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NatWest Business Builder: The Importance of Mindset

Even the savviest of businesses can face stumbling blocks along the way – here’s how to get over them.

From being resistant to change to taking employees for granted, we look at some of the most common business habits you need to break.

1. Not planning for growth

According to Dr Lucy Gill-Simmen, lecturer in marketing at Royal Holloway, University of London: “The old cliché is true that if you’re failing to plan then you’re planning to fail. No small business can afford to do without creating a proper, clear business plan – then when the company is up and running, an equally clear marketing plan.” Have a strategic approach to growth – set targets that are achievable and realistic, have a time frame to reach those targets, and put in place three- and five-year plans (or whatever best suits your business). The details will vary from company to company – but the mistake many SMEs make is to have no clear plan at all.

2. Not focusing on cash flow

A key cause of start-up failure is the cash running out at a critical moment – research suggests it’s the second-biggest reason why a business fails, after lack of demand for the product. To stave off cash worries, develop a head for figures; cash-flow projections and forecasting should become second nature. If they’re not, don’t risk losing the business because of a cash crisis – have someone on the team who’s good with figures, or entrust your finances to a trusted external accountant right from the start.

3. Not making the customer central to the business

As a successful SME, it’s a mistake to think your core business is selling a product or service. What you’re actually doing is meeting a customer expectation. Focusing exclusively on the thing you sell means you can quickly lose customers. “Map the customer journey and ensure you have plans in place to support every step of that,” says Chris Daly, chief executive at the Chartered Institute of Marketing. “That journey starts much earlier than many people realise and extends far beyond pressing the ‘buy’ button or delivering the product.” One bad habit many SMEs routinely fall into is focusing on finding new customers rather than retaining existing ones. “It costs far more to get a new customer than it does to generate repeat business,” Daly says.

4. Not delegating

As a start-up, you may well be a one-person band to begin with, only taking on employees as you grow. But your success as an individual can lead to an unwillingness to let go and delegate effectively. “As an entrepreneur, you’re an independent person by nature,” says Francis Toye, CEO at Unilink Group, a leading UK secure software provider for the criminal justice market. “But this means you can be something of a control freak. For a business to grow, you have to enable others to do things.” And, Toye adds, you have to be genuine about this. “It’s not simply about giving other people tasks, it’s about explaining the issue, then giving people ownership of certain areas. It involves giving them real situations and the responsibility to resolve them – if you hang on to the responsibility, you’re not really delegating.”

5. Doing what you’ve always done

When companies mature, the temptation can be to stick to what you know best. But failing to innovate is another key reason for business failure. The photography pioneer Kodak brought itself to the verge of bankruptcy by refusing to move into digital photography, while more agile competitors saw the near-universal shift in consumer preference for digital over film. A culture of innovation can be hard to foster, but remember that not all innovation has to be the previously unheard-of ‘big idea’. Innovation can be small but beautiful – for instance, tweaks to an existing successful product or small add-ons in customer satisfaction.

“As an entrepreneur, you’re an independent person by nature. But this means you can be something of a control freak. For a business to grow, you have to enable others to do things”

Francis Toye, CEO, Unilink Group

6. Competing on price

You can always cut your prices – but it’s very hard to put them up. Once you’ve put a price in place, you fix a perceived value for your product or service that can be difficult to change in the minds of your customers. Instead, find ways of creating value that aren’t dependent on price. Think of something unique that you offer and emphasise that. Do you have a bespoke element to your product? If so, price accordingly. Or offer good service and after-sales service, or create an experience. Ultimately, believing that you have to be ultra-competitive and as cheap as Tesco or Amazon is a recipe for business failure.

7. Not valuing your employees

Another business cliché is that your employees are your best asset. Again, it’s only a cliché because it’s true. Make the most of your staff – an employee who’s willing to go on training courses, for example, is likely to become a successful, productive and profitable member of the team. If you stifle these ambitions for cost reasons, the good employee will go elsewhere. Bear this in mind when you’re recruiting. “Look for passion,” says Alessandra Sollberger, CEO and founder at health supplements company Evermore. “When recruiting, you’ll spot the people who will be good to take things on and spread magic dust in the business.”

8. Not keeping up with regulations

Red tape is the bane of any SME’s working life, but it’s worth keeping up to date with new regulations that affect you for two reasons. First, they can be an opportunity – for instance, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is, according to Chris Daly, “an opportunity to clean and clarify your data in such a way you can personalise the strength of the relationship between the customer and the business”. Second, the penalties and the potential damage to your brand from not being legislatively compliant can be severe. Take the recent example of gaming firm William Hill Group, currently facing a package of fines of at least £6.2m as a result of failing to meet its anti-money laundering and social responsibility regulations. It’s a risk you don’t want to take.

Further Reading

• Five laws of disruptive business thinking
• How to create the right mood
• SME Tools: how to be productive

Join the Business Builder Facebook Community here

‘Want to learn more? Register for NatWest Business Builder to view all of their business development tools. Click HERE’ 

Self-Improvement in the workplacePure Recruitment

An organisation’s company values can play a significant role in creating a workplace culture which enables employees to bring their best selves to work and therefore be more engaged, motivated and productive.

Using her own experience as a co-founder of Pure, a values-led organisation, Chief Operating Officer Gill Buchanan has shared some of her top tips on embedding values into a business and the reasons why this makes a positive difference.

Gill said: “In our day-to-day work as professional recruitment specialists for the eastern region, we are increasingly seeing just how much importance candidates place on finding an organisation which genuinely cares and which has a set of values they can really relate to. Companies with clearly communicated values are often the most successful when it comes to competing for top talent and having high levels of employee engagement.

Supporting vision and purpose

A company’s vision and purpose can be used as the inspiration and guidance to set company values. This will help to ensure that they are authentic and can successfully form the basis for the organisation’s culture. For example, when we established Pure, our vision was to create a company which was different to others within the recruitment industry. We wanted our business to focus on developing long-term client and candidate relationships rather than being driven by numbers and KPIs. Having a clear idea of what we wanted to achieve helped us to choose our values. We wanted them to represent everything we believed was important about the way we wanted to work and achieve success. Our six values are: Pure Quality, Pure Teamwork, Pure Supports, Pure Delivers, Pure Rewards and Pure Innovates.

Bringing people together

Employees who feel a sense of belonging are far more likely to be engaged and motivated to go the extra mile for themselves, their colleagues and the business as a whole. Shared values can bring people together whatever their background, interest, age or level of expertise. They enable businesses to celebrate and encourage diversity while still uniting people in day to day behaviours, standards and attitudes. We recognise that our business is a people business. We want to bring our people together and look after them as they are our ambassadors and the ones engaging with our candidates and clients. Our values have helped us to create a culture where great work is rewarded, teamwork is celebrated and everyone is supported to deliver high quality.

Company culture foundations

People spend a lot of time at work, so it is understandable that they will want to be in an environment which is a positive place to be. An organisation’s values can help to achieve this as they set the foundations for a company’s culture and the attitudes and behaviours to develop and maintain it. For example, we have a people-first culture and our Pure Supports company value helps us to achieve this. As well as supporting each other, and our candidates and clients, we want our employees to have the support they need to do their job well. It helps us to shape everything from the equipment and training we provide to the initiatives we put in place to support the mental and physical wellbeing of our team.

Embedding values into day to day business

For company values to make a real difference they need to be brought to life and embedded in day-to-day working practices. This means more than just displaying them as part of the office branding, although that is still a very positive thing to do! They also need to become foundational to the business and genuinely underpin everything. Values can be embedded by making them a part of every aspect of your business from recruitment and onboarding through to referencing them in staff reviews, reward and recognition schemes and L&D plans. They also need to be reinforced and authentically displayed by the leadership team to ensure they flow from the top down.

As part of the leadership team at Pure, our values have given us the basis of establishing a consistency of how we want to do things. Because we all really believe in the values, we can live them while still being our true selves, we don’t have to robotically try and demonstrate them. They have also become a key part of the language we use when talking about our business, from updating our teams internally through to our external communications.

We believe that being able to share our values with our clients and candidates helps to give them a real understanding of what it is like to work with us. The same goes for potential new recruits. Our values help us to explain more about how we have created a culture which differentiates us from other recruitment firms. To help share this with prospective employees, and new recruits, we have put together a Pure book to explain more about our company in a fun, easy and tangible way. After a few months of being part of our team, we also ask new employees to deliver a presentation which includes sharing examples of when they have seen our values being demonstrated day to day. This really helps people to understand why they are so important to us and how they benefit everybody.”

The healing power of music

Listening to music can be a different experience for everyone, but we can all agree that music has its own power, whether it makes you feel nostalgic, helps you focus or boosts your mood. It is something that enables people to connect with others as well as having a positive effect on your mind, body and soul. However, working in the music industry as an artist could also be damaging to a person’s mental health if they do not seek the support that they need.

 POSITIVE EFFECTS ON YOUR HEALTH

Listening to music releases dopamine which is responsible for the feeling of pleasure. When experiencing tension and then resolution in music, for example a drop in a dance track, it is universally satisfying because different brain circuits are involved in both the anticipatory and achievement process. Dopamine also helps with motivation and studies have shown that listening to music whilst working can increase efficiency. However, this depends on whether you had a choice in the music that you are listening to because if the music is out of your control it can cause stress and the positive effects will not occur because dopamine is released only when music is pleasurable in relation to your mood or personal taste.

Music is also known to increase helpful antibodies such as Immunoglobulin A which aids cells to attack bacteria or germs which are invading the body, meaning that listening to music can increase a person’s immune system. Additionally, it has been proven that listening to music strengthens your heart and lowers blood pressure depending on the type of music that you are listening to. Pop, Rap, Country and Reggae have the same effect on the body as they all get the blood pumping which makes you less calm and happier. Metal is believed to help cope with feelings of depression and stress. Classical music releases stress hormones and causes a dopamine rush.

MUSIC AND MENTAL HEALTH

Music therapy has been proven by Levy (2017) to ‘reduce anxiety and physical effects of stress, improve healing, helps to manage Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, reduces depression and other symptoms in the elderly, decreased symptoms of psychological disorders including schizophrenia and finally it improves self-expression and communication.’ Music therapy is thought to help manage mental health problems in the ways listed above as well as help minimise the trauma and disruption associated with hospitalisation.

However, 73% of artists in the music industry suffer with mental illnesses according to Record Union. Although listening to music can relieve issues relating to stress, anxiety and depression, it has been said that working in the music industry as an artist can actually increase these negative emotions in relation to their creation of music. This can be caused by fear of failure, financial issues and also being lonely. Help Musicians UK have launched a 24/7 mental health support service for anyone in the music industry that may need some support or advice. Companies like these are here to support musicians at any time and are working on ways to prevent mental illnesses from becoming so common amongst young independent musicians.

MUSIC AND DEMENTIA

The national Music For Dementia 2020 campaign has recently been announced which will help to encourage patients to find the right services. Its aim is to make music available to everyone who is living with dementia. Music helps to unlock memories and improve the quality of life for a patient. It allows them to communicate beyond words and bond with others which is something music can do for anyone. As previously mentioned, music can make anyone feel nostalgic and dementia patients respond best to songs that they grew up listening to as it can trigger emotions and personal memories which can help ease the behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia.

Huxley Events

Teams need to feel together more than ever

In these strange and difficult times, team building and team development can seem low down a managers list.

The reality is actually quite different – now more than ever teams need to feel together.

Being apart does not mean you cannot be together, and with working practices changing in so many ways it is really important for leaders and managers to work creatively and sensitively to support their teams.

Remote work can be lonely, disengaged and unproductive; or the complete opposite.

So when people can’t be together what is the alternative?

Virtual Team Building Activities

The Benefits of Virtual Team Building

The benefits of virtual team building include:

• Improved team collaboration.
• Better internal communication.
• Increased job satisfaction.
• Measurable increase in retention.
• Happy remote workers.
• Productive remote teams.
• Build team culture.
• Improve your company’s reputation.
• Give your people something to tell their significant others about
• Improved relationships between managers and direct reports & more

Team Building Tip:

Every manager cares about the bonds between team members. They should constantly keep everyone involved in the team processes, motivating individuals to be more than just co workers.

Experienced team leaders know how it is important to support each other in a positive, playful manner. And they know that informal team building activities are an appropriate way to improve team spirit and make employees more solid. No matter you work in a software company, e-commerce store or involved in mass media, – team building will enhance your team and business.

The connections within distributed teams are not so easy to establish and maintain. You can encourage them to connect via email. However, to bring them closer, you should think about fun activities.

What is Virtual Team Building?

Virtual team building is the practice that includes organising online games and activities that give remote employees an opportunity to socialise and communicate with co-workers who rarely meet in person, or who they used to see but with changing working practices it is a lot less frequent.

People who work remotely do not have the same opportunities as employees in offices have, they can not interact outside of the scope of work. And now we are going to describe one of the most evident problems of distributed teams.

Any remote worker is typically focused on their own tasks and responsibilities. They are often very individually driven.

Distributed employees rarely get the chance to fully interact with their co workers as if they would in a “regular” office. The lack of organic relationships may lead to remote meetings feeling routine, dry and transactional as they just stick to the agenda. Nobody will know what else to talk about other than work since they never get to chat in the morning.

Unfortunately, very often virtual teams make companies lose successful communication that is so crucial to employee satisfaction and retention. People lose that opportunity to casually bump into each other near the coffee machine and talk about things unrelated to work such as their hobbies, current sports events, home life, or even politics.

You may say that these interactions and small talks mean nothing but they actually impact team performance and motivation a great deal.

Our favourite virtual team building activities include;

 VIRTUALLY KILLED CRIME SCENE TEAM BUILDING ACTIVITY

• HEALTHY HEART & WORLD COOKERY TEAM BUILDING ACTIVITY
• THE GOLD RUSH USA ADVENTURE VIRTUAL TEAM BUILDING ACTIVITY
• ESCAPE THE ROOM VIRTUAL TEAM BUILDING ACTIVITY

When team members feel closer, their morale improves, productivity rises and happiness goes up.

Huxley Events

The Engaging People Company

This year has brought many challenges. Including a new one I hadn’t envisaged.

The technology terrors.

Back in the very early spring, setting up meetings could bring with it previously unentertained anxieties. No sooner would I pop a virtual appointment in my calendar than my mind, like the DeLorean in the Back to the Future movies, would race forward to a few days hence. What if my Wi-Fi drops out? What if my laptop freezes? What if my microphone stops working? What if ditto my camera? What if I can’t get the grips with the settings? What if-

And when not thundering into some future parallel universe, my mind would cast back to times gone by, experiences when the technology had failed. And these unwelcome memories brought very literal reminders of the feelings of worry that they had provoked at the time.

Like a rocking horse, I oscillated unhappily between the ‘what ifs’ of an unknown and increasingly concerning future scenario and past reminisces of previous technological mishaps. And with each new thought, I could feel my anxiety increase until my worry had formed itself into a low, unhappy hum, prodding me annoyingly.

STOP.

What can I do?

I can set up my laptop closer to the Wi-Fi

I can go do a ‘test run.’

I can spend half an hour familiarising myself with the settings.

And that was it. Anything else that might crop up was out of my control. So if my laptop suddenly froze, or the internet dropped out, or if a power cut rudely and abruptly shut everything down, I would deal with it in the moment.

Such a simple, every day and minor challenge. But an example of how by realising we always have a choice, that there is always something we can do – as well as stuff about which we can do nothing – we can mitigate and manage worry and stress: and unnecessary worry and stress at that.

In any situation we have power. The key is realising where our power lies.

What can I control? What can I influence? That’s what we focus on. There is always, always something that we can do – even when we feel like something is happening to us rather than with us.

And what can I do nothing about? This is the stuff that we have to let go. Especially as these are the things on which we exert so much of our mental energy, ultimately bringing worries and stress and anxieties. It’s so often the ‘what if’ aspect of our lives, such as in my case. I had no way of knowing what would happen, I’m not a psychic, so getting lost on that turbulent train of thought was futile. And ultimately, unpleasant.

Because as well as realising where our power lies, focusing on what we can control and influence, is freeing. If I cannot do anything about it, then why I am giving it such head space?

The pandemic which we find ourselves in is a prime example where we can find and focus on the things within our control and influence. What can I control? Washing my hands. Wearing a mask. Keeping my distance. What can I influence? Others behaviours’ through my own.

But I am not an epidemiologist (there’s a word I couldn’t say never mind spell a year ago). I’m not a scientist. I’m not a politician. The pandemic offers many tempting opportunities for ‘what if…’ thinking but is this helpful? Or is it just creating further anxieties in an already challenging time?

Of course, that’s all very well said and done: it’s a pandemic after all. But it can be an invaluable tool. And, when we find ourselves on that slippery ‘what if’ path, we can remind ourselves that the only moment we need to focus on is this one. Right now.

*Oh, and those technology terrors are long since banished. I’m happy to report that I’m more than au fait with a good Zoom quiz these days.

This article was shared with permission from The Engaging People Company

Can we help? We’d love to hear from you. Please do get in touch:

Phone: 07834 578872

Email: michelle@engaging-people.co.uk

Twitter: @engagepeopleco

Energise Me

It’s been widely reported and commented on that during lockdown and working from home many people have had their productivity affected. Whilst we can technically get more done as we don’t have constant work interruptions and a zero commute, it’s not been that easy for many. 

As we now move into a period for the medium to long-term term where more of us have the freedom to work from home more, which many of you will want to take advantage of and many employers will encourage, let’s look at how we can make sure we stay energised and productive. Over the next few weeks, I’ll unpack all the key aspects of how to optimise your energy whilst working more flexibly.  

Today, let’s look at the issues. What are the pros and cons of working more flexibility?

Pros

Greater flexibility

No Commute

Better for the environment

Potential for better work / life balance

Reduced childcare costsSaving money on commute

Ability to create more killer routines that work for you

Ability to live further away from work

Opportunity to use extra time to exercise, hobbies etc.

You can prepare a proper lunch

Potential to be happier

Cons

Lack of direction 

Lack of informal contact with colleagues leading to less creativity

Hard to stay motivated

Risk of losing work life balance  

Children / distractions

Can get monotonous 

Loss of home space to work

Less commuting can mean less exercise

Lack of Structure

Risk of making more bad food choices

Zoom Fatigue (It’s now a thing)

More flexibility about workstation (for instance working in the garden on a sunny day)

Poor desk setup can cause musculoskeletal issues

Potential to sleep longer as no commute

Lack of clear on / off periods can lead to poor sleep (permanently switched on)

Less contact with colleagues could lead to less conflict 

Harder to resolve conflicts

 More likely to work in “Silos”

Isolation / Loneliness

Loss of commute leading to loss of unwind time

No one to spot when you are having a bad day and offer you tea and sympathy 

Harder to get clear instructions from your manager on work required and to see you’ve done a good job

wonder if when you started reading this post, you hadn’t thought of many of the above?

As I said above, over the coming weeks, I’ll talk about how to overcome the above cons so you can be the top performer, whilst still reaping the benefits.

Before I go though, I just want to talk about hydration. It’s so easy when we are in a different routine to let your hydration go. The impact of physical and mental impairment is significant. You’ll feel tired, you’ll make mistakes, you’ll get grumpy, you’ll forget things.

So think about your hydration strategy. You should be getting a minimum of 6-8 cups of water a day. If you’re not already, how could you incorporate staying hydrated into your flexible working routine? I would suggest at the very minimum, an investment in some water bottles, so you can have water with you whether it’s a home day, a work day or a travel day. 

If you focus on implementing this one habit this week, by the time you read my next blog, you’ll be more resourceful and ready to act on next week’s blog when we cover off some the above cons around lack of structure to your day.

Ian Hacon

PS, do let us know if you think we’ve missed any of the pros and cons.  

Energise Me

Identifying New Opportunities in Business

What do pitching for investment, handling important meetings, and speaking at events all have in common? They require confidence. An underappreciated tool in a businessperson’s arsenal, confidence has the ability to instantly transform, to create, to develop. Hethel Innovation recently worked with Emma Zangs to develop her business, providing coaching, mentoring and information services to allow us all to activate our inner, most-confident, selves.

Emma originally worked with the Hethel Innovation Business Development to teach them techniques that they could use to deliver training, handle important meetings, and talk at events more confidently. The sessions, which were full of energy, presented the team with a variety of great tools that allowed the team to improve how they retained information, remember lines, and process body language. (My favourite technique was the forest!)

Following the sessions, Emma Zangs worked through the Activate: Lean Startup process. Designed for early stage businesses, Emma was able to learn more about the value she was creating for her customers, how she could streamline her operations, and how she can grow the business in the future.

Throughout Activate, Emma was able to identify new opportunities for the business, as well as discover ways to free up her time on non-value adding activities and provide a greater level of service to her customers. The completion of tools, including a Customer Journey, Operations Map and Business Model Canvas, allowed Emma to develop a ‘Tutorials Page’ that would display information, guides and tools for customers looking for an instant confidence boost.

Desk-based research carried out by the Hethel Innovation team also provided Emma with information on a number of new customers that aligned with her target customers. Combined with the Customer Journey tool, Emma will be able to approach the prospective clients more effectively.

Following Activate, a Vision Orbit was created to allow Emma to realise how she could grow the business over the coming years. The tool highlighted Emma’s ambition to take on new members of the workforce, enter new markets and develop new services. Continued catchups will allow Emma to share her progress and allow the Hethel Innovation team to brainstorm solutions to any opportunities and challenges that come her way.

Emma said of her experience working with Hethel Innovation:

‘The Activate: Lean Startup Process allowed me to stop, reflect and analyse what worked and did not work in my business. The regularity and the flow of the process were helpful to navigate the uncertain times of making decisions during a pandemic. I now can refer to the resources when needed in the future, but what makes Hethel innovation programme so unique is the time and dedication they take to truly listen and help the business they are working with. In such isolating times, I feel supported by the team as their door is always open.’

Emma Zangs

To learn more about Emma Zangs and the amazing work she delivers to allow others to realise their full potential, visit Emmazangs.com

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