Building a Pyrotechnic Business - 7 x 7 ‘Sure Fire’ Accelerants for Entrepreneurs

Acclerant 3 -7 Ways to Light Up Your People

1. Walk the Talk

It’s tough, but the people around you will be able to assess your mood when you walk in to a room pretty much instantly. In an office, that mood can permeate the room in seconds. It may go against the grain but aim for upbeat and smile, smile, smile. If necessary fake it! People will also be constantly checking – rather like a virus check –what you say against what you do. So, if customer service is your thing – as it should be – then make sure you remain customer focused in all that you do and say. Think of your suppliers and staff as customers too.

2. Attitude v skills

There’s a popular mantra that goes ‘Hire for attitude, train for skills’. Ideally you want both of course, and in some circumstances – where, for example, there is an urgent need short term for some pretty technical stuff - then you can park this. But if you’re recruiting people in to the business, and especially if they’re customer facing – then the right people focused, positive attitude is critical. Teams, too, tend to be more successful if members are positive and goal orientated and this goes a long way to creating a positive climate for your business.

3. It’s their business too!

Get people to take ownership of the parts of the business that they have the greatest ability to influence. Be clear with them how what they do contributes to the overall success of the business. Make sure that performance discussions are open, frequent and evidence based. Spend more time looking forward rather than backwards otherwise life becomes a series of post-mortems. Help your people become ‘intrepreneurs’ within your business so that they build their own entrepreneurial skills.

4. Hearts and minds

You want people to bring their whole bodies to work – that’s to say their hearts and minds. Shocking results from a recent survey revealed that more than half of the employees polled felt disaffected from their job and the company they worked for. For a small business, this level of overhead – effectively two people to do one job –is untenable. So, you have the challenge of engaging your people as fully as possible. What we have talked about previously here will help. Take a real interest in your people, find out about their families and what they do in their spare time. And above all catch them doing things right and give immediate feedback.

5. Doing it right

Make sure you’re doing the ‘right things right’ rather than ‘wrong things right’. It’s so easy to get sucked in to stuff that is energising, exciting and inevitably time consuming. But if it’s not moving the business on – and that’s you’re prime goal – then you’re just wasting time and perhaps other resources too. Are you spending too much time travelling around chasing marginal business? Has social media taken over your life? Are terrorist customers sapping your strength? If so you need to get a grip. Keep a diary for a week and see how you spend your time relative to your business priorities.

6. Hymn sheets

What do your people actually say to customers when you’re not there? What do they say on the phone and face to face? In this day and age, what are they saying too about your business on their texts, on Facebook and Twitter? The days of direct control may be gone but you still have the ability to influence. Make sure that uncomfortable conversations and differences of opinion are resolved within your business before they go public.  Get feedback from customers, both satisfied and unsatisfied and even ‘mystery shop’ your business yourself.

7. ‘Could do better’

Too many businesses drift along failing to address self-evident performance issues amongst their staff and suppliers. In the poll about disaffected staff, employers also reported that they felt that 25% of staff were ineffective. This is outrageous!  Is there something in our culture that gets in the way of dealing in a timely and effective way with unsatisfactory performance? The longer you leave it, the more you collude and the more your staff – who will know who the poor performers are – will doubt your leadership capabilities.

And finally, if you’re so inclined score yourself on a scale

of 1 (low) to 10 (high) against these Accelerants.