I have been really enjoying doing some work for an impending start up company lately. Whilst I really enjoy my big corporate work, the energy and growth rate of start ups gets under ones skin and invigorates ones whole life. It got me thinking to the vast array of new ventures that I have been privileged to be involved with over the years and what made some more successful than others.

It largely came down to three things:

• Timing
• Product Definition
• People

Timing

The first big mistake is the wrong timing – don’t be a pioneer in a new field – the market takes a lot longer than you think to engage with a new technology. Let someone else break into the market – do all the research, start educating the market etc. Then go in – with a better version based on what you have learnt from the first one. The first guy out is the inventor – the second the entrepreneur.

• Facebook, Youtube etc were just new ways of using an existing technology.
• iTunes was a new marketing channel, selling a different format of an existing product – not a new product
• Versions of existing comms technology – iphones to mobile phones; ipads to netbooks etc are fine.

Product Definition

The second big mistake is trying to roll out with too many features on a new product. Firstly, it gives the customer too much to deal with and secondly, it gives you nothing to roadmap as ‘new improved’ versions later on. Keep it simple, it simplifies not only the manufacturing the product, but also the marketing and support.

People

The people mistake becomes evident once the start grows and starts expanding. Larger companies typically suffer from what Marc Andressen referred to as ‘The Law of Crappy People”. Typically, most hiring and promotion decisions are based relative to other people in the company. Imagine an IT company starting out can only afford to hire an average Engineer [they may not even realize he/she is only average], and Bob, an older average engineer to be Snr Engineer. So as you grow you promote the Engineer to a Senior Engineer purely because he is as good as Bob, the current Snr Engineer, then you now have two average snr engineers that are promoted purely on tenure and their relative skill levels to each other. They then hire a new engineer, who will be less capable than them, so you have now lowered the average capability of the engineering team from average, to below average.

Look around mid-tier to lower upper management – there is always a strong layer of incompetence at this level, which is why most strategies never get executed below two levels down.

In times of downturn it is natural for businesses, when seeing a stagnating or falling revenue to focus on cost cutting to maintain or boost profits. However, this can lead to a change in tactics that will inevitably lead the business further down the profit curve.

Taking some simple numbers – if your business is earning $100,000 a week, and your costs are $35,000 a week. In an attempt to reduce costs by 10% you save $3,500 a week. What if instead, you focused on the revenue, on how to increase revenue by 10% – your gain will be $10,000.

I realize this is very simplistic, and my aim is not to insult you with the basics. However, when we face large crisis, we tend to lose focus on the smaller things in business that make the most difference. These activity areas are your propeller profits. Look at any boat or aircraft – that massive structure is being propelled by a relatively tiny propeller. In any business – there are a number of propellers, many of them revving only at idling speed.

So rather than looking for the big hit – the big win that is supposedly going to open up a new market, and new revenue – find the small propellers and rev them up a bit. These are the activities that your performance indicators should be displaying on your dashboard.

One of the interesting things that I have come across in helping businesses select KPI is the subtle confusion between strategies and tactics.

In its simplest form:

• Strategies make you effective - doing the right things
• Tactics make you efficient - doing things right

Many businesses set their strategy, then fail to relate this to tactical plans in a meaningful way. For example, a strategy may be to increase gross revenue by 4% in 12 months. They then set out to develop the marketing plan, detailing product portfolio goals and campaign profiles and designate these as their ‘tactics’. However, these are just a lower level of strategy – the marketing strategy. The tactics are defined in how the decisions are made in the product portfolio and how the campaigns are executed. It is this very last step that is so often overlooked. Whilst it would be fair to say that tactics are indeed the actions one takes to execute a strategy – in terms of KPI selection the important measure is in how well you execute each key tactic.

Success is a combination of doing the right things [strategy] and doing things right [tactics]. Of the two, doing the right things has the greater impact in delivering the revenue – doing things right increases the profit.

“The ultimate stuff of the universe is consciousness”[1]; ultimate reality is reached not through the physical material world but through deep intuition. There is growing evidence that through expanded consciousness, man can access the primary reality of frequencies that support altering matter by ‘will’. Expanded consciousness is the foundation of the practice of yoga, where one seeks to remove from ones vision all the faulty perceptions of one’s subjective memory to provide clarity of vision in which to perceive reality. Read more »

As I am searching through my consulting notes to seek out examples of how to design the most effective dashboard I came across some notes I put together for a speech called ‘Asset Based Thinking”. It reminded me that this was indeed the approach one needs to take in selecting KPI for the dashboard.

It’s common logic used by managers in all types of organizations – how to get the best return on investment from our assets – whether those assets be employees, operational IP, customers, sales channels, etc. By looking at everything in the business as an asset we must look at how we retain those assets, how we grow those assets and how we make the most profit from those assets. Read more »

Dashboards are rapidly becoming the convergence point between two powerful performance capabilities:

• Performance Management
• Business Intelligence

In my lastest article I outline why each of these performance tools is lacking within their own domain, and how powerful they become as collaborative partners.

Read the full article: Dashboards – A Convergence of Performance Management and Business Intelligence

A recent report by consulting group McKinsey shows that social networking has outstripped blogs and video sharing as the leading technology used by businesses to connect with their market. Usage has doubled since 2009, with seventy-two percent of respondents say their companies currently use at least one social technology. Social networking is being used largely for scanning the external environment [40%] and looking for new ideas [36%]. Read more »

With the recent announcement of software giant, Microsoft, buying Skype for a reported $8.5 billion I had to wonder how that will affect the current popular service. Whilst the service is used by business and consumer alike, I wouldn’t mind betting that it is regarded as most as a consumer service. Already I have seen the transition of Windows Live Messenger from a once usable IP call interface into an attempt to make me into a social network junkie – hiding any semblence of connectivity actions in the sorely lacking menu bars.

Windows Live Messenger Entry Page

Loading my social feeds before my contacts signals to me that they are more interesting in building the database than providing a good IP phone service. Now, since this is a free service, that seems fair on many counts – but how far is too far? Read more »

Good to see that the business side of BI is starting to gain a little more focus in this article by strategy + business. Its not a comfortable transition for many executives and senior managers. The higher up the hierarchy, the more invested ones personality becomes in ones own ‘gut feel’. Letting go of this aura of insight is understandably difficult – especially for those whose ‘power base’ is wrapped up in their intuition. However, it is not a one or the other situation – there is a place for both – knowing the right balance for each type of decision and each environment is where great leaders gain mastery.

A good article to just get your BI perspective in line with todays business.

Get Clear, Get Simple, Get Going…That’s the message in terms of strategic execution.

Most companies understand the process of setting a good strategy. Few companies successfully execute that strategy. The reason – lack of a robust, agile connection between strategic objectives and profit generating deliverables to the customer.

The two core elements to resolve this weakness are:

1. Effective operational processes that connect strategic objectives to sales
2. Effective performance monitoring to determine how well the business is meeting these objectives

Read more »