Posts tagged "Failure"

Advice Partnerships

Friends and Business

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“A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship.” Anonymous

I firmly believe that partnering is one of the most effective ways of scaling your business. It is natural therefore to look within your network of friends/family and acquaintances to find potential partners. This is a strategy I have used, and even though a lot of people think that mixing friends/family and business is a bad idea, my experience has proved otherwise . Over the last couple of businesses I have been involved in, I have found that setting clear ground rules before starting a venture has been integral to their success.

One of the mistakes a lot of businesses are beset with when starting out with friends/family stem from there being so much left unsaid at the start. This is due to the fact that a mutual understanding is ‘thought’ to exist. The fact of the matter is, that unfortunately when money enters the picture a lot of these ‘understandings’ fall by the way side. Everyone wants to make money and start a successful business. The truth of the matter is that registering a business and starting one with no set plan is easy, making your business a success requires diligence, perseverance and structure.

Over the course of this week I will share with you certain ground rules to set when starting a venture or partnership. These rules have helped me tremendously in tempering expectations, getting ground realities realized and fostering an environment which promotes candour and honesty.

Teams

8 characteristics of ideal business partners

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“When the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends.” Japanese Proverb

After you have made a concentrated effort to understand as to who you are, you are now ready to go out there and start looking for the right individuals to partner with. This is a critical stage which will have a substantial impact on achieving your goals. Over the years I have either started or joined many business teams. There is a mental checklist which I run through when meeting my prospective team mates for the first time. This check list is made up from my own past experiences and also Jim Collins view on who “The Right People” (courtesy www.jimcollins.com) are.

1. The person must share the core values of the business or organization. These are the values which determine how the organization interacts, communicates and operates to reach it goals and objectives. For example there was a charity project for protecting the environment I was part of during my university days. There was a sales and marketing director who didn’t share the fundamental core value of compassion. He was in fact looking to profit from the project. Needless to say he didn’t last very long in the team. This just goes to show how important it is for you to probe and ask whether your prospective team mates core values are aligned to ensure that you are all on the same page and headed for the same goal.

2. The person should not need to be “managed”. When building your core team you need to find those individuals who are confident in their own abilities. If you are the more experienced partner then most definitely you will provide some guidance along the way. However if you are find yourself molding the individual into what you deem are the right behaviors then you have probably made a mistake during selection. These types of individuals who require constant support are draining and slowly become huge speed bumps for the organization. Make sure you select those individuals who have shown a capacity to operate on their own and have been successful at doing so.

3. The passion to become the best at what they do. There was a IT company which I was a part of a couple of years ago which was developing inventory management systems for the paper industry. Being a startup company we were naturally bootstrapping and couldn’t hire the best developers. However when filling a key role for project management lead for the team we selected an individual who had shown great potential during his university days and had great passion for his line of work. It worked out really well and the team flourished. So when you are making a key decision and may be limited by budget or geographic boundaries do your best to fill the seat with the person who has show the potential and willingness to be one of the best in that field.

4. Understand the difference between a job and holding a responsibility. This tip has helped me greatly in making some key decisions in recruiting partners. Say you are going to be hiring a developer for a new website to collect feedback for your product. You get the best coder in town to make it for you. He does what you asked for but users are frustrated because the website is difficult to navigate through or impossible to submit feedback easily. I know I have been in this spot many times. This is when you got someone who doesn’t know the difference. A coder who takes responsibility to make sure that users will be able to submit their feedback easily and quickly would have approached the project differently. So make sure when you are getting a partner who understands the bigger picture and is in line with it.

5. Would you hire the person if it were a hiring decision? This question allows you to look at the person from a different angle. Given that you know a substantial amount of the person would you hire him/her? When I get to meet people outside the workplace say at my squash game or at a charity that I volunteer at, you get to know a lot about the individual. When I ask myself this question when thinking about asking him/her to become a partner with me in a project it puts things into perspective. You begin to look at the individual impartially and can reach a more informed decision.

6. Does the person have a regard for rules, regulations and personal boundaries? I have learned this lesson the hard way as well. I came across what you call a super star performer. He excelled at a lot of the businesses he had been at. So if it were a hiring decision it would have been an easy one. However after working with him for a while I realized he had the sense that he was above any level of authority and did things which were ethically questionable when securing contracts and sales. We started to get complaints about his attitude from staff and customers and had to part ways. So when you meet a person make sure you get a sense of what his point of view regarding regulations and boundaries are even though everything else may look to be in place.

7. Professes a commitment to goals. When you are going into business you are looking for people who share similar levels of commitment as you do to the project. If you don’t pay attention to this aspect you will find yourself in an imbalanced partnership which could result in permanently jeopardizing your project. When evaluating prospective partners look at their past history and whether they were committed to the last projects they were on. Ask them about some of the big decisions they have had to make. Lastly if you are planning to take him/her on as a partner make them commit to particular goals and objectives and use them as benchmarks when performance will be appraised.

8. Integrity. This is probably the most critical yet most elusive quality to immediately identify. A person who has a high level of integrity will be one which will you can rely on and grow a successful business with. To be a good of judge of this characteristic however will take time and experience. I take Jack Welch’s advice here that if your “gut” feeling about someone is bad or you don’t get the correct vibes then it is best to go with that first presumption unless you are shown to believe otherwise.

By running through this checklist I have been able to select business partners with a lot more subjectivity. I hope this list helps out anyone who is looking to start up a new project. At the same time if you or anyone else has any key characteristics that they would like to share please do so in the comment section.
 
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Inspiration

Lights…Camera…ACTION!

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“What we think or what we know or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.” John Ruskin – English author, art critic and social commentor

You have got it all going, the goal, the planning, the team but somehow you are not gathering the traction you need to move forward. This unfortunately is something that many people experience throughout their life. The reason being; too many people like to talk big and make grandiose plans but when it comes to actually DOING them; this one step separates the people who are successful from those who are not.

Unless you make a conscious effort to get out of your comfort zone, nothing is going to happen. When you take an action step you make a sub conscious commitment to move forward. You start a series of event like the ripples when a stone hits the water. These will provide you with valuable feedback, attract the right people to your side, people will take you more seriously and things which may have appeared difficult to start out with will slowly unravel into manageable tasks. You will most certainly make mistakes along this path, learn from your mistakes. They will be the most valuable lessons you will ever experience in life. I was involved in a project a couple of years ago. I was being pitched to invest in a new concept store for an industry which was thriving. The plan looked great but in that first meeting I didn’t get the correct vibes from the person who was going to head the project. However the numbers looked way to good for me to pass up on the opportunity. Well I guess you can imagine what happened, 8 months later we were closing shop as the partnership was just not working. Ever since that day I have relied on my “Gut Instinct” a lot more.

That lesson may have cost me but I strongly believe that I learnt something which will be invaluable for the rest of my life. So there is no shame in failing, just remember to learn from the mistakes you make along the way. Don’t make excuses to wait a little longer, there will never be a perfect time. Get up and enroll in that course today, get that gym membership, start that company, write that business plan, go back to school. Just make sure you DO IT NOW!

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