INSIGHT
These focuses combined will help drive your revenue initiatives forward, as you will build a team that is engaged and delivering your corporate vision.
3) Remove the hierarchy and create a culture of innovation Instead of fostering a hierarchical team structure, working with relational authority is how bigger businesses cultivate innovative leadership styles. Having a relational approach will automatically earn leaders the trust and respect of their teams.
This type of leadership style is not imposed, rather it is given freely by the collective of people working around you. Making sure that your staff understand the value of collaborating in a peer setting is just as important as showing upper management what they achieve. Ultimately, you don’ t get pushed forward for management roles unless you are supported by your peers and respected by them. A good leader sets the pace, nurtures the team around them and inspires individual thinking. In doing so, an effective manager knows how to achieve the best out of the individuals who make up the bigger team.
The people you employ as leaders in your organisation have to be vision drivers. They are your generals and are there to support you in driving your business vision forward and enforcing the ethos of your brand top down. Underestimating the importance of having a strong leadership team is one of the areas where small business owners fall down. People management is a real job. It’ s critical that you have the right people doing the right jobs and that they are fully engaged for your vision to develop and grow.
4) There is a big difference being busy and being productive Understanding this difference and encouraging your team to delegate more and focus on core revenue objectives is vital for success. Delegation is one of the hardest management skills to learn, as we all have a natural desire to want to control how we deliver work or grow a revenue stream.
Knowing your own strengths and those of your employees is vital. Letting your people lead in the areas of expertise that you need them to focus on – delegation, is a key part of a business’ s success. As a small business owner it’ s probably one of the hardest things to do, to let go and trust the people you work with to deliver. Letting go means you will have more free time to focus on other business needs. Some special individuals can ignite the passion of everyone in a team, driving them to succeed just by their presence in the room. This quality is what inspires others to work as hard as you do.
It’ s true you will find that some employees are motivated only by money, however, many more are driven by the need to collaborate as one team. As a small business owner, understanding the difference in these two mind-sets and valuing your collaborative team players will contribute to your overall success without necessarily incurring more resource costs.
5) If it’ s good enough for Google … Much of what Google publishes as innovation evolves naturally from its corporate culture, which in turn shapes its business vision and growth. There are nine core innovation principles the search engine giant encourages which can be applied to any business to promote its success. a) Innovation comes from anywhere – you just need the headspace and time to recognise it. If you are too focused on being busy working in your business, you will not have time to nurture it. b) Focus on the end user – a strong customer experience drives growth and repeat business, so plan and accommodate your marketing efforts around where and how to engage them, 100 % of the time. c) Aim to be 10 times better – look ahead of where you want to be and aim to do it 10 times better than your closest competitor. By looking ahead of the target and not at it, you will encourage stronger growth. d) Bet on technological insights – always make time to look at what is happening around you then take a punt on how you can leverage it. Technology is advancing at a rapid rate and you need to look at how your business can harness technological development to save time and money or provide an even better user experience. e) Launch and iterate – the best marketing advice I’ ve ever had was“ Just do it!” Start, even if it’ s only 90 % correct. You will never have a perfect product to start with, so launch and iterate as you go on using customers’ feedback to help you improve your proposition. f) Give employees 20 % of their own time – allowing your employees 20 % of personal time during their working day to learn, research and have the space to think innovatively will reap its own rewards. By giving them this freedom, you are only helping your own business to grow through their collaborative efforts. g) Default to open processes – by encouraging open communication within your team, you will see a lot of natural idea generation. Interdepartmental collaboration drives productive development growth. When technical teams communicate with other departments in regular scrums they have a better understanding of how their development impacts the end user experience. h) Understand that it’ s ok to fail – and do it well. If you don’ t fail, you don’ t learn, so don’ t beat yourself up about setbacks. Take stock, see failure for what it is and move forward. I believe business coaching has a positive impact on small business owners. At AffiliateFEST one affiliate radically changed his business proposition after a brief 30-minute one-to-one coaching session, simply because he was asked“ why” he was doing what he did.
Have a mission that matters – here is where your managers come into their own. If they can encourage others in the team to follow your mission and to believe in it, that’ s quite a powerful thing that naturally drives your business forward to success.
58 iGB Affiliate Issue 63 JUN / JUL 2017