Beyond sole trader

There sometimes seems to be a huge chasm between the world of the sole trader and that of the small business owner.  It’s certainly a gap that many trip over, while a few disappear into the depths forever.

Where does the time go?

The biggest challenge for people going through this transition is time.  It’s likely that a major reason for the change is that you’re really busy and have more work coming in the door than you can handle by yourself.

Unfortunately, avoiding mistakes that will haunt you for a long time requires spending some time thinking about what you’re doing.  Considering alternatives and planning your courses of action.  Having a regular scheduled session with a coach or mentor or an experienced friend will help to ensure that you do take the time to consider how you want your business to grow.

I tend to divide these discussions up into categories:

Transition factors for small businesses

People includes

• thinking about what you do and how much you’ll be willing to let go of
• defining roles and the characteristics of the people you want to work with
• leadership and delegation skills

ICT includes

• how you’ll communicate with each other and with clients
• how you’ll share and record data

Process includes

• how you’ll control what happens when and avoid duplication
• how you’ll share tasks
• how you’ll manage time-scales
• how you’ll keep consistent messages to all your staff and to customers

Market includes

• where you’ll find the additional business to keep extra staff going
• evaluating marketing and PR options
• planning your marketing campaign

Each session is focused on one of these categories but often items come up with are much larger in scope and I pull these together into a discussion about where you want to take your business in the medium and long term.

Strategy includes

• Defining your vision
• Developing a strategic plan

Often the strategic plan will result in some tweaking of the earlier categories but I’v found that it really helps to keep your thinking focused to start with rather than trying to define a strategy from a blank sheet of paper.  The discussions on the how, what and where help to give you a sense of perspective.  This leads to a much more realistic strategic plan and achievable business growth.

If you’d like me to help you succeed at leaping the gap between sole trader and small business just call me on 03 442 3645 or fill out my contact form.

Control & Change

There’s an interesting blog on HBR today called What to Do When You’re Out of Control by Peter Bregman.  It’s written as an example of how we can help ourselves feel better and deal with others more effectively in uncertain situations. To me it strikes right at the heart of Change Management.

As Change Managers, Agents and Leaders we create and oversee situations where people are much more likely to feel that they are completely out of control. As Peter’s article clearly illustrates, this lack of control puts people into a heightened state of anxiety where the smallest trigger can result abnormal behaviour.  By this I mean behaviour that we wouldn’t normally expect to see within our workplace or even within our everyday life. I’ve seen people scream and shout, burst into tears and even deliberately crash their car, not just  because they feel that their world is being turned upside down and inside out BUT ALSO because they feel that nothing they can do will make any difference.

The emotional cycle of change - Kübler-Ross 1969

That’s why a key element of the role of a Change Manager has to be to explore and develop ways for each individual effected by the change to exert some control over their own lives.  And I do use that breadth of language deliberately. Events that we have control over act as a chunk of bedrock to stand on or a life saver to grab hold of during the turbulence of change but while that turbulence is within the workplace, the solution does not have to be.

One of the problems with extending individuals’ control within the workplace is that, like taking a peek at Schrödinger’s cat, allowing individuals to influence the change taking place affects the probable success of the transformation.  How do you maintain the clarity of vision required and ensure that the change programme speaks with a single voice while you are encouraging everyone to shout at the same time? It’s a fundamental of Change Management that everyone has to share the same understanding of what’s happening and how they’re going to get there.

So how do you give people control of what goes on outside the workplace?  Of course you can’t tell people what to do on their own time.  What you can give them is training and development designed to increase their emotional intelligence and help them to feel more confident about exerting control wherever the opportunity arises, in or out of the workplace.  Simply talking people through the emotional cycle of change and helping them to understand where on the line they are and the stages they still have to go through can also have a profound effect – understanding something is the first step towards feeling ‘in control’.

If you’re responsible for managing change in your business you may be interested in my 2 day Frameworks for Change Management course.

Innovation

Innovators are, above all, problem solvers.  They don’t sit in front of a workbench and say ‘I wonder what will happen if I add this widget to this whatsit – Oh look a self-sealing-stembolt!’  (There are people who do that – they’re called research scientists and 99% of the time they are just proving that widget plus whatsit = deadend.  That’s a valuable part of the process of understanding our world and when it does lead to something that works it can be earth shattering but it’s a very inefficient way to innovate.)

Innovators see problems in the world around them all the time. They see the status quo as something to be challenged and improved upon rather than something to be accepted and put up with. They see a need, have an idea of how to combine matter and energy to fill that need AND they are also able to implement it.  Inventors create stuff – innovators make things change.

A great way to kick off your innovation process is to attend my one day workshop, Frameworks for Innovation.  This highly interactive and intensive course can also be tailored to suit your particular needs.

My role in the innovation process can include:

• helping you generate new ideas with the tools and methods used by world class companies;
• working with you to refine your vision into a purpose that can be shared with your customers, your stakeholders and your team;
• managing the process of developing detailed requirements and plans including functional and non-functional specifications, tender documentation, establishing milestones and decision gateways and communications planning;
• co-ordinating the timely delivery of your requirements through your team, your contractors and your suppliers;
• pro-actively managing risks and issues as they arise and ensuring that you have all the information you need to choose from alternative courses of action;
• providing quality assurance for you through testing and regular reviews;
• ensuring that your innovation is implemented when and how you want and that it delivers the expected results.