A balancing act

Posted on November 26, 2010 by admin

My recent work within the Tourism Industry in New Zealand has highlighted to me just how hard it can be for small businesses to achieve any kind of work/life balance. Tourism, and particularly the activity sector, is a classic example of an industry that is dominated by small businesses. Often the founders of the business want to live and work in a beautiful location that enables them to pursue their own hobbies and passions.

I'm not a worker cartoon These individuals use their personal savings and collateral to establish their business and rarely factor in the value of their own time when developing a business plan. Tourists want to enjoy their holidays 7 days per week so that’s when these small businesses have to be open and operating – evenings too. Paperwork gets done in the wee small hours and a change to health and safety legislation or taxes can be a nightmare lasting months.

Many of these individuals wake up, several years after embarking on their brave enterprise, to wonder where their life went and what happened to the ‘lifestyle job’ they thought they were creating for themselves.

In this kind of situation, when faced with a business challenge, the tendancy is to duck inside the shell, turtle-like, and think frantically about what costs you can cut. Once again, the value of your own time somehow gets lost in the equation and you ‘save’ your business at the expense of what little time you still had left to yourself.

Of course, sometimes, the business and the ideal are simply not viable and maybe it is still worth it to you to be able to look out of the window at the scenery or guide visitors doing a simple version of the pastime you used to be passionate about. But perhaps there is a way of acheiving all of your goals for your business and for your life.

Whatever you do, don’t withdraw back into your shell to focus on the purely defensive ideas. That is one sure way of missing the possibilities available in the world around you. Discuss the situation with your partner and friends. Look for a business mentor to help you work through your options. Be creative about engaging with your competition, your suppliers and your distribution channels – opportunities for mutually productive collaboration can often be the biggest surprise once you start to look around.

After all, you won’t be the only one who wants to find a work/life balance.

Case Study: Facilitating innovation

Posted on July 16, 2009 by admin

A product team had been challenged to come up with some truly innovative ideas for a Personal Loan product. The Product Manager asked me to plan and facilitate an innovation day which would enable the team to think outside the box.

The first step was to ensure that the venue was ‘off-site’ in an environment that would not trigger business-as-usual thinking patterns. I asked the team members what techniques they had used before for creative thinking and developed the whole day around methods that were new to all of them. The final programme involved varied and occasionally shocking techniques such as Reversal, Provocation, Random Input and Concept Fans. Between the innovation exercises I ran warm-up, team building, conflict and trust exercises to ensure the team were really Performing.

By 5pm the team was completely exhausted but very pleased with themselves. They had come up with many flipcharts’ worth of ideas that they had never thought of before.

Case Study: Facilitating board meetings

Posted on July 16, 2009 by admin

The MD of a small business had recently invested in a training course on how to chair meetings more effectively. He had recognised the value in the techniques given by the course and tried hard to implement them when he return to work. However, he found that the techniques prevented him from having the level of detailed input that he was used to and he felt that the quality of decision making dropped. A discussion with several board members and a review of some recent minutes made it clear to me that, this being a small business, the MD was actually needed to fulfil an ‘expert’ role as well as be the meeting chair. I facilitated the next 3 board meetings and specifically took on the role of ‘meeting manager’ (eg ”mediator’, ‘time-keeper’, ‘topic sheepdog’ etc.) and left him with the roles of ‘expert’ and ‘decision maker’. This worked well and prior to the fourth meeting I spent time coaching the MD’s PA to fulfill my role on a permanent basis.