Procrastination is a fifteen letter word

After a short break I'm back on the blog - thanks for the prod Simon!

I have been doing quite a lot of coaching of SME's over the last couple of months. It seems to go in cycles. Sometimes I'm doing business plans and marketing plans back-to-back for weeks, at other times I'm getting used more as a sounding board, exterior perspective and coach.

I have one client (who shall remain nameless) who runs a business that potentially generates over £1,000 profit per person per day - an astonishing business in a very specialist niche that attracts public sector money. Having said this they are only managing to attract these fees for about 1 day per person per week.

And yet there is plenty of business out there and a demand for the skills in question. If I had a PHD I would be changing careers that's for sure.

So what's stopping these people upping the number of productive days per person? It would appear to be good old procrastination. They want the extra profit, they have the mechanisms to analyse the business and create a plan (provided by me) and yet they have spent the best part of 8 months fine tuning something that I could have done for them (given carte blanche) in a couple of weeks. They know it needs to be done but it almost seems to be below their intellect or at least outside of their comfort zone.

So why haven't I demanded carte blanche and done it for them? That's easy. It's not my business and I won't be there for very long as the support scheme I am providing assistance under strictly limits the days given. If they don't own the approach they won't act on it. So I can't nag them because they need to take the initiative themselves.

It's frustrating. The client company is packed full of very intelligent people with impeccable academic qualifications and a track record in providing successful outcomes for the company's clients. So why won't they act?

Procrastination is a terrible thing. Not knowing how to start something can kill a project. We have all experienced it - you sit pondering how to approach something and suddenly the day has disappeared.

Sadly I have to sign off from this client in another 7 hours of support. The goals is tantalisingly within reach and I have let them know this. It occurs to me that less qualified and less intelligent clients of mine seem to be more focused and more able to make progress. It's almost as if the intelligence is a curse as minds tend to wander and continuously branch off down interesting little side-avenues rather than chase the goal. Less curious minds will occasionally fall foul of not looking at the wider picture but they do seem to be better at getting stuff done.

I value intelligence above most things. The ability to process information and create new things is important in my book. But pondering the balance of people in an organisation I can see that you need a handful of intelligent types and many less intelligent ones with experience of doing the job in hand. My client is top-heavy in brains and woefully short in selling and doing skills. They may or may not make it but I will be advising them to get some pragmatists on board ASAP. The problem is that they will spend months deliberating over whether to do this or not and by then I will be gone. I just hope the message stays.

If you know how to cure an epidemic of procrastination in an SME please let me know.

Businesses smothered by the nanny state

Despite the title this isn't a political rant.

Being based in West Wales and working predominently (but not exclusively) within the Welsh economy for the last 5 years and the previous 20 in middle England I have quite an insight into the differences.

Wales is a poor but improving economy in European terms. A vast amount of EU Objective One money has found its way here over the last 5 years and will probably continue to do so for another 5. Regions of Europe that are below a threshold of productivity/output per capita qualify for EU funds to try to bring them into an average range. Middle England is affluent enough not to qualify.

In Middle England businesses invest real money in consultancy and training and make sure they get the best value for money they can with a view to using their investment to boost performance. They recognise what is needed to compete and survive and spend their money to achieve this.

Welsh businesses receive a great deal of subsidised and free consultancy and training. The problem is that the advice and training tends to focus more on compliance than on raising the bar of performance. The grand plan is to make Welsh businesses compete on a world stage. But the support mechanisms are in place merely to facilitate a game of catch-up rather than leap-frog. You are never going to beat the world if you take an "as good as" approach.

There is nothing stopping Welsh businesses analysing their real needs to compete and investing in the right support but the problem is the free training skews the market and lures them away from what they need to something that is sort of what they need and is free or very low cost.

Don't get me wrong here. There are many world class Welsh businesses and there are some that do invest in exactly what they need but looking at the vast majority that make up the critical mass of Welsh business - if it's not free they simply don't want to consider it.

The economy in Wales is picking up. Steep house price rises show a level of disposable income that points to a more affluent economy. At some point within the next 3-5 years I expect the economy to pull itself out of the Objective One zone and have to stand alone. Privately some agencies are already having these discussions.

As the owner of a couple of small Welsh businesses I am actually looking forward to the withdrawal of Objective One funding. The lack of free stuff will force SME's in Wales to consider the wider picture and, as they will have to pay for whatever input they take, they will have a much, much wider choice of support and training options simply because they will have to pay for everything.

The state will continue to operate subsidised and free support but on a much smaller scale. The bulk of businesses will have to take control of their destinies rather than rely on the state to tell them (by making stuff free) what support they should be taking.

Businesses will therefore start to think what they want to do and how they can achieve it. They will spend money and have clear expectations of what they will get for their money. As they will be actually paying for stuff they are much more likely to listen, engage and act on what they learn.

There is no doubt that Objective One money has achieved some great things in Wales. But now the best thing that could happen to the principality is for nanny to cut the apron (and the purse) strings and let the spirit of free enterprise soar. Wales starts more SME's per capita than anywhere else in the UK. And a higher proportion of these survive the critical first 2 years. The people of Wales are not afraid of a bit of hard work and so I am very much looking forward to the growth in our economy over the next decade.

Business-Scene is perfectly timed as far as I am concerned. The state operated free web resources will run out of budget soon and cease to be maintained. Business-Scene will be a struggle to get going in the next year or two because it's best bits cost money (but only £60 p.a.). But once the state web resources begin to fail Business-Scene will be there, continuing to provide exceptional value for money through a wide range of services. It's a great time to be looking at the future.

Zen and the art of patio laying

I am currently 3/4 of the way through building a patio in my back garden. Having dug out around 3 tons of earth I am now part way through filling the hole back up with 3 tons of rubble, grit, sand, cement and large paving slabs. As the light began to fade last night my father-in-law and I laid the 26th out of 48 large slabs. It's a physical struggle laying these things on a dry mix trying to get them just off level with a consistent slope away from the house and conservatory to allow water to run off, whilst ensuring the slabs are adequately supported across their entire span and not rocking.

I was on my hands and knees for a good part of this process fussing about getting gaps, edges and levels within a couple of millimetres and getting frustrated when having to lift and re-lay several slabs at least three times.

Then my father-in-law said "stop a minute and take a look from over here". I stood up and took a look from about 15 feet away. The patio looks absolutely fine. A little grouting when finished and all the little imperfections will disappear. Coming hot on the heels of this month's blog entries and the pressures of work it was a timely reminder that sometimes we all have to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Attention to detail is great but be sure it's an appropriate level and that you maintain a perspective.

Spending yesterday concentrating on this new challenge (I'm a business consultant - this is my first patio) was quite therapeutic as I was so absorbed I temporarily forgot about the work stuff normally buzzing around in my head. When I was finally able to relax around 9pm last night the business stuff started leaking back into my mind but I was able to look at it from a distance and come up with a new plan to cope with the next few months.

I believe Edward de Bono describes this process as discontinuous thinking - throwing in completely different experiences or knowledge in order to break a cycle of thinking constrained by current stale knowledge and boundaries and forcing new perspectives to encourage creativity.

We all know this stuff. But like cobblers' children I guess we readily apply our knowledge to our clients but rarely to ourselves as we don't make the time to take an occasional step back.

Time management and Entrepreneurship

When you take a look at the most successful people on our planet - be it measured through money, achievement, political position, sporting achievement or social respect they all have one thing in common - a passionate drive and belief in what they are trying to achieve. They focus on this almost exclusively and if you happen to want to be involved with them either through being a member of their family or on the periphery of their zone of activity you just have to take pot luck and be grateful for whatever time they can spare you.

Some of them are quite sharp and intelligent but that doesn't seem to be a deciding factor. Not many of them are creative - again it doesn't seem to be a deciding factor.

So what is? Grit and determination, fearlessness and a willingness to take risks? Probably.

Many of them seem to need little sleep. They must all be very good at time management and prioritisation (or have wit enough to employ a PA who is).

Where am I going with this? Well, focusing in on the business successes I was wondering (as you do) how the big achievers approach their day. You see I'm not convinced that many of the big achievers are serial entrepreneurs - it depends on how you define it. The founder of the Carphone Warehouse accumulated a shedload of money by doing one thing and doing it extremely well at the right time in a burgeoning market. Richard Branson apparently operates more like an incubator - people come to him with a bright idea for a business and, if they are passionate and committed, he supports them but makes them drive it - good for him.

I'm the opposite I guess. Being naturally curious I tend to juggle several balls in the air at once. Some mornings I sit in the office at the computer and wonder just where to start. Dozens of things demand my attention - some of which I should be doing, some of which I must be doing and some of which I want to be doing.

Sometimes I wish I was less curious and less creative - I would probably be much richer, but having said that I do massively enjoy doing what I do.

Hey ho, time to book onto another Time Management refresher course. Guilt usually drives me to it and it will last for 3-4 months whilst I make an effort to marshall my business activities and then something really exciting will come along and it will all go out the window again.

Think Customers' Customers

Another day, another day on the road promoting Business-Scene.

I had a meeting yesterday with an associate who has moved away from consulting to run a couple of different businesses for himself. One serves the building trade but also serves a secondary market of DIY'ers and building maintenance companies.

I have given him a free business profile on our site and free classified adverts and a banner ad on the front page. But he was still very sceptical. He always challenges stuff as he enjoys the Devil's advocate bit but even so I was slightly dumbfounded that for virtually zero effort he was being offered free adverts and yet was less than interested. He did point out that his core market are very unlikely to access the internet regularly, if at all. He seemed to miss the secondary market potential (and these people do access the internet for business), but as he is an MBA I guess he knows what he is doing.

Thinking about this I can see that the focus needed to be on his core customers ('cause he doesn't have many as he only opened last month) and that I should have positioned the benefits for him in terms of benefits for his current target group of customers (who are few and far between as this is a brand new business). Mind you - if I had thought about it in those terms I wouldn't have approached him in the first place as there are lower-hanging fruit.

I like to help my friends. Guess this one didn't want it. Still, I am grateful for the learning opportunity.

Creating a marketplace

As you might imagine, starting a new portal is a hectic time. Strangely, as a business consultant, July and August have never been slack periods for me since I went independent in 1997. This is just adding to the excitement.

I am totally sold on the Business-Scene concept and the incredible value-add for the very modest membership fee (there's even a free membership option with quite a lot of functionality). It's not my product but it has come into my part of the world at exactly the right time. Future blog entries will talk about weaning Welsh businesses off of public sector support as the Objective 1 money inevitably dries up.

Getting initial momentum is the challenge and in my two regions in South Wales I'm giving away some freebies to those who can help me build enough content by September/October to give early adopters something to participate in and get value from.

It's refreshing because my building network is populating itself with highly motivated, competent "doers". Being a pragmatist myself it's nice to meet others with the same approach.

What I am being reminded of is that business should be fun. I have always followed my nose in that respect and am probably much poorer financially but much richer as a person as a result.

So the momentum starts to build and early indications are that Business-Scene in South Wales is going to become a valuable resource for SME's looking to grow.

Business-Scene hits the business scene

Just had an interesting two days soft-launching Business-Scene in Swansea/West Wales and Cardiff.

Business-Scene is a portal for business networks and business support organisations and a whole lot more for SME's. There are links on the right of my Blog front page if you want to take a look.

According to the DTI there are around 4m businesses in the UK. Around 175k of them in Wales. Of the 4m around 99.3% are SME's (employing under 250 people).

The other interesting fact is that 80% of a typical SME's customers are within 30 miles of the business. So why are all the on-line business-networks and membership organisations aiming to be global with no emphasis on local? I gues it's because most of these networks are knowledge-economy networks and knowledge workers tend to have a national or international focus with less work available locally.

So Business-Scene was invented (not by me) to address general SME's and facilitate local trading.

It's why I have embraced it. There's not much there yet - the official launches happen in September-November 2006. Those who early-adopt will have the best chance of building local profiles and perception of them as the expert.

Take a look - if you like it tell your friends.

Richard