Move people one step at a time

I visited a not-for-profit organisation recently. This organisation’s mission in the past has been to get businesses to sign up to achieve accreditation against international standards. It has been successful in getting medium-to-large business to sign up and has built a substantial membership over the years. Large companies actually pay a large membership fee knowing full well that it subsidises activities promoting the standards to smaller businesses.

One of the goals of the organisation and its new chief executive is to promote its message to SME’s. This is a totally different proposition. When promoting standards and accreditation to large companies you can make an intellectual sale. Big companies have discretionary spend where professionals in their own field can recommend development strategies and investment in training and accreditation to follow these development paths. With SME’s it’s simpler – “stuff the intellectual sale – what will it do for me?” SME’s are far nearer to economic reality that big business and any SME owner will consider investment in terms of its immediate effects on costs and sales.

In my experience the journey towards achieving standards is just as valuable as reaching the goal. I worked for a very large catering company years ago and we considered BS5750 (now ISO9000) for our restaurants. The cost of BS5750 accreditation was around £12,000-£15,000 per site and we had 450! So we put a cross-section of three through the process to learn the benefits then simply took the key lessons and introduced these to all other sites in a way that they “discovered” them for themselves and thus bought-in to making things better. Did we pay to have all 450 accredited? – No. Did we benefit financially from going almost as far as the final step? Yes, with a massive increase in profits.

Taking a lesson from this we can see that often it is better not to reveal the final destination if the final destination is expensive or scarily complex, especially if the journey will provide benefits even if the traveller gets off a few stops short of the end.

I applied this to a recent client who I am training in Project Management. Their 250 managers would be scared witless if they saw PRINCE2 in all its glory. As I am doing a Foundation in Project Management for non project-managers I show them simple elements and a systematic approach that is plain common sense. Not all of the 250 need to be high-flying fully accredited PRINCE2 practitioners. The organisation itself will not be able to put elements like the Project Office in place for a couple more years anyway.

Back to my recent visit – this organisation has now taken a business membership of www.business-scene.com as we are targeting the same customer base. By posting articles and hosting a clinic the fundamental issues of raising standards can be floated for debate and interested SME’s will, no doubt, reveal themselves. By staying away from the intellectual debate (and the high costs of the final accreditation) and focusing on providing immediate and measurable benefits for the small business owner it’s a much better way to build momentum towards the final destination. What if some fall by the way? No worries – more will have started via the soft approach than would have done so as the result of laying out the full story and all who made it some way down the road will have improved their businesses as a result. For those who see tangible results along the entire journey the final chunk of investment in full accreditation will be an easy sale. In the mean time there will have been a welcome income from the engagement activities along the way.

www.business-scene.com provides a wealth of information and contacts for any SME looking to build business and/or cut costs. Basic membership is free and full site functionality including access to downloads, business clinics, directory entries and free classified adverts along with the ability to list your events and sell your products costs 5 GBP per month. Business-Scene doesn’t officially launch until late 2006 so at the date of writing they are in the pre-launch stage.

Don’t just take my word for it - take a look at the site and see what a fiver per month buys – you’ll see it’s a no-brainer.