Here is a post about failure and risk. Just what you all need!
I was reading Dawkins "the Selfish Gene" on the advice of a scientist friend and, well, it is a good and a compelling read.
Those gene sets that survive, do so through millions of machines and adaptations that failed. It is almost as if it is the failure that is the crucial thing. What I mean is, if the ratio of gene success is 1 successful adaptation for each 100,000 failures, then that tells you the "rate of failure" (ROF) in order to find success. This is in the natural world, and I am not aware of gene's taking expert experienced advice.
Thinking about the underlying themes I was reminded of Napoleon Hill's commendation for each of us to have "the opportunity for applied failure", and of course Eddison's "I failed my way to success". (If I have failed here in my quotations I am sure I will learn about it quickly!)
From a business point of view, Dawkins' billions of "gene machines" that dry out and die away unable to keep up with the changes in their world, are rather like the business failures that happen each day. That's the metaphor at one level. When you read the statistics on business failure, it's a pretty off-putting metaphor.
And yet although each failure contains a back story of some pathos (and some somewhat worse than getting a low grade essay score at school!) each also points towards success. The key things here are to avoid allowing the negative connotations of the word to demotivate you, and to mine down to the learnings within each failure.
What are the little failures? What are the little learnings?
I am sure you are starting to get the drift of this post. In my business experience, it is the ability to fail, without having to stop, that has taught me the most, probably because the immediate successes, few and far between, though welcome, were often surprising. Hard won successes taught me things I was able to re-apply with similar effect, and keep in my kit bag of useful tools for life.
Napoleon Hill, unlike Dawkins, calls for unusual and compelling belief in order to create success. He noted that most people don't have anywhere near enough belief to be successful. I think he was right. Most people are afraid of failure. Fight or flight are fundamental reflexes. We teach fear of failure from the first day. Many cultures punish failure. It's not a surprise that many people struggle with entrepreneurial-ism and have a reflex to blame others when failure arrives. The blame game tends to suppress innovation.
Most new business ideas, whether a start up or just a new product or project, start in the mind; with an idea. Then a huge amount of belief in the idea and the ability of the thinker to sustain them through the failures along the track.
With belief, available effort and gold are needed to sustain activity. Like a scientist, entrepreneurs should then go looking for failures. Small scale, obvious and quick are the best sort! However any failure will do, and is just another fence knocked down on the way towards success. Failure is interesting. Like risk, the possibility of failure and consequences are one way in which we come to know life, and they keep us alert and sharpened to the possibilities. Good marketing people tell you to do a limited but real test; the same idea is highly valued in new IT implementations, and in any profit and change projects. Plan, do, check, act is an effective cycle that embraces failure in its design.
My post this week is designed to make you think about your organisation's approach to risk and failure. Is the balance right? In what areas so you need to reduce failure and in what areas do you need more?
We are all happy to think about return on investment, a calculation based on risk and return. Perhaps one way to think about failure more positively is to develop an ROF, or "return on failure" measure.
Sunday, 30 October 2011
Saturday, 15 October 2011
Find your trade secrets
A client and I were discussing IPR and valuation recently over a pint. The gist of it was this: in technology businesses a lot of know-how is created over the years. Some gets used regularly, some gets lost a little bit, some is made deliberately and plenty comes about accidentally. Frankly this applies to any processes that add to productivity, protect margin and enhance customer value, not just biotech or technology innovations.
In business valuation, the basic valuation is a complex mix of profitability, profit strength, timing and market interest. Profit strength is about margin and sustainability and there are a number of ways to look at it - evidence can be seen in the stability of results, customer defection rates, product portfolio management and product development capability, etc.
Buyers can be very attracted to visible business strengths - for example easily controllable income flows (this can be model related or through contracts). Intellectual property comes in many shapes and sizes; when it is technical know how, if it can be shown to be commercially valuable, then for the right buyer, the price will go up.
A big problem for CEO's is to know exactly what the lab has got in its kit bag. Another risk is that, when know how is not fully recorded, it gets lost if key people go.
So here is the upshot: An IPR matrix. We thought it would be great to do this and let the lab or IT development team show their value. Maybe you could encourage collection through bonuses. It's a simple idea.
Step 1: get the team to list all their unprotected intellectual property and know how.
Step 2: table it out and in column two, link it to the products or processes that are impacted, live or canned (indicate this, so that great technology is not lost as products that it has powered but that are retired don't mean it is lost)
Step 3: describe what it does, and the key benefits
Step 4: where the files are kept and crucially
Step 5: any protection actually in place - patents, designs, trade marks
Step 6: finally go through and assess on a 1 - 10 scale, its commercial power (potential or known)
If you haven't got this in place or something similar, do it now rather than leaving it to chance when you're ready to exit. Make it a key document during your routine product portfolio planning review.
I'd be keen to hear any thoughts, and shares of other "know-how" recording systems you all have in place. Paper or wiki, locked away or shared.
In business valuation, the basic valuation is a complex mix of profitability, profit strength, timing and market interest. Profit strength is about margin and sustainability and there are a number of ways to look at it - evidence can be seen in the stability of results, customer defection rates, product portfolio management and product development capability, etc.
Buyers can be very attracted to visible business strengths - for example easily controllable income flows (this can be model related or through contracts). Intellectual property comes in many shapes and sizes; when it is technical know how, if it can be shown to be commercially valuable, then for the right buyer, the price will go up.
A big problem for CEO's is to know exactly what the lab has got in its kit bag. Another risk is that, when know how is not fully recorded, it gets lost if key people go.
So here is the upshot: An IPR matrix. We thought it would be great to do this and let the lab or IT development team show their value. Maybe you could encourage collection through bonuses. It's a simple idea.
Step 1: get the team to list all their unprotected intellectual property and know how.
Step 2: table it out and in column two, link it to the products or processes that are impacted, live or canned (indicate this, so that great technology is not lost as products that it has powered but that are retired don't mean it is lost)
Step 3: describe what it does, and the key benefits
Step 4: where the files are kept and crucially
Step 5: any protection actually in place - patents, designs, trade marks
Step 6: finally go through and assess on a 1 - 10 scale, its commercial power (potential or known)
If you haven't got this in place or something similar, do it now rather than leaving it to chance when you're ready to exit. Make it a key document during your routine product portfolio planning review.
I'd be keen to hear any thoughts, and shares of other "know-how" recording systems you all have in place. Paper or wiki, locked away or shared.
Thursday, 6 October 2011
What is so soft about "soft skills"?
"Soft skills", normally counterpointed against "hard skills" - with the latter defined as "occupational requirements". There are other versions.
Jimmy Carr, speaking on Radio 4's "Museum of Curiosities" this week said [sic] "words are magic, and I'm like a drug pusher except the drugs are endorphins and they are in you - I just know the words that unlock them. I say a series of words, and you get a dose of pleasure!" Perhaps a typically "Carr" way of putting things, but all the same, rather a nice explanation.
Words are magic, in that they bring with them memories and meanings of great complexity. I object therefore to the use of the word "soft"! It can imply lots of things, which perhaps are not intended to be negative, however negative implications are included. It can imply "easier", "unprofessional", "non-essential", "weak", "woolly", "undefined". Etc. You get my drift.
And yet, in my own business, the so called "hard skills" only take you to qualification. As a general rule "occupational requirements" are about 20% of what the team need to gain real ability and impact.
Many firms will adopt a thoroughly strict attitude to the "hard" training provision. It will certainly be done professionally and there is rarely hesitation in investing in anything seen as "hard". How easy it is to be the "hard men" of training - with repetition, practice, assessment, and qualification; it echo's the successful models of our schooling.
Use of the word "soft" is a problem because for many, I believe, it primes the mind to think differently. Typically, soft skills training is done in a very different way (suggested by the soft adjective?) in workshops, in one day sessions, with limited objectives, with limited practical application, without a course, without a test, without a measured outcome or qualification.
In my own firm (and I hope in many others - certainly in my clients) when we have overcome this attitude it has paid off big. I like to ban the word "soft". Training is training and I want to see it done professionally.
I am not really interested in buying a one day "people skills" training session, because I know from my own professional training skills that in order to create applied learning any programme needs the seven learning principles:
Feedback
Active learning
Repetition
Meaningful material
Multi-sense approaches
Over-learning
Primacy and recency
(E-mail me for expansion on any of this)
There are plenty of studies that show that skills practice, and moving from learning to teaching, rapidly increase the uptake of learning, and its move into long term recall. This is what leads to changes in behaviour and real changes in approach. In my own experience, the jeopardy of assessment and qualification really heighten attention. There are other ways to get high attention and learning - for example presentation to the group at the end of a learning process forces the learning to be used and demonstrated, even if no exam is present.
We did it at school! Why should it stop for work?
Managing people for performance, selling, mentoring, coaching skills, presenting, leading, delegating, prioritising, planning, creative thinking, product development, managing a large workload, commercialism, working in a big team, being a effective executive (director, partner, ceo), coping with major and difficult decisions and high levels of stress, managing the internal state for effect rather than being bowled along by life and emotion, writing and communication. These are essential skills for life and for business.
The people who move to high levels of impact in an organisation are a long way ahead of their core technical skills, and most get there through the training of real life and experience. They are largely unsupported by the wealth of highly professional experience and best practice material out there to get the improvements more quickly and more professionally. There is a tendency to grab bits of insight from here and there in a haphazard way. This is especially true of the small business sector.
A final reference to "soft". If "soft" primes the mind to respond in a certain way, and the focus, motivation and goals of your team at the outset are an essential preparation component for successful trainings, why would you tell them to prepare for a "soft" day's work?
Run back over your training programmes. Which skills are essential to your success? Identify the top three and put serious and assessed programmes in place to develop your essential skills programme. Put the soft stuff in the bin!
I hope this post inspires you to rethink the process you are running to develop yourselves and your teams. If you are already there, post up a note and let us know what you do.
Jimmy Carr, speaking on Radio 4's "Museum of Curiosities" this week said [sic] "words are magic, and I'm like a drug pusher except the drugs are endorphins and they are in you - I just know the words that unlock them. I say a series of words, and you get a dose of pleasure!" Perhaps a typically "Carr" way of putting things, but all the same, rather a nice explanation.
Words are magic, in that they bring with them memories and meanings of great complexity. I object therefore to the use of the word "soft"! It can imply lots of things, which perhaps are not intended to be negative, however negative implications are included. It can imply "easier", "unprofessional", "non-essential", "weak", "woolly", "undefined". Etc. You get my drift.
And yet, in my own business, the so called "hard skills" only take you to qualification. As a general rule "occupational requirements" are about 20% of what the team need to gain real ability and impact.
Many firms will adopt a thoroughly strict attitude to the "hard" training provision. It will certainly be done professionally and there is rarely hesitation in investing in anything seen as "hard". How easy it is to be the "hard men" of training - with repetition, practice, assessment, and qualification; it echo's the successful models of our schooling.
Use of the word "soft" is a problem because for many, I believe, it primes the mind to think differently. Typically, soft skills training is done in a very different way (suggested by the soft adjective?) in workshops, in one day sessions, with limited objectives, with limited practical application, without a course, without a test, without a measured outcome or qualification.
In my own firm (and I hope in many others - certainly in my clients) when we have overcome this attitude it has paid off big. I like to ban the word "soft". Training is training and I want to see it done professionally.
I am not really interested in buying a one day "people skills" training session, because I know from my own professional training skills that in order to create applied learning any programme needs the seven learning principles:
Feedback
Active learning
Repetition
Meaningful material
Multi-sense approaches
Over-learning
Primacy and recency
(E-mail me for expansion on any of this)
There are plenty of studies that show that skills practice, and moving from learning to teaching, rapidly increase the uptake of learning, and its move into long term recall. This is what leads to changes in behaviour and real changes in approach. In my own experience, the jeopardy of assessment and qualification really heighten attention. There are other ways to get high attention and learning - for example presentation to the group at the end of a learning process forces the learning to be used and demonstrated, even if no exam is present.
We did it at school! Why should it stop for work?
Managing people for performance, selling, mentoring, coaching skills, presenting, leading, delegating, prioritising, planning, creative thinking, product development, managing a large workload, commercialism, working in a big team, being a effective executive (director, partner, ceo), coping with major and difficult decisions and high levels of stress, managing the internal state for effect rather than being bowled along by life and emotion, writing and communication. These are essential skills for life and for business.
The people who move to high levels of impact in an organisation are a long way ahead of their core technical skills, and most get there through the training of real life and experience. They are largely unsupported by the wealth of highly professional experience and best practice material out there to get the improvements more quickly and more professionally. There is a tendency to grab bits of insight from here and there in a haphazard way. This is especially true of the small business sector.
A final reference to "soft". If "soft" primes the mind to respond in a certain way, and the focus, motivation and goals of your team at the outset are an essential preparation component for successful trainings, why would you tell them to prepare for a "soft" day's work?
Run back over your training programmes. Which skills are essential to your success? Identify the top three and put serious and assessed programmes in place to develop your essential skills programme. Put the soft stuff in the bin!
I hope this post inspires you to rethink the process you are running to develop yourselves and your teams. If you are already there, post up a note and let us know what you do.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)