Business Management

By Lisa Edwards of Radiate Corporate Wellness

Do you ever wish you could wave your magic wand and make your stress disappear? We’ve all had days where deadlines, personal commitments, and unending email leave us feeling overwhelmed. Stress! Overcoming it may not be quite as easy as waving a wand, but here is a little bit of stress ‘magic’ you can use next time you think you’re going to lose your mind:

Movement

Moving your body instantly changes your thoughts, and puts a bit of space between you and the source of your stress. If you are at your desk, stand up and walk around. Take a minute to shake out your arms and stretch your neck and shoulders. Taking even one minute to walk around will dissipate your stress, and open your mind to alternative ways of looking at a problem.

Acceptance

Get in the habit of accepting each situation exactly the way it is. It’s amazing how much energy is wasted by resisting what is actually happening. A simple example of this is putting off a task or assignment that you don’t want to do. The stress mounts as the days slip by with distractions and excuses. When you finally sit down to do it, most of the time it’s really not so bad. Maybe you even enjoy it! The sooner you can accept a situation, the more energy you will have to take action.

Gratitude

Whenever you are feeling completely overwhelmed, stop. Think of something you are truly grateful for. This alone will get your endorphins flowing and allow you to see possibilities that are right in front of your nose. Cultivating an attitude of appreciation on a daily basis will make you happier and bring more of what you want into your life.

Imagination

Your imagination is one of your greatest gifts – use it! We are all more resourceful than we give ourselves credit for, and the imagination is the gateway to ingenuity. One quick way to get the creative juices flowing is to draw the problem. Go to the whiteboard, or get out a piece of paper and start sketching. Begin with something as simple as a mind map. Even better, think of a metaphor that represents what you are working on. This will allow you to visualize the problem in a new way, and give you ideas about possible solutions you hadn’t considered.

Choice

Remember that you always have a choice. This starts with your ability to choose your thoughts and attitudes about a situation. When you are inundated by stress, this can be easy to forget. Just like everything else, it requires practice. Each time you choose to replace visions of despair with optimistic thoughts, you create positive momentum that prevents stress before it starts. Thinking about the optimal outcome also signals your mind to give you information about how to make that mental picture a reality.

Move your body, accept your reality, be grateful, use your imagination, and choose your attitude; all the magic starts in your mind!

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Lisa Edwards is the owner of Radiate Corporate Wellness and offers wellness seminars to businesses and professionals. Visit the Radiate website to register for the upcoming 90-min Stress Strategies for Professionals seminar on August 23, 2011 or September 21, 2011 or contact Lisa at 250.896.7939 | lisa@radiatewell.com.

Want to grow your business without a big investment in advertising? Want to enjoy more repeat business, more word-of-mouth buzz, more customer evangelists? Look at your front line. Your customers’ experience with your business from the very first day they dial your number, or set foot on your premises, will determine whether they become loyal clients or (worst) vocal opponents. Here are the things you should be looking at, no matter what size your business may be:

• Let people talk to people.

The advent of automated telephone answering systems and our increasing reliance on voice mail, email, Twitter, etc. for communication comes at the expense of the human touch when new customers are seeking out a product or service provider. While some use of voice mail can be convenient, especially if you are an independent businessperson and can’t always have your cell phone turned on, using voice mail or auto-responders causes many prospective customers to just hang up and dial the number of your competitor. Ask yourself: when phoning around to get quotes or find a product, do you bother leaving voice mail when there are other places to call? And how often do you leave a voice mail, then move right along to the next number anyway?

• Make your customers’ problems your problems, even if you can’t make money serving them.

I’m not talking about bankrupting yourself by serving those demanding, unprofitable customers who are just never happy. What I’m talking about is being empathetic and keeping an open mind to how you can make your customers’ lives easier. When I travelled in Australia, I was surprised, often inconvenienced and sometimes annoyed at how front-line personnel rarely knew how to give directions or could tell me where I might find something. For example, most newsagents sell stamps, but I visited a rare newsagent who didn’t, and their staff was totally unable to suggest where I might find some in the local area. In Canada I think our track record is a little better than this, but it highlighted for me the importance of thinking about what challenges your customers may be having when they come to you, and equipping yourself with the knowledge to help them. If you’re in the home improvement business, you should have a Rolo-Dex with complementary tradespeople to refer to your customers. Consider providing front-line employees with training about local businesses and services, so they can answer these kinds of questions.

• Let your employees take responsibility with clients.

We all like to feel that we are being trusted, and often we are most motivated by a problem if we can see and talk to the people it’s affecting. That’s why those infomercials showing starving children in Africa have been so successful over the years (okay, I know your customers aren’t starving). If you want your employees to feel connected and motivated, consider empowering them to work specifically with a subgroup of your clients, and give them a zone of authority where they can make decisions and even spend a defined amount of money or time to trouble-shoot. If a customer feels like an employee is really going to bat for them, that will generate loyalty and trust.

These three strategies can help shift your company culture to one that thinks considerately and courteously about your customers. And isn’t that what we all want in the long run, to be treated considerately and courteously? Make it happen, starting today.

One of the exercises I do with clients in a Visual Planning Retreat is called the Business Model Canvas (using the great book Business Model Generation by Alex Osterwalder as our starting point). In the centre of the Canvas is a box in which we write the core value proposition that the business delivers to customers. Around it, we identify the other parts of the business that make it possible and profitable to deliver that value proposition.

Ironically though, and probably because of the “shoemaker’s children go barefoot” phenomenon, I have yet to enjoy building the business model canvas for myself. Sometimes I wish somebody else was offering Visual Planning Retreats because I would totally pay a competitor to do this with me.

As I was sitting on the couch this evening, catching up on the 783 unread items in my Google Reader (I’m so far behind in most blogs that I’m just clicking “Mark All as Read”), I realized that this very activity I’m doing tonight is part of the value proposition that I deliver to customers as a small business consultant.

Business owners are exceedingly busy people. They have to worry about marketing, sales, product/service delivery, human resources, financial oversight, yadda yadda the list goes on. Let’s face it – they do not get spare time very often, and when they do it’s probably not going to be spent reading back issues of Inc.com or trolling the business section of Chapters for new and unheralded works of insightful genius. But for me, part of the value proposition I deliver to customers IS the fact that I HAVE done (and regularly do) this kind of research. When I’m in product/service delivery mode, part of my “purchasing” or inbound logistics is actually the sourcing, consuming and synthesizing of new ideas and knowledge about working ON a business. Or a non-profit association.

Sometimes it feels like I am on a constant learning curve. I worry sometimes, to be honest, at how much knowledge about entrepreneurship, leadership, marketing, etc. etc is out there which I seem to be missing. But tonight it just finally twigged for me – the stream of knowledge is never-ending. I am more tapped into it than most if not all of my clients – and that represents a big part of the value that I bring to the table (well that, and the great markers).

Ironically, I have now come full circle to the mission statement I wrote for Directis Consulting in 2003 when I started up the business: Synthesizing the best practices and ideas in business being written about “out there” and then being able to apply it with context-specific insight to a client’s business.

Making change happen is subject to the rules of inertia just as everything else. A body in motion stays in motion, and a body at rest stays at rest until acted upon by some external force.

A group of people (say, a work team) will resist change not out of maliciousness or lack of motivation, but due to inertia. They are on a trajectory related to what is happening in the team (or not happening), so if you hope for change you must present a force stronger than inertia.

Fear is a common choice. A burning platform is a cliche for a situation in which people must choose between staying in a place of certain death, or jumping into a place of near-certain death or possible rescue. Imagine being on a burning oil-drilling platform in the North Sea. Dramatic, yes, but when a business is facing ultimate crisis, people will change to save their jobs.

But fear doesn’t always work, and it leaves scars. Deep ones. If you create a burning platform falsely, you will massacre any hope of trust in your people. So what is the alternative?

A sense of identity and hope is a good start. Seek out small wins and show people it can be done – each win is a small pebble rolling down the hill and this is how you build a different inertia. Pretty soon you have an avalanche.

Last week my father, who is a self-employed environmental engineer, suffered a serious life-threatening medical emergency. He is in hospital recovering now, and will slowly return to health with the help of many skilled caregivers and loved ones. For this, I feel extremely blessed. What it has reminded me is that as business people, we sometimes avoid thinking of the scary possibility of suddenly being cut off from our livelihood.

There are two major points that this family event has highlighted for me. The first is the utmost importance of having some kind of insurance in place for yourself, as a business owner, in case you are unable to work. I prefer and recommend disability insurance with a clause that covers you if you’re unable to work in your own industry again (otherwise you may be forced to seek a job wherever you can get one). Critical illness insurance is very popular with insurance companies and insurance salespeople these days, but it does not cover everything, and the money can eventually run out. Knowing that if you did have to stop working and sell your business due to illness or injury, you will still have some kind of regular income, is very important for those of us who don’t have employers’ benefits to rely on.

The second major point is to think of succession not in terms of “when I’m ready to leave my business” but also “what happens if I have to be away for a while?” It’s one thing to take a vacation for a few weeks (this is hard enough) but what happens if suddenly you’re unable to work when you have projects in the pipeline, or you can’t open the shop in the middle of your busy sales season? Whether you’re a solo businessperson or you have staff, you need to have a plan for emergencies. Somebody needs to be prepared to step in and check your email, pay your bills, communicate with customers about your expected return to business, and keep the fires lit while you get back on your feet.

I don’t have this person right now. It’s not a position that you post a job for, but it’s something I’m going to give some thought to. It’s dreary to think about, but I know that if I got hit by a bus and had to spend 3 weeks in the hospital, I would certainly want to have my customers looked after (not wondering what cliff I just disappeared off) and my banking done properly. It’s part of an emergency plan that every business owner should put in place, as unpleasant a task as it seems.

(A note – I think I’ve also seen a Business Interruption Insurance, and a Key Person Insurance. If anyone reading this is in the insurance biz, feel free to post a comment explaining whether these cover what I’ve talked about above).

I’ve got my hands on the September 2010 Harvard Business Review, and am devouring it rapidly, my notebook at my side. Expect a few posts from me over the next little while, translating HBR wisdom into business ideas for the rest of us.

Discovery-driven planning (explained in typical academic writing style in this wikipedia article) is essentially what most start-ups do, although usually unconsciously unless they are challenged by a funding source to provide more carefully prepared business plans and milestones. In Sept’s HBR James D. Thompson and Ian C. MacMillan have applied the disciplines of discovery-driven planning to a social venture (article title: “Making Social Ventures Work.” Some of their advice for social ventures is relevant for all entrepreneurs starting out down a new path.

What are the boundaries of the ballpark you’re playing in? Define your deal-breakers, your conditions of success, and your rules of engagement. Many people enter entrepreneurship with a noble cause to serve or vision to bring to life, but fail to define the rules they want to play by. See under: becoming an underpaid slave to a deadend business.

Recognize the discipline of discovery-driven planning. Define a business model on certain assumptions, trying to anticipate the challenges of growth. Do this with the knowledge that (here’s the amusing and important bit) your assumptions will turn out to be wrong. But since you don’t know which of your assumptions will turn out wrong or how seriously wrong, you should start your business at the lowest possible cost and use the events that transpire to continuously update your assumptions.

Use your assumptions to build a revenue model. Know how much money you’ll be earning, and when (and what the associated costs will be). Test the model as events unfold. The “discovery” aspect of discovery-driven planning means that each new piece of information is treated as a discovery that feeds the business model. When you experience success, examine why. When you experience failure, ask why and what have we learned? How does new information affect your plan?

The crux of this is having a disciplined routine for examining what’s happened and what you were right or wrong about when you did your initial planning. A series of checkpoints, possibly at the first quarter, first year and so on, provide opportunities to evaluate your venture and decide whether you want to put more time, money and sweat equity into it.

This applies for a business that is currently in full swing and looking to expand, just as much as a small business. Any project or program for growth or improvement can be managed using discovery-driven planning.

I wrote the attached Word document as the outline for a talk I’m delivering tomorrow to my Marketing 110 class at Camosun College. While you probably won’t get your feedback to me in time to help them from my inevitable oversights, I thought I’d put this information up on the blog.

I’d appreciate your feedback in comments about whether this was useful for you, whether you think I’ve got a good approach (for a small business – mostly aimed at my class’ group projects in tourism-related service businesses) and what I’m missing.

This was guided somewhat by the textbook for the course, which has to influence what material I present. Aside from this information, I’m going to be sharing a series of rate cards and typical costs for doing some of the main types of advertising and promotions drawn from around Victoria.

Once this gets test-driven for a while, I’m going to post it as some of the perma-content on this site and it may find its way into a book I’ve got on the go (early stages!)

Clicky-clicky on this graphic to download the Word file.