Jump

Happy Day! 🥳

2018: Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future. Its failure to achieve adoption to date is because systems built on trust, norms, and institutions inherently function better than the type of no-need-for-trusted-parties systems blockchain envisions. That’s permanent: no matter how much blockchain improves it is still headed in the wrong direction. kai Stinchcome, a futurist for Medium online magazine.

A search for “Leadership” on Amazon shows hundreds of books, videos and programs. Many of them conflict advice with each other. As your intention is to lead a non-employer start-up, I suggest you filter out anything written by any person who has not built such a company. That reduces the list to just one. (Three Simple Steps, of course).

In my regular career some of the best leaders I worked with had no leadership training. Some of the worst were avid readers of leadership books. No one can learn to be a leader from a course or a book. We learn leadership by, well… leading. Just start and figure it out.

My Two Cents on Leadership:
1. As we discussed in an earlier lesson all you have to learn is how to manage a small group of people. In the virtual non-employer business these will be experienced, skilled client managers, which means you have to do very little leadership at all other than offer direction and feedback.

2. The true measure of freedom is to be independent of the GOOD opinion of others. This means you must make what you think are the right decisions regardless of what it means to you or others. If you do not have the courage to fire your own granny for the right reasons do not go into business.

My Two Maxims:
a) Lead by making decisions that balance analysis with intuition.

b) Lead by always doing what you consider to be the right thing no matter what it takes.

Regardless of the job or title, my main role in all my regular jobs was the leading of a small group. If you can lead a few people, then you have what it takes to be a successful leader of any size organization. You don’t need a MBA or some other management course. You just need to be authentic, to be self-confident, and to be discipline oriented.

There is no one-way to lead and there is no common element between great leaders. For instance, Google’s CEO Larry Page has degrees in engineering and computer science. Richard Branson dropped out of school at age sixteen. Neither could be said to be similar or to have similar traits, nor were they born leaders. Some leaders are extrovert and some are introvert. Some are tall and some are small. Some have humor and some take themselves seriously.

The short answer to it is that when you put yourself in a position to lead, then you have to lead. People may judge you as a good leader or a bad leader depending on how they feel about you. Just lead anyway. Ditch all those books on what it takes to lead and just start leading. I believe there are several key leadership styles that assist success in a non-employer business.

My Three Leadership Imperatives:

Customer Comes First
One of my mantras is: the customer comes first, the rest is just detail.

Your customer is now your closest family. His or her needs are more important than anyone’s, including your own. When they speak, you shut up and listen. When they complain, you accept responsibility and improve. When they praise you, you ensure everyone involved in their happiness gets to hear about it. When they call, you answer or call back. When they need something, you help them, and regardless of whether there is a benefit in it for you. You exist to provide benefits to them. You are not in business for you, but for them. Your main goal is to delight them.

Every time you communicate with someone, whether by letter, handshake, or voice, they are your number one customer in that moment and must be treated as such. You have no way of knowing who they know, or who they work for, or the influence they have. So, assume they are all friends of Bill Gates and treat them that way.

Continuous-Improvement

After WWII, American occupation forces brought in experts to help with the rebuilding of Japanese industry. One group was tasked with improving management skills and they introduced a film to teach the three “J” programs (Job Instruction, Job Methods, and Job Relations)—the film was titled “Improvement in 4 Steps” (Kaizen eno Yon Dankai), thus the original introduction of “Kaizen” to Japan.

During the 1950s, a culture of kaizen, or continuous improvement, developed in Japanese manufacturing, and we can see the results of their success in the number of Japanese products in world homes today. Kaizen is synonymous with quality and with a desire across the organization, and in every employee, to suggest ways, systems, and quality might be improved.

Many MBA-type courses fixate on Kaizen as it applies to the manufacturing process and largely miss the point of the philosophy. It is not about increasing production efficiency, although that is certainly part of it. It is about improvements in all aspects of a business, in every department, in every person, and in every system. It is about never resting on your laurels, or feeling that you have arrived at some destination.

MBA courses also like to make Kaizen mysterious and complicated by getting the student to consider subjects like statistical analyses or quality circles. It is, however, a much simpler philosophy. It is simply a mentality that you always strive to do better tomorrow than you did today.

A culture of continuous improvement is essential for a successful small business, and it is the passion behind a virtual business model. By bolting on expert functions, each with their own desire to continuously improve their functional expertise, you automatically become Kaizen in nature. When selecting vendors, it is important to ascertain whether they also continually strive to improve and one of the key questions I ask during the due diligence phase is about their future plans to improve the systems they have in place now. How do they monitor performance and what processes do they have for continuously improving.

For a small business it is important to constantly ask yourself how you can improve in every aspect. What small changes or updates can you make to your Internet presence? How can you improve your sales information sheets? How can you improve your customer service function? Is your auto attendant greeting original and relevant? How cutting edge is your accounting procedure? How can you improve your product to increase customer satisfaction? How can you improve your sales skills? How can you manage time better? How can you reduce costs more and raise more profit? This attitude should permeate every part of the business and be lived enthusiastically by everyone.

Fun

Does Richard Branson seem like he hates his job? Ray Dahlio? Bill Gates? Warren Buffet? Are they not all happy, smiling, having a grand old time?

Life is not meant to be a struggle but a joyful process, and so is running your own business. I can think of few things as exhilarating as becoming your own boss for the first time and waking up with that sense of child-like excitement at the day ahead, a day that is as unpredictable as a child’s game. Whatever your dream, please feel free to adopt my company mission, vision, and values statement:

Our Company (insert name)