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“When people are financially invested, they want a return. When people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute.”
Round here, we talk a lot about the 4 Foundations that will give a business owner McFreedom, that is, freedom to choose whether to scale, grow, or sell your business…or run it from a beach somewhere. The 4 Foundations – Planning, Process, People and Performance – are all inter-dependent and inter-related, all essential for making a small successful business even more successful, without any one of the four, the business can’t fulfil its potential. The fact is though, that the 4th foundation, performance management, which is the real cornerstone of the whole McFreedom System™ is often the one that is either forgotten or set up badly. For your Performance Management system to add value, you need three things:
We’ve talked about the first two in recent blogs, so let’s take a look at number 3, and the common mistakes business owners make. Or rather the biggest mistake that business owners make – making rewards all about money, or more specifically, the bonus. So what’s the problem with bonuses? They’re giving your team members what they want aren’t they? Well here’s just a few of the potential pitfalls:
To be really effective, a bonus, or better still a pay review, must be based around very clear measures of business performance first and foremost, and then, if the business has done well, very clear measures of the individual’s performance to determine the size of the bonus they will receive. But money really isn’t everything, there are other much more simple ways to engage your team.
In the words of Simon Sinek, author of ‘Start with Why’: “When people are financially invested, they want a return. When people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute.” Do one thing: Consider how you are engaging your team emotionally on a daily basis For more information on how MPL can help you visit www.mariannepage.co.uk or contact me on hello@mariannepage.co.uk
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It’s that time of year when my ancient boiler gets its annual health check. For about fifteen years now I’ve had a series of engineers visit my house, make that ‘sucking through the teeth’, noise, and shake their head, as they discover the age of the patient.
Yet on it chugs – incredibly reliable despite the regular pronouncements of its imminent demise. Thanks to that annual service. Thanks to that bit of TLC which keeps it working safely and efficiently. Many would say that paying for an annual service is a waste of money, but for me, if you want to keep anything working consistently over time, you need to invest in it – to maintain it, fine tune it, update any parts that aren’t working. With my boiler, that investment has extended its life, prevented breakdowns and the need for expensive callouts and parts, and stopped it from blowing up – and that’s worth the investment to me. In business, we also need that regular health check, that examination of what’s working and what isn’t, beyond our end of year accounts. Yet how many of us are willing to make that investment? The beginning of a new year, whether that’s calendar or financial, is an ideal time for retrospection and planning. Many of us will be working to sparkly new year plans that we developed for 2016, but what are those plans based on? How deep did we dig into what’s been working in our business and what hasn’t? Are they just based on ‘more of the same’, because we had a good year last year so everything must be working well, right? Like my boiler service, the pre-work for planning requires investment of the one thing most precious to us all…time. And stepping off the treadmill; making time to review, re-energise and re-focus; actually seems like a waste of it, especially when you’ve got a busy business to run. But, sometimes you have to slow down to go faster. Just like when you want to lose weight, you get on the scales, you think about what you’re eating, you look at how much you’ve been exercising, or not. You work out your starting point and you get clear about your target – it’s essential to getting where you want to be. Invest time in your boiler. Take time to:
Have a firm handle on where you are now, where you want to get to, and what success will look like to you. Understand the blocks that are in your way, and how you’re going to overcome them. Be clear about what your customers, your team and your family want for you, and from you. Don’t wait for another year to do it. Do it now. Your business needs that health check – and you may just save it’s life! For more information on how MPL can help you visit www.mariannepage.co.uk or contact me on hello@mariannepage.co.uk  Planning is the platform on which your innovation and creativity can blossom and shine. And that’s just one of my top ten benefits...
Planning: Helps you to spot opportunities A consistent planning system, and planning calendar, forces you to step off the hamster wheel once in a while and get your head up. To go from being a hamster to being a meerkat, if you like. It gets you to review your progress to date - what’s worked well, what hasn’t, what lessons can be learned. It provides space and time to think - about what you want to happen, what might get in the way, how you can get round any obstacles. It opens you up to opportunities, that you might otherwise miss. Planning: Brings individuals and teams together and breaks down silos All too often, specialist teams, or individuals within a business, even a small one like yours, can get lost in their own little world, and not be able to see the value that others bring to the business, or the challenges others face to get things done. Regular planning creates the opportunity to bring people together from different areas of the business to review the way work is done from the customer’s perspective and make plans based on what is best for the whole business. Planning: Creates a safe environment for new and creative ideas Meet ‘that’s not the way we do things round here’ - first cousin to, ‘we tried that before, and it didn’t work’. It’s this type of statement that will prevent the flow of ideas in your business, and even your best people will not put their creative heads above the parapet if they know they’ll be shot down in flames. Your Planning system offers a structured way to talk openly about the challenges facing your business, and ask for new and creative solutions to overcome them. Planning: Gives everyone the chance to contribute How motivating and exciting to be part of something that is growing and achieving success, thanks in part, to your contribution. Involve your team in your planning, and you involve them in your Vision for the future - you give them the opportunity to create it. How much more engaged do you think they will be? How much more ownership do you think they will take? Planning: Exposes your blind spots We all have them. We can all be blind to our own strengths and weaknesses, to our innate prejudices, to other people’s talents and the value they add; and often we need others to shine a light on our blind spots. It’s the same in business - we all see things from our own view point, and benefit enormously from understanding how others see things. Planning gives us a framework for this. Planning: Puts the customer first. Life planning puts you first. Business planning puts the customer first, and ensures that the focus is on what’s best for the customer, building trust and ensuring that everyone is focused on what really matters. Planning: Keeps your products relevant It’s your customers who decide whether your products are relevant to them or not, and it’s your planning system that will ensure that you check in with them; that you review your energy vs profit matrix*; that you look for more innovative and effective ways to meet their needs and satisfy their wants. Planning: Builds a stronger management team Regular planning, focused on the business as a whole, brings the management team closer, and helps them to see the value - skills, experience and expertise - that they each bring. It’s also a great way of developing them, teaching them to focus on the end goal, and the strategies and tactics that will get you there. Planning: Determines priorities Your planning system is a key element in your continuous improvement cycle: plan - implement - review - plan. You start the exercise looking at what’s possible, and by the end it’s all about results. You understand your long term goal and you’ve plotted your course to get there. Together you’ve agreed your priorities, you’ve decided on your 90 day goals, you have your action plan, you know your first step. It’s simple and it’s logical, and it’s all about getting the right things done. Planning: Builds ownership and accountability Any effective plan assigns the who as well as the what, where, how and when. It gives everyone ownership for their own little piece of the business - their role, their goal, their action plan. Ownership and accountability are the key differentiators between a regular team, and a high performing team. Your plan will drive this. Do one thing: start planning this week for a successful 2017 For more information on how MPL can help you visit www.mariannepage.co.uk or contact me on hello@mariannepage.co.uk |
AuthorMarianne is the author of three books, and is currently working on her fourth, whilst regularly writing her blog, we hope you enjoy it :-) Archives
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