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Messages from the Mountains (1)
Posted Oct 3rd, 2011 By Andrew Horder in Clarity & Focus, Decision Making, Motivation & Management With | No Comments

Last weekend, I attempted the 3 Peaks Challenge* – ascending Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon, the highest mountains in Scotland, England and Wales respectively. During the trip, and while pushing myself to get up (and down), I learned some things about myself, and the world. These I’ll be sharing here in a series of blogs over the course of this week.

The group was pretty mixed, ranging in age from late twenties to mid-fifties, and ranging in ability (we discovered) almost as widely. We all gathered in North London and piled our stuff into the minibus Pere had hired for the trip. The first day was a long old slog up the M1, M6 and M74, to a hostel in Glencoe. We made very good time, at sometimes breathtaking speeds from Pere and his co-driver Kate, arriving just before dark. The first thing I learned on the trip, at the hotel restaurant down the road from the hostel, was don’t order the crumble for pudding until you’ve seen the size of the fish & chips!

Day one: Ben Nevis. It was immediately clear that Pere was focused on the objective of climbing each peak on schedule, to make sure we had time to complete the challenge, and some of us found ourselves falling behind. It was becoming obvious that one of the women wasn’t really up to the climb – surprising, because we knew she’d trained for it, maybe it was different terrain. We tried to encourage and support her, but it just wasn’t happening. And we had Lesson One: there are times when you have to be prepared to cut loose those who are holding you back.

And that’s true in real life too, sometimes it just takes too much of your energy to try to pull people along with you.

After Valerie dropped out (and her husband volunteered to go back down with her), speed picked up. I was still bringing up the rear by some way, but progress was steady. And I soon felt myself flagging … and I’ll tell the story of the second lesson in my next blog.

* Lite version, over 2 days.
Good decisions
Posted May 19th, 2011 By Andrew Horder in Clarity & Focus, Decision Making With | No Comments

This post is adapted from Chapter D of my new book “The Busy Fool’s A to Z of Loving Work“

Decisions are much easier to make when you have clarity about what you are really trying to achieve.

It’s often said, in the success literature, that wealthy people tend to make decisions quickly, and change their minds rarely, while unsuccessful people hesitate for ages before making a decision, and then dither about actually putting it into practice. That’s true to an extent; and there’s more to it than simply making decisions quickly. A lot of unsuccessful people also make decisions quickly – they’re just the wrong ones!

So how do successful people get to make the right decisions, and make them quickly? By doing their homework; there’s no quick-fix, no silver bullet answer. They do the hard work to understand their market, their clients, their business, themselves – in fact everything that could make a decision a good one or a bad one. And here’s their trick – they only do it once. They focus, so everything they learn can be re-used for their next decision.

And each decision is backed up with all their previous research, plus whatever they’ve learned since. They don’t have to start their information-gathering from scratch every time. They do the work of figuring out the right work or business to be in, once. After that, it’s just maintenance. So they have the information they need to make a confident decision quickly, without having to think about it too hard.

Where unsuccessful people go wrong is they skim the surface and then make bad decisions they later doubt, and feel they have to keep checking over and over.

When every decision you make comes with a doubt attached, you’ll find yourself always expecting to be ‘found out’. Whenever I hear people saying they feel like they are a bit of a fraud, that sometime soon people are going to realise they’ve been making it up as they go along, I know they haven’t put it the work required .

I once took a job I was hopelessly under-qualified for. Even my staff had a better idea how to do the job than I did – and it wasn’t the usual unfounded complaint of “I could do better than my boss”, they really could! It was one of the worst years of my working life, because I really didn’t know what I was doing. Eventually, what I’d spent the previous year dreading happened, and the directors realised we’d all made a horrible mistake. And I’ve never been so relieved to lose a job!

To be confident in your decisions, you need to put in the work to know what you’re talking about. Once you’ve done that, the work will start to feel easy, and to feel like it’s not work at all. And you can’t know enough about everything, so you will first need to put in the work to know what it is that you really want to do.

There’s no quick fix – all those successful people who seem able to make the right decision at the drop of a hat, they’ve worked bloody hard to get to that point.
Action!
Posted Jan 15th, 2011 By Andrew Horder in Audio and Video, Business Strategy Coaching, Motivation & Management, Time Management With | 1 Comment

Business Strategy Coaching:

The importance of actually doing something !
Are you a Protopreneur?
Posted Dec 21st, 2010 By Andrew Horder in Business Strategy Coaching, Decision Making With | 1 Comment

What is a protopreneur?

We’ve all heard of entrepreneurs, haven’t we? And most know what a ‘micropreneur’ is. And a ‘solopreneur’ too. Even ‘Mumpreneurs’ (and ‘Dadpreneurs’, according to Rachel Elnaugh). But what’s a ‘protopreneur’? It’s a made-up word, just like all the rest. Well, apart from entrepreneur (which, according to Dubya, is something the French don’t have a word for ).

It comes from the Greek ‘prōtos’ (first), which itself comes from ‘pro’ (before). Proto- tends to mean the form immediately before something emerges. For example a ‘prototype’ is the nearly-finished product, from which the final item that goes to market is developed. And ‘protoplasm’ is the earliest form of living matter, from which emerges all living organisms. ‘Proto-’ means the very start, the point just before the actual thing itself is born.

OK, so that’s the derivation. But what actually *is* a ‘protopreneur’? I use it to describe a person who is standing at the brink of entrepreneurship – still in a job, but somehow certain that you should be doing doing something for yourself. You may even have an idea what you’d love to be doing, yet something’s holding you back from taking that first step – keeping you at the ‘protopreneur’ stage, right on the cusp.

That hesitation, that niggling doubt, that obstacle to just taking the leap of faith, could just be nerves. Or it could be something more, it could be your intuition telling you that something’s not quite right, that for you this isn’t quite the right time, that there’s a fatal flaw in your plan. And the trouble is, it’s very hard to tell whether you’re holding back through procrastination or perceptiveness.

And you don’t have to be still in a job to be one. A lot of people remain in the protopreneur stage for quite some time after they leave employment, as you try to work out exactly what it is you do. In fact, from my experience, I’d say a good half of the people you meet around the networking circuit are in the protopreneur phase for a maybe a year, even two, as you try your hand at various things that seem like they’ll be fun or they’ll make your fortune, before finding that one thing you can stick at.

I’ve been there, I’ve been that protopreneur, on both sides of the employment divide, and I’ve seen it so often in others, I’m now on a mission to move protopreneurs on, to help them find their laser focus, to see them set firm on a course that will take them where they want to go.
Are you ready for self-unemployment?
Posted Nov 25th, 2010 By Andrew Horder in Business Strategy Coaching With | No Comments

So, the big opportunity you’ve been waiting for is here – they’re talking about redundancies, nice big severance packages to give you some breathing space while you get your new consultancy business established. You’re great at what you do, an expert in your field, and you’re fed up with working alongside high-paid consultants and contractors at a fraction of the daily rate they’re getting. So bring it on!!

Are you really ready for it? Let’s examine a few of the issues you’ll need to deal with.

What infrastructure are you going to need? For example, Who’s going to raise the invoices? Who’s going to chase the invoices? No friendly (to you, anyway) ‘accounts receivable’ team to rely on. Who’s going to make sure the bills get paid, and who’s going to decide which suppliers have to wait when cashflow doesn’t quite work out – as it won’t? No treasury department allowing you to ‘borrow just a bit’ from next month’s budget.

Who’s going to keep your computer running when it starts slowing down to a crawl, or make sure you can sync your e-mails to your crackberry or whyphone? No friendly (OK, not even to you) geeks in the IT department to ‘just make it work’. Talking of helpful people (yes, I know we weren’t), what about the grapevine – where’s your ‘market intel’ going to come from? No watercooler or coffee-machine moments for you now, just the morass of the ‘social media’ sites and the rampant cholesterol of breakfast networking.

What’s your marketing message going to be, your ‘unique proposition’? Who’s going to write it, and who’s going to design your website and your flyers? No ‘airy-fairy’ marketing department hanging on your every word (as if!). And what about new business – less euphemistically known as “Sales”? How are you going to keep the pipeline full AND deliver the work at the same time? No road warriors in their trusty Toymota repmobiles out there slaying the dragons of poverty for *you*.

OK, that may be slightly overstating the case, but if you’re not ready for more than a little uncertainty and isolation, then going out on your own may not be right for you.

Don’t get me wrong, anyone who’s been reading my work for any time at all will know that I’m all for people following their passion and doing work that makes their heart sing. It’s just that there may be other ways to acheive that, without launching yourself out into the void of self-unemployment.

Sometimes I have to tell clients to hold on, to learn (or maybe remember) how to enjoy their current work, while they plan their exit properly. They may see this opportunity to take a package as one that won’t come again – in my experience, it’s never that hard to become surplus to requirements if you really want to. And even if they’re right, they may still be better off right now, looking for another employed position to keep things running until the ‘big opportunity’ is really ready.

So before you grab at that shiny severance package with all those lovely zeros after it, maybe you’d better just ask yourself just why it’s there.
“Action always starts with calculation”
Posted Oct 26th, 2010 By Andrew Horder in Clarity & Focus, Decision Making, Motivation & Management With | No Comments

These days we are constantly harangued with the need to take action, not to just sit around wishing for good things to come to our business, LoA-style. But what about the need to plan, to analyse the opportunity, to truly understand how to get the most out of our best opportunities?

I’m just reviewing a free e-Book from business advisor Jonathan Farrington on his approach to Key Account Management. In it he quotes Chinese general Liu-Ji, writing over 600 years ago: “Action always starts with calculation. Before fighting, first assess the relative wisdom of the leadership, the relative strength of the enemy, the size of the armies, the lie of the land, and the adequacy of provisions. If you send troops out only after making these calculations, you will never fail to win”.

The trouble with analysis is that it often becomes a barrier to action, as different stakeholder groups call for research and analysis on a bewildering array of concerns. In small businesses, it can even become an excuse to avoid taking the risk of acting at all – “I’ll make my move just as soon as I’ve analysed ‘abc’ … ah, and I’d better make sure about ‘xyz’ too … oooh, come to think about it, ‘def’ might be a problem too, best wait until we’ve checked that out … and …” These are both aspects of the phenomenon known as “paralysis by analysis”. As I was copying out Liu-Ji’s list, I was thinking, “Blimey, this is going on a bit” and wondering if all these aspects really have to be analysed up-front. And yet, as Liu-Ji says, by analysing we can dramatically increase the chances of a “win”. So it seems the trick is to make sure you analyse the critical success factors, and get your understanding about the rest by ‘learning-by-doing’ – getting started and adjusting the plan as new information arrives.

The way I do opportunity analysis is to spend some time with a client really understanding what makes a good opportunity for them, then helping them to check all the opportunities being considered against those criteria, to identify the best ones, for them. I call it “Inquisitive Analysis” – because I look at the human side of things as well as just the numbers. One very important outcome of the process is an understanding of the vulnerabilities that will need to be fixed (either in the plan, or the individual!) – and whether they’re show-stoppers that need to be resolved before even starting out, or can we get going and deal with them ‘on the march’.

The right level of analysis might take a few hours of hard work, but it can save days and weeks of wasted effort later; and just as importantly, it can provide the reassurance and confidence to take that all-important first action.
Rest & Ponder
Posted Jul 12th, 2010 By Andrew Horder in A Better World, Clarity & Focus With | No Comments

Dr Steven Covey wrote, in The Seven Habits Of Highly Successful People, about our ability to choose our response to any situation, to shift our paradigm and see the situation in a different light. The example he gives is the guy on a train who is letting his kids run riot, and we react by expecting him to keep them under control, until we learn that they’ve just come from the hospital where their mother just died, and our attitude shifts from condemning to wanting to help.

Covey goes on to say that the extent of our ability to choose our response indicates our level of response-ability.

Taking this semantic sleight of mouth a little farther, what most people do is react to situations in the same way each time, based on their experiences, culture and upbringing. Act again, doing the same thing over and over again, the unconscious mind running the same pattern whenever prompted by the external stimulus. Re-Acting.

If you want to make changes in your life, you’re going to need to do something different. Wasn’t it Einstein who said that to keep repeating the same action and expect a different result was his definition of insanity. Dr Michael Beckwith says that when you’re faced with a stimulus, you should pause before acting, and consciously decide how to respond in a way that will best serve you and the world. That pause is important. A pause to allow your better self to take control of how you respond.

To take the semantic game one stage further, I say you must respond, not react. Don’t Re-Act the stuff that’s got you to where you are now;
RESt + PONDer how you will respond to take you even further.
“I’d just do all of it!”
Posted Jul 4th, 2010 By Andrew Horder in A Better World, Clarity & Focus With | No Comments

Focus and how to choose between opportunities is a big topic for me, and I’m always interested t learn how successful entrepreneurs handle it. I was at a fantastic event on Friday on the subject of Influence, with profits going to Peace One Day, started by the amazing Jeremy Gilley (check it out, a brilliant idea that’s really making progress, with every member state of the UN ratifying September 21^st each year as Peace Day). One of the speakers was the very entertaining Simon Woodroffe of Yo! Sushi and Yotels fame.

One of the questions he was asked by the audience was, how do you decide between business opportunities. As you can imagine, my ears pricked up, waiting to hear how this successful entrepreneur dealt with the issue of selection and focus. So imagine my dismay when he said “oh, I’d just do all of it” – the exact opposite of what I recommend to the people who go through Opportunity Matrix programmes and Art of Focus days. Erk!

Simon then went on to say that he would put each of them on a separate page of a notebook, and compartmentalise his thinking about each one. And he’d spend a couple of hundred pounds on each to do a bit of research, set up the website, or whatever. Then he’d run with them all for 3 months – 100 days – and then decide which one (or ones) was for him, or his team. So not so different from my advice after all – phew! (except maybe running them through my process might be a bit quicker)

I think Simon’s advice would work well for an established entrepreneur, someone who’s already proved themselves in the business arena, and more importantly, in their network. For a newbie entrepreneur it would still, in my opinion, run the risk of confusing their network about what they actually do – what their niche really is. And for an unproven entrepreneur, the “jack of all trades” label can be difficult to shift.

I should know, I’ve been there, when I was playing the Busy Fool!
Decisions & Time
Posted Apr 26th, 2009 By Andrew Horder in Clarity & Focus, Time Management With | No Comments

I don’t normally just link to other people’s blogs, but this one from Seth Godin is spot on: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/04/i-need-more-time.html