February 2008

Welcome back to Random Ramblings and thank you for the favourable comments about the first issue in January. Some people have even acted on a few of the thoughts expressed. Well done to them!

On this month’s menu is:
Ø Bin the Business Plan!
Ø BEEs and Foxes.
Ø Putting on a Show.
Ø Well Done, You Failed!
Ø Have You … ? The next instalment.
Ø Circulation Details
Ø And finally


Bin the Business Plan!

OK, maybe it’s a slightly extreme view but is there any point in a business plan? Before you think I’ve flipped, just ask yourself, how often does anything work out like the business plan? Or the weather forecast, or any other type of forecast? Actually I am not suggesting that one shouldn’t have a business plan, but just that they are not infallible. After all, every board paper I wrote (and there were a lot during my career) showed that the particular project would make a profit. So how come we went bust? (Not entirely my fault by the way!) Want to borrow money from the bank. You need a business plan. So that’s OK; if the bank gives you a loan, it must be a good plan; after all, they are experts … aren’t they? The only snag is that the MAJORITY of businesses fail within three years of starting! Oops!!!

Many years ago I read of an interesting approach to navigating a yacht – this was before the days of satellite navigation. Back then you plotted your course, told the helmsman what course to steer and set off. Along the way, you measured your speed, took account of tidal flows and the like and kept a running check on you position. And if all went well, you sailed serenely into harbour at your chosen destination.

Sadly it isn’t that simple. If you’ve every tried steering a yacht as it swoops through the waves, you’ll know that it is impossible to steer accurately. And your speed will vary as the wind gusts; and the tide may not be flowing at exactly the predicted speed.

Gradually, over the horizon appear the lights of port. Odd, they don’t look quite like you had expected. Still, you press on. A bit worrying though that this doesn’t look like it should. But it must be, after all, you have kept a very accurate plot of your track across the ocean. Even when you run aground, you are convinced that you are right and the sandbank is in the wrong place. I guess this is how Columbus accidentally stumbled across America!*

The interesting approach I mentioned earlier? Point the boat in the general direction, assume that the variables will largely cancel out each other, and be prepared to make some rapid course adjustments when you sight land and can work out where you really are. Maybe this would be a better approach than having absolute faith that the business plan will ensure success.

* By the way, if you go to Barcelona, down on the waterfront you will see a column with a statue of Columbus perched atop, looking out to sea. He is looking towards Italy! Confused or what? Well, no. If he were to look towards America, he would be looking inland, which you might find a bit odd.


BEEs and Foxes

Bureaucratic Evil Empires – I can’t remember where I came across this term but I love it! The Collins English dictionary has several definitions of bureaucracy, but the one that most of us would recognise is: ‘any administration in which action is impeded by unnecessary official procedures and red tape’. We could have a debate about what is necessary and what is not. But think about this. EVERY document, EVERY signature on it has a cost – it is an overhead. The time to produce unnecessary documents could be used for profitable work; the time the document sits waiting for that pointless signature could be removed to speed up the process. Why speed up the process? Well, assuming that the document is useful, surely you want to complete it as soon as possible, if not, why bother?

Remember the Peter Drucker quote from last month? "Ninety percent of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get things done." A couple of weeks back, my friend and business associate, Trevor Gay, appeared on the US business TV channel, Fox Business Network. Trevor’s passion is to keep management simple and let the front line get on with things i.e. to ‘let go’, to do less managing, to make it easier for people to get things done. Click here to see Trevor’s interview.


Putting on a Show

The chief executive of Marks & Spencer, Sir Stuart Rose, likens the daily operation of the store to putting on a West End show. If the audience likes the performance, they will come back for another show. If they don’t like it …

A couple of weeks back there was an article in the Telegraph about Apple and its boss, Steve Jobs. It commented that: ‘for Apple it’s all about the users’.

Belinda Earl is credited with reviving the fashion house Jaeger. She understands that the ‘show’ isn’t in her executive office, but out on the shop floor. Therefore she spends a great deal of time out there where she can talk to customers and staff alike.

In one of his frequent rants, the legendary Basil Fawlty famously suggested to his wife, Sybil, that she should enter Mastermind, specialist subject, ‘Stating The Bleeding Obvious’.

Putting on a show and focusing on what customers and users really want is obvious to Rose, Earl and Jobs, but appears to be a complete mystery to so many organisations. I guess these are the same organisations that appear to think that bureaucratic systems are helpful.


Well Done, You Failed!

So the big idea didn’t work out eh? Brilliant, that’s great news! Oh, you mortgaged the house to raise cash for the business and now you are sleeping on a park bench? Well maybe that isn’t quite such good news! However, assuming that the disaster isn’t of that magnitude, failure can be seen positively.

Those who are avid followers of Dragons’ Den may know that the wealthy investors are not put off by previous business failures. Far from it in fact. They take the view that someone who has had a business failure will have learned some valuable lessons and, as a result, will be a better investment bet.

But failure doesn’t have to be that dramatic to be helpful. I am sure that most of us have tried things that haven’t quite worked out. Excellent. We have now learned what doesn’t work and can take a different approach next time.

It is all too easy to get depressed when things don’t go to plan. But if we adopt the view promoted by a number of cutting edge companies that the fastest way to succeed is to fail often, then we can put a positive ‘spin’ on things that don’t work out. This sort of positive thinking is particularly helpful to one-person organisations, where confidence and belief in what we are doing are required to drive us on. Seeing setbacks as a good thing is a great start.


Have You?

Last month I featured the first dozen of Tom Peters Top 50 ‘Have You …?’ questions. Here’s the next instalment.

Have you celebrated in the last week a "small" (or large!) milestone reached? (i.e., are you a milestone fanatic?)
Have you in the last week or month revised some estimate in the "wrong" direction and apologized for making a lousy estimate? (Somehow you must publicly reward the telling of difficult truths
Have you installed in your tenure a very comprehensive customer satisfaction scheme for all internal customers? (With major consequences for hitting or missing the mark.)
Have you in the last six months had a week-long, visible, very intensive visit-"tour" of external customers?
Have you in the last 60 days called an abrupt halt to a meeting and "ordered" everyone to get out of the office, and "into the field" and in the next eight hours, after asking those involved, fixed (f-i-x-e-d!) a nagging "small" problem through practical
action?
Have you in the last week had a rather thorough discussion of a "cool design thing" someone has come across—away from your industry or function—at a Web site, in a product or its packaging?
Have you in the last two weeks had an informal meeting—at least an hour long—with a frontline employee to discuss things we do right, things we do wrong, what it would take to meet mid- to long-term aspirations?
Have you in the last 60 days had a general meeting to discuss "things we do wrong" ... that we can fix in the next fourteen days
Have you in the last year had a one-day, intense offsite with each (?) of your internal customers—followed by a big celebration of "things gone right"?
Have you in the last week pushed someone to do some family thing that you fear might be overwhelmed by deadline pressure?
Have you learned the names of the children of everyone who reports to you? (If not, you have six months to fix it.)
Have you in the last month taken an interesting-weird outsider to lunch?


Courtesy of www.tompeters.com


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And Finally

To return to the importance of failure, it is instructive to look at Thomas Edison who failed a great many times as he strove to develop the light bulb. There was probably a great deal of personal feeling in his comment: “Many of life's failures are men who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
One rather assumes that Aneurin Bevan,* was referring to a bureaucrat when he said, “Poor fellow, he suffers from files.” Sadly I am suffering from a large pile of paperwork waiting to be sorted and stored in my newly acquired filing cabinet!

*Post-war Minister of Health and chief architect of the NHS

David