Your Business Advisor

Business owners are definitely think differently about risk than those who work for someone for a salary.  They know that they are calling the shots at every turn.  They realize how tenuous the market and their work is.  Invariably when asked if they would quit and “go work” for someone else they get a smile on their face and shake their heads.  Although it’s aluring to most have that in their back pockets, they know that this really boils down to letting someone else call the shots in their lives.

I spoke with a business owner who had the opportunity to help another business owner set up his new business.  As he was toiling away he watched the new business owner see the world anew several times.  One person lending helping hands tossed several things in the garbage at the end of the day and the new owner stood of the can and threw out to the room “Who’s throwing my money away?”.  This was a powerful moment as those who were helping were revealing themselves as only human … acting in a way that they could see their own concerns but not those of the business owner and his new needs.  It was but one moment for the new owner where he would have to weave a world for those around him that included them but shaped their actions so that he was taken care of as well.

This is more easily done with some business models but less so in others.  If you are in business so that you can make a buck and that’s all it’s about, it will be a hard row to get others on board.  But if you can include taking care of others in your picture of why you are in business, you will be far more successful!

You’ve heard many times that taking on a partner in business is a lot like getting married.  There are some very successful partnerships that last for years and others that end in painful, terribly expensive divorce.   A successful approach to having solid, profitable partnership starts with taking your time and choosing wisely.  This approach includes understanding all the attributes you need in a partner (remember your needs for a partner may be very different than other entrepreneurs around you),  taking a goodly amount of time before committing and assertions (data points) that come from multiple people and angles.

Following this approach can give you a much bigger leg up in a successful partnership.

• Start by listing your best attributes as an entrepreneur and in house talent.
• Speculate on what attributes in a partner would best round out the management team.
• Design a series of interactions and a number of opportunities for trust to be built (have the partner make commitments to you and give them an opportunity to fulfill).  These interactions should include opportunities for the potential partner to make commitments to others in your network so that you can observe them in action with others.  This should include people you trust so that you can gather assessments from them on the interactions they have.

It is also important that you pay close attention to how authentic you are being (are you being your normal, everyday, entrepreneur self as you interact with this person or are you putting on a face).  If you hold a person up to this potential partner that is charming and ultra caring, that is who they will make commitments to.  This could be disasterous when you solidify the partnership and you are terribly forthright and require precise delivery of promises.  They don’t know who they just got married to!!

Dissolving a partnership can be incredibly expensive (may cost you your business, health and savings).  Taking time to choose a partner and involving those you trust in the decision can mitigate a great deal of the risk involved.

Marshall Goldsmith is a blogger for the Harvard Business Publishing site and has written numerous books on leading and creating positive, lasting change in behavior.  I’ve been truly enjoying his blog entries for about 6 months.  I’ve included a link below for you to see his latest blog on keeping employees engaged.  He invited a friend who’s just written a book into the conversation and Joe brings up some great points.

There were a number of things that came to mind as I read Joe’s advice.   The most relevant and clear thought was that people (employees) need to understand that they are continually responsible for proving they are worth the compensation they are getting for the work they are performing.  THEY make the choice to be employed each day by you.   You have to be prepared to act on their choice in this matter.  In this market, there are plenty of options for employers in getting work done.  If rewards and repercussions for good and poor performance are evident, people will be passionate about their roles or leave.

Enjoy Marshall’s continuing throughts!

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/goldsmith/2009/04/keeping_your_people_engaged_in.html

The hype around starting your own business lately has been tremendous.  A recent article in Ode magazine claims that now is a great time to start your own business.  The author claims that their are 6 things in common among all start ups that succeeded.  The owners:

• found their sweet spots and work with their passion
• found the “right” business partners - people who shared their purpose
• did world class research to identify the gap in the marketplace
• used rigorous, continuous process to invent and commercialize their offer (product or service)
• didn’t plan for the future but learned how to improvise and adapt easily to changes in the economy
• acted with integrity

These are dead on.  I’d add a few things though.  The owners are:

• committed to success
• visioning for the future so that what they are doing now works toward their ultimate goals.  Rarely do people succeed wildly without some story for the future they hold in their hearts and in their committment to those helping them get there.
• definitely agile.
• operating their business in congruence with their customers values as well as their own.

Those entrepreneurs that think they can succeed with an offer without complete understanding of their customers needs, their own expectations of the business and knowledge that this all can change in the blink of an eye are going to be left standing in a puddle of confusion and indecision.

You know, the thought of being part of twitter and facebook and other social media gives me the yucks.   More to keep track of what this was all about I joined facebook and found that there were basically 3 groupings of people that my friends fall into:

• people constantly taking tests to see which food, city, horror flick bad guy or some-such they are and feeling the need to tell me about it
• people who are blatantly “up” about their moves in hopes of snagging some big fish
• people who seem to post once every month or so with interesting, relevant thoughts for the world

I really enjoy the last group but have a hard time wading through all the crap from the other two to actually see it.  I hope I’m not annoying to others with this and cringe at the thought of actually twittering others with my constant stream of thought (some good and some boring as all get out).  But even more ridiculous is the hyper connection to the first two groups of facebook with twitter.  Can you imagine?!

I’m thinking about taking a test about which pizza topping I am.  Anyone got any thoughts?  You guess what I am and I’ll guess what you are!!

Going to a speed networking event and I’m targeting 30 business cards in my pocket!

Uggh.

Is this hyper connection really that necessary?  Better yet, isn’t it distracting us from thinking and doing?  What about this blog?  Wow.

Montana and a tee pee to live in is sounding really appealing right now.

Observations from last week … One client called me the “mood lady” and another called me his “business psychologist”.  On reflection I was triggered to be pleased and complimented by the comments.  Why?  Well, I think it’s because as the recession seems to be deepening and widening I’m getting more and more settled in being my authentic self and it seems to be showing up for my clients as valuable.

Truthfully, my authentic self hasn’t been something I can readily share with the world and have them respond favorably … at least at first.  They need to get to know me a bit before some of my characteristics can be received and responded to well.  For instance I am thrown to automatically share negative assessments with people about practices they are in that are ineffective.  Sometimes I’ll do this in a way that sounds harsh (I call this the two-by-four against the head).  Other times I share my picture of my client’s future that is not necessarily anything they’ve ever imagined fitting into their future.  (It’s even a neck stretching move for me to write this!).  What I’m doing differently is getting out the two-by-four earlier and sharing these “visions of the future” earlier and more often.  The two-by-four has them quitting practices that have negative consequences earlier and the visioning has them choosing with direction more frequently.

I’m pressing people to change or think about change more often and in a more uncomfortable space.  This is scary for them and for me.  But it’s working and very well.  The challenge I am facing is how to talk about it with clients … how to explain that they will be uncomfortable and thrown to not working with me because it doesn’t feel good but that they should forge ahead.  I suppose just exposing it in language often could be a good way. I do think for those instances where both my client and I stay in the discomfort and work through the issues of their ambitions and business practices, my skill set is akin to some really cool super powers.

An ego is healthy in my line of work. 

One fundamental skill for an entrepreneurial leader is to understand and care about what their individual team members need and want from life.  This allows them to speak to them individually and fit their contribution into the big picture.

Compassion is the ability to perceive concerns coupled with the sincere desire to address those concerns. If it is true that fundamentally a Business Leader produces a network of human coordination that produces some specified outcome, the effectiveness of the leader can be measured in the effectiveness of this coordination. People coordinate with others when it takes care of their concerns. If some work does not take care of what matters to them, people become poor coordinators and eventually cease to participate at all. Therefore it is essential that the Business Leader understand and care about the concerns, motivations, and ambitions of those that are in their network.

Leaders who possess these skills are able to surround themselves with the most skilled people and create an environment where they are deeply mobilized to coordinate well. Those that are not able to muster this orientation collect people that are not skillful enough to warrant a position elsewhere and create an environment where everyone is looking out for themselves because they know that if their concerns are going to be addressed, they must jealously guard their own self interests because no one else will. The implications for a Business Leader are obvious.

Back to essential skills of an Entrepreneur.  We’ve talked about Integrity, Commitment and Coachability thus far now I’ll introduce a term that is liable to trigger many of you to think about love.  Not really what I was after but definitely in the right direction!

Passion is a mood in which you assess that the future is very bright. If by achieving the objectives of your business (yes business, come along with me to work and business discussion), life will be your oyster, the sun will come out and birds will sing, then your plan can produce passion. When you are in mood of passion you glow and are animated and energetic. People are drawn to you and want what you have. As a leader, people are seduced to be around you because you are clearly up to something good. Investors are interested and employees are predisposed to feel that the future you are producing will be good for them too.

Passion is also hard to fake. It requires working on and understanding your own dreams. If you are just on the treadmill that someone else made for you, it is unlikely that you can be in the mood of passion. Designing and knowing your ambition, your story of the future you want, is a difficult and long process that is not common. It takes work and education and trial and error. Once one has a well-defined and compelling ambition, then designing a story of how to achieve the ambition that is believable and internally and externally coherent, it makes the ambition possible. Only then, when one begins on that path, passion is possible.

Business leaders that have done the work to enable them to “be” passionate, attract followers that are also passionate and therefore extremely productive. People that are passionate want to work. They are driven to work; you have to get out of their way, not motivate them. They are also effective for your vision because if you are passionate you know what you want and can articulate it in a way that others can then “know” you, what you will do and can assess for themselves whether where the direction you are going will work for them.

What do you think?

Life is so interesting.  Complicated in some ways and amazingly simple in others.  A few days ago I read somewhere that you cannot really look ahead and see the direct path to what you want or will do and have it happen exactly that way.  But you can look back and see the direct path from where you have come.  it’s not very profound but it is oddly comforting to me.

Kevin and I are working on a new study into what/who helps Entrepreneurs the best/most.  That’s a very direct way of talking about it and not very businesslike.  Ah well.  The point is, I’ve been talking with Entrepreneurs one on one over this study for about 6 weeks now and am learning an awful lot.  There is this point in every interview where I have essential clarity over how I am being with them that produces an amazing experience for both of us or produces a flat, boring conversation.  I definitely need to bring my highest self to these conversations.

We are pursuing grants from foundations to support this study and to use the outcome in a way that will most impact the future success of Entrepreneurs.  This is definitely a feelgood portion of this study for me.  Impacting people around me is important but approaching them in a humble, unobtrusive way isn’t always easy.  I know I can help them see their businesses differently but getting them to trust me enough to let me in is sometimes a very long process.  I’m getting better and being okay with this.  If I get frustrated and push then I just look hungry or arrogant.  Luckily I have my fabulous spouse in this with me.  Someone to check my mood, have victories with and make mistakes with.  Wow.  How powerful is that!!?

I’m plodding/marching/walking/running ahead with the interviews and would welcome a conversation with anyone who wants to share … share in the interests of perhaps revealing yet another piece of the puzzle.  You know where you can find me.

Another essential, fundamental skill of an entrepreneur is being able to hold commitment consistently. This builds trust in those professionals who support entrepreneurs (lawyers, accountants, advisors etc.) as well as those others vital to doing business (employees, customers, partners etc) and those supporting them in their private lives (spouses, friends and extended family).

It is often easy to see commitment, or perhaps more visibly the lack of commitment, in the body posture and expressions of an entrepreneur. Commitment is the utter resolve to do everything one can do to see something through. It can often look almost pathological. They do not take no for an answer, they have unending optimism and the doom-saying by those around them runs off their back. Commitment is not just a declaration; it is the mood of resolve that under girds a declaration. We often make declarations of intent that are more speculative than personal demands of ourselves. We are either blind to the weakness of our declarations or we hope that others will not notice or that something lucky will happen. Fortunately, luck comes disproportionately to the truly committed.

A common phrase from the investment community is that they “back the jockey not the horse”. This means that while a business idea is important the success comes from the person not the idea. The jockey that investors find attractive is skillful and committed. If you are skilled and do not seem committed, then people will not entrust their money to you. They want to know that your personal sense of self and feeling of success will only come to you if you are able to move all of the obstacles out of the way and make your business succeed.

It is very difficult to fake commitment. It bleeds through your skin. People unconsciously watch body posture (stand tall? Or hunched?), gestures (crisp, punctuated? Or languid and loose) and language (Should be able to, might, want to? Or Am going to, Will, Need to). People are masterful at reading through performances and seeing whether the person is moving from a posture of maybe or must.

If you can be clear with others of your story of commitment to your business or whatever initiative it is you are pursuing, they will be more able to see themselves in the story (after all it is one that has high likely hood of success if you are committed) and want to do their part to make it happen as well.