from existing and new customers.

End result – over £100k of business came in within the period allowing them to hit their targets, and a similar additional amount came in during the next quarter as a consequence of the momentum built up.

For true effectiveness, break the plan down further into weekly and daily activities.

Next week – Engage people and resources.

Read more:
Delivering results for your business; step two

Results are what counts. And all the talk, endless effort and countless cash will amount to nothing unless you know how to deliver results.

From working with hundreds of SME clients over the last 10 years, and from 15 years of personal experience in multinationals prior to that, I’ve distilled out my six top tips to ensure you have the know-how to do just that.

This week step one…

1)    Have a clear vision of success

This might be something for the long term, or perhaps just an intermediate point on your company’s journey.

For instance, a) working with a telecoms company, they wanted to grow one part of their business (based on call charges) to more than match their overheads, which meant doubling the volume

b) A start up wind energy company needed to get at least 10 prospective sites in its pipeline as quickly as possible

Outcomes: the telecoms company more than tripled the business within 12 months and the wind energy company achieved its 10 sites within 6 weeks.

Next week step two – Create a 100 day plan.

If you think you’re already doing this and not getting the results you want, I’m always interested in having my insights challenged! Drop me an email hilary.briggs@r2p.co.uk and let’s figure it out.

Read more:
Delivering results for your business; step one

Remember the phrase “how fascinating”. Thanks to Benjamin and Rosamund Zander I use it a lot – and find it has helped me in some tricky situations.

It’s easy to get irritated by people who tell you what you “should” do with your business but clearly have no real understanding of your sector.

It’s even easier to get angry with people who start shouting at you and blaming you if things go wrong – even if it was their fault.

And it can drive you to tears (or drink!) when someone states categorically that something is XYZ when you know for sure it’s ABC.

In business you probably have to put up with all of these irritating scenarios, and many more, every day. So how to do stay calm and refrain from thumping someone when it all gets too much?

My secret weapon is “how fascinating”. Sometimes I say it out loud, other times I simply smile and utter the words internally. It reminds me that everyone is different and everyone is entitled to their opinion – whether I agree with it or not. It doesn’t mean I need to take it on board. I just need to stop it affecting me negatively.

And, to be honest, it IS fascinating to hear how different people think.

Whatever they think and whether you agree or not – you are learning something. Something about them and how you might be able to do business with them, or how they need to be managed within the team, or perhaps why they aren’t delivering on their promises. The information is often there – and it is fascinating.

Read more:
“Oh, how fascinating!”

Could your hobbies help your business? I believe they can.

For example if you find that your mind tends to wander and you lack focus and concentration then taking up a hobby could help. Choose one that you enjoy and helps you to train your mind to focus and concentrate for several hours. By developing concentration and focus you can really benefit your business, for instance if you ever get involved with lengthy negotiations.

As a personal example, whilst playing the cello, I’m frequently playing with others for 4 hours or more with only one break – and concentrating hard as I’m often going through music for the first time. Or in Toastmasters International meetings, I may be called upon to review a two hour meeting and need to have been paying attention throughout. What hobbies do you have – or could you have – that could be used to develop your concentration?

If your business is wearing you out and you collapse at the end of the day – could a hobby help to build your physical stamina?

Some of the most challenging situations I’ve found can be meetings abroad. You’ve probably had to get up at the crack of dawn (or arrived late the night before after a long day), and are either having to speak in a foreign language, or at least working with others who are – and whose English may not be 100% – meaning you’ve got to work harder to understand them. I’d assert that if you’ve got good physical stamina, you stand a better chance of performing in these types of situation. So are you up for activities such as triathlons, long hikes, or dancing to boost your stamina?

Think about the hobbies you have and how they may be able to help you in your business – and if you don’t have any, then now is the time to start. You’ll enjoy yourself, they will help you to relax and at the same time you can build new beneficial business skills.

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Could your hobbies help your business?

100 days is the perfect goal setting timescale.

100 days (or just over three months) is long enough to give a sense that there is time to achieve the goal. However it’s not so far away that it lacks urgency. It sits in the middle; achievable with some pressure to get you motivated.

The other great thing about 100 days is that it means you will see results quite soon. If it takes too long to reach a goal it’s easy to get de-motivated. Achievement inspires and energises people. If you can break your goals down into 100 day chunks then you can keep yourself and your team inspired and motivated.

That’s not to say longer term goals aren’t relevant – clearly they are. But if that’s all you have then it’s likely they will always seem too big and too far away.

There is a reason why President Jed Bartlett’s team in the “West Wing” hurried to make their changes within the first 100 days.  Yes, it’s to do with the run up to the next set of elections, but its also to do with showing the electorate that they are actually achieving something, that they are keeping the promises they made in their election manifesto.

The first 100 days are always the most important – they set the tone for the future. And that applies in business just as it does in politics.

So set goals in 100 day chunks with clear markers for achievement; you’ll build a momentum that will carry you on far past those initial 100 days.

Read more:
100 days to achieve your business goals

If you’re feeling swamped in your business and there just seems far too much to do and far too many problems that need sorting out, with new ones appearing almost every day – there is a little trick I learnt early in my career that will help.

It will seem counter-intuitive as it doesn’t tackle the problem that’s in front of you. But if you can discipline yourself to give just five minutes each day – you will see amazing results very quickly.

So here it is; give yourself five minutes today dedicated simply to making tomorrow better.

For example, one client spent five minutes one day setting up some rules for her email inbox so that mail was automatically sorted. That five minutes today made every tomorrow much easier for her.

Another decided to look three months ahead (rather than just at tomorrow) and identified a few areas that he knew would need dealing with then and could be pre-planned. He then set about delegating those tasks to people, giving them plenty of notice of what would be needed. That five minutes (Ok, it was more like 15 minutes) saved days and considerable stress further down the line! And although he still had the current problems to deal with, he felt so much better that his motivation and energy increased allowing him to tackle the issues in front of him with renewed vigour.

I have used this technique regularly over the years – some days I manage more that five minutes and some days I manage none at all – however the forward momentum builds up and that feeds the positive feeling with its own reinforcement. Very soon you’ll be feeling better and the problems will be smaller, and most important of all you’ve set a pattern that will help prevent new problems and crises appearing in the future.

Read more:
How to change your business tomorrow in just five minutes

If you recognise that you tend to go from fire-fight to calm and back again then its important to importantly establish a 100 day plan to help focus your activities on moving towards calmness permanently.

Develop the vision, work out the details of what it would take, check the reality and identify where improvements can be achieved. Keep monitoring the data and adjust the plan as you go.

Remember the key is to take action to improve the situation. Constantly fire fighting will leave you for ever in that mode. You need to put out the fire and then, crucially, stop a new one from igniting.

It’s easy to get stuck in the fire fight mode, especially if you are struggling with a lack of revenue (or profit or customers), lack of cash, lack of time, poor delivery, or people issues. Pretty much any time there is a gap between actual and planned performance it can move you in the direction of fire fight and away from calm.

Even if you’re thinking “that’s not me” – beware. It’s very easy to get knocked into fire fight mode. Any change in your business or business circumstances can push you in that direction. For example, changes in the market, the failure of a key customer or supplier, a key customer unconditionally extending payment terms, a project going off track (e.g. internal IT upgrade, or new product development), a member of staff leaving unexpectedly or experiencing extra demands outside work e.g. a young family. All of these have the potential to put you in fire fight mode.

Failure to take action on a problem in time means that the fire fight becomes a vicious spiral – as things go wrong, you’re likely to get involved in explaining to shareholders/customers/staff/spouse what’s going on and what you’re doing about it – taking up more precious time. You’re likely to feel under pressure and stressed, which further reduces your effectiveness. It can also reduce the effectiveness of your immune system, rendering your body more susceptible to colds etc, having a further negative hit.

In extreme cases it can lead to nervous breakdown – something I have witnessed in the car industry on more than one occasion.

So take action now. If you are fire fighting already use these techniques (over the last four weeks) to move you towards calm and if you’re lucky enough to be in the calm phase, then don’t get complacent – make plans to ensure that the unexpected doesn’t start a fire under your feet.

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How to Stop Firefighting – 100 days to a calm business

From fire-fight to calm is a common continuum for many businesses. Over the last two weeks I have looked at how to get calm and how to prevent the fires. But with the best will in the world – you’ll come up against blocks that will impede your progress to calmly functioning business with no smouldering corners.

Its important to get into the detail of the problem and collect the data needed to help you move through it and ensure it doesn’t happen again.  But if you’re already in the thick of a fire-fight then investing further time to get into the detail and collect the data etc. is a tough call.

In my experience the “no time” excuse comes up often. I can only stress the importance of establishing a clear vision of the calm state, and breaking actions down into tiny pieces so at least some progress can be made.

More fundamental blocks often come from our personality traits, for example impatience, preferring the big picture, or wanting to stay in control (and not wanting staff members to start driving the improvements). All of these can easily block progress. Ask yourself some searching questions and make sure your personality is not the cause of your problem.

Coming from a maths and engineering background, I enjoy charting data to see trends and monitor progress, but I suspect a lot of even quite senior business leaders perceive they lack the relevant maths skills, or at least feel uncomfortable with data handling and would rather not do it.

Take courage from a foreman from my production days. He made the most progress of anyone in my team. He’d left school at 14 with no qualifications and had never even seen a computer before. He was able to grasp plotting quality data and soon found that this small piece of additional information made a huge difference to his productivity and effectiveness.

So I’d challenge anyone who claims that the kinds of analysis I’ve talked about would be beyond them. In the words of quality guru W. Edwards Deming, “you do not have to do this – survival is not compulsory”. It’s your call!

Read more:
How to Stop Firefighting – Getting Past the Blocks

If your business life seems to be a constant round of fire-fighting, getting calm, fire-fighting, getting calm… and round and round you go (perhaps you don’t even have the calm moments!) then there are a couple of things you need to do to get you off that merry-go-round.

You just need five minutes a day.

Read more:
How to Stop Firefighting – Preventing the Fires in 5 minutes

Many business owners and managers find themselves caught up in a constant round of fire fighting. There just never seems to be a quiet moment and when you eventually get your head above water.

The good news is – there is a lot you can do to stop the fire fighting and get calm and back in control.

Early in my career I found myself in the role of Production Superintendent, responsible for over 80 people working on the door build for the Rover 800 at Rover Group’s Cowley Assembly plant.

I was running round like a headless chicken, desperately juggling problems of all shapes and sizes from quality issues and parts supply to people challenges. My colleagues seemed to be doing much the same. It would have been easy to assume that “this is how it is”. However, at the time I was working closely with Honda, and it struck me that there seemed to be much more calmness in their approach; I vowed to create some of that in my section before my team and I burnt out!

Within 3 months I had tangible results, and 20 years on I am still using these same techniques. I have used them in every subsequent position, in my current business and with my clients’ businesses.

So what can you do?
1) The first thing is to be aware of where you are on the continuum of “fire fight to calm”. Think of it as a 0-10 scale, and keep track of any changes

2) If you’re in the fire fight side, the second action is to build a strong visualisation, including feelings, of what the “calm” version would be like

3) Then build a detailed plan of what’s required to deliver that – e.g. the number of new customers, number of projects/size/margin, sales conversion rates etc

4) Identify where things are off-track at the moment and why. It’s important to dig in to the detail. You need to delve in and specify how to increase margins, for example

This one step can make a huge difference. By simply looking at the detail and defining it I have seen companies I work with increase revenue by 40%, increase the number of customers re-ordering by 57% and reducing lag time between order and delivery from 30 days to 15 days. All of these impact the bottom line. All of them help to move you permanently away from fire fight mode.

This is because once the reality is understood, improvement actions can be planned. Even if the reality is well off the original requirement, and no immediate improvements can be found, it’s better to know this and focus efforts on alternative lines of action rather than pursuing the “if we achieve X” mantra, when you clearly won’t in the near future!

So although in the midst of a fire-fight it may be counter-intuitive to pause. Do take a moment (or a few!) and work through the points above. In particular make sure you put some time and energy into pint 4 – this will make the biggest difference.

Next week I will dig into this a little deeper and explain how to prevent further fires breaking out in the future.

Read more:
How to Stop Firefighting – Getting Calm

Do you find your mind wandering in long meetings? Could you do with a little more concentration and focus?

My observations of typical business owners is that they are often running all day from meeting to meeting, rushing to respond to emails and mobile calls in between. Whilst on the surface it looks productive, further observations, from situations such as chairing Board meetings, running away-day events or conducting negotiations, is that many business leaders frequently struggle to concentrate and stay focused on one thing for any significant period of time.

Does it matter? And if so, what can you do about it?

Well yes it does matter! (No surprise). Let’s take the potential impact from some of these typical scenarios:

•    Board meeting – hopefully there should be high quality thinking about how the business is doing and where it’s going. If key people are not able to contribute at 100% because their mind is wandering, the worst outcome is poor decisions, closely followed by delayed decisions or simply ineffective use of time, as the discussion takes longer than planned

•    Away-days – should be generating fresh ideas on anything from particular operational issues, to longer term strategy development. Again, having all participants on the ball is crucial to achieve a robust outcome, otherwise there’s a lot of waste in people’s time and venue costs

•    Negotiations – it’s crucial to listen out for the nuances, signals , nervous twitches and every other thing you can think of to increase your chances of securing a good deal. It’s not unusual that it might take hours, perhaps even days or weeks to secure an agreement. Even just a 1% gain on a multi-million deal is worth having, in my book

How would you rate yourself? How many hours can you remain focused and on the ball? How does this compare with what you are required to do to deliver top performance?

Assuming whatever level you’re at you want to improve, here are five steps to build your concentration and focus:

1)    Prepare in advance. No secret here – but how often do you actually take the time to prepare a detailed agenda for the meeting – and think through all the points you want to raise?

2)    Take notes. Depending on the situation, you might be able to have someone else take notes for you. Assuming in the worst case scenario there isn’t, the more comprehensive, yet concise you can make your notes the better.

A process I’ve been using for the last 18 months and would highly recommend is SmartWisdom. It’s described as advanced note taking – personally I’d call it mind mapping on steroids.

3)    Take breaks and do remember to eat! If I’m running a long meeting I’d never go for more than 1 ½ hours without a break. Because people often haven’t planned properly, they’ve not thought about any food requirements and hope that the meeting will wrap up soon. This might mean you end up at 3pm, with people who’ve not had anything to eat or drink.

There’s then what kind of food; typical lunch menus for meetings are often the things that will kill concentration – lots of bread/sugary snacks/crisps and soft drinks. If you’re worried about the cost of having something more healthier such as salads or sushi – work out the costs of having the people there and the impact of the decisions you’re expecting them to take and put it in perspective. I’ve got the nick name “squirrel” with some clients as I’ve always got a supply of almonds with me!

4)    Train your mind. I maybe fortunate in that some of my hobbies help develop concentration over several hours.

For instance whilst playing the cello, I’m frequently playing with others for 4 hours of more with only one break – and concentrating hard as I’m often going through music for the first time.

Or in Toastmasters International meetings, I maybe called upon to review a two hour meeting and need to have been paying attention throughout.

What hobbies do you have – or could you have – that could be used to develop your concentration?

5)    Build your physical stamina. Some of the most challenging situations I’ve found can be meetings abroad. You’ve probably had to get up at the crack of dawn (or arrived late the night before after a long day), and are either having to speak in a foreign language, or at least working with others who are – and whose English may not be 100% – meaning you’ve got to work harder to understand them.

I’d assert that if you’ve got good physical stamina, you stand a better chance of performing in these types of situation. So are you up for activities such as triathlons, long hikes, or dancing to boost your stamina?

Some of you might have turned pale at the thought of doing strenuous exercise, or any other type of improvement activity and have already made the easy dismissal – “I haven’t got time for that”.
From my observations, top performers do make time – it’s your call on whether it’s of sufficient importance to your business that you’re at your best for those long meetings.

Read more:
5 steps to build your concentration and focus in long meetings

MISTAKE 7 – Staying in the comfort zone

It’s easy to stick with people you know and understand – but there’s one downside; who’s challenging you and testing your thinking?

As we view the world through our own sets of values and beliefs, it means we are more vulnerable to missing things which might be very obvious to others with a different background or experience. For instance, ever used a cooker or gadget which seemed like the designer had never actually used the product in everyday life?  (I think companies are much better at this now but sometimes corners get cut as time and resources get squeezed.)

Whilst it may be uncomfortable to step outside your usual zone, it’s better than experiencing the discomfort of a major problem in the business because no one around you had the courage to say “hang on a minute – what about X?”’

Innovation comes from picking up ideas from outside the conventional thinking. Mixing with others will increase your chances of doing this. The more diverse your contacts (whether by sectors/age/ethnic group/gender), the more you’ll also be able to “narrow the angles” on potential incoming problems; someone in your group will have had experience of issues that you haven’t – better to learn from others’ mistakes than get extra battle scars yourself!

So ask yourself – what hobbies could you take up that could expand your network? How could you benefit from better use of your contacts through family, friends or existing activities? Some people like to keep work and private life completely separate – however I’m suggesting using them more as an intelligence source.  Be interested in their perspectives on the world; what are they noticing, what impact might that have on you and your business? How would they deal with your challenges? What alternative approaches could you generate?

By avoiding, at least to some degree, these seven common mistakes (featured over the last seven weeks) your business has a far greater chance of not just surviving but thriving!

Take a look at each of these areas and ask yourself some tough questions, and be honest! Your answers and the resulting actions you take could make all the difference to your future wealth and happiness.

Read more:
Are You Killing Your Business? Mistake Seven

MISTAKE 6 – Lack of self awareness

Many business owners refuse to face their fears and insecurities, often because they don’t want to appear stupid or expose a lack of knowledge. They don’t trust other people and want to hold on to everything themselves because they believe no one can do it as well as they can. They have a lack of awareness of their own personality, of their strengths and weaknesses, and their impact on others. Ultimately this means they are less able to build an appropriate team around them.

Many think they’re great delegators – but in reality they are just dumping or they’re micromanaging, so they don’t achieve any real engagement with their people. This then reinforces their view that “you just can’t trust others to do anything…”

It’s really easy – and highly tempting – to blame poor performance on other people or circumstances– but are you yourself the problem?

For instance, do you ever find yourself repeating things such as; recruiting the wrong people; having key people leave unexpectedly; getting yourself overloaded?

We all have patterns that keep coming back – good or bad. It’s worth investing some time in self analysis – taking that long hard look in the mirror – to check out whether we’re really as good as we’d like to believe – or even need to be, to take our businesses forward in these challenging times.

If any area of your business is struggling, then the most likely culprit is you – not the recession, not the government, not your staff. You.

Read more:
Are You Killing Your Business? Mistake Six

There are seven common mistakes that people make that can kill their business. Over the next few weeks I will be sharing some of those mistakes – to help you avoid them.

MISTAKE 5 – Bringing In The Wrong People

It’s great if you’ve recognised and acted upon the need to bring in external people, however, many business owners hire in their own image – so the gaps are not actually filled. It’s also common for the recruitment to be left until the last minute (to save costs) and so a rush decision is made, potential problems are overlooked, references are not checked, and business partners and shareholders are not consulted so they never really “buy in” to the new recruit.

It’s easy to rely on friends and family – who may be good enough in the early stages – but in the longer term they can be a constraint, and a very tricky problem to deal with later on.

Remember, no matter how good someone is, if there’s a difference in values, then the only questions that matter are “When will the row happen?” and “On what subject will it be?”

If you are considering using a consultant/advisor/mentor it can be hard to choose the right one, so find out;

• How much real world experience do they have?
• Is it relevant to what you need? 
• Are their skills and experience complimentary to yours? 
• Do you have mutual respect? How important will you be to them? 
• Do they know their own limits? 
• What networks and contacts do they bring? 
• Will they let you talk to their clients to get a feel of how they work? 

Make sure you are comfortable with all these areas before committing yourself.

Read more:
Are you killing your business? Mistake Five

MISTAKE 4 – You Haven’t Got Anyone To Bounce Ideas Off

Many new businesses are too small to have a proper Board or even a Non Executive Director. Some issues are not appropriate to talk to staff about (for example exit planning or the poor performance of a member of staff) and often partners and friends just don’t “get it”,  and advisors may have only a narrow focus or worse still have their own agenda. So business owners can end up in a silo on their own.

This can be very damaging. Talking things though with others is important as it may yield new perspectives. Just as valuable are the situations where people endorse your view reassuring you that you are on the right track. Likewise if the reactions and advice are mixed then perhaps it’s an indication that there’s more work to be done to understand the issue.

For example; I’m naturally a very optimistic person and in many situations it’s a great strength: I have had great results overcoming major challenges ranging from a recovery after a factory fire through to managing tight cashflow situations.  However, at other times it’s been a weakness as it’s meant I’ve missed things. For instance, overly focusing on the opportunities, I got involved far too hastily with one company five years ago and ended up having to put it into liquidation. 

So personally I now check out ideas with other contacts I have who, to my optimistic way of thinking, are “negative”; they will see things I would overlook or dismiss.

This process brings out its own challenges, such as keeping an open mind whilst hearing things one doesn’t want to, and being able to communicate with people with different values. But it will make you and your business stronger.

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Are you killing your business? Mistake Four

Don’t be the reason your business fails. Over the next five weeks I will be sharing the most common mistakes that people make that kill their business.

MISTAKE 3 – Growing Too Quickly Before Your Model Is Proven

Typically, at the start, the owner’s passion and belief in the business is very high, and sales come in. So, they gear up by expanding staff and premises – only to have to cut back as the sales increase turned out to be just a blip.

Every business needs working capital and as the business increases so does the working capital requirement. So if cash is tied up in stock or in covering debtors that owe money on standard 30 day terms, then the company runs the risk of running out of cash. This is a well recognised phenomenon and for this very reason the Bank of England is expecting the business failure rate to increase as we come out of recession.

So make sure you plan for any expansion – often business owners fail to do this; they celebrate the increase in business and then blame the banks for pulling the plug just when things are picking up. The reality is you need to sit down with your Bank Manager and discuss the need for funding several months in advance to avoid any panic requests.

In addition if you don’t have the appropriate systems and procedures in place, you can end up being sucked into more and more areas as the business grows, meaning you spend more time working in the business and less time working on it.

Another issue can be a lack of knowledge about how to scale the business – in particular how to reach new customers and the systematic achievement of conversion rates. This can mean that sales come in “in fits and starts” making longer term growth planning more difficult.

Read more:
Are you killing your business? Mistake Three

Read more:
Are you killing your business? Mistake Two

As a business starts to grow, it’s crucial that your actions don’t strangle it in its infancy.  Over the next seven weeks I will be sharing the seven most common mistakes that people make that kill their business.

MISTAKE 1 – Doing Too Much Yourself
Many business owners fall into this trap of trying to do it all by themselves. As they attempt to keep their costs to a minimum they avoid hiring or outsourcing. It seems like a sensible strategy to begin with but ultimately it can mean you get bogged down in day-to-day issues and fire-fighting. There’s  less and less time to step back, plan for the future and anticipate problems – which then hit as the cycle goes round again.  If you find yourself in the classic “firefight to calm to firefight” cycle – then the chances are you are doing too much yourself.

On top of this, guilt about the lack of time spent with the family can compound the issue and in extreme cases can lead to exhaustion and collapse. It sounds dramatic – but unfortunately I have seen it happen.

Many business owners kid themselves that everything is OK and only start to hire staff or outsource when the cracks are beginning to show. By then it can already be too late. You need to think ahead and get help in before you’re too exhausted to function.

So start by being aware that you are on the continuum of “firefight to calm”. When you are next on the firefight side build a strong visualization of what the “calm” version would be like.
The next step is to build a detailed plan of what’s required to deliver that – identify specific actions, and break them down into small pieces. Take action. Monitor the progress and look out for signs of trouble

Read more:
Are you killing your business?

Outlooks from organisations such as the FSB: “business prospects for the year ahead are looking bleak”, to the CBI: “bumpy times ahead for businesses in Britain”, may well indicate that 2011’s going to be another tough year. Whatever your take on the matter, it makes sense to look at ways you can differentiate your business and improve your chances. Looking after the customers you’ve worked so hard to win over is one crucial area with plenty of potential.

For any of you that might feel a bit discouraged at another exhortation to raise the bar yet again, I have some good news – the standards out there aren’t that high. Instead of doing the usual examination of best practice, let me give you some examples I’ve observed recently of things NOT to do if you want great customer service, to stimulate improvements:

The product or service isn’t fit for purpose. I’d purchased a pair of Salomon walking boots that were definitely not made for walking! The soles completely fell apart after only 3 years’ moderate use. “Normal wear and tear” was how Salomon’s service department described them. Yet I’d bought them as walking boots – not bedroom slippers! Action: Check what your customers really want – this may have changed from when you originally designed your product or service.

The people or processes aren’t up to scratch. I wanted to transfer money from one of my NatWest accounts to a third party and used their telephone banking system, carefully giving the instructions on account number and amount. I then found that they have taken the money from a different account, causing it to go overdrawn, triggering a raft of correspondence about unarranged borrowing and fees etc. Bad enough that someone should make a mistake, but apparently having no check to prevent taking more out from an account than is available seems bizarre to me. Action: Work with your people to think through any point where things could go wrong for customers – and what to do to avoid it happening.

Customers can’t contact you easily. When I trawled the Salomon website looking for a “contact us” type page, I was amazed to find absolutely no way of getting in touch with them. It was only by seeking help from outdoor shops such as Snow+Rock that I managed to track down the one sales rep come service man – who was then only interested in trying to sell me another pair of boots rather than deal with my complaint. Action: Seek out feedback from your customers before they even think of complaining and nip any problems in the bud.

The call centre experience is truly awful. I’m sure you’ve got your own nightmares of seemingly endless and confusing lists of options to navigate through before you even get to the call centre. When trying to resolve my problem with NatWest, I was told I was being passed to the person who had investigated the original problem. After 7 minutes of waiting the call dropped into thin air and I was back to square one. When I called back I was told “You need to speak to the Lending Department”, who were of course unavailable. Action: Test out your own service lines and listen in to calls regularly to understand what’s really going on.

Over promise, under deliver.  One my first call to NatWest I was promised everything would be sorted out no problem. On the second time, that my Relationship Manager would be in touch. Neither happened. Action: Make it your policy to always do what you say you’ll do, and to ensue that your business processes can deliver. If you can’t, at least let people know!

We’re experiencing customer service – good and bad – all the time and it’s very easy to criticise poor performance. Rather than get angry or distracted by the problem cases, use them to generate tests for your own business. How does your business avoid that kind of issue? If not, how could you? Small steps of improvement day after day will give you the competitive edge and increase the robustness of your business to weather whatever may happen in 2011.

Read more:
Customer Service: Use your own bad experiences to sharpen your game

Read more:
CBI predict the slow recovery to continue through 2011

Read more:
Survival is not enough – how to accelerate growth