Based in biology terminology, this ‘stasis’ relates to organisms and the way the ‘whole’ can be maintained, the right amount of light, nutrients, etc to ensure the organism can survive. The organism dies when things get too far out of balance and things go astray. With limited ability to improvise – adapt – or overcome a simple organism has little chance of survival.

In business the ‘organism’ becomes more complex, there are more variables, in many cases it is a range of little ‘things’ which can make or break it’s ability to thrive let alone survive.

Lets look at a few variables

• Staff – motivated – skilled – communicating well?
• Systems – complex – simple – effective?
• Strategies – Marketing – Management – Operations – in place or not?
• Values – minimal – developing – fully developed – where are things at?
• Resources – tools – materials – workspaces – finances – training – well utilised?

Now you can see your business as a complex organism and one where the balance of all the factors to make it successful, have to be juggled carefully to keep things in harmony. In this case harmony can equal a static situation which does not allow for growth.

For the sake of your business, figuring out what is keeping the status quo where it’s at could be important in the logical approach to evaluating the situation. OR you could take a ‘quantum leap’ and step over that, avoid the analysis and look at a range of things that can be done that might not already be done, to head things in a healthier direction. A bit like doing a range of exercises to build core strength in a body when you thought you could get away with just one or two exercises, often the result is better in the long run.

What you can do

• Communication – Discuss – projects – people – resources – aim to connect – synergise – empower – inspire – what works – what doesn’t – distil lessons learnt & distribute – reduce barriers – reduce hassles
• Create a learning cycle – Assess a project before it starts – assess it inn progress – evaluate the aftermath, what went well, what didn’t and what can you learn from it
• Aim for excellence – “If it could be done better do it!” look at all aspects to what makes things tick- Systems – strategies – skills – structure – service – quality (to name a few)
• Provide a sense of belonging – achievement – contribution
• Goal set – share the info – share the wins – explore the challenges and shortcomings.
• Love your people – they make the hard resources move – they do the ‘stuff’ that pays the bills and builds the profits if  you love them they will love the customers
• Love  your customers – connect – discuss – focus – ask – explore them – know them – let them know you and your team

All of these things can keep your team nimble and exploring a wider range of actions and thinking processes than their usual comfort zone allows. All of this should allow your business to explore the idea of thriving, not just standing still in a warm spot where things are comfortable but pushing at least some of the boundaries to make things work better.

Compile the guidelines into your master operating procedural documents, begin to live it, refer to it and explore all it has to offer.

Any future steps the organisation takes should be done in light of these core values, then over time these can be ‘tweaked’ to suit.

Now you are fired up to tackle this as a project (even you small business operator…) then here is a link you can email to your team to work with.

Adaptable

Quality

Passion

Accountability

Integrity

Collaboration

Tolerance

Respect

Leadership

And another article on values to tie it all together

Now look at how you bring the various aspects of this together to create great results for your business by taking positive action.

Oh and while you are at it, get your team to explore any other values they think would be useful for your business, drop me a line to let me know via the comments for this post and I will take a look and consider adding them in.

Adaptable: We are able to take initiative and embrace projects and challenges with the guideline of “Improvise – Adapt – Overcome”

I like the ideas of ‘improvise – adapt – overcome’ I think it makes a neat mantra your teams could follow, and if you are brave enough you will provide a working environment where you trust your people to go the extra mile because they are following the mantra and have ‘nutted out a way forward’.

You know you have set up your team to value the idea of being adaptable, perhaps they might have to work varying hours while a team member is on holidays, or having to be part of a brainstorming team to come up with some fresh ideas. Perhaps it’s having to find solutions using creative approaches in a ‘blink’ and doing it with confidence and poise.

You know you can be adaptable too and value the word so highly you often find yourself having to be more adaptable than most, but then  you treat that as a starting point to train others in how to be even more adaptable. Notice how you have to become more creative to be even more adaptable… How will you teach your people to value creativity and explore it with ease?

Quality: What we do, we do well – We openly explore ways to improve at all levels – A commitment to personal and professional excellence – A commitment to great service at all levels – Aiming to be a highly professional team

It’s not just products, it’s so much more, the delivery, the service the sales presentation, the effectiveness of communication at all levels. It’s the way your business holds itself, it’s stance or posture, it says tot he market place ‘we are quality’.

If you have a quality system that relates to some standards of practice or certification  you will have all manner of quality device in place to ensure every last check box is ticked and minimum standards are met. If you don’t have a quality system in place what can you do to create one? How will your people respond and use it, how will they help to develop it and how will you ensure it is being used at all times by those who count, everyone in your business!

Perhaps you were lucky and your passion is so infectious your team became mini clones of you and before you knew it the passion bug struck and they all got deeply passionate about the business and all it stands for. Wow! lucky you! Chances are though the passion may not last and preventing it from fading becomes an challenging task so ask lots of questions about it so you can impress upon your team the importance of it.

Passion: Committed in heart and mind to get great results we can all be proud of

How does passion show up in your business? How do your people respond to it when they see it? Is it different from your response? What can be done to keep a rising passion happen for the business to grow and be an exciting place to be for all?

Ask people about the passion they have for your business, from the customers to the staff, what gets them excited so much they are loyal followers and supporters of all the business does and is. Knowing more about the passion your business is built on probably should be your major quest, an illusive Holy Grail if you like. A secret notion, ‘potion’, concept, aspect, feature, benefit etc… it’s one or more of those which creates the passion.

Accountability: If it is to be, it’s up to me – See something, Do something, take action to make things right – Think globally, act locally – Hold true to a high level duty of care.

Who is accountable in your business? Your immediate answer should be everyone… Each to their own degree of influence in their ‘part of the business’. Who is will ing to put their hand up and say ‘it’s my problem I caused it’… depending on the degree of the problem will probably depend on how much they put up their hand and take responsibility for the challenge.

It all comes down to a duty of care, to  ourselves, our team, our customers, our business. To do that takes action, seeing things may not be right and taking action to set that thing right. What things are your people accountable for and what is your expectation of them when things go astray? Now ask how can we as a business explore what’s happening and how can we all be more accountable for what happens?

How is it instilled in your business? how is it explored and developed? How do you do your part to ensure that from the top down integrity is a hallmark of all your business stands for?

Integrity: Consistency of honest working principles and beliefs – Build trust through our positive actions – Build our structural integrity to ensure sustained growth through a solid foundation – We build with a culture of mutual respect for all – Aim to be ecologically sustainable.

Honour, virtue, honesty, trust are all part of this one word and the values it represents. How does it show up in your organisation, what things communicate to people your business has integrity from the words and actions it uses to the physical aspects of the business (from signs, furniture and the actions of its team)?

Now take action to build the integrity by knowing all the small things in your organisation can be tweaked to increase the integrity people experience and believe in. What will you strengthen first?

How do your people collaborate, and are they aware they do it, almost constantly in your business? Are they aware of how well they do or don’t do it?

Collaboration: Leverage collective genius – work cooperatively with others – Comply with all legal and statutory authorities – Explore ways to develop profitable business relationships.

Collaboration is like some sort of guideline, knowing the boundaries and exploring the lines and levels of communication so people can do what they do well. The more your people communicate in a collaborative manner the more chance you have of the organisation really exploring it’s strengths and abilities. over time weaknesses and poor skills will be replaced by a more positive approach.

Collaboration as a value is important to recognise and find ways to make it prosper and grow.

On the staffing side, how well do your people tolerate each other, perhaps they shouldn’t need to tolerate bad behaviour (bullying, harassment and such and should have ways to work positively with these kinds of issues.) But how do differing nationalities get on? and the difference in values people might have due to a range of personal beliefs and values.

Tolerance: Of others, their views, beliefs and values.

In business we have to deal with many things, handling differences is part and parcel of things and our ability to be flexible in our approach is probably key to making differences work.

Take a look at what people in your team tolerate from each other and customers. Do they handle the differences well or not. If not what can you do to show people there are differences and that they can simply be other peoples beliefs and values, they are not good or bad, just different. Then yo will have a great starting point to build from.

Respect: For each other, the people we serve and the environment – From the way we communicate to the way we act on all levels.

How then do you build respect? Explore it’s meaning to you and others in your organisation first, then look at ways of implementing high level respect. It could be better communication, from you as the business leader to to your team communicating with you. Then to the way everyone communicates with the customers.

How do your actions encourage respect, are you too laid back, not clear in your communication, not clear about your goals, the organisations goals, the way the team/s interact… and the list goes on.

If you value the notion of respect you will find more ways to make it happen for yourself and your team. May I suggest you make a BIG list of the ways respect shows up in an organisation and how these can be tweaked in your organisation to foster some growth. the bigger the respect gets the better chance you will have of creating a positively buoyant organisation, and that has got to be good for the longer term stability of the enterprise.

What I’m thinking of here is the structural side of the business idea, rather than the sort of business it might be. So no it’s not the far out super freaky pizza business that serves east west Tex-Mex surprises with a Thai influence.

Imagine a business, where you have made things tick over nicely the staff are stable (and happy), your customers like what you provide and the way forward looks good. Income and profitability tick over nicely and you wonder about the bigger picture now you have more time to, you replaced yourself multiple times with great people and can sit back and “enjoy the view”. Now it’s time to look that bit further, or perhaps differently to cause your business to do more of what you want it to.

You know when to put on new staff, knowing when the rest of the team are pushing the limits, and you can handle the ‘lag time’ until they are ‘up to speed’ in the role. You have great measurement tools in place to know what’s working and what’s not. You know what the profit margin is and where it goes to.

What next? Is this it, is this the holy grail of your business goal/s? Are  your challenges at an end? Do you simply sell it off and retire (early?) or do you go for the thrill of the chase… the adrenaline injecting process of doing more, and creating anew to push yourself that bit further.

Let’s go for the latter… Lets explore how you can replicate the process to explore success in business and do more, be more have more. After all we live in a world of abundance and by the sound of things if you have read this far you have probably said to yourself yes I do all these things and I am in that lovely lofty position to be able to do more.

You have created an ‘organism’ which grows, it’s more than just sustainable and you can stand back and enjoy the benefits of it’s growth. Now take out a pen and pad and jot down the mechanics of the business, what makes it tick, what makes it profitable? What sets it apart from your competition to the point where you don’t have to even be there anymore to enjoy it.

Take that list and ask, Can I develop a formula from our current successes to be able to reproduce that in other businesses… short answer will probably be yes.

I suggest at this stage  you take a look at the list in a way which deals with the essence of the success and not just trying to think about other businesses you might like to try out or test. Look at the structure, how information flows, the team and culture, the values and beliefs, all the things which can cause the internal structures to remain steadfast and provide the right sort of support for growth.

Now you know what makes your current business tick and the building blocks for ANY new business, it’s up to you to act on the information.

If you create a new business or five, hold this thought in your mind… “in war success has never come to those who fought on more than three fronts” (go on prove me wrong…) it’s said this was Hitlers downfall in the end. So how will you as a business owner develop more businesses without this happening.

Firstly you will be mindful of it, secondly you will probably recognise that each business will not be run by you, you simply provide the ‘right structure and resources’ then step back and advise on ways to tweak the enterprise to generate greater success.

Go on, give it a go, if things go well through great planning you will end up with a site of businesses making good profits you will be able to share around with others, therefore creating more positive abundance in the world.

Well that’s my view.

We could spend ages debating the issue, what a brilliant business is, how it’s measured and the results it provides. But I want to focus on the ethereal things which caused it to be a brilliant business. The initial points I put up are a big part of that.

Let’s go back to the start, a business you set up started with an idea, you could see what you wanted, probably saw yourself running it how things would turn out. In your minds eye you saw a plan of action coming to reality and all the key pointers I started this article with are what bought the dream to reality.

It was you in the beginning who put in the effort, you did the thinking, the planning, took initiative, explored options and provided great service to ensure prospects and customers would come back for more.

The next step in your business was a big one, you took on staff, partners and or associates who could see what you saw, felt what you felt and heard the positive accolades for the products and service you provided for customers. You managed to  encourage your ‘team’, they got motivated, excited and became driven to follow in your footsteps.

The results spoke for themselves, happy customers, great products and services and the bottom line reflects the top level positive work everyone puts in.

There it is, your brilliant business, brilliantly utilising your ‘soft resources’ to ensure the ‘hard resources’, products and services, are in the right place at the right time for your ideal prospects and customers.

Sadly all of this is not a common occurrence, in fact it’s a rare situation, one sadly lacking in a world where hope, excitement and the ‘thrill of the chase’ has been eclipsed by businesses which start up and fade, some fast, some slow.

All of the above points and so much more in formation is available to those who want to ensure their ‘business idea is given the best chance of survival in the ‘formative part of the business process’ and thriving in the maturing part of the process, yet too many fail fast.

What annoys me the most is that people who have great intentions in starting their business find the sense of loss palpable. All that was required was the right sort of research, a solid plan of action and the ability to cause people to follow your brilliant lead. Alas too many businesses do not have that and what could be a great start soon becomes millstone.

Let’s ask then, what sort of business do you want to have? One with brilliant prospects and outcomes or one doomed to failing fast? Now ask what will you do to make sure it’s not the latter!

In business you can have a range of reasons as to why you do things… To make a profit and get rich (yeah right…) to be my own boss, to feed my ego, to provide  service and products to a niche market.

Lets go deeper. In business you might decide to do some things to make your business stand out from the crowd. Perhaps it’s a promotional event of some kind, you figure you can spend some $$ invite people over to your business and at some stage they will buy. Perhaps you figured the media will come and you will get wider kudos and therefore more publicity from the event.

For me there is some form of internal ‘buzz’ I get out of doing things, projects (in my case arty projects) to the point where I will produce a range of Artworks with an aim of exploring a theme of some kind with a bigger picture of exhibiting them (rarely happens) so I pursue a dream, and I get a ‘buzz’ from it. I then go onto the next project hoping things might go further… I continue to produce.

What about you, what’s your reason for doing what you do?

• Ego -”I’m important look at me”. (What, you only lasted six months, but you were important and hey you gave it a go).
• Profit – “I’m in business and I can make a greater return than any investment I know of” (You hope.)
• You’re the boss – You get staff, they do the work, you sit back and watch (nice idea, doesn’t always work that way).
• You have a great idea you think the world will want to buy – Maybe it is the best idea since ‘sliced bread’ but what if it’s not… done any research yet?
• I want more promotional coverage for the business – You run an event to get people in, hopefully people who have not used your business before but hopefully will in the future. Perhaps the local radio station team up with you and run a sausage sizzle, it costs you a heap of $$ and you hope for the best. Was the effort really worth it? Note the key word here is ‘hope’

Your business has become big enough to have a person in this role, other businesses of your type and stature have them and it seems to work for them. So how about your business? The decision has been made and someone has to implement it. What to do next?

• You’re leading them so ask what you want them to do and how you will support them to do it. (make a list FAST!)
• Get a budget sorted their wage and ancillary costs, the resources they will need on a basic level and then the resources needed for them to excel at what they do.
• What sort of person would you IDEALLY like to select for the role. Think personality type, adaptability, flexibility, nimbility, stunning phone manner, highly courteous at all times to ALL other personality types and so much more (another list!)
• Where will you position them so they can feel part of the team but have the privacy their role may require?
• How will you support, coach, mentor and support them?
• How will they be seen by other staff who might currently do a part of this role as part of their usual duties… How will they be seen by other staff in terms of importance within the business?
• What access to the database will they have?
• What I.T. support will they get?
• What Admin support will they have?
• How will you measure their performance?
• What will your expectations be of them?
• How often will you meet with them?
• What other people will have to interact with them so they can get their job done?
• What sort of position description have you put together, does it include enough detail? Does it leave scope for them to add to the role?
• What training will they need – to start with and along the way?
• Who will fill in while they are away? Will this fill in person be able to effectively fill the gap and continue in a ‘business as usual’ kind of way or will they need to work one on one with the existing person to make the transition seamless?

• How will you make sure they are not under too much pressure from ‘moaning customers’ and those who want to yell and scream?
• What strategies will you use to keep them motivated and highly engaged in their job?
• How will you include them in planning sessions, showing them the stats, having them measure the stats…
• What control will they have over the various situations which may arise… Feeding back info  to staff, dealing with difficult customers (what sorts of gifts can they send)?
• What sort of ongoing ‘keep in touch program’ will you let them do, special occasion cards, reminder letters, promotional freebies and goodies.

Notice how what started out as ‘just another role in your business’ has become a major one, and the person has not started yet!

• What limit will be set for their budget? Is it big enough or is it a bare minimum “we don’t know yet how big it should be, perhaps we should start out low and work up from there”?
• What level of authority will they have? Can they go straight to HR to warn of  another staff member who is causing service ‘issues’ or so they have to ‘go through you’?
• Will you require them to work after hours at special customer events?
• Will they require the ability to think outside the square or is that left for the Marketing Department only?
• Do  you want them to be loaded with ideas, or a person to ‘just do the job…’?

Okay you get the idea, this role is vital to your business, if you are not in a big enough position to have a person in this role perhaps there are a bunch of people who are in this ‘type of role’, if so how many of the above become applicable to them… Take a look at the organisations mission, vision, values, beliefs and ideals and see how highly customers are valued throughout that. Need to make changes?

So what is all this, a customer service initiative to cause customers to LOVE what your business does. Without this sort of thinking and action going on, your business just may as well fade into the sunset.

How did this come about, after visiting a retail ‘shop’ with friends, we spent an hour or two enjoying what they have to offer (yeah it’s a sit down, stand up and enjoy kind of place.) We got chatting to one of the owners, and ran through a few points of discussion. When we went to dinner after that we managed to throw more ideas into the mix.

It got me thinking (not again, just more…) and here is a list to work with.

• Target market – Know who you are targeting, in their case I figure 26 – 60 yr old professionals looking to ‘unwind’. They don’t mind to spend if they are getting value from that spend – social types.
• Work the list – They have been in business a few years now and should have a great email list to work, so work it. The list should also include their connections on facebook, google+ Linked in (It’s for professionals!) Twitter.
• Work on their pain – They want to unwind, drop in and chill out… they want to pick up some great goodies to take home and unwind with, drop in and pick them up. So focus on what hurts, then alleviate that with what you have to offer.
• Let them know – Use the list and ‘tickle their fancy’ with enticing ideas and options, photo’s of the specials and the offers, give them ideas they might like to try “Bought this, then try this too!” It’s Friday and the good peeps on your various lists should be hit a few times with these enticements. Like a reminder service. And make sure people can find you with great signage etc.
• Ask them what they want – Yeah the customers, they might not want rickety stools, they might want something a bit shorter with back support. They might not want the cricket on the big screen TV. They might not want big in your face music… then  again they just might.
• Plan it – All of this stuff, make it happen with a simple plan. who will do what when, then stick to it.
• Offer incentives – Like, bring three friends next time and we will make them VIPs and we will reward you with a freebie.