A Key Element to Keep You Out of The Startup Failure Club

Most small businesses start as micro-businesses or solo entrepreneurship.

This incubator stage is a juggling nightmare for most, where one person needs the work equivalent of a board of directors. As if that isn’t hard enough, most entrepreneurs start without the benefit of specific training and knowledge in as much as 75%, or more, of the skills needed!

The cornerstones of every business plan are four fundamental elements: Marketing, Sales, Fulfilment and Finance. Short for; finding prospects, turning them into customers, delivering the product or service and collecting payment.

All this while balancing the daily machinations of the world around us!

It needs a lot of specialized knowledge right? Challenge is, not many of us have such a wide skill set or experience, or even the time to keep all those plates spinning.

It’s like a 3d puzzle with a mountain of pieces to fit together, and it’s no small challenge. So often, just as we begin to see the picture, the puzzle gets knocked over, and we have to start again!

So, it’s no small wonder that even when we correctly plan our businesses, something is always missing.

So, what is missing?

Like any puzzle, if we don’t have all the pieces, we never get to see the full picture.

As much as we may set out our strategies for the standard four elements, most of us miss the most powerful - the fifth element.

The fifth element is the most powerful! The link that holds the rest together and makes them work. It’s the answer to every challenge we ever face.

The fifth element is people!

Think about it! People are involved in every area of a business; as staff and employees, customers and clients, suppliers and contractors. Our ability to communicate with them, influence them and fully engage them, determines our success, absolutely!

Of course, you know how vitally important people are to the success of your business. After all, they take up a massive amount of your time, don't they?  

But is that for the wrong reasons? For many business leaders, people are one of their biggest challenges and hindrances. Only a few really understand how to create powerful people strategies and leverage them for success

For example, many leaders have a constant fight to find and keep reliable and effective staff and attract and keep, quality, high-value customers. The two most vital business objectives and powerful elements of success.

So, here’s a question? Are people simply something that is part of your day to day business problems, or do you have an intentional, programmed strategy for maximising success with them?

A strategy that is constantly monitored, measured and fine-tuned.

A strategy that is in tune with this understanding;

You can buy people’s time, but you have to win their hearts and minds.

Because if not, it’s impossible to build and operate a business that reaches full potential!

A successful business is a combination of successful activities, completed by successful people.

Successful people take responsibility for their results and understand how they impact the success of the business.

A team of successful people takes responsibility for the success of the business and takes pride in its success.

With such a team, a business is a pleasure to lead and has the power for long term success. But such a team doesn’t simply arrive at your door. You have to find, build, and develop it!

As business leaders, this is our most important mission.

We need the correct people in the correct positions, motivated and engaged to get the best results. Then we need to measure their performance and results against agreed and understandable processes and targets, and we need to ensure they achieve success.

So, the first job is to recruit the correct people. We need to set out specific recruitment activities together with processes for maintaining staff engagement and efficiencies.

The process can be separated into a series of measurable stages, each a key performance indicator:

• Recruitment activity
• Response management
• Interviewing
• On-boarding
• Ongoing training
• Performance targets
• Retention levels
• Costs
• R.O.I.

The information gained in each stage helps us to monitor success and improve areas that are falling short.

Each stage of the recruitment process will produce valuable information that can be fine-tuned to impact the overall result. When we fail to find and keep the best staff, we must look for the reasons within our people strategies.

It’s no good blaming your location, the competition, or any reason that we can’t influence and rectify.

Are we using the correct activity? How many responses do we generate?

How many responders are booked for interviews, and how many arrived?

What is the quality of people interviewed?

Analysing each stage will indicate points of failure which can be studied in detail and perfected.

Just one wrong ingredient will ruin a cake!

Imagine a chef trying to create a dish without following a recipe?

Without the recipe, the chef is flying blind! If the dish turns out bad he won't know why. Any changes he makes are hit and miss and unless measured, recorded and adjusted against a plan, he will be unable to perfect the dish.

Without a people strategy and results measurement (our recipe), we are also flying blind! We know that we are failing to get the results we need, but we don’t know why.

As Peter Drucker famously said, “What gets measured gets done.”

People are involved in every area of a business; as staff and employees, customers and clients, suppliers, and contractors. Our ability to communicate with them, to engage and influence them, absolutely determines our success!

Measuring the performance of our people gives us detailed knowledge and the opportunity to analyse the activities leading to the results.

Setting out guidelines and targets, agreeing on these with our people, and helping them achieve individual success will lead to the overall success of the business.

We cannot leave this most powerful strategy to chance.

We must set our people strategies to create a highly effective, dedicated team and exceedingly satisfied and loyal customers.

Highly effective people are the sure-fire way to create a successful business, one that is a pleasure to own and produces maximum profits.

“Look after your people and they will look after your business”. 

Richard Branson