If You Want 2015 To Be Better – Start Here

As we approach the end of another year that has flown by our thoughts inexorably drift to next year and if our business will be better than it has been this year. We ask questions like…what worked this year? What didn’t? What caused me to lose sleep? What caused most stress? Did I achieve what I wanted and if I didn’t what did I miss and why? What will next year be like?

And when you do think about next year you naturally think about the things you can do to make it better. What can I do to…

Attract more customers?
Attract fewer higher paying customers?
Hold on to them?
Have less problems land on my desk?
Increase revenue and profit?

We all do this…its human nature to think about how to solve something with actions – do this and that will be better. But whatever these things are they are unlikely to work because it’s not the place to start… Continue reading →

December 23, 2014 Chris Briggs 0 Comments business foundation, Business Strategy, connect the dots, Control and Certainty, Uncategorized

The One Big Difference That You Can make to Your Business This Year

I’m sure you’ve received messages about making 2014 better than 2013 and about setting measurable goals and so on. This is easy to say and not very easy to do. If you’re struggling and want to make 2014 different to previous years here’s 3 things you can do.

First, read or re-read my post that I sent you back in early November last year. If during the break and the last two weeks you’ve struggled to plan your year ahead then this post contains some links to a large amount of pretty solid advice and guidance. In my humble opinion, it’s well worth taking an hour or so out to go through (again, or for the first time if you didn’t see it because you were too busy sprinting to year-end or if you’re new to my blog) and digest.

The other reason for doing this is that it means stepping out of your business so that you can think about it at a higher level. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ll know that I view ‘thinking’ about your business as one of the most important things you can do and which most do too little of. Type ‘Thinking’ into the search box at the top right of this post and you’ll see a number of posts on this, the first one dates back in July 2011, around the time I started this blog.

Which brings me to the second thing you should do to help you make this year different and better. Hover a few hundred feet above your business and look down on it.

Look at how your business flows:

How you attract and retain your ideal customers;
How you convert prospects into new customers;
The products and services you create and deliver that is worth more to your customers than the amount you charge them (the value you deliver);
The resource, capabilities and leadership qualities needed to do all this;
The systems and processes needed to keep all running smoothly so you can focus on value and revenue generation.

With this flow in mind, where are the bottlenecks? What’s holding back the flow of your business and why? What’s the biggest constriction to the smooth flowing of your business? What’s the biggest thing that needs to work but isn’t? If you got this bottleneck working what difference would it make to your business?

I take clients through this process and we identify the biggest obstacle to their business flow. When I ask the last question, the answer I almost always get is, “It would make a huge difference.”

Unless you have infinite time and resource, this would be a good place to start.

And the third thing you can do? Identify where your expertise does not lie and get help. It will be quicker, more cost effective and you will have better results than if you try and work out how to do everything yourself.

If you need help making the big difference to you business then contact me and see if I can help.

January 16, 2014 Chris Briggs 0 Comments Business Strategy, connect the dots, Control and Certainty, Leadership, Planning, Strategic Thinking certainty, control, creativity, leadership, strategic thinking, strategy

How will you get to the other side?

One month down, 11 to go. How’s it going so far? Are you on course to meet your goals or is it too early to say?

If you’re not on course, or worse don’t know, then re-check that you have the right mechanisms in place to give you the information you need, when you need it.

Veering off course can happen quickly and if January hasn’t started as planned and considering how quickly it’s come and gone, where exactly are you and where could you end up in a few short weeks.

Imagine your goals are on the other side of a stream or small river in a specific spot on the bank. Getting to the other side isn’t a problem because the river is full of flat, secure stepping stones which are close together so you can take small, safe steps.

You need to pick your path, as the stones are everywhere, and in a straight line you could get across in about 40 steps. Remember, your goals occupy only one spot on the river bank, so you need to get to the other side at exactly the right spot.

What’s your tactic? Well, you might look up to check after each step you take or you might take a few steps then look up and correct your course if necessary. Either way, you’re unlikely to take many steps without stopping to check.

Now, imagine, you are blindfolded and can lift the blindfold and check your position only after you have stepped over say half-a-dozen stones. It is likely that you will be off course somewhat but at least you can correct that course each time you look.

Now imagine that someone else, who cannot see the other side, is telling you where to step. It is highly likely that this time, when you check, you will be even further off course. So, you inform the person of where you are so that corrections can be made and then take instructions once more.

Eventually you’ll get to the other side but will you be at the right spot and how much longer has it taken when blindfolded or taking instructions from another? If your goals are annual and each stone represents say, a week, you must get to the other side in under 52 steps…would you even have made it?

Clearly the most efficient and effective method is to not be blindfolded and to look up and check your progress every step or two. If each stone represents a week in your business then clearly you need up-to-date progress information, probably in the form of summary reports and short focused team meetings.

To stay on course, you need to check your heading regularly and receive the information you need to be able to correct your course if necessary.

If that decision is based on the information being provided by others in your company then make sure you have a robust system that collects and delivers that information up the chain, to you at the helm.

What mechanisms do you use for staying on course?

February 10, 2013 Chris Briggs 0 Comments Business Strategy, connect the dots, Control and Certainty, Review Phase, Strategic Planning Adapt and learn, business processes, strategic planning

What are you doing today?

Do you get into work and sometimes think, “What am I doing today?” What about the people who report into you, do they ask the same question? What is the impact on you of them not being sure? And what is the impact on them of you not being sure?

On a day-to-day basis the impact may not be noticeable, but accumulate this over time and you may find milestones and targets looming that you’re not sure you can meet.

What you do today will impact what you achieve this week, which will impact what you achieve this month, this quarter and so on. Everything is connected…everything has to be connected for your annual goals to be met.

To be certain that you will achieve your goals there must be a connection to your daily activity and therefore you must be in control of your activity and your people in control of their activity.

You should know what milestones you need to hit and how that breaks down into monthly then weekly and finally daily activities.

Without certainty and control you can only hope that you’ll achieve your goals but you will have no real idea if what you’re doing ensures you will. You’ll be travelling blind.

If you want to know more then read my report Why Most Businesses Fail.

If you don’t agree with what I’ve said then read this report and then come back to me.

May 9, 2012 Chris Briggs 0 Comments business foundation, connect the dots, Control and Certainty, Strategic Leadership certainty, control, leadership, planning, strategy, time management

Hit your goals…connect the dots.

In my last post I talked about the importance of connecting the dots of your strategy plan from your vision to your tactics, understanding the impact on your business of setting out to achieve your goals and the need to align the different areas of your business in order to do just that.

I used the example of entering a new market sector and converting new prospects and highlighted some of the areas involved in doing this such as sales, marketing, engineering and HR.

These are functional parts of a company and aligning goals, objectives and tactics to them is not straight forward simply because they are separate vertical sections.

To connect these dots, rather than try and align by functional departments or groups, align the goal, and work involved in achieving it, by horizontal processes.

Using the above example you may split the goal into the process of entering a new market and the process of converting a prospect. Break the processes down into logical steps and you will see how they involve a number of vertical functions.

The process, for a technology company, of entering a new market will involve market research (marketing), client profiling (sales), possibly new product features (engineering), new targeted marketing strategy, messages and collateral (marketing), possibly sales training (HR/marketing/engineering), PR (marketing), new account management (sales), relationship building (sales/directors), new contracts, pricing, services-level agreements, customers (administration), technical support (engineering) and of course a budget (finance).

That’s one process and around six separate functional sections of the company.

So you see, connecting the dots from a goal to the tactics and the tasks involved, is easier to do when broken down into steps within a process. The various functions or departments involved can then plan their role and align with each other to achieve an efficient execution of this process.

Define all the processes in your business and align the roles of the relevant functions to each. Assign someone to be in charge of the processes so that they can work with each function involved to ensure the processes are aligned and run as smoothly as possible to achieve the company goals.

January 24, 2012 Chris Briggs 2 Comments connect the dots, Control and Certainty, Deliver Phase, Plan Phase, Planning, Processes, Strategic Leadership, Strategic Planning, Strategic Thinking, Think Phase control, goals, leadership, planning, strategic thinking

What are you doing?

Assuming your annual cycle began last week then ideally your ship has left the harbour it was docked at for the Christmas break and has now set off on its new 2012 course.

Your company is in the new Deliver phase of your strategic planning cycle and you and your teams are implementing the tactics that were set to achieve the objectives and milestones which were created to achieve the goals which were established at the end of last year to drive the company to where it needs to be at the end of 2012.

Not only have you made sure that everything is connected from your purpose through your vision and mission, and your goals and objectives to your tactics, but you have aligned everything to make sure they have the best chance of being achieved and producing the best return possible.

For example, one of your objectives may be to convert a specific number of new prospects in a particular market sector. Your sales tactics will include visiting these new prospects to convert.

Sales will struggle to do this if the right prospects haven’t been identified and the right messages and solutions put together by marketing. So, marketing are working on the tasks to identify these prospects, understand their needs and match the best solution to meet them.

Marketing will also need to create the compelling marketing messages which will attract these prospects. That way there will be a higher probability that their sales colleagues will be able to make the visit, address any questions and objections and eventually convert the prospect to a buyer.

Peter Drucker once said something like, “The purpose of marketing is to make sales superfluous.” Marketing should at least aim to present sales with a warm, receptive customer and ideally one that craves what you are selling.

For sales to have the best possible chance to achieve their objective they may need training if the solution or benefits are new. This should be an objective of say HR and have been scheduled in advance to minimise disruption.

And we haven’t touched on engineering or support being aligned to provide and support this new solution.

Every new idea, every new goal, new objective will disrupt the status quo and so everything that needs to be done needs to be planned and the stages connected both hierarchically, between objectives and tactics, but also across the tactics themselves. If they aren’t then actions will be less effective or be lost, milestones missed and time and money wasted getting the business back on course.

Even if you run a business of one, the principles are the same.

We haven’t looked at the systems and processes that are involved and the impact on them in achieving this objective so I’ll cover this next time.

Have you connected the dots from your vision to your tactics so that everything is aligned to hit your milestones and achieve your targets?

January 11, 2012 Chris Briggs 2 Comments Business Strategy, connect the dots, Control and Certainty, Deliver Phase, Planning, Processes, Strategic Leadership, Strategic Planning certainty, control, goals, leadership, planning, strategy execution, time management

7 Steps to checking your business is ready for 2012

Regardless of when the fiscal year starts, many businesses see January as the start of a new year and hence a new cycle for the business.

Having said that many business owners struggle to step back from their business and plan the year ahead as they drive towards the year end. They make the decision to “do their plan” in the first week of January but find that they’re straight back into the business and the plan is either looked at when there is spare time or not at all.

But without stepping back and creating a new plan your business will meander through the next annual cycle and hopefully grow. At the best of times this is not a good idea…in this economic climate, this is simply crazy.

You cannot purposefully get to a particular point/destination/goal without a plan.

Here are 7 important checks to help you make sure you’ve covered the key areas.

1. Review and learn
How did the last 12 months go? What worked and what didn’t? Did you spend more than you anticipated? Did you lose some opportunities or customers? Did you support your customers well? Have you grown market share? Did you meet your goals? What happened that you weren’t expecting? What worked really well?

Do a thorough review of how the year went and make sure you have answers to all the many questions you should ask. This assessment will help you set some of the goals for the year ahead so that your company is stronger and more effective.

2. Work on your findings
From the assessment identify any weak and vulnerable areas and identify where you differentiated from your competitors as these are strengths that you need to exploit. Once you have these listed create plans to strengthen weak areas, exploit strengths and mitigating plans for all risks to your business.

3. Check your core purpose
Review your company’s purpose, vision and mission. From the year that’s gone are they still sound and valid? A year is a long time in business and it’s worth checking that you’re still on course to reach your long term aims and that these aims haven’t changed.

Things can change and events may occur which can impact the core of the company’s reason for being and what it is striving to achieve.

4. What to do
Create a balanced set of hierarchical goals; a set of goals that drive the business forward and make it stronger and more effective. Too often goals are simply an extension of what was achieved the previous year; revenue + x%, profit + y% and so on.
Be creative and set one or two visionary goals that will take the business to another level, 4 or 5 vital goals that will achieve the growth you need in the next 12 months, 6 or 7 important goals that will support the other goals and make sure they are achievable and some routine goals which will improve aspects of your business but which won’t have a detrimental effect on results if not achieved.

5. How to do it
Plan how you intend to achieve these goals. Work with those responsible for implementing the objectives and tactics and create a plan with measurable milestones and responsibilities. If you own your own business, with no people, do this anyway…you need to step out of your business and set targets.

6. Making it work
Make sure everyone in your company and other key stakeholders like your bank, investors and strategic partners understands and embraces the plan. Even share it with key customers assuming it demonstrates how your plan helps their business. Create a one-page summary of your strategy plan, print it onto large paper and put it where people can see it and see how their role contributes to it.

7. Staying on course
Establish a system and timetable for monitoring and reviewing progress. All companies stray off course if progress isn’t regularly monitored and reviewed. Set early milestones to check you’ve headed in the right direction during Q1.

Hope is no longer an option in these unchartered waters

Last week over $1 trillion was wiped of the world’s stock markets and as of writing this, they continue to fall. The USA’s credit rating was reduced by one agency and the possibility looms that it may be reduced further. The politicians in the Euro zone are papering over cracks that continue to spread and grow. There are renewed talks of a double-dip recession and all the makings of a “perfect storm”. There is nothing to indicate that things are going to get better any time soon but every indication that things could easily get much worse.

With the prediction that unemployment in the public sector will rise it is the private sector that politicians are looking to for growth. With the bank’s profit results looking grim there is little chance that they will be lending anytime soon and help the private sector invest for growth.

Business-as-usual makes no sense in these unchartered waters that we find ourselves in. And make no mistake, these are unchartered waters. No-one really knows how this is going to turn out and there are no historical events quite like what we face today to learn from.

As business owners and leaders, we are “navigating” through these treacherous waters on our own. We cannot hope that we will get through this; instead we must do everything we can to make sure that we get through this.

What you need to do right now is step away, thoroughly assess your business and strengthen as many areas of it as you can. (I understand that for very small businesses this can be difficult but you must find the time to do this and seek help if you need to.)

Carry out a thorough assessment of your company, markets and risks. Think about how you can make sure your business not only survives but comes out stronger.

Here are 7 things to consider to get you going:

Your company – Are you on course to hit your goals? Are there weaknesses in your company that you really must address before they hurt your business? Are there strengths that you can exploit further? Are your processes aligned and working effectively? Do you have the best business models which help you capture as much customer value as possible? An annual self-assessment is a vital part of setting the right goals and plans. Regardless of where you are in your fiscal year, in these extraordinary times, don’t wait, do one now.
People – your people are your best assets…look after them. Make sure they’re motivated and achieving their targets. If they’re not then take responsibility for that, find out what’s wrong and help them. You don’t want to lose them and so make sure they have the training, tools, direction and support they need to return the business you need.
Do they know and embrace your vision and do you empower and involve them when deciding how to implement your plan? Make sure they know how they contribute to the success of the company and how much you value them.
Relationships – Your relationships are crucial, are you looking after them as much as you could be? What would be the effect on your business if they closed? Are you delivering what your customers need? Could you be doing more? Are they struggling in any areas where you could help or introduce another organisation who could help? Aim beyond demand creation. What of your other stakeholders? If you will struggle without them then speak to them, check to see how they’re doing and what help you might be able to give each other. Form stronger strategic partnerships that will help you both survive and grow.
Your markets – Are you delivering what the key players in your target markets need now and are likely to need in the future? Are you aware of what your competitors are offering? You may not need to deliver something better but you need to know if what they offer meets customer needs better than your solutions.Technology advances at an ever faster pace. Are you abreast of these changes? Can you exploit them? There are a number of external influences that can impact your market segments. Don’t be caught out by them; prepare for them and use them to your advantage if you can.
Strategy – If you don’t have strategic planning system for setting and implementing the goals that will strengthen your company and steer it towards your vision then establish one. If you don’t have a strategy plan that details these goals and the objectives and means for achieving them then develop one. If you do have such a plan and the supporting processes then check they’re working and adapt if necessary.
This strategy plan isn’t your business plan but lies at the heart of it. It isn’t your marketing strategy but includes it. This is the plan of the goals you have set and how you aim to achieve them. You cannot stay in control and keep your business on course without one.
Leadership – Lead from the front, inspire, listen, make sure your people and partners know your vision and embrace it. Show drive and determination, show the confidence you have in your people, products and services to win and grow. Know your weaknesses and address them either yourself or with others.
Focus. Know what you need to do and keep on course, don’t be deflected. Guide your people, listen to their concerns and help them. Empower them to be leaders in their own area of responsibility.
Think – If you don’t allocate time for you and your people to think about your company, about your customers and about your markets you will simply keep doing the same thing year-in, year-out and at best survive. Especially in this current economic climate, that’s not good enough. Creative thinking is needed now more than ever. Whether it’s your products and services that your customers and prospects need, your business models to capture more value effectively, your marketing strategies to attract more opportunities, the deals you make, the relationships you build, the targets you set or any number of aspects of your business you should look at, take time to think.Creative thinking is often seen as a luxury which is sacrificed in favour of managing day-to-day pressures. It is NOT. It is vital to the success of a business and, like now, to its survival.

If things do turn around, if those parts of the economy which are growing continue to do so, if the Euro zone is sorted out and no more countries go bankrupt, if countries start to reduce their debts, if banks start lending, if… then carrying out these 7 things and more will still help make your company stronger which is no bad thing and no waste of time.

Start this today; arrange a time for yourself or with your people and begin this process.

Hope is the positive face of uncertainty. Do not hope that things will turn out fine for you and your business. Make sure it does.

If you need help then contact me…it costs nothing to talk.

If you don’t need help that’s great but if you do then get it and do what you can to protect your business against all this uncertainty.

What advice can you give to help others strengthen their business and eliminate uncertainty? Please share.

Image:stockmarketview.com

How much of your most precious resource do you waste?

Yesterday evening I asked my daughter to help me prepare dinner. It’s something we enjoy doing together. She was however submerged in a video game and I heard “5 minutes I need to get to a save point”. This game has a lot of side missions and 20 minutes later it turned out that she’d come across one of these side missions and off she’d trotted to save the day. “What happened to 5 minutes?” “Oh yea, I forgot.”

She’ll call me “AD Dad” when I often go back into a room and not done what I left the room to do. “Where’s your cup of tea?” “Oh yea, I knew I went into the kitchen to do something.” “What did you do instead?” “Whilst the kettle was boiling I noticed I hadn’t taken the clothes off the washing line. As I was doing that I noticed some strawberries were ripe for picking so got a bowl. Then I noticed the dog’s water bowl needed filling and then I came back… minus the tea.”

We all suffer from attention deficiency to a certain degree which is fine when playing a game or when making a cup-of-tea (or not), but can be a real problem in the workplace. People are distracted all the time, especially by email, and waste so much of the one resource you can’t replace, time.

People end up being busy doing little and wonder why the work piles up and extra hours have to be put in to meet deadlines. Productivity goes down, costs go up and people become de-motivated and stressed.

A coherent strategy plan can be broken down to monthly and weekly targets which can then be broken down into daily objectives and tasks if necessary. It can help you see what’s important and what needs to get done for the good of the company. You can turn off your email and the demands of others can wait because you know what you need to achieve. And if others ask you to do something which isn’t part of the strategy plan then you can question the need to do it.

As a leader, not only will your strategy plan and strategic planning system guide you, it will help you and your people do what needs to be done when it needs to be done, keep motivation high, stress low and will help you use your most precious resource, your time, as effectively as possible.

How do you manage your time more effectively? Please share your ways to help others.

Image courtesy of xscion.com

July 11, 2011 Chris Briggs 1 Comment connect the dots, Control and Certainty, Plan Phase, Planning, Processes, Strategic Planning control, goals, ROI, strategic planning health check tool, strategic thinking, time management

Invigorating boost or damp squib?

Are your quarterly review meetings the strategic boost they should be or do you and your people simply leave the room and go on with business from where it was left off?

You may have agreed some actions to catch-up on missed targets or to resolve some problems raised, but was the meeting and outcome worth the time and effort it took to prepare and attend?

Add up the number of people involved in your quarterly review meetings, the time taken to prepare for and have the meetings. You’re potentially looking at man-weeks of time and effort.

Even if you do everything you can to make the meetings effective in both their preparation and execution you still may not receive the information you need to make the necessary corrections to keep your business on course.

This is because, peoples’ emotions and office politics can get in the way. People don’t always want to say what’s on their mind for fear of the consequences. If the meetings appear to go too well, with no challenging questions being asked, then this may well be the reason. Peoples’ careers are of course vitally important to them and not raising a problem because they don’t wish to rock the boat is both common and understandable.

If you don’t get the answers you need, regardless of how tough they are to hear, then you may miss a vital issue that could grow into something that has a big impact on your business if not addressed. This is where bringing an external facilitator into these meetings can make all the difference.

An objective outsider, who knows your industry, can quickly come up to speed on your strategic priorities and goals, speak with a selection of people in your company and ask the hard questions, or raise the issues in the meetings that others don’t want to. Because of their objectivity and experience, they may also ask questions that no-one else thinks of.

Issues and ideas need to be raised and discussed. Review meetings need to be a boost to the company and the people who spend so many hours of the lives working in it. The return for having these meetings needs to be worth the time and effort invested. You cannot afford them to be damp squibs.

Continue reading →

June 28, 2011 Chris Briggs 0 Comments connect the dots, Control and Certainty, Review Phase, Strategic Leadership, Strategic Planning communication, goals, objectives, ROI, strategic planning, time management