E is for Engelbert Humperdinck and …..

You can tell us.

Your secret is safe with this column (and its hundreds of readers).

Did you watch the Eurovision Song Contest?

It’s OK.  It doesn’t make you a Bad Person…..

It seems incredible that this annual shtickfest has been going for 56 years….. and that it was set up to promote harmony amongst European nations.

Rather boringly, I’ve never watched it — but it falls into the category of yearly rituals which seem to exist entirely for the purposes of filling the columns of newspapers — like the Paris fashion shows, the Turner Prize, and the Sunday Times Rich List.  These are the modern equivalents of panem et circenses – bread and circuses, the cynical recipe of the Roman poet Juvenal for keeping the mob happy (circuses in those days included rather more blood and fewer clowns than the average Billy Smart performance, of course).

Still, I must confess to a little pang of pleasure when E Humperdinck (or rather, Humperdinck, E — he’s a professional) was chosen as the British entry (only to be upstaged by the Russian grannies) — not only because both selections seem to show a hitherto unsuspected liking amongst the selection committees for irony, but because of their age.

Readers who are mathematically agile (which includes all of you, naturally) will have worked out from my remark last week that I’m a Georgian that I am now on the wiser side of 60 (or the new 40, as we Senior Railcard holders prefer to call it), and it’s always reassuring to see other members of the club achieve success…..

And EH did achieve success.  It is true that he didn’t win (thereby saving the hard-pressed taxpayer a shedload of money organising next year’s contest), but he did amass a colossal 12 points (no doubt thanks to wearing his lucky “taking care of business” necklace, given to him by Elvis himself — I need one of those).  And he avoided coming last — a position in which our dear European friends seem to delight in trying to put us.

I confess that I was pleasantly surprised that EH is actually still with us.  In fact, he’s only 76.  Born Arnold Dorsey, he adopted the name of the 19th century German composer (who wrote the opera Hansel and Gretel) (and whose relatives are sufficiently proud of their ancestor to prevent Dorsey using the EH name in Germany — well, I for one can understand that).  In addition to Please Release Me and The Last Waltz, which we all love (?) he also sang Lesbian Seagull (the mind boggles), and had a fund of one-liners (“I can reach notes a bank can’t cash”).

But enough already — what benefit does age play in business?  Well, the obvious answer is…..

….. Experience

You remember the old gag?  ”Good judgment is the result of experience — and experience is the result of bad judgment”.

There’s only one way to get experience — although when you’ve been in business nearly forty years (as I have) you have to try to have forty years experience, rather than one year’s experience forty times…..

Despite appearances, however, this week’s column is not naked self-promotion (it’s not even decently clothed self-promotion) (oh all right then, not entirely decently clothed self-promotion) — it’s to re-emphasise the importance of drawing on other people’s experience, especially in a recession — a lot of today’s business leaders have never managed through a recession before.

Because there is an alternative way (can you see where this is going? as Rolf Harris might say) to draw on experience (other than asking an older person) — you can ask a group of people.  Maybe a group of six or seven other business owners/managers, who meet once a month, and who have over 200 years experience between them, and who give honest, impartial advice…..

I can tell you where to find a group like that!

Have a great Jubilee weekend — and I hope it adds to your fund of experience (though only in a nice way, of course!).

Cheers for now

Tom  

I presently run five Boards –

• Dark Blue (for people who run large businesses) – one spare seat
• Light Blue (for people who run large businesses) — four spare seats
• Red (for SME business owners) –- full!
• Red (for SME business owners) — one spare seat
• Orange (for owners of startup businesses) – four spare seats

Contact me if you’re interested – tmorton@thealternativeboard.co.uk, 075 40 30 87 86

“Education never ends, Watson;  life is a series of lessons, with the greatest for the last”  (Sherlock Holmes, in the Adventure of the Red Circle)

“When I was 15 my father knew nothing.  It’s amazing what he’s learnt in the last ten years”   (Mark Twain)

D is for Doom and Gloom (and Drachmas) and …..

Are you as fed up as I am with the endless diet of impending disaster served up to us by dear Auntie BBC?  (and Uncle Rupert Murdoch, of course).

Eagle-eyed readers with total recall (which, let’s face it, rules out most of my contemporaries — on both counts) will have spotted that I’ve had a rant (sorry, that should read “thoughtful cerebral disquisition”) on this subject before (F is for the Feel Good Factor – a rattling good read), but here we are, nine months on, and things are just as bad — worse, if anything.

I know we’re pre-programmed to be more interested in bad news than good — something to do with the sub-conscious mind wanting to protect you from immediate threats — but that assumes that we’re in a position to take effective avoiding action.  Great if you have to dodge an angry mammoth;  less good if you’ve got to come up with an immediate plan to solve the Euro crisis/global warming/Ed Balls/Nadine Dorries/various wars/(feel free to continue).

But be of good cheer — once again the Bluffington Post is a present help in times of trouble.  

This week’s first tip is to remember Sphere of Influence and Sphere of Concern.  Que?  I hear you cry?  Well, consider the humble fried egg, seen from above, like in those old pencil and paper riddles — we had to make our own fun in them days — cue Hovis advert….. sorry, where was I?  Ah yes — well the yolk is the Sphere of Influence and the whole egg is the Sphere of Concern (look, I KNOW a fried egg isn’t spherical, but we’d get on a lot quicker if you didn’t just sit there and pick holes).

To explain — we’re concerned about lots of things (see above list, plus Forest’s defence, your alarming tendency to slice off the tee when under pressure, missing/surplus apostrophes, will David Archer give evidence despite the threats to his family ….. —>.         .< space for your own pet worries) — but we can only actually do anything about a few of them.  The secret of a happier life is to spend more time in the yolk and less in the white (sounds sticky, but you know what I mean).

The second, and closely related, tip was inspired by a piece in this morning’s Times.  Step forward this week’s hero, Gavin Pretor-Pinney.  With a name like that you’d have thought he was pre-destined to be a Eurosceptic Tory MP, but fortunately he chose to do something useful — sorry, far more useful — he founded the Cloud Appreciation Society (in 2004), and also a magazine called The Idler (enough in itself to make him a star).  The society (which now has 22,000 members in 83 countries) posts photographs on its website, which is called Clouds That Look Like Things — and it does exactly what it says on the tin.

Mr P-P, after quoting Aristophanes with approval, goes on to say “society is very pressured and lying staring up at the sky and looking at the clouds is fun and a great way of relaxing”…..  

Whatever floats your boat….. which leads neatly on to –

….. the Diamond Jubilee

Fortunately you can be a republican (nb NOT with a capital R), like me, and still enjoy this.  Even I have to admit that Her Maj has done a sound job (even if the whole system is archaic).

I of course was born in the previous reign, and am thus a Georgian, defined via Mr Google as “graceful, austere, with harmonious proportions and quiet colours”, which I think describes me pretty well (though I wasn’t so keen when it went on to talk about the Gothic Revival).  It is true that I was only 1 (nearly) when the King died, so my memory of the first few years of the present reign is a bit hazy (come to think of it, so’s my memory of some of the last few years of the present reign….) but it’s a good time to reflect on how much has changed (most of it for the better).

More importantly, it’s a good excuse for everyone to have a bit of fun — especially if the weather stays like this.  

Which is sort of where we came in!

Have a great weekend!

PS — in the interests of domestic harmony — my other half is an Elizabethan — MUCH younger than me….. and even more harmoniously proportioned (phew).

Cheers for now

Tom  

I presently run five Boards –

• Dark Blue (for people who run large businesses) – one spare seat
• Light Blue (for people who run large businesses) — four spare seats
• Red (for SME business owners) –- full!
• Red (for SME business owners) — one spare seat
• Orange (for owners of startup businesses) – four spare seats

Contact me if you’re interested – tmorton@thealternativeboard.co.uk, 075 40 30 87 86

“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof”  (Matthew, Ch 6, v 34)

“How nice to be a cloud, floating in the blue”   (Winnie the Pooh)

C is for Complaints

Are you a good complainer?

While you’re thinking about the answer to that, I ought to clarify which type of complainer I mean.  In my view, there are two main types, hereinafter referred to as the Victor Meldrew and the Quiet But Firm.

Richard Wilson is one of my great heroes.  I was lucky enough to see the edition of Mrs Merton’s show on which he was engaged in conversation with Bernard Manning, whom he enticed into saying more and more appalling statements, allowing Mrs M to puncture the balloon by asking Manning (in a calm and sweet tone) “who do you vote for, now that Hitler’s dead?”.

I have to confess to having had the odd Victor Meldrew moment (pause for hollow laughter from my nearest and dearest — “what do you mean, ‘the odd’?”).  Indeed, one of the highlights of my year is the annual walking/drinking weekend with five similarly-aged friends, known universally as the Grumpy Old Men.  (I won’t identify them in print — They Know Who They Are).  You may indeed have noticed the occasional hint of a rant in the august pages of The Bluffington Post.

The VM type of complaining is very much in the news, with Philip Hammond  telling British business leaders to “stop whinging”, and William Hague telling us to stop complaining and work harder (yes I know, before anyone tells me, that that’s not a fair summary of what either of them said, but they ought to have known that that’s the slant the press would put on it).

Now I’ve met both Mr Hague and Mr Hammond, and I liked, and was impressed by, them both;  but I don’t know about you, but I think I work pretty hard already — and even if I didn’t, I don’t think I’d be motivated to do so by a politician (however senior) giving me advice that’s nothing short of clarty (as my mother would say) (Nottingham expression — translation available on request).

However…..  the VM type of complaining doesn’t have much to do with your and my business (whatever the Cabinet says).  The QBF type certainly does.

I had breakfast at Betty’s yesterday with Jennifer Holloway (the leading expert on Personal Branding — check out www.sparkexec.co.uk).  This turned out to be not only very enjoyable, which I was expecting, but also educational, in a way I wasn’t.  Jennifer’s bacon muffin (they’re not called butties at Betty’s) was served on a plate which was not sparkling — so J said to the waitress, politely but firmly, “please may I have another plate — this one’s dirty”.

Respect!  (and nothing to do with George Galloway).  I realised that I’ve always belonged spiritually to the cautious gang of “better not make a fuss” when confronted with a situation demanding a QBF complaint.  But I’m now going to be a reformed character…..

How does this relate to your business?  In at least three ways –

1)  By being a good QBF complainer you not only receive (eventually!) better service, but equally importantly you feel better about yourself.  As Jennifer said, “you have the choice”.

2)  I am sure your business never gets any complaints (?) but do you go out of your way to encourage people to complain?  In other words, how do you take steps to get customer feedback?  (do you take steps to get customer feedback?)  Readers who are members of The Alternative Board get regular feedback from their fellow Board members — not always comfortable, but really helpful!

3)  How do you react if you do get a complaint?  This is a key opportunity to impress the customer.  If you’re wise, you don’t deny it, you don’t counterattack, you don’t get cross — you acknowledge it, apologise, and put it right — but how often do you see people make the situation a squillion times worse by reacting in the wrong way?  The waitress at Betty’s yesterday smiled, said “that’s not very Betty’s, madam, is it?”, and provided a new plate.  Excellent!

So — are you a good complainer?  Do let us all know!  All comments welcome…..

Cheers for now

Tom  

I presently run four Boards, plus one about to launch –

• Dark Blue (for people who run large businesses) – one spare seat
• Light Blue (for people who run large businesses) — four spare seats
• Red (for SME business owners) – full!
• Red (for SME business owners) — launches on 23rd May!! — one spare seat
• Orange (for owners of startup businesses) – four spare seats

Contact me if you’re interested – tmorton@thealternativeboard.co.uk, 075 40 30 87 86

“It is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness”  (Confucius, c500BC)

“Never complain about your wife’s judgment — look who she married”   (Anon)

B is for Bank Holiday

Back from Vienna….. lovely city — temperature in high 20′s….. return to Blighty on bank holiday — cold, wet, windy…..

Nowadays, in the light of the activities the banks have been up to in recent years, I guess we should be only too grateful if they have a holiday every so often…..  but bank holidays (in their present form) are actually a fairly modern phenomenon.

Up to 1834 the Bank of England was closed for 33 (!) saints’ days during the year, but in 1834 this was reduced to four (May Day, All Saints’ Day, Christmas Day, and Good Friday).  It can’t be a coincidence that this was shortly after the Great Reform Bill — one can imagine the newly enfranchised merchant classes, just as the Industrial Revolution was really getting going, lobbying for the abolition of all this holiday stuff — bah humbug!

It wasn’t until 1871 that this was increased to six — May Day and All Saints’ Day were dropped, but Easter Monday, Whit Monday, the first Monday in August, and Boxing Day were all added (in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol Scrooge asks his clerk, Bob Cratchit, on Christmas Eve “you’ll be wanting tomorrow off, I suppose”, and insists that Cratchit is back at his bench extra early on Boxing Day).  Bah humbug again!

The Liberal MP who proposed the bill, Sir John Lubbock, was much-loved for this, and was referred to thereafter as St Lubbock.

Hard to imagine now, either proposing a motion to reduce holidays from 33 to 4, or having an MP canonised!

In the 1960′s and ’70′s Whit Monday was moved to the end of May (“Wilsontide”, after the then PM), the August holiday to the end of August (except in Scotland), and May Day, New Year’s Day, and New Year’s Eve were added, so that in England we now have nine bank holidays (the Scots have ten and the Northern Irish eleven — huh).

Nowadays, as we all know, the primary function of the holidays at Easter, and in May and August, is to pinpoint with unerring accuracy the coldest and wettest days of the spring and summer…..

Despite this, every so often someone lobbies for more — St George’s Day? (after all, the Scots and Irish already have a holiday for their patron saint).  Trafalgar Day?  (I still think we missed a trick when the Eurostar terminal was moved from Waterloo to St Pancras — the new terminal should have been renamed Agincourt).  The Cornish even want their patron saint’s day off (St Piran, if you’re interested — 5th March).

It all depends on your standpoint, I guess.

If you employ staff, then extra bank holidays are bad news.  Our dear government declared an extra bank holiday for the Royal Wedding last year, thus cutting production by 0.4% (on an annual basis) — the result was that April never really got going.  Emboldened by this success, they’re trying the same this year for the Jubilee in June.  Bah humbug nr 3!

If you’re a wage slave (sorry, that should read “in paid employment”), as some of my faithful readers are, then extra bank holidays are good news — stay at home and relax (if you’re sensible) or join the mobile car park on the A64 to Scarborough (if you’re not).

If you’re self-employed, then it’s largely irrelevant (apart from being unable to speak to customers, and having to remember that the supermarket closes early) — bank holidays are really a device to enable you to make some inroads into the mountain of stuff in your inbox….. but at least I have the choice.

The result is that I’m working longer hours now than at any time for thirty years….. but they’re my hours, and that makes all the difference!  If you haven’t tried it — you should — come over from the Dark Side…..

Cheers for now

Tom  

I presently run four Boards, plus one about to launch –

• Dark Blue (for people who run large businesses) – one spare seat
• Light Blue (for people who run large businesses) — three spare seats
• Red (for SME business owners) – full!
• Red (for SME business owners) — launches on 23rd May!! — one spare seat
• Orange (for owners of startup businesses) – four spare seats

Contact me if you’re interested – tmorton@thealternativeboard.co.uk, 075 40 30 87 86

“From a commercial point of view, if Christmas did not exist it would be necessary to invent it”  (Katharine Whitehorn)

“Warning — due the water shortage all our beer is served at full strength”   (notice outside the Cross Pipes pub in Otley)

A is for Asteroid

There I was, quietly driving over the hill route from Otley to Harrogate on Tuesday morning, on my way to work, listening to the Today programme (yes I know I strongly advised against this practice in F is for the Feel Good Factor, but in my defence I had first carefully checked that Jon Humphreys wasn’t on air).

A rocket scientist (apparently it isn’t easy) was warbling on about a new project (to be financed by a group of wealthy individuals) to capture an asteroid.  I’m sorry?  Must have misheard.  Replay the mental tape…..  yup — he definitely said, “capture an asteroid”.

He now has my full attention.  Apparently some asteroids are stuffed full of valuable metals, and they’re going to try and capture one and send the metal down to earth.  And how are they going to capture it?  They’re going to lasso it with giant plastic bags….. (I am not making this up).

At this point I did a double check on the date — but the first of the month has definitely come and gone.  I kid you not — apparently they are going to have a shot at this (at a cost of squillions of dollars)….. and even if they succeed, surely the price of precious metals will plummet when they flood the market?  That’s what happened with Spanish gold from the Americas in the 1500′s, after all.

Maybe this is yet another example of the mechanism of Adam Smith’s invisible hand, for transferring money from rich eccentrics (polite speak for b—- fools) back into the economy — but on the other hand the investors include Larry Page and Eric Schmidt (the CEO and Chairman of Google), as well as James Cameron (presumably eager to spend some of the loot from Titanic), so maybe there’s something in it after all.

Apart from adding to general jollity (in pretty short supply at the moment), is there anything this story can teach us?  Well, the link I want to make (tenuous though it may be) is that it reminds us yet again of the seemingly infinite desire of our species to try out, and invent, new things.

Where are you on the Diffusion of Innovation curve?  Just to remind you…..

• the first 2.5% are the Innovators
• the next 13.5% — the Early Adopters
• the next 34% — the Early Majority
• the next 34% — the Late Majority
• the remaining 16% — the Laggards

As consumers, most of us tend to be in different groups for different products.  For instance — in the world of TV I’m a Laggard (I’d probably still have a black and white telly if they made them, and I’d certainly have an analogue if they hadn’t switched it off);  but in computing gadgetry I’m usually an Early Adopter.

But that’s as a consumer.  What about as a business owner?  Do you have an innovative product or service?  If you do, and if it’s so innovative that it requires a significant change of behaviour on the consumer’s part, you’d better be aware of the problem of Crossing the Chasm…..

This colourful (or colorful as he would have spelt it) phrase was coined by Geoffrey Moore (not to be confused with Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel, and discoverer of Moore’s Law — the number of transistors on a microchip doubles every two years) (the clan Moore appears to be fond of gadgetry).

Moore (Ge) had spotted that the Innovators and Early Adopters are usually techies and/or visionaries, whereas the Early Majority are pragmatists — who won’t listen to the first lot.  The Chasm is the gap between the two groups.

If you don’t have sufficient speed of growth, you’ll gradually sell to all the Early Adopters, but not get any further;  Moore’s book puts forward a number of strategies for overcoming this (you can always cheat and look up Wikipedia for a quick synopsis — like I did!).

Moral — be clear about what’s the nature of what you sell, and plan accordingly.  Sounds obvious, but lots of people get it wrong…..

You could of course significantly increase the chances of success by using thousands-of-years-old technology — i.e. taking advice from other people who know what they’re talking about.

It so happens that I know an helpful organisation that specialises in allowing you to do just that….. without an asteroid in sight!

Cheers for now

Tom  

I presently run four Boards, plus one about to launch –

• Dark Blue (for people who run large businesses) – one spare seat
• Light Blue (for people who run large businesses) — three spare seats
• Red (for SME business owners) – full!
• Red (for SME business owners) — launches on 23rd May!! — one spare seat
• Orange (for owners of startup businesses) – four spare seats

Contact me if you’re interested – tmorton@thealternativeboard.co.uk, 075 40 30 87 86

“Business has only two functions — marketing and innovation”  (Milan Kundera)

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it’s dressed in overalls and looks like work”  (Thomas Edison)

1 ….. Ring to Rule Them All …..

Worry not — I’m not going to be venturing into “the land of Mordor where the shadows lie” (though come to think of it, it’s high time I reread Tolkien’s masterpiece).

If you could wave a magic wand and be granted one single gift to help you in business (and, indeed, in life) what would it be?  Money?  Good looks?  Great sales technique?  A brilliant network?

Take a few minutes to think — what would you choose?

Ready?

Well, in my view it would be — Confidence.  Not only is it important in itself, but it governs everything else — like Tolkien’s One Ring (and before we go any further, for any readers as old as me, this is nothing to do with 1970′s advertising for Colgate toothpaste!).

As regular readers (thank you, gang!) will know by now, I started this business just over two and a quarter years ago.  A few of us started at roughly the same time, and we’ve all gained greatly by comparing notes as we go along.

Recently we were discussing progress, and it turned out that each of us had had a Damascus moment about eighteen months in.  You suddenly realise that not only do you believe intellectually that it’s going to work, but that you feel it emotionally – you’ve got confidence.

That alters the whole game.  It doesn’t of course change the facts – how many members have I got?  Are they happy bunnies?  How many prospective members am I going to meet this month?  Can I pay the mortgage?  But it changes your perception of the facts, and that changes everything.

For years I believed (I now realise) that you could become confident only by being good at something;  I’ve now twigged that it’s the other way round.

Since my Damascus moment I’ve become a trained coach, and the more I see of other people’s issues and problems, the more I realise how much success and happiness depend on self esteem and self belief.

This is a massive subject.  If you’re interested in exploring further (and the more you explore, the more fascinating, and the more rewarding, it becomes) then two areas offer a good place to start — Emotional Intelligence, and NLP.

I’ve already touched briefly on Emotional Intelligence (in U is for Understanding), with its building blocks of Self-Awareness, Self-Confidence, Empathy, Relationship Skills, and Adaptability.

NLP is a relatively recent science, which explores how you can change your beliefs and behaviour by changing your habits of thinking.  It’s based on a series of beliefs, which include –

• if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got
• the person with the most flexibility controls the system
• your perception is your reality
• problems exist only in your own head
• there is no failure, only feedback
• whatever you believe, you will defend
• you already have all the resources you need to succeed

This is in many ways uncomfortable stuff — because you can no longer fall back on the comfort blanket that most of us have without realising it (“I’d be a success if only I had more education/money/experience/luck/[................]” <— fill in your own particular self-limiting belief).

You can start now — and indeed, until you do start, nothing will change.  Carpe Diem, as the man said (which doesn’t quite mean “God is a fish” — thanks to Peter Banks for this little gem).

Can you achieve all this off your own bat?  You certainly can.  You can change your self talk, and alter the negative circle to the positive one (check out O is for Optimism, where this is explored at greater length).

It’s not quite as difficult, though, if you have a teacher – in my case I’d like to thank particularly Julie Harrison, of Julie Harrison Consulting, and the blest pair of sirens from Azure Consulting, Sharon Klein and Sue Alderson.

If you’re interested in this area, and if you’re already a member of TAB, then why not come to the second TAB National Members’ Event, on 16th May?  Both Emotional Intelligence and NLP are on the agenda, together with lots of other goodies.  And if you aren’t a member of TAB, there’s still time to join…..

Let me know if you’d like to register.

Well, it’s been a pretty varied countdown from 13 — I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it!  Back to the alphabet next week…..

Cheers for now

Tom  

I presently run four Boards, plus one moving majestically down the slipway (nb this is its only resemblance to the Titanic) –

• Dark Blue (for people who run large businesses) – one spare seat
• Light Blue (for people who run large businesses) — three spare seats
• Red (for SME business owners) – full!
• Red (for SME business owners) — launches on 23rd May!! — two spare seats
• Orange (for owners of startup businesses) – four spare seats

Contact me if you’re interested – tmorton@thealternativeboard.co.uk, 075 40 30 87 86

“I wish I was as cocksure of anything as Tom Macaulay is of everything”  (Lord Melbourne)

“Oh God!  Not another f—– elf!”  (Hugo Dyson, fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and friend of J R R Tolkien — said as Tolkien read the last chapter of The Lord of the Rings aloud to his friends)

2 ….. Roads Diverged in a Wood …..

….. and I — I took the road less travelled by, And that has made all the difference.

These are the last three lines of “The Road Less Traveled”, by Robert Frost.  If you’re in a certain age group you’ll have studied Robert Frost  at school (though I gather he’s rather less fashionable these days) — remember “the woods are lovely, dark, and deep/but I have promises to keep/and miles to go before I sleep”?   (had a bit of a thing about woods, did our Robert).

He also had a line in snappy quotations — e.g. “I’m not confused, I’m just well mixed”, and “a bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain” — nothing much has changed in the last hundred years!

Can you remember standing at the point where the paths diverged?  Do I carry on in the “safe” environment of a monthly payslip, and follow the herd down the well-trodden path?  Or do I take the “road less traveled” and strike out on my own?

Since I jumped off the dock just over two years ago, I’ve spoken to loads of other people who run their own business and very very few of them regret it.  I’ve loved virtually every minute of it (with the occasional three-in-the-morning panic about whether it’s going to make a profit, of course!).

Last summer one of my friends asked me why I enjoy it so much, and I eventually came up with three reasons –

1. I don’t have any internal meetings.  Remember those?  the regular monthly sales/management/partners’ meeting, with ten of you sat round the table for two/three/more hours, all too often going over the same ground?  Remember Morton’s Law — the value of the decisions coming out of the meeting is in inverse proportion to the length of time taken multiplied by the number of people present.
2. I talk only to people who can take decisions.  How frustrating is it to talk to your bank manager, only to find that whilst he/she is really supportive of what you want to do, “it’s out of my hands — I’ll have to refer it to Credit”?….. and it’s even more frustrating when you’re on the other side of the fence.  Now I can take decisions as and when I like — they may not be the right decisions, of course, but at least they’re my decisions!
3. I act only for people I like.  If you’re still wondering whether to strike out on your own, don’t underestimate what a wonderful motivator this is.  Remember when you used to spend 80% of your time on the affairs of the 20% of clients who were a pain in the butt?  Always late with information….. never paid their bills….. always complained….. sue you at the drop of a hat….. etc etc — not any more!

Since then I’ve added a fourth reason – I don’t have to defend policies I don’t agree with.  I was lucky — by and large I agreed with most of what my previous firm got up to — but it’s inevitable in any large organisation that you have to have a “party line”, and stick to it, even if you disagree.  Not if it’s your business, though — you set the rules!

So when cash flow is tight or a customer is misguided enough to go elsewhere, don’t forget why you did it in the first place — “I took the road less traveled by/and that has made all the difference”.

You’ll have your own reasons — why not share them via a comment?

Cheers for now

Tom  

I presently run four Boards, plus one in the course of construction –

• Dark Blue (for people who run large businesses) – one spare seat
• Light Blue (for people who run large businesses) — three spare seats
• Red (for SME business owners) – full!
• Red (for SME business owners) — being built — seats available
• Orange (for owners of startup businesses) – three spare seats

Contact me if you’re interested – tmorton@thealternativeboard.co.uk, 075 40 30 87 86

“When written in Chinese, the word ‘crisis’ is composed of two characters — one represents danger and the other, opportunity”  (John F Kennedy)

“My wife and I tried two or three times in the last forty years to have breakfast together but it was so disagreeable we had to stop”  (Winston Churchill)

3 ….. Things to Do Every Day

This week’s post comes half way through the inaugural UK National Conference of the Alternative Board  at Weetwood Hall in Leeds, and this is therefore a suitable time to stand back a little and reflect on what’s happened over the last two-plus years since TAB launched in the UK (from a standing start, to well over 200 members, nearly twenty franchise owners spread over most of the UK….. etc).

Reflection is made more appropriate from a different perspective,  since Denise McCallum (who I mentioned at the end of last week’s post) passed away on Friday evening, aged 44.

Many people far more eloquent than me, over many centuries, have wrestled with the problem of how to make any sense of death and serious disease, and how to reconcile their random nature with the continuing challenges and achievements of life — so I’m afraid this week’s (unusually serious) post won’t add greatly to the sum of our knowledge on these things.

But — it’s still right to try.

It’s right to celebrate achievement (in business and in life generally) — if it were not so, work becomes an unending struggle.

It’s also right to step back from the daily hurly-burly and plan the future, to give purpose and direction to what you’re going to do going forward.  Lots of earlier posts refer to this, so I won’t repeat them here!

But when friends and colleagues are struck down in a way that makes no apparent sense, I think it’s right to reflect not only in grief and regret, but also in celebration of what they have achieved and how they’ve behaved.

Which brings me to this week’s headline.

Jim Valvano was an American college basketball coach, and until I asked Mr Google for inspiration on the subject of “three”, I had (I’m sorry to say) never heard of him — which I’m uneasily aware will probably be the equivalent of (on the other side of the Pond) not having heard of, say, Brian Clough.  No doubt my faithful transatlantic readers will (gently but firmly) let me know…..

Jim Valvano died of cancer nearly twenty years ago, aged 47.  A few weeks before his death he accepted a major sporting award, and included in his speech was the following –

“To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special.”

Can’t add to that.

Have a great weekend!

Cheers for now

Tom  

I presently run four Boards, plus one in the course of construction –

• Dark Blue (for people who run large businesses) – one spare seat
• Light Blue (for people who run large businesses) — three spare seats
• Red (for SME business owners) – full!
• Red (for SME business owners) — being built — seats available
• Orange (for owners of startup businesses) – three spare seats

Contact me if you’re interested – tmorton@thealternativeboard.co.uk, 075 40 30 87 86

“From quiet homes and first beginnings/Out to the undiscovered ends/There’s nothing worth the love of winning/But laughter and the love of friends”  (Hilaire Belloc)

4 ….. Horsemen of the Apocalypse

A cheery subject for a beautiful day….. but in tune with the continuing air of gloom and doom which the media love so much.  The weather is beautiful — the days are getting warmer and longer — the daffodils are fabulous (though please don’t mention the Grand Slam).  True, the economy is not exactly racing ahead;  but growth seems to be getting ever-so-slightly better….. wouldn’t it be nice if our dear journo colleagues were a bit more positive?

But I’ve ranted about this before.  This week let’s turn our attention to the horsemen themselves.

I guess most of us have some sort of mental picture of the Four Horsemen.  They originate from the Book of Revelation — the last book in the New Testament, and the only one clearly written when the author was in the middle of an extended session smoking some pre-e-e-etty powerful stuff.

These days they’re generally reckoned to be –

• Pestilence, on a white horse
• War, on a red horse
• Famine, on a black horse
• Death, on a pale horse (called Binky, if you’re a Terry Pratchett fan)

(I say “these days” because the original text has the first horseman as Conquest rather than Pestilence).

They’re generally regarded as the first signs that the world is about to come to an end.  Not much relevance to the world of owner-managed business, I hear you cry?

Well, not directly, perhaps — but it’s quite fun (on a slow day, at least!) to try to identify the equivalent harbingers for a failing business.  What are the four weaknesses which occur most commonly in businesses heading for disaster, and which (if all four are present) mean that the end is nigh?

Everyone will have their own view on this.  Let us know what your nominees would be!

Here are mine….. (drum roll) –

1. Lack-of-a-Plan.  With no clear objective in mind, the business owner either carries on as he/she always has (regardless of a rapidly changing business landscape), or commits the opposite folly of thrashing about, changing direction apparently randomly, and never taking the time to evaluate a course of action before dashing off in a new direction.
2. Lack-of-Cash (on a red horse, naturellement!).  Even in tough times, you can get away with a lot — you can even survive for a remarkably long time without making a profit….. provided you can pay the bills.  Once cash flow gets really tight the situation tends to deteriorate remarkably rapidly — you can’t afford to finance new stock, so you can’t even take on new profitable business…..
3. Ignorance.  Not only have you no idea where you’re trying to get to (see horse #1), you have no real idea where you are — you haven’t got any reliable KPI information, your management accounts are non-existent or months behind, you’ve no information on how profitable various pieces of work are…..
4. Inexperience.  An awful lot of  business owners have no experience in managing in a recession (they may remember the last one, but in a lot of cases they weren’t in a position where they had to take the decisions).  It’s certainly true that the present business climate is giving people massive scope for learning — as long as the lessons are not so painful as to be terminal!

If any of these modern horses ring any bells (if you see what I mean) then you might like to consider joining a group of other business owners, to share experience and knowledge, and help you form a plan, thus helping you make more money, and chasing all four horses away.

Pretty neat, eh?

Cheers for now

Tom  

I presently run four Boards, plus one in the course of construction –

• Dark Blue (for people who run large businesses) – one spare seat
• Light Blue (for people who run large businesses) — three spare seats
• Red (for SME business owners) – full!
• Red (for SME business owners) — being built — seats available
• Orange (for owners of startup businesses) – two spare seats

Contact me if you’re interested – tmorton@thealternativeboard.co.uk, 075 40 30 87 86

“Horse sense is the thing a horse has which prevents it from betting on people” (W C Fields)

Please think of one of my Alternative Board members, Denise McCallum, who as I write this is gravely ill and will shortly find peace.  A generous and life-enhancing person who is always cheerful;  if in similar circumstances I could summon even a fraction of her courage and grace under pressure I would be proud indeed.  She would be amused at the irony of this week’s subject!

5 ….. Olympic Rings

You may have noticed that a certain sporting contest (or rather, two) is/are taking place in East London (not the South African one) later this year.

As any fule kno (as Molesworth would say) the modern games were founded by Baron de Coubertin in 1896.  He also designed the five ring symbol (the rings signifying five continents — not sure which one he left out! — with the colours covering all the colours used in national flags at that time) and the Olympic motto.

I’m sure you can remember what that is…..

Ready?

Citius, Altius, Fortius – Faster, Higher, Stronger.  Sounds a sensible aspiration for athletes — but can we learn anything from this for the world of business?

Well, I guess Faster certainly applies.  Technology gets faster and faster — you may have come across Moore’s Law, which says that the number of transistors which can fit on to an integrated circuit (and thus the speed and capacity of the computer) doubles every two years.

And as business owners, our speed of reaction also needs to continue to get faster — we need to adapt to change more quickly than the competition.

But there seems to be another (often unspoken) aspiration which most businesses aim for — not Higher or Stronger, but Bigger.

It’s generally assumed that it’s a Good Thing for your business to expand, and to keep expanding — but is this always desirable?  I think there are (at least) two instances where you have to take a long, hard look at whether getting bigger is beneficial.

The first is where you take your eye off the profit ball and chase turnover for its own sake.  That supermarket contract where they’ll double your turnover — here’s four things to think about before you sign it! –

1. What’s the profit margin?  If it’s a supermarket, almost certainly wafer-thin.  Remember the old adage — turnover is vanity, profit is sanity.
2. Are you sure you’ve taken account of all the costs — depreciation cost of extra plant?  extra stockholding cost?  opportunity cost (ie what else could you be doing with the time)?
3. What are the cash flow implications?  Will you have to pay your suppliers well before the customer pays you?
4. What will you do if (when) you lose the contract?  Will you be left with lots of empty space/unoccupied staff…..?

The second case goes back to what we looked at in 11 ….. Players in a Cricket Team. Not all increases in size are incremental — in other words, some size increases cause a step change, whereby the nature of the business suddenly changes fundamentally.  Maybe you’ll have to set on a whole new level of management, or extra plant, or open a new factory…..

If you run your own business there’ll be a point where the business grows beyond the stage where you still really enjoy it.  That point is different for each one of us — but you need to know what it is.

Many years ago I used to have a friend-of-a-friend who ran his own accountancy practice. He had only a hundred clients;  if he won a new one, he would sack one of the existing ones (and recommend them to another practice, thus gaining brownie points for the introduction).  The effect was that he was continually improving the quality of his client base (not its quantity).

Worth a thought!

The key is to have clear goals and to keep them under review.  It just so happens I know an organisation that can help you do just that…..

Cheers for now

Tom  

I presently run four Boards, plus one in the course of construction –

• Dark Blue (for people who run large businesses) – one spare seat
• Light Blue (for people who run large businesses) — three spare seats
• Red (for SME business owners) – full!
• Red (for SME business owners) — being built — seats available
• Orange (for owners of startup businesses) – two spare seats

Contact me if you’re interested – tmorton@thealternativeboard.co.uk, 075 40 30 87 86

“Whoever said ‘it’s not whether you win or lose that counts’ probably lost”  (Martina Navratilova)

“I’m in competition with myself — and I’m losing”  (Roger Waters)