I confess that this week’s CDCD is something of a pot pouri, but nonetheless I hope still useful. Let me start by thanking those of you who e-mail me frequently, having received and read your copies. I’m grateful to receive all of your comments and indeed humbled that CDCD is so widely read and – as will become clear – in great detail. Several of you pointed out typographical errors in last week’s edition and I thank you for that. These past few weeks have been quite an education for me, as I have started using voice recognition software to dictate this broadcast, as well as write the scripts for my radio show. The software is easy to use and highly reliable, although it is prone to misinterpretations which can be fiendishly difficult to spot when proofreading. For example, in this work that I am dictating now the phrase, “and I thank you for that” was interpreted as “and I think you for that”. I have discovered that although voice dictation software is extremely useful it calls for a different approach to proofreading. Typographical errors no longer appear as “rubbish” – sometimes helpfully underlined in red by Microsoft Word. I now find that errors comprise complete words correctly spelt but making no contextual sense. By all means continue to point out these errors to me as I strive to invoke a new proofreading scheme to counteract the latest advance in technology at Active Presence headquarters.
In preparing this next paragraph, I searched the Internet using the words, “we live in uncertain times” – a search that returned more than 5 million responses. Given this, you could accuse me of not saying anything new, and to certain extent that’s true. My objective is to get you to pause and reflect a moment on current circumstances and how you might be able to influence them. There is a huge amount going on in the world and much of it is not good, as has been widely reported by every news outlet worldwide. I read a very interesting take on world affairs just this morning and I suggest that you read this entry in Dr vises blog market money matters blah blah, in which he predicts extreme difficulty ahead for the American economy and the US dollar. The extent to which time proves his predictions to be correct will become clear in due course, in the meantime it seems fairly clear to me that the only way ahead is by everybody cooperating to an uncommon and unparalleled degree. The world and its affairs are now so interconnected that they are beyond the control of any one group of people – be that group a religious doctrine, a political or commercial empire. The only way forward is by cooperation. Cooperation is only possible if groups of people communicate. The groups of people that the world needs to communicate in order to progress are groups of people that normally would not work together. And this is where you come in. The people who subscribe to and read this broadcast are, to some degree or another, interested in communication and its use in the workplace. The world needs you now, like never before. There are some people out there who recognise this need for unparalleled cooperation and they are doing their best to communicate with their counterparts – however, their communication skills simply aren’t up to the job. It’s like taking the averagely skilled car driver and asking him or her to drive a Formula 1 racing car. There is a growing and unparalleled need for high-quality, assertive, facilitation and effective communication skills. So far as I can see, this market can only grow and I would urge you to get stuck in and help people out.
I leave you with the words of Theodore Roosevelt, “Do what you can with what you have where you are.”
I’d also like to give you a brief technical update this week as well, by way of a very useful company and their website. The company is called MX Toolbox and their site is www.mxtoolbox.com. MX Toolbox is an American company, founded in 2003 and based in Austin Texas. On their website you will find a range of really useful tools, one of which allows you enter an IP address and discover whether that address is on any blacklists and if so the name of the list is on. Now it’s quite conceivable that 90% of the time you will not need to know this information. However, on the day that you really need to know it then you really need to know it and you really need to know how to find it – and this has proved invaluable to me this week, so I would encourage you to make a note of this website and at least bookmark it in your browser and I hope that you never ever have to refer to it.
This post was first published as one of Chris Davidson’s regular “Competitive Difference” emails. You can subscribe to Chris Davidson’s “Competitive Difference” (CDCD) Via the Active Presence website. You can also contact Active Presence directly.
Five questions for assessing Your Business plan (Issue 12, Vol 04)
When it comes to running your business, you need to know what you’re going to do next – where “next” might mean by the end of the month, the end of the quarter, or the end of the year. Whatever the time period being measured, you need to have some goal and a plan to achieve it. Sometimes these plans are referred to as ‘strategies’, mostly because the author believes it makes him or her sound more important and a step closer to Richard Branson. Get real, I say, just tell me how you’re going to make your first million, never mind the next three or four.
I believe any (micro) business needs three plans:
A marketing plan, which tells you about who it is that is going to give you money, where you’re going to find them and how you intend getting your message in front of them.
A product development plan, which tells you what it is you are going to create and sell to the people identified in your marketing plan.
A personal development plan, which gives you the necessary personal fitness, mental focus, moral courage and overall skills to make all this lot a reality.
In my experience, the difficulty with strategic planning is that a lot of the output is little better than waffle. It is simply not grounded in reality. I have seen far too many “strategic plans” produced by corporate marketing departments that start at completely the wrong end of the problem – and not surprisingly end up with the wrong answer.
The most common mistake is to place faith in ‘top down’ planning and this is normally how such an approach works and why it ends up being wildly wrong. The planners assess the overall size of the market – which normally ends up being some huge number. They then say something along the lines of, “…if we could only get 2% of this market in 5 years, we’ll make XX amount…”. While the pure logic of their mathematics might be true, the people who write such documents give little thought as to how the wealth is going to be accumulated. They simply pass this down the line as a noose that ends up round the neck of some poor divisional director. (I know, I used to be one. This is how the game is played).
The only way to write a sensible strategic plan for your own business is to deal with what you can actually achieve. In other words the plan has to be built from bottom up and not from the top down. There is a finite amount of resource (time and money) you can bring to the table and your plans have to recognise this
Once written you really need to be able to assess whether your plan is any good or not – and thankfully there is a fairly simple way of achieving this (which those people in corporate planning used to keep well hidden, in case we found out and embarrassed them).
Ask yourself the following questions:
What choice does this plan force me to make?
If your plan doesn’t force you to make a choice, then it’s a poor plan. Re-write it. Get off the fence and make a decision.
How does this plan focus effort?
Does your plan inform you as to what you’re doing with your time and – equally as important – where you’re not going to focus any effort. (Reference the English saying, “Jack of all trades and master of none”).
How does this plan balance continuity with change?
Doing too much new stuff at once is dangerous – for you and your clients. There needs to be a link with what you’re already known for doing well, otherwise you’ll find your credibility being stretched extremely thin.
How does this plan convert big issues into actions?
The biggest mistake of ‘corporate’ strategies – they never told you what actually had to happen. Anyone reading your plan should be left knowing the big issues you are wrestling with and what you’re doing about them. In terms of actions, there are only two that you need worry about: those that reduce cost and those that and value. If you find yourself making a decision that is neither adding value to your business nor taking cost out of it then why are you even bothering with such trivia?
How does this strategy integrate the organisation around a common objective?
If you employ staff your plan ought to clearly state how they are going to be engaged with the plan’s objectives.
This Post was first published as one of Chris Davidson’s “Competitive Difference” emails. You can subscribe to Chris Davidson’s “Competitive Difference” Via the Active Presence website. You can also contact Active Presence directly.