Wim GE De Vos

Small businesses with a BIG impact

Owning underperformance

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If you are the Boss/Owner/Manager/Team Leader/… and the people in your team are not performing that is 👉 on you.

The solution 🧪 can be broken down into 4 steps:

  1. Own it. Accept and let everyone know this is on you.
  2. Improve your communication. Build a coalition around solving the problem through dialogue.
  3. Be clear about the underperformance and then ask what you can do to help.
  4. Then actually start helping… (this is often the secret ingredient…😉)

Underperformance is not fatal. It is the inability to take the above 4 steps that often proves to be fatal…

Small decisions ✅ with a BIG impact 🚀.

My small business morning routine ☕️

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brain time…

Every morning I spend about 45 minutes on the following small business activities: working ON the business and monitoring.
It has helped me and our business greatly to make consistent progress. No quick fixes or magic bullet. Rather continuous development or kaizen.

My Morning “Working ON the Business Activities”
about 30 minutes before “chaos takes over”: I Pick ONE of the following activities and alternate during the week

  • Business Development: Stuff we are working on that grows the business. What new products or solutions with big potential are in the works? What strategic partnerships are we working on that can really bring a part of our business forward?
  • Offer Development: This is about using existing resources in a new way. Can I create a sale, a launch event, a new offer or bring best practices from one person/market to another to generate attention of our customers and income?
  • Fixing long-standing problems (big and small): This is about problems/friction we have started to work around instead of solving directly. Instead of ignoring or accepting these things, I use these 30 minutes to deal with the root of the problem. “fixing a 100 small problems” (and maybe a few big ones) needs “free brain time”. Kaizen.
  • Margin review: Where do we need to review pricing and margins upwards. Were can we up-sell, cross-sell or find new income generating offers.
  • Partner communication: This is not answering emails and messages, but about initiating communication with partners by giving updates or asking questions (social, email, messages, partnerzone updates, newsletters,…).

My Morning Dashboard Monitoring activities:
max 10 minutes to get a grasp of the “cruise speed” of the business – this is looking back of course. Activity is what drives success.

  • PartnerZone (=our digital workplace with partners) visitors – more than 40/day is a “good day”
  • PartnerZone projects (including drafts) – more than 10 projects and a total value of over 100K is a “good day”. Sometimes I also have a quick “deep dive” into projects per salesperson to see the dynamic of different “markets” (we have 6 right now but growing).
  • PartnerZone “Accepted”+”In Process” projects = our confirmed pipeline – more than 1 month sales is “good”
  • Xero – YTD Sales compared with last 2 years to get perspective and compensate for daily rush of good&bad news.

And then it is 9.00 AM :rocket: and the day starts…time to make WOW the standard. Together.

Every single day I have invested these early morning 45 minutes for more than 10 years now. I believe it has helped to build Genesis Home Technology Architects into what it is today.

Maybe some of these elements of my morning business routine can help you too.

Atomic habits with an exponential impact 👊🏼.

Towards a #newbalance ⚖️ – 3 orders of change ⍙

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Word from Nelson

Change brings about change. But how so and to what degree.

The way we look at change defines the type of transformation we can apply.

Here is my framework types of change we are facing in the years to come.

It also clarifies why I firmly believe a #NewBalance and a #betterworld are ahead of us if we choose it to be so.

1st order change – #newhabits are born

Change that is fairly predictable and brought about by new habits when it comes to work, consumption, entertainment, education, … sometimes called “new normal”. Often underestimated by “creatures of habit” or called a temporary fad.

2nd order change – #newmodels are born

Organizational change at the level of businesses, governments and society as these adapt to first order changes, #newhabits or “new normal”. Predicted by “visionaries” that see the future based on applying existing patters to new first order changes around them. Often these people were already “living in the future”.

3rd order change – #newbalance is born

Systematic change at a holistic level. Hybrid and more philosophical by definition. New equilibriums at a foundational level for individuals, organizations and societies. Impossible to “predict” because they belong to a more utopian goal-oriented realm. 1st and 2nd order changes and choices made define where the 3rd order change or #newbalance will end up. Looking at this from where we stand today this an n-dimensional matrix inhabited by people connected through changing networks.

And by looking at change in the above framework we can start to define what types of transformation we want to apply to the different facets of our lives and our worlds…

Small decisions with a BIG impact 💥.

Late evening brain dump after mixing ideas on the above from #caroldweck #andygrove #jocaudron #danielpink #kevinkelly.

Peace out 👊🏼

Note: I firmly believe people feel they either dive, bounce forward, slide or get pushed into the New Future depending on where they are positioned on the growth/fixed mindset axis as defined by C. Dweck.

The winds have shifted ⛵️ and you are in charge.

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Bob´s advice…

The winds have shifted ⛵️ and you are in charge.

When the winds change suddenly it comes as a surprise. The boat heels over. What worked before does not work anymore…

You need to steer the boat in a different direction before you run out of energy or get into trouble. You need to act quickly and firmly, but without panic. And act as a crew.

Pay extra attention while you get a feel for the new direction and the strength of the wind before you can be sure to have got it right and are on a new course.

Accept it is your responsibility to guide your company out of harm´s way and to place it in a position where you can prosper in the new future. Nobody else can do this but you.

The last months I have been working on something to help small businesses deal with the impact of change. Something to help you find your way through uncharted territories and come out winning.

Part of it will be to raise your awareness of what it is like to go through cataclysmic changes and to acquire a framework in which you can deal with them.

Strategic inflection points force us to have a different mindset than the business-as-usual running of the business on autopilot we are so used to.

Strategic inflection points and the change they bring about sometimes push us in a corner, make us think about survival so much we only understand the significance of the change upon us (too) long after the fact.

Survive, transform and bounce forward. Together.
Right into a new better future packed with opportunity.

Stay tuned…