Accepting the status quo is as good as turning off onto the motorway of mediocrity for business, but doing the opposite can also create a parallel problem – initiative inertia or overload.  An unplanned dichotomy where you’re intention is to do good and create momentum but you end us pushing people into a state of inertia, not understanding which initiative comes first, which is flavour of the month, which is strategic,which is tactical – and so on.

Heading an big business takes energy and organisation.  You have to de-clutter yourself from the distractions, the small stuff and keep focussed on the road to excellence.  When you do that, you can more clearly prioritise the “must do” initiatives from the “nice to have” initiatives.  I use a priority matrix to help me understand the big long term picture from the short term stuff, the stuff that will take resources from the stuff is easy to do, the things that we can do quickly with big impacts to the business.

It’s brilliant to do new things, it challenges people and keeps momentum.  But always health check on whether your latest greatest idea may slow down people, drain resources or distract them when other priorities exist before you get happy clappy or you risk unintended inertia.

If you take a long hard look in the mirror, what do your reactions say about you?  Do you flare up? Feel out of control? Take critiscism badly?  Sulk?  Feel let down? Go on the back foot?  Or are you balanced?  Considered? Calm? Reflective?

When under stress or “in the grip”, it is the best possible time to step back and understand your reactions and root-cause drivers.  Whenever you’re feeling that “something”, have a good think about what it reminds you of.  There is likely to be a past event or person, that is driving the reactions, time after time. 

At a talk recently, I spoke of your core operating processes (thoughts and actions) being programmed mostly from childhood.  We then use that same processing system as adults, so it will be due an upgrade.  Today, software development is done through an api, that is, an open interface which allows developers to work on new applications for a core software.

Taking that metaphor, having a mentor, reading development books or working on your emotional intelligence delivers the same results.  It can act as a catalyst in the updating process and re-programming that out of date software, which can be responsible for your “to type” reactions.

The good news is, whatever you have as your core, can be changed and updated.  All it takes is an open mind, an ability to deal with a few home truths and an appetite to improve.   Most importantly, you can also do a CTRL+ALT+DEL reset, erasing all the past negatives and setting your clock back to zero, imagine that.

I’d like you to join my professional network on Linkedin.

How many request do you get when someone just fires through the standard invitation?  I get loads.  But, rather than ignore them or just accept a request from someone that I don’t know, I send this reply: -

Hi (Enter Name Here),

Thanks for your Linkedin request.

I generally only connect with people I have met in person or have been recommended to by someone I know.

If there is an opportunity you would like to put my way, a mutual benefit to us connecting right now or I’ve simply forgotten we’ve met, please drop me a note and would be happy to consider.

Phil

So, what does this do?

It sorts out the collectors (speculators) from the real connectors (trusted contacts).  Collectors are people that are just randomly wanting to connect with you, offering no value to the connection.  Linkedin is the place where I keep contact of my network, that is, people that I know.  It’s mostly people that I have met, but occassionally I do connect with people that know my trusted contacts.

A Quality Invite

When you know someone personally, it’s OK – in my view – to send a standard request.  I still choose not to, opting to always add a short note to personalise it.

If you are looking to connect to someone that you want to approach as you have a mutual opportunity/common connection/reason to connect, but you have not met in person, then add some commentary why you are sending the request or you are likely to end up on the reject list.  It doesn’t need to be war and peace.

Example

Hi XXXX,

We haven’t met but we share XXX as a mutual connection.  I think we share a number of common connections/or an interest in XXXX and think we would benefit from knowing each other.

XXXX always speaks highly of you and noted to me that you are someone that I should connect with.

Kind Regards,

XXXX

Do you see what a different impact that might make to a potential connection?   It says, “I’ve thought about this, there is some benefit to us knowing each other and this is a personal note.”  Do that and you should ensure more connections.

She delivered a keynote at yesterday’s Talk of Manchester conference on how she took her brand of women’s bra’s from an idea she had whilst working for an alcoholic drinks company, through to one of the most successful global brands in its sector – Ultimo.

First Impressions

A great speaker connects with their audience, is personable and let’s their personality shine through. 

There can’t have been a single person in the room yesterday that wouldn’t have failed to warm to Michelle.  She’s very pretty, funny, oozing charisma, she showed her product off to it’s full potential via a stunning outfit, is clearly driven and very accomplished in telling her story. And it’s a really inspiring story, which I’m not going to re-cap in detail - go see her speak, but I would like to share some of the key lessons I picked up from Michelle’s talk.

Ten Lessons from Entrepreneur – Michelle Mone

1. “Every day is a school day” – you can learn something new from every experience, every day.
2. Her biggest self-confessed weakness is the numbers/finances and she just has a great team around her to do that whilst she takes care of the product innovation and marketing.  This is all about playing to your strengths.
3. Think small when thinking big.  She burst onto the scene and generated £62m of press coverge with a £500 PR stunt outside Selfridges when first launching the brand.  She continues to think in this way, pushing people to be more creative, rather than assume there will always be a big budget.
4. She sleeps for four hours a night and is always on the go.  You can see the raw energy when she speaks.  She comes across as calm and collected, however you can see a steely determination to get things done.
5. She has a list of objectives.  A small notebook in her bag carries her short and long term objectives.  These are reviewed every day for her to stay focussed.
6. Her biggest lesson was being taken for £1.6M by an overseas business partner.  Minutes away from being foreclosed by the bank, she negotiated a re-financing package with HSBC which saw her overcome the adversity and go on to global success.  She cites this as one of her most difficult periods, but one in which she learned a lot as is often the case with adversity.
7. She is about to launch a new spray tan product called UTAN.   When you’ve set up a business with all the right channels of distribution, look for other product you can push down that pipe.  Next logical step for the brand is in complementary goods, expect to see them in the shops soon.
8. She is a big fan of innovation.  Doing things which others say, can’t or shouldn’t be done.  Michelle is constantly looking for ways to create new products or do things better.  Exactly as it should be.
9. Michelle always set challenging goals for herself.  When joining a drinks manufacturer as an adminstrator, she set her sets on running the entire Scottish operation within three years, she achieved it in eighteen months.  Being the best you can be is always about pushing your potential.
10. She created her own opportunities.  Speculatively sending bra’s out to 100 top stylists in the world.  The Ultimo bra was worn by Julia Roberts in the film Erin Brockovich, without Michelle’s knowledge.  This led to the bra getting huge international exposure and a new American market was opened up.

Summing It Up

Michelle Mone is a very driven person, hugely successful, with a real sense for business.  It’s the second time I’ve seen her tell the MJM story and for the second time I was really impressed by her, her style and her achievements. 

My audience question was “When will we see Ultimo with an underwear range for men” – M&S have dominated the sector for years, so perhaps its time for a breath of fresh air and some uplift in the gentlemans department.  Watch this space!

The most important lesson I think is this.  Michelle has got where she has got through hard graft and hard graft alone.  No reality TV show, no leg up, no silver spoon.  She set her sights high and set off – that’s what I liked most about her and that should be your “uplifting” moment, along with a decent Ultimo bra if required

1. It can show trends of the past.
2. It can point you in the way of previous failure and success.
3. It can provide deep insight into previous behaviour.

I think Steve Jobs had it right though, he assumed people didn’t know what they want yet and set about designing things for their tomorrow, less than their now. 35,000 products sold an hour and last quarter revenues of $38bn can’t be wrong – but Apple is a special case right? Wrong.

 They capture the headlines yes, they’ve penetrated our lives – yes, their products are great – yes, but they are one tiny fraction of the amount of money that gets spent in the world, across technology, business and consumer, so there’s plenty to go at.

Just because we are in recession it does not mean people are not spending. They may spend less on discretionary items, perhaps but people still spend. So, hold your head up high, breathe in a lungful of air, shoulders back and march on out into that economy and do something wonderful. You’ve nothing to lose and everything to gain. Stay positive, stay sharp and get recession busting. See you out there.

Wind forward to 2012 and step forward Chairman of London mini-cab company Addison Lee – John Griffiths, who has whipped up a storm after using inflammatory language about London cyclists in the “in car” magazine they publish called “Add Lib” (read the story here).  This time, social media played the role of the traditional media and within twenty four hours, the backlash has been significant. 

Looking back, when people started to talk about web 2.0 and how it would put the web back in the hands of the people, from the big corporations, I’m not sure if we all really knew on what scale that would happen.  Now we’re here, you can see exactly how.

Be Careful What You Wish For

Griffiths, clearly underestimated the impact of his words and the unified nature of the cycling community.  Twitter literally exploded with outraged cyclists, many of whom happened to be Addison Lee’s customers at the Corporates within which they work.  A hashtag was started #boycottaddisonlee, where you can see the impact of the story – one Twitter follower alone who is responsible for £100K a year of bookings to Addison Lee claiming that they’ve closed their account with the company.  All the nationals picked up the story, if Addison Lee were smart they would have realised that The Times had only weeks before run a cycle safety campaign called “CycleSafe,”  so any inflammatory words would put a journalist straight to work.  The five hundred of so cyclists that are intending to stage a “die in” outside Addison Lee’s HQ won’t do the Corporate image any good either and throw more wood on the fire.

Damage Limitation

As you can imagine, the PR damage limitation machine has now engaged reverse and Griffiths is quickly softening his language, manicured clarifying statements are being released and he’s even backing the Times CycleSafe campaign – classic PR crisis management in action and very predictable, if not a little shallow.  It’s amazing how a backlash from paying customers can quickly change your view.  Addison Lee will feel the aftershocks of that for some time to come, I’m sure.  What’s different about today’s times however, is that if you search “Addison Lee” in google, you’ll read nothing but up to the minute negative stories and you’ll also get to read blog’s like this, which will have a big impact on their organic search for some time to come.

Leading Lessons

Every business needs a good spokesperson, particularly big businesses more than others.  It doesn’t always have to be the CEO, you can cast people according to skill.  What you must make sure of however is that they generate headlines for the right reasons.  Web 2.0 (social media and user generated content) have put power to the people.  You can see this manifest itself in many ways such as crowd sourcing, crowd funding and – in this case – “crowd forcing” – where the crowd get together to express their aggregated anger and create impact.  The impact to Addison Lee will be an entire community of cyclists, who have vowed to veto using their company ever again – oh dear.

Something as important as  your customer magazine, needs to be carefully filtered for content, it’s not the platform for your rant.  It should always be objective, considered and informative.  You can tackle big issues, of course you can, however the approach taken by Addison Lee on this occasion I think may well make the MBA courses as a case study of how to damage your Corporate reputation at a Ratner level scale.

Last week, when news of my impending promotion broke in the press, I received well over a hundred messages from people that I know, which was lovely.  It’s an important lesson in business, to keep an eye on your closest contacts and make sure you take the opportunity  for a TNT.  People will remember those gestures for a long time. 

Ways you can do this include: -

1. Keeping an eye on Linkedin to see if someone has changed their job title
2. Scanning the business press to see if any of your key customers have made any positive announcements.
3. Allocating filtered colums in Tweetdeck to ensure that you keep full track of your top network members.
4. Regularly reading blogs of people that are in your network to keep updated with their activity.
5. Committing to sending at least one e-mail a day to someone you’ve not been in contact with a while asking for their news.

In our world of electronic communication, a hand-written card has cut through, every time.  I keep a stack of them in my drawer and my wallet topped up with stamps in readiness for a TNT.  Don’t over use them, but look for the genuine moments when something has happened worthy of comment or celebration.  I regularly mention this when I speak and people that I have seen since tell me stories of how this has helped to cement or renew a business relationship, basically it works.

Even though e-mail and Tweets are convenient and hugely welcome, going the extra mile and dropping something in the post, creates a nice surprise and a keepsake which doesn’t make it’s way to an e-mail file folder.  Have a go next week and send something to someone, see what happens.

Having been in the business now for 18 years and working my way up through the company, I thought it might be interesting to share a few thoughts on how I ultimately got here, as there are lessons to be learned, particularly if you are starting out on your career in a large enterprise.

In no particular order: -

1).  There are no easy options.  It’s taken me a long time to get here, it’s taken perserverance and hard graft.  A lot of long hours, nights away, trips, weekends and sacrifice.  If you want it, be prepared for it.

2). In the early days, if extra responsibility was available, I took it.  No shirking, just stepped up and did the extra work, sacrificing my social time in the early days for my career in order to get on.

3). I’ve built trust.  Within a Japanese working culture, trust is very important.  You have to do what you promise and be good to your word to build long term credibility.  I’ve always treated my personal reputation the same, guarding it closely by my actions.  Be good to your word.

4).  I’ve never settled for average.  Being average often leads to mediocrity.  Averages are made of overs and unders, to get the middle ground.  I’ve always aimed to be an over by pushing my own personal limits.

5). There are no quick fixes.  Forget reality TV, you want to make it in the Corporate world it’s all about the value you add over the long term, not in one audition or single moment of glory.

6). Remember where you came from.  As you push on, don’t let your new found fame go to your head.  Keep your feet on the ground and continue to look for bits of advice from those that you work with.  Remember to network as much internally as you do externally.

7). Develop yourself.  Read, network, attend conferences.  If you become institutionalised within your business, then it’s easy to be pigeonholed.  Stay bang up to date by constantly updating your knowledge.  Think of your knowledge like an API, there to let others develop it.

8). Stay relevant.  The world moves at an amazing pace, you will only stay relevant if you stay close to the latest goings on, trends, thinking.  Linked to point (7), how are you keeping up with the latest goings on in your industry or sector?

9). Be yourself.  It took me a long time to realise that I just needed to be me.  For a long time I was one person at home and one person at work, putting my “workface” on when I walked through the Corporate doors.  Soon realised that I was becoming “roboemployee” so aligned the work me with the real me.

10). Don’t push too hard.  Written lots about this.  If you add value, your time will come and you will get your reward.  If you push your agenda too much, execs above you will tag you as “only in it for yourself”.  Always think of the big picture, take one for the team if you need to, execs will always remember that in the long term.

There are lots more as I come to think about this topic.  The key thing is that effort + results = value.  No silver spoons, no fast-tracks, no funny handshakes.  In the world economy now, employers are looking for people that are MAD, that is they “make a difference”.   Long term stakeholder value, trumps a quick win any day.  

Put the hard yards in, develop, grow, network, thing BIG, be respectful to others, take the bad days with the good and ultimately enjoy what you do or move on.  I’ve loved evey minute of my time within the business I work within, even the hard days, as I’ve learned something about myself with every experience/challenge and situation.

If you use others as your benchmarks, you may be constantly disappointed in your performance.  i.e., If I spent my life trying to be Usain Bolt, I might never make it.

So, my advice is be the best you can be, given what you are equipped with.  Be inspired by what others can do and what they achieve and then personalise that to yourself and your own capabilities.  It’s far less stressful.

When you’re only benchmark is to be the best you can be, you use external reference points but you do not measure yourself exactly against them.  You interpret them.  You become far happier, more relaxed and more focussed on your own development rather than your measurement against things.  You’ll find that it has the effect of turbo-boosting your happiness.

There is only one caveat to this, which is not assuming your limits.  You have to still push yourself into unchartered territory to understand your boundaries and possible re-define them as part of being your best.   I blogged about this recently.  Only through continuing to create experiences which define you, will you ultimately decide what you think your best is/can be.

Cloud computing

There’s a huge amount of upside to cloud, particularly given the explosive rise of tablet computing, data storage exponentially rising and mobile network speeds accelerating.   Having someone look after your network, your applications and other items could dramatically reduce your IT overhead, moving it from capex to opex and giving you the capability to flex your requirements.

However, there is an issue in the background, which is worth considering as part of your long term strategy, particularly at enterprise level.  That is, who currently – who owns this cloud now and who might own it in the future?  There is a lot of consolidation talk in the background as players look to grab ground through acquisition.  This may impact on your future costs, think what’s happened in the energy industry, prices are only going one way….up.

Now, competition will always keep a market on it’s feet, until you start to get to major players taking dominant position. When that happens, the market follows them – think Sky TV.  Took years to get the infrastructure sorted but now has a dominant share of the market.  In the Energy market, three of four players rule the roost.  Will cloud go the same way?

Plan for It

All it exposes is that there may be a culmination point in the future.  If costs begin to rise because someone has built a dominant position, your IT costs may start to rise beyond inflation to a point in the future when it’s cheaper to bring it in house again.

I’m a big fan of cloud computing, it’s awesome – you can throw everything in the cloud and have someone else look after your system, upgrades and services.  For an enterprise, there may be longer term considerations about what you put with who to mitigate against someone pushing prices up in the future or giving yourself the option to back out of a contract if your cloud provider gets hoovered up by someone else.

It shouldn’t be a barrier to entry, not by any means but it should form part of your due diligence when choosing a an enterprise provider.