Business Innovation Services

CHRISTMAS THOUGHTS
Whether you celebrate Christmas as a religious festival or not, it’s a great time to take a break from the busyness of work and spend some time with family and friends, and even your pets as they are part of the family too! Slowing down at this time of year and spending quality time with our family and friends is good for our souls and mental well-being. 😎

It’s an opportune time to thank those that have been of service to us such as staff, suppliers and colleagues, as well as our valued customers.

It’s also a great time for a country drive, a picnic, a bit of gardening, or just going for a walk amongst nature. Doing some of the things you usually don’t have time for because you are so too busy during the year. I will be spending this time in Perth with my partner, family and friends, and hopefully going for some bike rides along the river foreshore and my favourite place – Bibra Lake. 🚲

However, Christmas will be more subdued this year as I think of the pain and suffering the Ukrainian people are going through as result of this very unnecessarily war. When will war be over?

I hope you have found my weekly posts on various business-related topics during the year interesting and informative. I enjoy preparing them and sharing my knowledge and insights with you. I'm passionate about the value that entrepreneurship and business contribute to our community. ⚖️

Wishing you a safe and happy Christmas time with your family and friends and best wishes for 2023. 🎄

Cheers, John

PROCRASTINATION? I’LL GET BACK TO YOU ON THAT!
As we head towards the end of the year, you may start thinking about your achievements and feel pleased with yourself. You may also be thinking about the important projects or changes you didn’t get done during the year, possibly due to procrastination. It was a priority in your business or action plan, but it didn’t get done! Let me share my four best strategies to help overcome procrastination, which may also help you.

1. The benefits of doing it
The most important strategy is to think about the benefits and value you will gain from implanting the project. If the outcome is of greater value than the effort required to make it happen, then this will most likely get you going. For this to work, you need to be clear about your goals. The obvious ones are profit and revenue, but you may also for example be seeking to foster a loyal customer base or achieve more work-life balance. Put this all on paper or screen to help you decide the value of the project.

2. Waiting for the right time
Sometimes we wait for the right or perfect time to implement the project. That now is not the best time because of X, Y and Z reasons. Ditch that thought because there’s never a perfect time. Just make a start, anywhere, even in the middle. Making a start will give you a good feeling which will drive you forward to completion.

3. It won’t take as much time and effort as you think
When we are thinking about a project or task, our mind often inflates the amount of time and effort required to do it. It’s just the way our human minds work. So rather than spending too much time thinking about it , just make a start on the project. Even if it’s a bit messy at the beginning, you will probably find it’s easier than you thought it would be, and the momentum will keep you going.

4. Be accountable to someone
While it’s great to be self-motivated, as human beings we work best when we are accountable to another person, such as a partner, friend or business coach. When someone else knows we are working on a project and are cheering us on, we are more likely to be get motivated to make a start, and more importantly to finish the project. So, team up with people who will inspire you to act.

For help with your project planning and implementing contact me on mobile at 0402 843314 or [email protected]

FOUR STRATEGIES FOR DEVELOPING BUSINESS PARTNERSHIPS
A key ingredient for growing your SME business is to build and maintain strong relationships with your business ‘partners’. By partners, I mean referral affiliates, contractors and franchisee relationships, joint-venturing arrangements and the like. So how do we do this? Apart from having an effective legal instrument, let me share four key strategies with you.

1. Connect with people who have different strengths
Connect with people who have complementary skills and competencies for mutual benefit. If you only connect with people the same as you, you are unlikely to learn anything new and develop. For example, as a business coach, I seek to partner with marketers and accountants as they complement my business skills and knowledge. I am also able to reciprocate by sharing my experience and knowledge with them.

2. Connect with those that have similar values
Values are critical to your success as a businessperson. Values reflect your business beliefs, practices, and decisions that define the essence of you and your company. It’s difficult to progress towards your personal and business goals with people that have vastly different values to you, as you and the other party will disagree about how business should be done. Therefore, seek to partner with people whose values align with yours.

3. Communicate and share your vision
Proactive and honest communication between you and your business partner fosters trust and cooperation. This includes sharing each other's visions and objectives, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of your business. A partnership built on trust will result in better coordination and mutual support regarding common business activities.

4. Be open to different ideas and opinions
Seek to remain open to different opinions and approaches, even when they are different to yours. If you want to grow and develop, then it's okay to engage in healthy debate and be open to different ideas. Being open to being challenged will stretch your definition of success, knowledge, and perspective about doing business.

Please share any other strategies from your experience that supports effective business partnering.

For advice and help with your partnering activities contact me on mobile at 0402 843314 or [email protected]

WHAT'S TRENDING?
Social trends can make or break your business. So monitoring and responding to such trends is especially important for business owners or leaders. Let me share some thoughts with you on this very important topic.

Social trends are often the result of peoples’ reaction to some aspect of change in society which may be caused by factors such as social issues, technology, economics, and pandemics of course!

While trends are often prompted by a group or minority of society, they can then evolve into the majority making the trend mainstream.

Engaging in trends can allow people to develop a sense of togetherness which is important for us as humans. Trends have been around since the beginning of human societies. Some trends last for generations, many years, and others just a short time which is known as a fad.

We are all familiar with the recent wave of new technology, including smartphones, which have changed our lives. Social media websites, like LinkedIn and Facebook, have created a new way for people to communicate with each other. These trends have changed the way people communicate with each other, work, and entertain.

As a business leader, you need to be keenly aware of when your market is being affected by a particular social trend. Your market’s (people) response and take-up of a trend may affect your product offering including how people access and buy your product. You need to adapt to such trends, or you will be caught out to your detriment.

For example, a current social trend is people’s concern for the environment and the sustainability of our world. So, whatever product or service you are selling, it would be wise to adopt practices that are consistent with these values and promote them to your market. Of course, you need to be genuine in this regard, as people will see through any ‘greenwashing’, which would then backfire.

The Covid pandemic has produced some interesting trends. The most obvious one is people being more accepting of working from home. Whether it's effective in all types of businesses is debatable, but it's certainly a current trend.

I specialise in monitoring social and economic trends affecting Australia. So, for help with understanding the current and emerging trends that may be impacting your business, contact me for a no-obligation discussion. Contact me on mobile 0402 843314 or [email protected].

WORDS THAT HELP US
Quotes from great leaders and thinkers inspire us to achieve and persevere in our various endeavours. For me, it’s not so much about the person who said it, but the wisdom contained in the quote. Wisdom can only come from hard work, much experience and deep observation. I would like to share some quotes that have inspired and encouraged me during my career and personal life.

There has to be a better way, let's find it! Thomas Edison.

My whole working career has been focused on this principle. From a young adult, I was fascinated by how any activity could be improved by analysing it and looking for improvements.

“Logic gets you from A to B. Imagination can take you everywhere” from Albert Einstein

So, while it’s great to be logical, logic alone will not lead to great success. This quote has inspired me to practice ‘imagining’ creative solutions for problems, or just better ways of doing things.

"Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the co-operation of many minds". Alexander Graham Bell

I’ve always believed that success is a team effort. I have always applied this axiom in my business endeavours and encouraged other leaders to do the same.

“A goal without a plan is just a wish” from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

This is a more recent favourite and reflects the need to have a plan for any great endeavour including a business.

“Every problem is a gift - without problems, we would not grow” from Anthony Robbins.

This quote helps to put my life problems and challenges into perspective. Problems help me to learn, grow and be a better person.

Finally, this is my all-time favourite, because, in the busyness of life, it reminds me of the need to ‘stop and smell the roses,’ and live a little!

“Life is not measured by how many breaths we take, but by how many times our breath is taken away.” (Author unknown).

Do you have a favourite quote that has inspired, motivated or just made you feel good you? I would love for you to share it with us.

[email protected] Mob 0402 843314

CHECKING 1 2 3, CHECKING 1 2 3
One of the most undervalued tools in business is the checklist. It’s a simple tool yet so powerful for getting things done at the right time. Let me share some tips with you about this very practical tool.

Checklists will help you to focus on the important tasks that need to be performed. They improve personal productivity and ensure staff consistently perform a procedure in the same manner. Even the great entrepreneur Richard Branson used checklists to help him manage his growing empire and personal life.

There are two types of checklists. Firstly, there is the ‘Static Checklist’ that specifies a list of necessary tasks that need to be completed each time a process is performed. For example, when developing a contract with a client, there is a set of repeatable steps that need to be completed to prepare a contract. 📝

To prepare a Static Checklist, identify all the tasks that need to be completed regularly to achieve a successful outcome, and then write them down in a logical order. Enhance the checklist by labelling the critical tasks, so they stand out for attention. While it’s a static checklist, it should still be reviewed regularly to ensure that it’s up to date, as things change.

Static checklists can be integrated with procedures. Rather than choking up procedures with checklists that need to be updated more regularly than procedures, simply make reference in the procedure to the existing checklist and where it can be found in the company.

The other type is a ‘Dynamic Checklist’ where the tasks on the list are updated daily. The best example is a daily To-Do list where we list all the tasks we need to perform for the day or other period. As tasks are completed, we tick or cross them out and add new ones as they arise. ✔✔✔

Get more sophisticated by entering the tasks into an electronic diary so that due time is applied to each task. You can also label each task with a priority ranking, such as high, medium and low to help focus your efforts.

For help with your developing checklists. policies and procedures, contact me mob 0402 843314 or [email protected]

THE BEST LEADERS ARE LEARNERS
As business leaders, it's good to continually be learning and developing ourselves. As Albert Einstein once said: "Once you stop learning you start dying." But what should we learn and how? Let me share some thoughts with you.

Leaders who continuously engage in learning accrue several benefits. Firstly they are better able to deal with ambiguity and uncertainty. Because not all information is available about a problem or opportunity, knowing how to deal with such ambiguity is a worthwhile attribute for leaders to have. Learning leaders are better able at engaging with others, be it staff, customers or suppliers. Continual learning helps leaders to take a more systemic view of their business and the world around it. Seeing the whole as a system rather than the parts helps make better decisions.

In terms of what to learn, an area of priority is business management. These include those activities that are important to the success and growth of our companies. Sales, marketing customer service, and innovation strategies would be examples.

Another priority area is personal development. For example, we may be lacking interpersonal communication skills so learning about communicating at both an individual and group level would support our leadership role. Other examples would be critical thinking and emotional intelligence.

Finally, we could learn about social, economic and other trends that may be impacting our industry. An example would be changing social values and norms that could impact the way our customers perceive and interact with our business.

Once we have identified our priority learning areas, we can then think about how we learn best. The learning experts tell us that there are several learning styles and that people have a preference for a particular style, which include the following:

· Visual - reading text
· Visual – pictures, diagrams, and models
· Listening to others explain things
· Show and tell – watching others demonstrate, and
· Inquiry style – research ideas and identify relevancy

There is no right way, just use your preferred style to learn. For example, if you are a reader, you need to find books and online material that you can read. And If you’re a listener, you need to attend formal training courses, whether in person or online, to learn about what interest you.

What has been the most valuable learning experience that has supported your leadership?