Last night I spoke at an event in Manchester for the Royal Manchester Childrens Hospital “Many Hands” Campaign.  Raising money for the Childrens hospital by encouraging lots of businesses to get engaged and raise a thousand pounds, I was asked to say a few words on the benefits of having a strong CSR position as a business.

Aside from the obvious things which you can read anywhere around risk management and reputation, I thought I’d use an environmental acronym to position where I think business procurement is at.

T - Technical Solution.  Businesses don’t buy you because you’ve got a strong CSR position. It will be taken as one of a series of things in the supply arrangement.  You have to be able to satisfy their technical solution to a problem first.  Whether that be via a box of tricks or a service.

R – ROI.   We’ve been at the forefront of environmental best practice for over fifteen years and one thing that is as clear as day is that the numbers matter.  Unless you can make the business case work first, people won’t attach a premium to your product or service.  In some instances – such as public sector – you can derive some small premium of 2-3% because of government initiatives to accelerate the CO2 footprint of the public sector.

E - Environmental.  This is all about CO2 and the cradle to grave footprint on the environment.  You’ll get to this if you satisfy T+R.

E - Ethical.  Beyond the attributes of the product itself and into the overall approach to doing business.  Choices you make in your supply chain and your holistic approach to business.

S – Stakeholders.   How those benefits can be used in your business or your customers business to further their aspirations, meet their targets or CSR aims.

So, if you want to sell to me, you need to act like a TREE  

In our own organisation, we look for suppliers and initiatives which are cost effective, cost-reducing, easy to implement and wherever possible give us some stakeholder advantage. 

When the Rubber Hits the Road

Does everything need to have a business case?  If we’re talking about the deterioritation of the planet, is there an ROI attached to it?  Here lies my last point.  Sometimes it’s just about doing the right thing.  Giving a hand of help, showing leadership, taking an early adopter position.  However, if you are turned on by the numbers, here’s a few to throw at you: -

1. We’ve more than halved our energy consumption in less than 5 years.
2. Water consumption is down 21%.
3. Our length of service across the business exceeds eleven years.
4. Our sickness ratge is 40% lower than the national average (increased productivity).
5. We’ve recieved a colossal number of awards resulting in many hundreds of thousands of pounds of free publicity for the business, enhancing our Corporate Reputation.

Later this month, I’ll be visiting Buckingham Palace to collect a Queens Award on behalf of the company for our leadership in this area.  We’ve proved that by joining the dots up in your organisation, you can still be very business focussed when it comes to CSR, but you can still achieve the end game, do good and have a little fun along the way.

I’d encourage any business to get involved in the Many Hands campaign.  I like the idea so much because it’s not just about opening up a cheque book, it’s about how and what you do with your people to achieve the goal.  Along the way, you’ll meet lots of other businesses, some new contacts and end up doing something really brilliant for kids that need it.  Experiences need to be experential, your people need to get involved emotionally if they are to buy in to your ideas and working alongside good causes is a great way to achieve that.

I closed my talk yesterday by saying “Be MAD For It” – MAD meaning “Make A Difference”.  Being able to help others is the most wonderful way of helping yourself, your own esteem and growing as a leader. 

I recently wrote a guest blog about networking.  It’s a lot longer piece that I normally publish, however if you do have five minutes with a cup of coffee and want to know how to enhance/build/develop your network, I’d recommend you to have a read.

Not Working at Networking

Opportunity is knocking at your door.  Can you hear it?  The knock is certainly loud enough.  If you have the mindset of an opportunity engineer, not only will you hear the knock but you’ll be really pleased to see who’s at the door and how you can collaborate together.  Not working at networking is guaranteed to decelerate your business success and opportunity creation.

If you look carefully, nearly all successful entrepreneurs have a great network of people around them.  Advisors, mentors, friends, associates.  In fact, look beyond entrepreneurs into large businesses and you’ll see the same thing replicated.  There’s a reason – having a strong network leads to business, personal growth and enhanced reputation. 

The New CEO?

My philosophy is that the CEO no longer exists in its traditional format.  They are in the shadow of the COE (Chief Opportunity Engineer), the new breed of front man who exudes the value of the organisation.  Steve Jobs of Apple falls to mind or Richard Branson of Virgin – see what I mean?

Business – at all levels – need to be generating opportunities through their network.  At a basic level, recommend friends.  At a senior level, can your organisation and my organisation work together? 

Can peer to peer networking introduce a learning opportunity or new friendship?  Time, Attention and Trust are the new scarce commodities in our busy world – breaking into the hearts and minds of senior executives won’t come via an e-shot.  You need to be referred, introduced or have a relationship.

Give me Five

If you’ve new to networking, here are five quick facts for you: -

1. Networking isn’t about the right here, right now.  Most networks take time to develop, like a finely spun spider’s web.  Don’t push too hard or expect too much too soon.  It’s why more senior execs avoid billed networking events and prefer to
2. Quality and quantity.  Networking isn’t about having a thousand anonymous contacts.  It’s about building a serious group of like minded solid contacts.  People that will take your call.
3. Give, give, give.  Ask what value you are delivering into the network.  Give generously.
4. Use on-line to keep track of your network.  No more million cards in boxes.  Use technology to help keep your network organised.  Linkedin is a great place to start.
5. Be genuine.  Authenticity, reliability and transparency matter.  Understand why you’re embarking on the journey of building your network.  Personal learning, new prospects, new job or new friends.  Whatever your reason, be yourself.

Put your head in the Cloud

The modern day Rolodex/card box all exists in the cloud with one major difference – establishing the inter-relationships exist between the people you know.   

On-line tools allow you to understand the relationships between people.  The six degrees of separation between you and anyone else in the world.  Trying to get to a new prospect, then this is the way you may find a route through to them.

The world seems to have gone full circle.  Web 2.0 has breathed new life into the idea of networking, without the time investment of turning up at venues and getting home late. 

 A plethora of transient technologies for developers to create new social media platforms has cropped up, status updates, geo-location and aggregation to name but a few – these new platforms will continue to allow us to evaluate who we want to know and what’s going on with them.  Take a look at Gist for example, or Xobni – an application that sits within your Microsoft Outlook client.

However small your business or big your job title, having a strong network around you is a pre-requisite of business success.  I didn’t really figure this out properly until social media networks turned up, but in a turbo-charged world, I’ve quickly figured out that staying front of mind is everything.  Technology has been one of my key facilitators (aswell as getting out there).

The Age of Distraction

We’re in the age of distraction.  The short attention span.  We’re now consuming nine hours of content a day, compressed into a five hour window.  We’re juggling devices, consuming one thing, fiddling with another it seems.  Meeting people is becoming more difficult; they just don’t have the time or have a pre-formed selection criteria, particularly senior executives.

Staying “front of mind” of your network is imperative.   I use Twitter and Linkedin status updates to exchange interesting information.  Links.  Blogposts.  Business news.  Mixed in with some of my movements.  It’s amazing that when I see people, how up to date they are with what’s going on in my world.  I enjoy sharing it and it’s led to some great spontaneous meet ups, fantastic content distribution and enjoyment, through meeting new people.

The CIA in Social Media

There’s never been a better time to investigate who and what you know.  What I mean is using social media networks to investigate your networks and really get under their skin by knowing more about them – like the CIA would.  Most people for example use Linkedin to make a single connection with an individual they may (or may not) know and leave it at that – questionable whether it’s worth doing.

Linkedin is more powerful than that.  Tools I use are things like Linkedin company search.  This allows you to follow a company and see who’s arriving, who’s leaving, who’s been promoted and the members of the business that are on Linkedin.  It’s like a living breathing company CV.  Perfect for dropping a personalised note to a network contact if they’ve been promoted or following a key contact if they’re moving on to a new opportunity.

Is Dunbar right?

Ever heard of Dunbars number?  Wikipedia it.  In short, British anthropologist – Robin Dunbar – established that the number of contacts that you can maintain is finite dependent on brain size.  As the average, the number was around 150 people.  Now, I guess this was before social media came along and changed the rules.  Thousands of Twitter followers, Linkedin contacts and Facebook friends.

However the underlying principle has always been for me about what your network is there for?  What role does quantity have over quality?  Different people run their networks in different ways.  Quality matters.

For example, I rarely connect on Linkedin with someone that I haven’t met in person unless there is a compelling reason for a connection.  If you connect with anyone that asks, they are associations, not a network.  A network is people you can call on, trusted advisors, people who will take your call.  I use layers for my networks, maintaining a large number of loose contacts but focusing my time on energy on the people that matter (top 3%), that way you keep the quality and proximity.

Social2facial

Let’s face it.  A contact only starts to become really meaningful when it goes off-line, that is, you end up meeting someone in person.  I’m a great believer in this and it is the route to growing the number of people you know.  Connect on social media first, take a look and see if there’s a crossover, establish it, start conversing, build credibility then at some point – meet.

I maintain a wide network of contacts at a secondary and tertiary level to increase the number of primary contacts I have.  To increase your exposure to opportunity, you need to be visible, connected to a wide range of people and be alert.  I use social media networks primarily as follows: -

Twitter – The wide pool of people that I have loose connections with.  Consider this the ocean of prosperity through which you might trawl your nets.  I promote my blogposts via Twitter to increase readership and ultimately reputation.  By virtue of that readership, people become more interested in your wider thoughts and interact with you.

Linkedin – A very powerful tool.  Much more than I connect with you, you connect with me.  I use it to follow competitors, potential employees, customers; engage with groups and keep front of mind with the people that matter.

Blog – Great for Reputation Management.  I write a blog at www.philjones.biz giving commentary on business, leadership, social media and innovation amongst other things.  This creates credibility, puts your thoughts out there for people to discuss/debate and gives you an opportunity to put some thought leadership out there.  Blogging is hard to start and maintain, but if you keep at it, it will bring you significant rewards by increasing your reputation amongst your network.

Work It

Networking is basically about building solid human relationships.  Whites of their eyes relationships with people that may assist you with opportunity – whatever that looks like for you.  Human to Human (H2H) relationships still sit at the core of our world – so you also need to be out there, not just sat at a screen.  Choose your events wisely though.  Put as much thought into where you want to go as why.

Maintaining your network is as important as building it.  Staying relevant, remembering small details, adding value and devoting time to stay in touch with people will pay dividends in the long term.  

Not working at networking just isn’t an option for anyone serious about building their reputation, increasing opportunities for sales or meeting interesting people for learning experiences.  If you get a knock at your metaphorical door, open the door and look for the win/win.  Knock knock –who’s there? 

Senior Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer of IBM – Mark Loughbridge – visited Manchester last week to deliver a lecture at the business school about IBM and their 100 year journey from a small punchcard company to global giant.  In an hour long talk, he covered the four phases of IBM’s existence, including the disastrous imploding which saw their share price collapse between 1973-1993 as the company lost it’s way and drifted from its core competency, losing $16bn in 3 year period at one point.

Compare that with now and IBM is unrecognisable.  They totally turned the business around and made an astonishing 125 acquisitions from 2000 onwards, totalling $33bn, quite a story.  Highly articulate money man – Loughbridge, 57 – lived through all of this.  Joining IBM in 1977, he now has over 11,000 financial people reporting into him across the globe.

A few things stood out for me from the lecture, which I think are worthy of note: -

1. Between 1951-1972, what he described as “The System/360″ years, the then president discontinued every single product line they owned and threw an incredible amount of money at product development.  During this period, they spent as much on R&D as the American government did putting the Apollo space rocket on the moon.  After a period of re-consolidation, IBM came back stronger and went on to grow at 20% CAGR.
2. When they had their bad times, it was because the company launched into so many non-core areas, in so many countries, they lost the DNA of the businesss.  Son of the founder – Thomas J. Watson Jr – was quoted as saying “It’s harder to keep a business great, than it is to build it.”  This took a massive amount of energy to turn round and at times the business came close to running out of cash.  A far cry from the hugely profitable business it is now with $47bm a year in gross margins alone.
3. They achieved the turnaround by jettisoning low margin, non-core businesses and launched themselves into the services/consulting sector, focusing on performance, information and content.  They acquired buinesses with high margin potential and proprietary technology, improving productivity and margin as they consolidated them into the group. IBM now employees over 420,000 people – some wage bill that must be.

It’s a fascinating story of a business that grew and grew and grew, had a major period of drifting in the wilderness which nearly bought it to bankruptcy, which turned itself round to become a huge global organisation with massive profits.    There’s some lessons there: -

1. Sometimes you have to be bold, to stay relevant. Discontinuing every product they produced was a massive gamble or calculated risk?  Looking back, their CEO was a visionary, he studied what he felt the future might look like and got the business ready for it.  What’s the future for your business/category/space?
2. Big decisions need implementing. Jettisoning the low margin businesses, cost a lot of money and time,  however they had to cut them loose to grow their profitability.  Think long term, don’t wed yourself to something because it has been great in the past.  If you decide to do something big, do it.
3. They standardised quickly. Using the same language for financial reporting, sales reporting and group KPI’s.  It was “my way or the highway” when it came to implementing reporting.  Those that resisted were quickly exited in favour of progress.  Time was against them, they had a sense of urgency to save IBM in the dark days.  What could you do to standardise more and get a common language going in your business as you grow.
4. They dealt with the brutal truth. Read Jim Collins book “Good to Great” and you’ll see the importance of doing that.
5. They had a strong vision of the future. Loughbridge put up some interesting charts which they used with investors, to give clarity as to their future plans and reasons for acquisitions.  Many of those reached out over ten years.  It’s important to financially plan, to know what course you’re ultimately sailing.

It was an hour well invested.  Some good lessons and a great reminder that even big businesses get it wrong.  The trick is, recognising it and pulling it back.

Earlier this week, I was invited along to Hull Business Week to deliver a keynote around megatrends.  Hull Business Week does what is says on the tin, a week long celebration of business.  Speakers, exhibitions, dinners, you name it, they do it.

I don’t get over to East Yorkshire much.  It was a few weeks since I was there last and I do remember how welcoming the business community was then.  Nothing’s changed.

Delivering a keynote around something I call “The Me-cosystem”, I shared some trends which I think are changing the game in respect of how businesses need to re-define themselves in the new hyper-speed economy.  Time, Attention, and Trust continue to dominate the social landscape.  Breaking through is the new challenge for marketeers and business development professionals.

In an engaging Q&A session afterwards, we spent a lot of time discussing questions around which platforms are right for business, how to manage a PR crisis on social media, developing policies for your business to give guidance to staff, the legalities of web defamation and even what the digital future holds for  a printer company – great stuff!

Some of those answers were: -

1. In a social media crisis, respond and take it off-line wherever possible.  Don’t pour further fuel on a fire by debating in the public domand.  Keep your answers to facts, keep it short and take it to e-mail or phone.
2. Create  a social media policy for your staff.  Do’s and dont’s.  Remember, nearly all your staff will already have a social media profile – you can’t control that.  But you should give guidance to what they do or don’t say about your business and in business hours.
3. Platforms for business.  I use Twitter for listening, Linkedin for contacts that I’ve met, blogging for reputation.  I don’t use Facebook for business at a personal level, however we do use it for customer interaction.
4. F-Commerce is the new E-Commerce.  Transactional platforms like e-Bay and Amazon are dominating the convenience of on-line marketplaces and communities.  Facebook is coming.  Facebook credits are alread on sale in the USA – the new global digital currency perhaps?
5. Managing your on-line reputation is key.  Honesty and transparency matter.  You can’t edit content so that it only contains good stuff or people won’t believe you.  People will tell you if you’ve got a bad product or received bad service.  Better to listen and respond and do better next time.  63% of people trust recommendations from peer review ahead of adverts.  So, start listening and engaging with your customers.

Hull Business Week was well managed, well attended and a great example to other regions on how to lay on a top quality event for business.  Great job.

We’d all like to know what the next big thing will be.  Something to invest the re-mortage in

I’ve been talking a lot more about augmented reality (AR) of late.  It’s something that has been promising a lot for a while, but suddenly seems to be starting to take off.

So, what is it?

In simple terms, it’s the ability to merge the virtual world with the real world, real time.  Like you’d see on some of the fancy sci-fi movies of years ago.  Many things have happened technology wise over the past few years, which have created the tipping point to AR becoming more commonplace.  Things such as: -

1. Smartphones.
2. Processor speeds.
3. Mobile broadbands speeds.
4. Geo-location.
5. Applications.

Why is it so important?

Two major applications for augmented reality will be: -

1. Turning 2d ads into 3d by holding your phone over a small QR barcode.  A press ad becomes a 3d ad by holding your i-Phone over it.  The ultimate product being brought to life moment.
2. Over-laying virtual or web information onto your current geo-location (directions, instructions or information).

I’ve already seen developers starting to do some clever stuff with this already.  Here is a great article called 10 mindblowing augmented reality apps and videos, to see what I mean.   This was published over a year ago, so imagine what a head-start those people that have been busy developing have over the market.

AR will bring a new age of interactivity, visualisation and opportunity.  Start looking seriously at it.