3 Business instincts to avoid

 Culture  No Responses »
Oct 312011
 

To dominate an industry and outperform your competition, you have to be different. You have to be different in a meaningful way. What you don’t always need to be is the best.  

(NB – this post continues my thoughts from Why you should stop trying to be the best.)

Last week I heard brilliant Harvard Professor Youngme Moon present and she suggests that if you are committed to being different you’d better eliminate these 3 long-standing business instincts from your culture:

  1. Paying too much attention to the competition - in Youngme’s word’s “who cares what they are doing!”.  
  2. Over-listening to customers – the advice you get from customers will always be to improve, not to be different. 
  3. Over-commitment to excellence - there’s no need to be excellent at everything. Different nearly always involves being brilliant at some things and weak at others. To be different, stop trying to be well-rounded. 

There’s a striking similarity between Youngme’s point 2 and and lesson 2 that Guy Kawasaki taught us from his time working with Steve Jobs.  Remember “Customers cannot tell you what they need” from this article?

To be different, you have to think different and create an organisation that is committed to being different.

Why Zappos HAVE to keep their culture buzzing

 Culture  No Responses »
Oct 282011
 

Zappos.com is famous for their company culture.  Today I had the chance to check it out first hand with a tour of their campus.  I was impressed.  The Zappo’s culture is everything I expected it to be: it’s high energy, it’s welcoming, it’s fascinating and it’s pretty weird. Here’s a few predictable and not-so-predictable things I learned..

  1. When I arrived early, really early, about 45 minutes early, it didn’t matter. Even when I went in the wrong door, I was greeted by an excited Zapponian (that’s what they call themselves) named Sonia who happily walked me to the main reception.  (Very welcoming start).
  2. The Zappos culture is based upon living their 10 core values.  From recruitment to training, reviews, rewards, recognition, competitions and even parties, everything is built around their core values.  (This was expected, but they do it REALLY well)
  3. The desks, corridors, stairwells, bathrooms, boardrooms and kitchens are messy!  There are streamers on the roof, weird trinkets everywhere you look, Zapponian-created graffiti on the walls and right now, halloween decorations and huge pumpkins everywhere!
  4. Tours of the Zappos campus are run by a small group called the Zappos Insights team. This team do an awesome job of welcoming guests like me and hosting the tours.  They are open, honest and helpful (as expected).  But..
  5. When I asked our guide what are the 10 Zappos Core Values, she could only remember two (yep, 2!) before referring to the list on the back of her name badge (Unexpected!! I thought she’d know them).
  6. Their recruitment process is exhaustive.  Culture-fit is the most important criteria and some of the weirdness you could be asked at interview is: “What would be your theme song and why?”, “Please now perform your theme song for us!”.  (Yep, our guide actually performed at her interview!!)
  7. Absolutely everyone, even their new CFO, does a 4-week initial call centre training program. Even senior executives know how to answer the phones and are expected to get involved on the phones as ‘holiday helpers’ at peak times.
  8. The Zappos team continues to grow at approx 100% per year.  Right now they have over 1300 team members, next year that means 2600. People move from all over the US to join the Zappos team.  Their culture is magnetic.  (I expected to hear this).  With 100% growth, about half the team have been at Zappos for less than a year.  (That’s a lot of newbies!)
  9. Two years ago, there was a huge demand from Zapponians for free access to doggy daycare.  This year, there is much greater demand for actual daycare (here come the Zappos kids!). Times are a-changing at Zappos.
  10. Las Vegas is not perceived as a great place to bring up kids.  Lots of Zapponians seem to be leaving after 12-36 months and heading back home to start a family, etc. (This is why Zappos HAVE to keep their culture buzzing, they need new hires for growth AND to replace lots of people leaving).
  11. When my tour ended, the super-helpful Zappos Insights guys ordered me a cab and paid for it as I headed downtown Las Vegas. (My Zappos time ended as friendly as it started).

My Zappos tour was an awesome experience. Living, breathing and talking core values is the absolute key to creating a magnetic culture. It was also refreshing to see even the 10-tonne gorilla of values-based cultures having some improvements to make.  Zappos will never stop learning and improving.  Neither should we.   

Why you should stop trying to be the best

 Culture  No Responses »
Oct 272011
 

Is your business either a) the best or; b) going to be the best in your industry? Most businesses describe themselves as one or the other. Me too, I used to want to be the best. It’s a nice goal. But is it worth it? Being the best just doesn’t seem to have the same benefits that it used to. Here’s why..

What happens when you become the best? You will have a target on your back. Everyone else will immediately be trying to knock you off the no.1 spot by being faster, better and/or cheaper. And then they will. And the cycle starts all over again. Striving to become the best at anything is an expensive treadmill that never ends.

Instead of trying to be the best, why not focus on being different?

Now I’m not talking about being just a little bit different, I’m talking about a meaningful difference between you and your competitors. Like Ikea is different from every other furniture store and Google is different from every other search engine. I’m talking about being really freaking different!

Becoming different is nearly always much cheaper than becoming the best. It’s also heaps more fun, more memorable and more sustainable.

How different are you from your competitors? Not just different in your eyes, different in your customers eyes.

PS – This post was inspired by Youngme Moon’s book, Different. Check it out here.

PPS – Right now I’m fascinated by this concept of being different. Stay tuned I think I’ll have more to say on this..

Presentation tips from the world’s no.1 business speaker

 Culture  1 Response »
Oct 262011
 

Right now, Dan Pink is the No.1 Business speaker in the world.  Today, I heard him present and I’d have to agree, the man is good!!  

Dan’s tips for creating killer presentations are very simple.  Every presentation should be delivered based upon the following 3 concepts:

  1. Brevity
  2. Levity; &
  3. Repetition

That’s it!  According to Dan, you are set to deliver an engaging presentation every time if it is based on the concepts of brevity, levity and repetition.

In true Pink style, those keys were: brevity, levity and repetition! 

Talk time with your team

 Culture  No Responses »
Oct 252011
 

Time to stop and chat is very valuable in every business.  How often do you stop working just to talk with someone in your team?

Every week, I make time to sit and chat with at least one person in our team.  Whether it’s dinner to celebrate a TPC anniversary, coffee with someone who needs some support, heading out of town with our leadership team or simply picking up the phone and asking “How’s it going? Is there anything I can do for you?”, talk time is one of the most important things leaders can do.

In the past two weeks I’ve spent time doing all of the above, and every minute was worthwhile.  I feel very lucky to spend time with our inspiring team. They seem to love having the CEO’s ear for a while and together we solve challenges and generate ideas to find a better way both personally and for The Physio Co.  It’s brilliant!

Talk time. Make it part of your week, every week.

Succession Planning – the key to great leadership

 Culture  No Responses »
Oct 242011
 

How often do you consider who will do your job when you’re not around to do it? How about who will do everyone else’s job when they’re not around either? Succession planning is one of the keys to great leadership. 

A friend of mine and former EO Global Director, Carlo Santoro, once described great leadership as ‘leaving a legacy’. In my opinion, Carlo is spot on and I use his approach as often as I can. 

Similarly, in Good to Great, Jim Collins discovered and described the humble but professionally driven Level 5 Leaders that were laser-focussed on creating an organisation that became even better after they left it.  Level 5 Leaders select and train successors to do a better job then they ever did.  That’s great leadership.

Succession planning is needed for every position in every organisation.  At The Physio Co, we continually reassess who will be completing every role a) this month, b) next month and c) in 12 months time.  We appoint an ‘apprentice’ often and provide as much training as possible. In my opinion, it’s not possible to be ‘too prepared’.

The future is inevitable.  How often are you preparing your succession plan?

PS – apologies for fewer posts last week. I won’t make excuses, I’ll just get on with it.

PPS – this week I’m in Phoenix for a ‘mini-think week’ at the Fortune Growth Summit. I’ll also be visiting Zappos while here in the US.  Exciting few days ahead!

Want to grow fast? You have to pulse fast.

 Culture  No Responses »
Oct 192011
 

If you want to grow your business faster, you’ll need more meetings.  That’s right more meetings, not less. Here’s why..

Businesses generally have annual planning days, monthly management meetings and a semi-regular weekly meeting.  This approach can work for businesses growing at 10-15% per year.  If you want to grow at 30%, 40% or even 50% per year, you’ll need to compress time and have many more meetings.

In a fast growth business there is so much happening that a year can feel more like a decade and a quarter more like a year.  With this in mind, you’ll need to talk strategy at least every quarter, measure performance every week and pulse with a short huddle every day.

The best way to start a faster meeting rhythm is with a daily huddle.  This is where we started at The Physio Co, we call our huddle To The Point and it’s become the most important meeting we have.

Pulsing faster by committing to a regular meeting rhythm and almost religious discipline are some of the keys to fast growth.

PS – Want to know more? Check out this post: a 12-minute meeting that works.

PPS – If you’d like to see our daily huddle in action, come and join us!

Creating policies v’s firing the bad eggs

 Culture  No Responses »
Oct 132011
 

Growing businesses create policy after policy to stop bad situations recurring. Imagine that instead of creating more rules, you just removed the people that were causing the problems? 

For example, if one team member continually claimed excess fuel allowance by driving the long way to client sites every single day.  When their manager found out, some sort of policy like: “fuel allowance only applies when the most direct practicable route to a client site exceeds XXkm and must be verified by a manager every week”  might be created.

What if, instead of creating another policy for everyone, you respectfully (& legally) parted company with that one problematic person? The result: you’d have less petty problems to deal with and all of your best people would be left alone to keep doing what they do best.  

Instead of policy-making for the minority and upsetting the majority, why not just eliminate the problem?

The 2 most important words in business

 Culture  No Responses »
Oct 122011
 

On the 6th anniversary of his time with The Physio Co family, I received an email from one of our longest-serving team members.  The email ended with: “…from the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU.”

Yesterday, at our daily huddle, I individually thanked each member of The Physio Co support team for choosing to be a part of The Physio Co.  Every day, they come to work and do their very best.  For that, I am very grateful.

To you, the reader of this post: thank you.  Thank you for taking the time in your busy day or night to follow this blog.  I am very grateful.

“Thank you” are the two most important words in business (and probably in life).  I use them as often as I can. How about you?

PS – Here’s what I learnt from my Zappos experience.

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