Category: Opportunities

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What’s the use of knowing how to find true north?

Over the years, as we live, we also learn. We hear about events from news announcements, from friends and acquaintances and even, occasionally, from someone’s marketing material. All these sources of information add to our store of knowledge. 

Much of that knowledge won’t be relevant to your situation and you will unconsciously file it away. Memory experts tell us that we don’t forget things – we are just not very good at recalling them. 

Sometimes you are reminded of information you first gathered years ago – but at that time you didn’t have a use for it. 

Many years ago, I worked with a client who was using a knowledge transfer partnership (KTP) project to enhance the sum of knowledge in his business. I hadn’t heard about knowledge transfer partnerships, so I took the time to find out about them. I didn’t have a use for that piece of knowledge for decades. 

More recently, research and development tax credits have become very popular. In my present role,  I receive two or three calls or emails per week from people offering to help with them. We’re already claiming – and have done so for years. I have also helped many other clients lodge successful claims. 

I was reminded of the KTP scheme by a notification on LinkedIn a few weeks ago. It wasn’t an explanation of the scheme, just a news item about one of my connections. That triggered something in my memory and I realised we could probably use the scheme to solve a problem. We’re already in the process of selecting a university partner and the reaction to our outline of the project has been very positive. 

So, what do you have locked away in your memory vault that could help you with a challenge you are facing today? 

What do your team know – but it’s locked away in their memories or they have not volunteered the information? 

What are the challenges you need to solve – and does everyone know what they are? 

Perhaps one day you’ll be lost in the wilderness – then you will want to know how to find true north. 

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Why don’t you do more business overseas?

Strange as it may seem, people make most decisions based upon emotion rather than facts.

Sales training courses emphasize the need to engage with the customer emotionally, using the Know, Like and Trust principle.  Anyone who has bought a house will recognize it’s an emotional purchase. When you’re deciding whether to buy a property, there may and should be some filtering of the options based on facts – for example, distance to the station, school catchment areas etc. – but, at the end of the day, the decision will be emotional.

The same is true for other purchases. Cars are bought based on emotional decisions and car manufacturers spend fortunes promoting their brands rather than the mechanical features. 

Do you remember the Janis Joplin song ‘Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes-Benz’? That wasn’t an advertisement, but it shows the power of the brand.

In your business, however, emotional decisions can lead you astray. I’ve seen talented individuals leave businesses as a result of disagreements with their managers, when in fact these talented individuals were suggesting business improvements. These improvements were taken as criticism of the managers, who reacted emotionally instead of rationally.

It’s emotional reaction that can hold a business back. You don’t take the opportunity to engage that new supplier or explore that uncharted overseas market because you don’t know what might be involved.  When we don’t know what something might involve, the usual reaction is fear – fear of the unknown.

If you add into the mix a whole range of preconceptions and apocryphal stories that abound, especially when it comes to overseas markets, you have a recipe for poor decision-making! You’ll hear any number of horror stories likely to affect your perception of overseas trading opportunities – but you won’t hear very much about the millions of ventures successfully achieved in other markets.

There’s no rational reason to avoid these market opportunities, but you do have to do your research and plan for them. You should focus on gathering as much factual information as possible and proceed slowly, step by step. The success you enjoy in these new areas will be well worthwhile!

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The mission comes first

You have a set of tasks to complete, a to-do list that just seems to get longer and longer. And there’s a horde of people waiting to speak to you.

The phone never stops ringing.

The email keeps pinging, demanding your attention.

There’s yet another meeting, just around the corner.

If you’re not careful, you’ll get sucked into day-to-day activities.

Add a few big projects to the list – getting ready for that exhibition, developing that new product line, working on a new marketing campaign – and, before you know it, you’ll be wondering where the years have gone!

It’s easy to lose sight of the overall objective of the business.

It’s easy to spend time looking at all the mundane things that cross your desk. It’s even easier to get caught up with projects that are exciting and demanding.

If this is what’s happening to you, what’s happening to the people who work for you and with you? Their situation will be even worse.

I’ve often used the simple question ‘Why?’ when considering different activities in a business. Why are we having this meeting? Why are you doing that? Why are we going to this exhibition?

Controversially, I’ve also been known to ask, ‘Why does this job exist?’

Mostly, the answers can be summarised as, ‘We’ve always done it that way’.

If you can make time to ask the questions and dig through the initial, rather facile answers, you then need to make time to absorb the real answer.

You may find that individuals have forgotten the real answer. They’ve forgotten the real mission of the company.

It’s worth taking a step back to remind everyone why the business exists: What’s our purpose? What’s our mission?  Then make sure every activity is directed towards the fulfilment of that mission.

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The past is the past so focus on the future

Many of the circumstances that existed before the Christmas break will still be the same now the New Year is getting underway. For example –

  • You’ll probably be interacting with the same people
  • The business will face many of the same opportunities and challenges
  • You will react in the same way

Old habits die hard!

That makes it really easy to feel as though nothing has changed. You’ll get dragged back into the same old things. There’s a cynical saying that goes, ‘Same s**t, different day’.

All those wonderful plans you’ve been thinking about, all the great things you were planning to do at the start of the New Year are likely to get overwhelmed by the wave of history. You get dragged back into day-to-day battles and your plans sit in the drawer gathering dust.

In a year’s time, you’ll probably reflect on how little progress you’ve made towards your goals and feel really frustrated.

Or else you can take proactive steps today to break with the past, leave all those old habits behind and focus on new plans and opportunities.

To do this is easier said than done – but that’s usually true of anything worthwhile!

A tip that will help – and can be applied to any change project – is to set short-term goals and deadlines. These will act as milestones or staging posts towards your longer-term plan.

Hold frequent progress meetings. Try to avoid calling them ‘review’ meetings, as that tends to imply you’re reviewing what has happened, rather than focusing on the development of what has yet to happen.

Remind everyone involved that you can’t change the past.  You can, and should, learn from the past; but change only happens by looking to the future.