All tagged business scale up
I’ve been rewriting my website recently. It’s been fun, spending time thinking about what it really means for my clients to make the shifts they do when working with me. Last week I was chatting to Elizabeth who’s doing a stunning job of helping me drag all of the tangled thoughts out of my head. She was asking me about what it really looks like when a team is functioning brilliantly.
It’s like an orchestra I said. You are the conductor. Your team members know their roles, they know what they’re good at and they know that they need to follow the music and look to you for pace, emphasis, energy. You’re not leaving your conductor’s podium every two minutes to play first violin. Neither are the members of your team playing tug of war over different instruments. You have agreed what pieces you’re playing, in what order and when.
A lot of the senior leaders I work with find they’re low energy because, as natural high achievers, they get their buzz from doing things and getting results. They find that rather than building a whole list of things that drain them, they actually end up feeling as though they just don’t have a very big list of things that energise them.
As you get towards the top of any organisation, two things happen. Firstly you now have a team who are eager to do things and get results themselves and secondly the external validation that tells you you’re doing well, and that high achievers thrive on, starts to diminish.
Last week I saw a quote from the CEO of Unilever - '5 days in the office seems so old fashioned now’.
It stayed with me, as important ideas often do. I started thinking about how quickly that sense of obsolescence has manifested. But then I started thinking about all the conversations I’ve had over the years, with colleagues, with clients and with myself! And I thought - no - 5 days in the office doesn’t’ seem old fashioned NOW - it always has!
Ever since my days in middle management corporate roles I found that the 9 to 5 really didn’t suit me. I was more than willing to come in at 5 am some days, stay til 10 pm on others but what I wanted was a credit debit system.
For me, creating a version of you as the ideal leader of your business is as important as being clear about your ideal client. And scarily, I see most of my clients put a lot more work into who their client needs to be than who they need to be. Often that’s because we assume we are ‘fixed’ as we are.
Creating a persona that is all the things you need to be as a leader - confident, self assured and decisive, even when you’re having a bad day – allows you to step out of yourself and still get the job done.
Making an impact on the world is largely to do with knowing where best to put your energy. So when I get the opportunity to do something that has a potential impact on not just my business but those of my clients and peers I grab it with both hands. Last week I was thrilled to be invited to an event run by The Entrepreneurs Network, a think tank set up to give entrepreneurs, small businesses and the self-employed a greater collective voice. It was called ‘A Parliament Fit for Entrepreneurs?’ and aimed to understand what the government needs to do to support entrepreneurs better.
I was excited to go, and at the time the discussion was absorbing and inspiring. The overwhelming message from the panel, made up of Baroness Susan Kramer, Andrew Dixon and Gilian Keegan MP was that the way to change government policy was to ‘get involved’. Lobby, speak to your MP, play your part in discussion groups and forums. ‘Great’ I thought, I’m here at this event, getting involved, changing things – that’s a start.
A week today I attended an event called Be More Gazelle - How to grow your business at speed...
I’ll start with a confession… before this event I had no idea what a Gazelle was. Obviously I know it's a kind of deer like mammal but in business terms, not a clue! It turns out I probably should have done because it’s exactly the kind of companies I work with. According to The FT it's an extremely fast growing company (20% + YOY) that maintains consistent momentum.
Are you a secret Gazelle? I can’t be the only person that doesn’t know what one is?!
The event was run by Upstream – a fab initiative that's aiming to redress the silicon roundabout East-West imbalance and make Hammersmith and Fulham the best place to do business in Europe. What an exciting vision! Are you in the West of London? Look it up and get involved. There were far too many business advisors there and not enough actual businesses and I'd love to feel as though I was part of a growing and thriving community of great businesses.
