Business musings...

I’ve been pondering my blog for a little while now. Whilst I have blogged a lot about business improvement and excellence, I haven’t blogged about many of the other interesting things I discover and learn on a daily basis. As I’m a maven at heart and love learning and sharing new stuff, I wanted to reflect this in my blog and hopefully be of benefit to you, my reader.

So, really as a note to you, and a challenge to myself, please welcome the Matt Stocker Ltd blog 2.0!

I am really pleased to have been appointed to the Warwick Business School Alumni Board.

As a graduate of WBS, I’ve felt great affinity to the university, and the opportunity to contribute to the success of both the business school and the diverse alumni network is a great privilege.  I look forward to the next three years of my term on the Board with excitement and anticipation; I’m sure future updates will follow.

The process I used to keep track of my sales pipeline used to be a bit complicated. Accurate: yes. But simple? No.

As a result, it was hard to update. The more complex something is, the more commitment it takes to use it.

So, following a conversation with my business coach (who supports my own personal development and keeps me on my toes!), I’ve radically simplified the number and type of stages in my sales pipeline. Now it is much easier to gauge my pipeline at a glance and to see gaps in the flow.

The result? I’ll use it much more.

In your business, is there anything that is more complicated than it needs to be?

Why not challenge your team and your customers to see what they think could be simplified in your business. You might be surprised at the results.

I have just finished Good to Great by Jim Collins and I wanted to record my reflections about the book. However, I am in somewhat of a dilemma. On the one hand, I really enjoyed the book and felt that many of the concepts Jim talks about are values and ideas that I recognise as important in building a great business. On the other, I have read a number of critical reviews of the book (such as that by Rob May) pulling apart both the fundamental research foundations of the book and also its findings.

On balance

Overall, I think that Good to Great provides a very useful model and framework for developing and creating a great business. Concepts such as the flywheel go some way to challenging the ‘magic bullet’ fascination within the business world. Similarly, a Level 5 leader in place of ‘Fred the Shred’ might have created a very different outcome for Royal Bank of Scotland in the last year.

Solving the impossible

At the same time, trying to unravel the complexity of the business world to create a model that enables a business to become great is a tall order! Businesses operate in too complex an environment for a ‘key to business success’ to exist. Any business book that claims to have discovered the ’secret to success’ is deceiving itself. Although I don’t feel that Jim Collins does claim the key to success in Good to Great, the book is taking on a huge task in assessing what creates ‘greatness’ and I suppose it is not surprising if it falls a little short of the answers.

Everlasting greatness

Obviously, there are other criticisms leveled against the book regarding the companies that were chosen and their subsequent fall from grace – Fannie Mae, being the most recent. However, the book never claims that the companies chosen will continue to be great beyond the 15 years of great performance shown. Indeed, 4 of the 11 great companies used in the study were facing serious challenges to their greatness or had already lost it by the time the book was published. It is also worth noting that Jim has recently published a new book (although I haven’t yet had chance to read it), entitled ‘How the mighty fall: And why some companies never give in‘, which I imagine begins to examine some of the questions raised by the fall of great companies.

Correlation versus Causality

I think one of the key problems with many studies and books is that of causality and correlation. Causality and correlation are similar and yet entirely different. Causality is where one or more factors cause an effect; correlation is where a relationship of some kind exists between two factors but one is not necessarily the cause of the other. Yet, so often when correlation is discovered, people assume they have discovered causality. Good to Great discovers correlation, but cannot prove causality: there are too many other uncontrollable and unexaminable factors to pin down exactly what causes greatness.

Should you read it?

If you are looking for factors (or levers) within a business that can be proven beyond doubt to create success then you might as well stop reading business books!

If however, you are looking for interesting ideas that help develop you and your business, not as a magic formula but rather as concepts to play against and spark off, then Jim Collins’ Good to Great does just that. It may not hold the secrets to success but it will certainly provide you with food for thought!

Let me ask you a question…

“What’s next for your business?”

It can be tempting in the tough times to put your head down, and just try to get through each day hoping that you come out the other side.

But, on the other hand, why waste a good crisis?

It is actually times like these that we should be looking up, not down.

By taking stock, reviewing what we are in business for; by asking the questions around where we want our businesses to be in 5 years time, and what it will look like, we gain a new perspective on our current struggles.

What are we struggling for? Why is our business here beyond just surviving?

By answering these future based questions, we gain insight and challenge for the now, as well as strategic direction to aid decision making.

So, if it is only just for a morning, lift your head up and look ahead. It can have a powerfully motivating effect on both you and your staff.

Learning is a key part of what I do.

I’m learning and developing my own skill-set all the time. I push myself to learn new skills and develop existing ones.

If I don’t grow and develop, I limit my business and limit my clients’ businesses.

Learning is a process. I put time, money and effort into that process, through which I am rewarded with increased knowledge and skill.

Yet, whenever and whatever I’m learning, I’ve noticed the same two feelings occur: excitement and frustration.

The frustration occurs during the stages in the process at which I am investing time and effort, but don’t have the immediate gratification of knowing and understanding.

The excitement comes from ‘knowing’ something new and being able to do something that I couldn’t do before. Learning is fun!

So what can we learn from this process?

1. We need to judge frustration correctly. Will the frustration break through to excitement, in which case we just need to keep pressing on? Or do we need some help or need to pursue another avenue? It is pointless pressing on if the frustration is there because we have reached a dead end, but we also shouldn’t give up too quickly.
2. If we are not getting frustrated about the learning process, then this may be telling us that we’re not being stretched enough.  Maybe we’re just coasting when we should be pushing through into a new area.
3. ‘Breakthrough’ is difficult to predict – normally it comes after, or in the middle of, frustration, but we have no way of knowing exactly when it will happen. It often feels like one of those lightbulb moments when suddenly it all makes sense.

Applying this to our businesses…

In business, we find the experience of learning in both our own personal development and also in the implementation of new projects and tasks.  How often have you felt frustrated that a project seems to be going nowhere and you just feel stuck?  Maybe you’re trying to re-write the copy for your website but you just can’t quite grasp those elusive words that say what you really want to say!  The same principles as above apply.

1. We need to judge frustration in a project correctly.  It may be that we’re on the right path, we just haven’t reached the point of breakthrough yet; in which case, we need to keep pressing on.  Alternatively, we may need some external input and support – it’s amazing what a fresh pair of eyes can see.  Or, we may have actually reached a dead end; using a business analogy, maybe the marketplace we’re competing in just isn’t the right one anymore and we need to target a new set of customers.
2. If all the projects we take on as a company or as individuals are easy and never give us any sense of breaking through, it may be that we’re coasting.  Although coasting can be great – especially if the company is making good profits and returns from something that they find relatively easy – coasting can lead to complacency and also never gives that great sense of achievement we gain from breaking through in something we’ve found quite challenging.  I can’t imagine that the truly great companies out there have ever achieved that status without stretching themselves.
3. Breakthrough is difficult to predict, so when we feel we really are on the right path, we need to press on through and not get discouraged.  Breakthrough may be just around the corner and it will be a fantastic moment of elation when we reach it.