I’ve just finished working on the last slab of a long running research project into how small companies actually use the web and social media to promote themselves. This has been looking at what companies in the Aerospace supply chain actually do – and how they make use of the social media as part of the mix.

These are very traditional businesses which use much of the sales and marketing processes that the heavy engineering industry I left in 1981 used. However – they do use linked-in a bit and they use i-phone apps if recruiting. But that’s about it.

So I’ve done some work on the report to generalise it into an e-book suitable for companies with real (as opposed to online marketing) businesses.

Some of the key ideas bringing everything together – like the online presence is the scenery for a the real, face to face, play – are captured in this slide set. I hope you find it interesting.

If you would like a copy of the e-book please let me know

How to do Business

Leading your organisation in the 21st century is about being in the knowledge economy. You must strike the right balance between systems / results and motivation / creativity.  You need a synthesis of left and right brain thinking, a blend of people skills and effective use of technology. More on left and right brain thinking here.

Large organisations are great at systems but poor at engagement. In small organisations the reverse is true.  Large organisations worry about motivation and conflict  while small companies worry about how to trade with larger organisations, how to use KPIs and systems and how to market themselves.

So they behave differently. Small organisations tend to be informal, flexible and creative. Large organisations tend to be efficient but bureaucratic.   They work best in different parts of the market.

Market Dynamics

Most products follow an uptake curve that’s shown in the diagram. In the early stage only those who see the value of it ahead of the curve will buy it.  If it crosses the “chasm” and gets adopted by the early part of the mainstream market, it will become more and more commoditised and margins will fall.  This pattern is seen both in the commercial sector and in the uptake of services in the public and third sectors.

Profit available to an organisation is the mirror image of the uptake curve. In the early stages of a market where customers need help and support profit margins are good. As the market develops the product gets commoditised and the amount of margin decreases. Eventually, in the aftermarket when the majority have moved on to something else the profit margin increases again.

How profit changes during product life cycle

Only the largest players can follow the commoditisation route successfully. The rest of us have to cater for early adopters or the laggards.

So there are really only two effective business strategies. One is to dominate the market – as a Gorilla to use Geoffrey Moore’s terminology.

The other is to treat learning new things as a way of life and attempt to stay ahead of the curve.

The biggest challenge is to continually find new ventures that justify the cost of keeping your team together.

What should you do?

Large organisations get efficient by cutting costs

• applying technology to improve process
• application of purchasing power to suppliers.
• Being prescriptive in how their staff behave.

Smaller organisations identify a viable niche that’s profitable and congruent with their team’s values. Then they learn as rapidly as possible to stay ahead of competitors.

They lead in a way that creates a group field to harness the discretionary commitment and creativity of their staff. They help them operate proactively via self managing teams. Stafford Beer’s viable systems model is a good illustration of this approach.

Viable Systems Model

However both these approaches have their limitations.

If they want to grow, small companies need to learn skills from large companies to become fit to trade with larger partners and take part in the world economy. These skills include

–        Basic HR – you can read more at our www.growingjobs.org site

–        Systems thinking and KPIs

–        How to achieve and maintain accreditations

To provide the responsiveness customers demand in the era of Twitter and Facebook, Large organisations need to learn from small companies how to

–        Engage staff and motivate them by example so they routinely go the extra mile

–        Develop and maintain total customer focus

–        Carry out rapid and responsive new product development

–        Recognise that performance is the basis of brand

The key skill is how to learn on purpose. How to generate and communicate a shared vision of the future and evolve a way of  operating within the social ecosystem that blends people and technology skills to produce a uniquely effective operation.

Our business is to help you achieve this – as a small organisation wanting to grow, or a larger one wanting to learn how to dance with the market.

1. Help with creating white papers, presentations and other high quality collateral
2. Help with selling successfully to larger organisations
3. Help with Market Research.

Companies were happy with their systems and people motivation and retention – the biggest worry is getting a good stream of new customers.

However experience tells a different story. We know that if you want your business to succeed you have to grow the business in an integrated way. You need to

- Create new products

- Produce and deliver them reliably

- Tell the market about them online and in person.

- Motivate staff to make it happen

All based on the vision and values that provide the energy to drive your company forward

I’ve  run 4 successful businesses in 30 years and the main thing we’ve learned is that your brand depends on performance. You do need systematic ways of developing the products you need. But you also need the systems to deliver without mistakes and attract and keep good people to run them for you.

If you don’t pay attention to these things your business won’t grow. I promise you.

What do you think chaps? Makes Sense?

But they do. Both involve supply chain work, both involve accreditations and both are groping towards how you run a business effectively and make use of the tools for collaboration and marketing that are available to us in this strange new business landscape.

The horticultural project has led to me writing a whole new document that wasn’t on the original agenda.  As well as writing the main Growing Jobs report I’d foolishly volunteered to write up the evidence base. However this didn’t stay theoretical for long.

One of the things that really struck me right at the end of the case studies was the way in which the larger horticultural companies – the ones that play in the supply chain – have been adopting lean.

We need some of that here in the nursery. We’ve got the guys a really good training course from the local Horticultural College and the next step is to look at lean. We’re going through that Dawn of Formality transition – the one where you have to do things properly and behave like a real company with HR and all of that stuff that we set up in business to get away from

Writing the paper forced me to look at the evidence for HOW you would implement high performance work practices and how it all started to link with Stafford Beer’s viable systems model and smart working.

To plagiarise Lenin – Smart Working is Lean plus Broadband. Hold that thought – I’ll come back to it another day.

Anyway business is a series of transitions

Getting off the ground, getting noticed, recruiting staff, putting in systems, building a management team, getting ready to scale etc etc.

Getting through them is all about how well you learn – and how well you implement it.

To finish up with, here’s a short list of things that companies struggle with as they approach transitions.

• •A strategic vision of markets, competitors and the way forward
• •The ability to communicate it if they had it
• •Acquiring Professional Management Expertise particularly in marketing, IT, new product development and a balanced scorecard approach
• •Lack of structured HR and training
• •Networking is short term and ad hoc  – aimed at leads rather than acquiring strategic partners.

Next time we’ll have a quick look at some indicators for companies that seem to be getting their act together

As you may know we’ve worked extensively with Dudley Lynch of Brain Technologies who wrote the Strategy of the Dolphin in the Eighties. He also created a number of self assessment personality tools which are particularly useful in understanding what our thinking style, how are values systems have developed, how we handle conflict and how we choose our path in life.

So the site allows us to explore how these tools can be applied to marketing and to leadership by helping you understand how you think and what your values are and be extension those of the people you want to work with as customers and as colleagues. Gaining this understanding should allow you to create narratives that resonate with the other people and make it easier to move your business forward.

The BrainMap model starts from the premise that our thinking style is a balance between a bias for thinking vs a bias for action and a preference for detail and results vs relationships and the big picture. We all have capacities in each of these areas, but each individual has a unique pattern but will have a centre of gravity that lies in one of these brain quadrants.

Left Brained BrainMap

The picture here shows an individual who by preference is orientated towards thinking, detail and getting results.  As you can see the individual is has a bias for control and for action – less focused on exploring and building relationships.

In trying to convince this individual you would  probably be advised to focus on the facts, on proven solutions and in putting forward a perceived low-risk option.

The site itself has full details of all the different products and their uses.

So please visit us at the BrainMap site

Our project which is run jointly with Kingston University and Royal Holloway University of London is looking at specifically what tools are used and to what extent this supports collaborative activity within the supply chain.

We are looking for another half dozen companies for in-depth interviews – lasting maybe 40-50 minutes.

We also have a quick 5-10 minute Survey Monkey questionnaire if you would like to take part but can’t justify the time for a face to face meeting. You can complete it from this link.. All data is held in a secure environment and is bound by the MRS code of practice.

Anyone taking part will be offered a copy of the findings together with a complimentary copy of an e-book on how to build social media into your marketing based on our findings in earlier parts of the study.

If you would like to take part or would like further details, please contact me on 0845 094 0407

Thanks

Alan

“What keeps us awake at night?” asks an investigation into the future of the horticulture industry’s workforce written by South East England Development Agency workforce champion and grower Dr Alan Rae.

The answer, from the growers he interviewed is clear. Worry number one – where will the next generation of leaders for the production horticulture come from? Worry number two – the need for a stable supply of well-trained workers to drive the business and handle peaks effectively.

While both concerns have of course been with us for many years, they have each been exacerbated in recent times by a combination of factors, not least declining profit margins and the gradual erosion of the public infrastructure required to develop and expand the industry’s knowledge base.

The two articles in this weeks horticultural week can be seen here and here

Here is the slide set explaining what’s in the report presented to a recent South East NFU conference.

The full report – 24 pages – plus some case studies and video clips can be downloaded via the Growing Jobs site.

Here’s one I created earlier based on our now traditional Free Marketing Planner – if you’ve not already seen it, there’s a link in the presentation where you can download it.

Let me know if you think it’s useful

Alan

Needless to say it’s got more going for it than I had thought – not only can you create and publish your own slides and pdf but you can also insert you-tube videos into it and arrange to be sent leads – if you’re really stingy you can get email only leads for $1 each.

Since you can embed the information into blogs, ecademy web pages and linked-in profiles you can soon start to get your message about what you do spread around in a much more structured and pointed way.

Like so much else in 21st Century business, less is more. If you can get what you have to offer communicated clearly, quickly and with high impact – and then make sure the hooks are built in for othe people to spread it for you then you can achieve a surprising amount from limited resources. The holy grail of the small business.

I’ve been playing around with this as I’ve got a new project dealing with distance learning coming up with my pals from Southampton University. So here’s one I prepared earlier – if you want to know how it’s done give me a call.

more anon.