http://www.fastcompany.com/3003455/one-minute-change-will-transform-your-company

Thought provoking - what’s the one single thing everyone in your business needs to do?

It’s been a doubly useful exercise - as well as giving us the figures we needed, it has also highlighted an unexpected consequence of (an otherwise very sensible) archiving policy decision. This has allowed us to tweak a policy and create a new approach to one aspect of marketing, saving thousands of pounds per year.

Certainly good anecdotal evidence to support the old programmers adage that “it’s cheaper to fix it on paper…”!

There is just so much I could blog about from that week beyond the obvious sporting endeavour - organisation, good-humour, commitment, achievement, sportsmanship, generosity of spirit - the list goes on and on.

One thing that really did hit home for me though was the changes in attitude that I really believe the Paralympics will have started.

Paralympic sport is a lot about celebrating, challenging and competing in what people can do, not what they can’t do.

What a great way of looking at life in general; and at the people we interact with every day…

We’re thrilled to have been Highly Commended in the 2012 Business in the Community Awards for Excellence in the East of England!

The Awards for Excellence, run by Business in the Community, commend the best examples of business as a force for good. This year Business in the Community celebrates 30 years of supporting and encouraging businesses to genuinely transform their businesses and their communities.

The 2012 Awards were presented to the winning companies at the East of England Awards Gala Dinner held at Hengrave Hall, Bury St Edmunds attended by over 300 businesses from across the region. The awards recognise the significant impact that companies have made to positively transform the communities in which they operate through their responsible business practice.

Mike Brophy, Regional Director, Business in the Community said:

“Each year I am thoroughly inspired by the businesses across the region striving to incorporate responsible business into all they say and do. Our winners show great leadership and willingness to genuinely transform their businesses and the communities in which they operate. This interconnected proposition of the mutual benefits to both business and society when businesses think and act differently is key for all organisations on this journey.”

Pro Bono Company of the Year

Critical Action was shortlisted for the Pro Bono Company of the Year. This award seeks to recognise, reward and celebrate businesses that have provided their professional services pro bono (free of cost, for the public good) to support voluntary or community organisations. It is designed to recognise a regional company whose outstanding contribution has had a significant impact on the local community and society and sets an example to other companies.

Critical Action Ltd received a “Highly Commended” award from the judges (along with fellow Peterborough ProHelp group member, Buckles Solicitors LLP).

We were surprised, delighted and humbled to receive the commendation for our work. Giving something back, and helping others to make the most that they can out of their situation is part of our core philosophy, and we’re proud to be engaged in our local community organisations and charities, helping such inspirational groups and people.

We encourage businesses, large and small, to get involved in Business in the Community, to make a difference to their locales, and become even better places for staff to work.

About Business in the Community

Business in the Community is a business-led charity with a growing membership of over 850 companies. They work locally and nationally through 11 regional teams and internationally with 115 global partners. With a further 10,700 engaged in our campaigns and an employee reach of 16.8 million - they are one of the largest and most influential leadership networks focused on driving responsible business practice. They offer members a range of practical information, tools, training and resources to help them transform their businesses and integrate responsible practices into their operations. Members are also work to help transform communities and tackle serious social issues where business can make a real difference.

Business in the Community is one of the Prince’s Charities, a group of not-for-profit organisations of which The Prince of Wales is President. www.bitc.org.uk

We have been working with a client recently on a simple, clear way of prioritising both strategic and day-to-day demands on time (in this case for the IT department).

If It’s Too Hard, Abdicate It…?

At Critical Action, we’re great believers in the principle that managers and leaders can’t create two independent sets of priorities for strategic (”we must improve the business”) and tactical (”we must keep our users and customers happy”) activities, and abdicate to operational staff the balancing of the two in the real world.

That’s not fair, because the balancing act is actually the difficult bit, and it’s also not smart, because we’re losing control and visibility of service quality and progress of improvements until it’s too late and someone presents us with a problem.

Consistency and Trust

As leaders, owners and managers, we need to be thinking about these difficult real-world choices before we “hand down the priorities”, and consulting with our teams on how to make prioritisation work.

The start point for our work this week was to help come up with some simple principles that could be applied across all aspects of work, which would help answer the question “what do I do first?” and also, support us in explaining to users and customers why their request (important as it is) is not top of the queue. It also helps your staff, because they know if they are being given a tough time, you will back them up on their correct prioritisation. It’s about consistency and trust.

The initial list for this client was (from top priority down):

• Data integrity (e.g. is it accurate and up to date)
• Data security (e.g. is it adequately protected against incorrect access)
• Customer-facing (e.g. are we pleasing or letting down our customers)
• Operational efficiency (e.g. are we wasting our time, duplicating things or creating errors)

Of course, you could debate any of these areas (particularly the top two), and the priority will most certainly be different for individual businesses. However, thinking of your own short list, and debating the priority is an interesting exercise to go through, and can’t but help improve the joined up view of priority across and throughout your business.

A short, clear list encourages us focus on what’s really important for the success of our organisation. What’s the list for your business?

 In my last blog post, I outlined three key stages we use to help businesses improve, and I covered the first area (Commercial Imperative - the “why do it?”):

 This time around, we’ll look at “Planning Improvements“ - how to change the way your people do what they do, and how to give them better tools. These are the old classics of “people, process and technology”.

• Commercial Imperative - what’s the case for doing it - the “why”
• Planning Improvements - the what, where, how of action/change
• Taking Action - the who and when to make change happen

Hold on. You’ve only just started - how can you improve!?

Well, we believe you can, and should, make improvements every day.

For a start-up business, planning improvements are often not about improving existing tools and ways of working, but creating new ones that will take you through the start-up phase and into growth.

One maxim we use is “design for the business you want to be, not where you are now”, and this is equally true of start-ups.

Will you remain at one or two employees for some time, or is your plan to grow to 50 people within a year. These plans affect decisions on what is appropriate for you.

People

Making improvements, or creating new ways of doing things, involves people in a number of ways.

You need people to operate your business, or if it’s highly automated, to get it going in the first place, and deal with exceptions. People can help or hinder the processes of change or creation. In a similar way to looking at profitability or risk, get a sheet of paper, and list out all the things you can think of that the people involved (even if it’s just you) should, can and can’t do, strengths, weaknesses and so on.

What we’re looking to do is build an honest assessment of what we’re working with, so we can manage our “human capital” as well as we can, for both the business and the people. It’s vital to keep the right people motivated and bought in to making the future happen. That’s why we aim to be clear about what our people are good and and enjoy, and are not so good at, or dislike doing. We can then be more confident about what we can do, and what we will be best to buy in skills for.

Remember too, that one related aspect of “people” is “time”. Each person has a finite amount of time to work with, so take some time to think about (and write down) how you will organise time, what results the time should yield, and how you will track the effectiveness of the time used. We do a lot of work around practical time (and priority - see next blog post…) management when we start working with clients, so we know it makes a difference.

Process

Process is broadly speaking “what you do, how you do it, when, to whom” in order to deliver your service or product to your customers.

Particularly for start-ups, the temptation (and often the need) is to “wing it” with the way you do things - it’s partly a learning phase after all, and I think that we should never lose the excitement of creating new things - products or processes.

So why is process important in the start-up phase?

I think that there are three main reasons - giving your customers reliable, consistent products or services, preparing for growth and securing the value of your business.

The important aspects of process in start-ups are to keep things simple, keep them accessible, and keep them fresh. Use one page summaries of processes. Publish them on your intranet, blu-tac them onto the walls, draw them on whiteboards. Debate them, challenge one another - could the way you do things be better? Could it be faster? Waste less? Do more for the same effort? Make customers happier? Look on process discipline as a way to incrementally do better for your customers. Big established businesses could learn from you! (But they won’t, they get stuck in institutional thinking, and that’s part of why start-ups can make such rapid market impacts…).

Look for where things are delayed, duplicated or waiting on decisions. Ask your customers where you are better and worse than your competitors. Ask your suppliers too. Ask staff to tell you what they spend most of their time on, and look for opportunities to improve.

Technology

Keep it appropriate.

It’s tempting to splash the seed-investment cash on iPads, MacBook Pros, stonking great HP servers, top-end agencies and service  providers.

Sometimes that’s absolutely the right thing to do.

Sometimes though, having a pencil and paper and a phone is enough technology for now.

Generally, technology improvements are about a few key things:

• Speed, efficiency and accuracy - make repetitive or complex tasks happen more quickly, with less input from expensive resources (like staff and sub-contractors), and fewer errors
• “Findability” and clarity - get to the facts and decisions quickly, allow you to summarise, drill-into, expand, extrapolate and so on using your data sources, support searching to get the right information at your fingertips
• Reducing time challenges - get stuff working 24*7 so your business is available and working, even when your people aren’t, keeping customers happy and wasting less precious time

Of course, there are lots of other things technology is good at, some of which might be key to your business (so add them to the list above!). However, if the purchase you are thinking of right now doesn’t improve at least one big aspect of your business, or put you ahead of your competitors, ask yourself, why are you really buying it?

“It’s how you use what you got…”

…to paraphrase many a song! Try to make an hour a week or similar to ask “could we do more with what we have?”

Take time to look at the hard and soft assets you have in your business - people and their knowledge/skills; the ways you do what you do; your technology and its capabilities.

How much more do they need to do?

How can they do more?

Can someone else help you get more out of them?

What do you need to invest in to get more, to fill gaps?

Who needs to take what action to make the improvements?

Next time, we’ll look at just this area - planning, prioritising and delivering results.

Decide, Design, Deliver

We do a wide range of work, sometimes with long-established businesses, sometimes with start-ups. Our approach splits business improvement into three areas:

• Commercial Imperative - what’s the case for doing it - the “why”
• Planning Improvements - the what, where, how of action/change
• Taking Action - the who and when to make change happen

Building Your Case, Making Decisions

The Commercial Imperative has three components - profitability, risk and differentiation.

For a start-up business, you have to be creative to figure out how life will go with these three for the first 6-18 months. It’s definitely worth doing though, because we see a lot of mature businesses which have lost the clarity they once had on these things. I’d love for you to avoid some of that pain right from the get-go.

Profitability

Simply put, your profitability is your ability to maintain a (positive!) difference between your income and expenditure. Reduce costs, increase prices. But it’s rarely that black and white. Get a sheet of paper, your iPad, whiteboard or whatever, and start writing down all the things you can think of that affect your profitability, and its cousin - cashflow. What do you need to spend, when, why? How does what you spend clearly link with money coming in? How will you set prices (see also Differentiation below) that people will pay? What will you do if someone needs a refund or return? If you grow really quickly, will you not have enough profit to pay increased production costs - how will you get more cash? How can you charge a premium for your product or service? Can you complement one with the other - a maintenance service that goes with your product, or a product that makes more of your service? Could you re-sell someone else’s product or service so they have the production pain?

We’re looking to get a list of things that could make you more money, and a list of things that could cost you. Plan to do more of the former, and fewer of the latter…

It sounds like a lot of stuff to worry about - but remember, we’re not necessarily looking for all the answers here, just a list of things to think about to make sure you’ve at least thought about how they could affect your business. This leads nicely on to…

Risk

Risk is basically “what do we not know and/or not control” - and how do we stop little bad things turning in to big bad things. Think of it this way - you have motor insurance and a mobile phone so that a car accident doesn’t turn into a £15,000 loss (wrecked car) and prolonged pain (not able to call the emergency services). However, you may not buy the expensive “product protection” insurance retailers pitch every time you buy a toaster or kettle, because you can live with buying a new toaster. You’ve made judgements on the relative risk and the “mitigation” - how you will reduce your overall exposure to bad stuff happening.

Grab another sheet of paper and begin to figure out what bad things could happen and what knock-on bad things could happen. Once again, this is about being aware of the big wide world out there so you can spot things going right or wrong, early. As you write, think of “if this happens, then I’d do this…” and add that to the paper - these are your “plan Bs” and are what makes your business flexible and adaptable.

Maybe one or two risks will leap out at you. Write them on post-its and stick them on the wall in front of your desk. Just keep an eye on them - don’t obsess about them, but make sure you are not burying your head in the sand. Review your overall risks every 6-12 months - this helps you to avoid gradual changes in your situation that end up making you very exposed.

Differentiation

Put simply, why will someone buy from you rather than an established or alternative provider. Wrapped up in this is market positioning, marketing communications, USPs and a host of other business jargon.

You need to be able to answer the questions your customers and investors will ask:

• Who will buy it, when
• How and where will they find out about it
• What makes them feel they need to have it
• Why choose to buy it from you, and
• Why is the price right?

For me, these are the basic points you need to have nailed to make a success of your business.

Personally, I think that Differentiation can be the hardest thing to get right, because in the early stages of business, we tend to see everything through our own eyes. You need to get as wide a set of opinions as you can on this one, not just your nearest and dearest. Unless you have serious intellectual property to protect, I’d use every conversation you have with people to discuss what you plan to do and ask them to comment on the five questions above. Above all, listen to what people say, and try to be honest about whether your potential customers are telling you something different to what you think - if you want to sell to them, they are right, not you…

Next time, I’ll blog on Planning Improvements - what to do with your People, Process and Technology.

Our bread and butter is helping businesses dig into how they do what they do, and looking for how we, they and their staff can make incremental improvements. Very satisfying.

The work we really love though, is to look at the situation and help an organisation come up with fabulous new stuff - great, unexpected, (positively) disruptive ways of doing things.

We came up with a really intriguing business model for Qton Solutions (a favourite client of ours because of the idea-storms we generate together!) to consider.

They produce software solutions for customers that really liberate value through streamlining operations (fitting nicely with the analysis and design that Critical Action does). However, customers are often concerned that value-based solutions are only valuable to them if they deliver…

A classic example of this is where we show that one can save a business 15 minutes per day per person - across a workforce of 100 people, so let’s say 25 person hours per day, around 6,250 person hours every year - at £60/hr that’s £375,000 p.a.!

Now, that sounds impressive, but we usually also point out that you can only get £375k of benefit if people use that 15 minutes every day to do something productive instead of talk some more about X-Factor or football…

With this thought in mind, we posed ourselves a challenge:

“could we build a pricing model that said - the more you actually use this system, the cheaper it gets, from what it’s worth to what you want to pay?”

We didn’t mean break points for volume usage, we meant the actual money you pay each month to use the system comes down if people genuinely use it…

That’s quite radical - and it usually stops the conversation dead for a few minutes, before the talking really starts again!

If you’re interested in commenting or knowing more about how we’re thinking of making this work - why not get in touch?

I’ve always tried to do at least one course or qualification each year which is nothing to do with “the day job”. This is partly for relaxation, but also because doing radically different things forces you to think differently Lastly, it reminds me what it is like to have to start from scratch again, acquiring knowledge and skills. It keeps the brain fresh.

For example, I went to night school and studied British Sign Language for 4 years (after starting out with just a one year introduction course!). I followed that with a course on welding - slightly different. After that, I started Pilates classes (I’ve broken too many bones to go back to rugby again).

The Biggest Ever Class Intake?

So, I was looking around at what to try next when I came across a tweet about an online degree-level module in Artificial Intelligence that Stanford University were offering - it had something like 25,000 students from around the world signed up. It’s now at over 85,000, I believe.

What a great idea! Bringing that level of expertise to a vast audience.

I’d encourage you to find out more, not just to see if the course is of interest (think “Google is actually artificial intelligence…”), but also to look at how the course is structured, how the content is “chunked up”, how it will be assessed, and how a global population spread across time-zones is accommodated.

Beyond the course content itself, there has clearly been a lot of learning and thinking going on. Stuff we can potentially learn from to, for our customers, our staff and our businesses.

Wish me luck as I brush up on my stats theory in preparation for the course!

First up is “What Would Google Do?” by Jeff Jarvis. Not just an interesting manifesto/thought piece, but also interesting to look at 2009’s predictions through 2011’s lens!

Second is “Yes! 50 secrets from the science of persuasion” by Goldstein, Martin and Cialdini, which never fails to give me ideas for new things to try and new ways to look at old problems.

If you’ve not read them, give them a try - I’d love to know what you think of them.