Zen and the art of business judging.

Imagine if you were a judge in a business competition that measures your business across dimensions such as financial results, people, processes, technology, innovation, leadership and overcoming obstacles.  Detach yourself from your business physically, intellectually and emotionally and view your business as a judge would do when comparing your business to others.  I know how hard this is as I am both a business judge and a business owner.

Being a business judge has been responsible for some of the most powerful insights and learning in how to improve my own business.  As a judge I also know how difficult it is to detach yourself from your business to gain a clear view of what is looks like to others, be they judges or customers.  Despite the difficulty, detachment is absolutely necessary to gain a fresh perspective to inspire new ideas and the motivation to change.  Without detachment you can often be defensive and prone to rationalize your status quo.

There are a few ways to make this process effective.  If you are a sole operator you probably have the toughest challenge but you can do your research and analysis yourself or get help from a consultant, business coach or fellow business owner.

• Establish your judging parameters.  It is hard to benchmark your financial performance against competitors but can base your judging on the health of your finances and rate of growth.
• Do your research on competitors and similar organizations.  You can do this online and in person by visiting their premises.  In my judging we look at the office layout, cleanliness, ease of access, and other elements.  You can visit websites, visit forums, look through social media (Linked In, Facebook, Twitter) for insights into the profiles of your competitors and feedback from customers.
• Set up a scoring scale and use it.  For each judging parameter use a scale and score each company you research as well as your own.  I suggest you score your own business first and last.
• Judge the business and not the product or service.  There is an inclination to rate businesses that are engaged in exciting and/or interesting products and services higher.  I remember an instance of this with a comparison between and event management firm and a robotics firm.  Many judges could not comprehend how the event management firm scored higher.  The robotics firm was not as well managed, had immature processes, could demonstrate no focus on people development among other factors that were attributes of a model business.

When you have performed your research and filled in your score cards, it is time to go and spend some time thinking and planning.  You do this part of the process away from your business and distractions.   I cannot help but give  a tip that describes all the contestants in the contest that I judge, ‘focus on the basics and the detail.’

In our next blog we will explain how to convert your business judging to creating better results in your business.

Execution Paralysis

One of our new clients is actually in the enviable position of having a rapidly growing business thanks to referrals.  His business supplies a great product and backs it up with excellent service.  If you analyse his sales you see that over 80% are referrals within one industry.  He called us in when he woke up to the fact that the bigger players were starting to react to his success with more aggressive marketing and pricing strategies.  Among our Australian clients this scenario is pretty common.  What is unusual with this client is the sophistication of the strategies and tactics he has developed to counter attack the bigger competitors.  He and his team have also created strategies for entering new markets and eventually expanding overseas.  Great stuff on paper with no execution.  When we were called in it was obvious this client was suffering from ‘execution paralysis.’  For some business people this can be a malady that last a day, for others weeks and in this case it was uncertain if they were ever going to recover momentum.  Execution paralysis occurs when you have a number of tasks and objective but you fail to execute any to completion.  It is like being in a severe snowstorm and only seeing ‘white’ through your windscreen.  Individual snowflakes are visible on the glass but beyond that only white.  How do you break execution paralysis?  It can be hard without external help as often you are too close to the business to take a higher level view of objectives.

• Analyse your list of objectives and prioritise based on positive impact to the business.  Do not prioritise based on speed or ease.      In the case of this client our first objective was to create a new marketing kit for both online and hard copy distribution.
• First things first is to create a list of next actions for each objective; in other words break things down.  I suggest you get away from your computer and use big sheets of paper and/or a white board.  A next action may be a small task such as calling a person or doing a web search.  You must break down to small pieces.
• Assign accountability and a due date for each ‘next action.’
• Incorporate your objectives and next actions in collaborative tool for all persons to access and update.  In this case we used Backpack from 37 Signals.
• Time block for each next action or you can consolidate with time blocking for an objective.  A time block is segmenting time in your calendar to focus on a task or objective.  We still find the majority of people in business seem to approach each day in an ad-hoc manner and leave the office feeling they have not accomplished anything.  Surprised?
• I paraphrase a statement I read in a book by Alan Weiss, “……….we are after success, not perfection.”  For our purposes this means finish what you are doing and move on.  DO NOT waste more time refining, contemplating or discussing what you have done.  MOVE ON.
• With our client we are having weekly reviews every Friday.  These reviews are pretty intensive and include not only the measurement of progress against their objectives but also a clean up of all the emails, documents and notes collected during the week.