A satisfied client recommended my copywriting skills to Results.com, a software start-up developing a revolutionary online business management package. I initially created the company’s overall ‘manifesto’, putting into words the business direction and global ambitions of founder Ben Ridler. I was then commissioned to write website content, EDMs, an Information Memorandum, and other documents.
Working within very tight deadlines with design company Method Studio, I wrote complete website content to market the new ‘.kiwi’ internet domain.
I write blog posts for companies and business people, developing thoughtful, entertaining, useful, and sometime downright cheeky content that serves up each client's brand in compelling ways.
When Winston Churchill became Prime Minister on Friday 10 May 1940, things could not have looked worse. Germany had already invaded Poland, Denmark, and Norway, and now unleashed their blitzkreig (‘lightning war’) on France, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Luxembourg.
Churchill himself was personally unpopular, even within his own party, and at the age of 65, widely considered a spent force. His health was precarious and his drinking habits well known. Britain was ill prepared for war and many people, including government ministers, favoured negotiating a peace deal with Hitler.
We all know what happened next – and kept on happening for the next six years despite incredible odds. Churchill refused to give up and inspired a nation to do the same.
“We shall go on to the end,” he said.
“We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender…”
These were more than merely stirring words. At the time, no bookie in England would have given you decent odds of a British victory. But by saying these words – saying them well and with complete conviction – Churchill began the long, slow process of willing that eventual victory into being. He inspired an entire people to fight, to persevere despite the odds, to stay calm in the face of setbacks, and to believe all the suffering was worthwhile.
It’s an extreme example. However, we can draw some general principles from it that anyone can apply to their situation to help them overcome difficulties, setbacks, failures, and hard times to win through in the end. The internet is awash with advice on this kind of thing, but here are my top 10 tips on how to cultivate perseverance:
1. Commit to one goal at a time. Research shows that you’re more likely to succeed if you focus on a single goal.
2. Choose your goal carefully. You have to get the ‘why’ as well as the ‘what’ otherwise you won’t have sufficient belief to carry on when the going gets tough. And if you don’t care enough about your goal, you will find ways to get distracted from it.
3. Break it down into achievable steps. Don’t get in awe of your goal. Bust it up into things you can do more easily, get stuck in, and celebrate every small victory along the way.
4. Use a system. Action lists, daily schedules, check boxes, goal tracking – there a many ways to stay on target. Find what works for you and make it your discipline.
5. Make failure your friend. Because you will fail, over and over again. If you let those failures stop you, you’ll never learn how to succeed. Look on failure as your wise friend who is teaching you how to win.
6. Visualise success. Imagining yourself performing the necessary steps to achieve your goal will actually help you take those steps for real. Condition your brain for success.
7. Build mental resilience. Learn to tolerate emotional discomfort, step out of your comfort zone, rise above your negative emotions, and behave more like the person you want to become.
8. Surround yourself with good people. You stand a better chance of success with a support team of business mentors, coaches, mastermind groups, and your own network of family and friends.
9. Stay positive. Monitor your thoughts, nip negative thinking in the bud, and consciously direct your attention along more positive lines.
10. Stick with it. Never give up. Success could be just around the corner – but if you give up now you’ll never know.
So what’s the difference between perseverance and blind faith? How do we know we’re not just wasting our time? Doesn’t it sometimes make more sense to give in, go home, try something else?
Perhaps, but consider this example. In 2000 Hamish Carter arrived to compete in triathlon at the Sydney Olympics. At the time he bestrode the New Zealand triathlon scene like a colossus. Ranked world number 1, he appeared unassailable.
He finished 26th, more than two and a half minutes behind the winner.
"Sydney played on my mind every minute of every day," Carter told the Herald in 2014. "It took me a long time to control it because it completely took over. You go in having done 10 years' preparation and it was a complete disaster, so it undermines everything you believed in and everything you thought you were good at.
"It led to a complete re-invention of myself, which was pretty ugly at times. Luckily, I had the right people around me to help me through it."
The stakes are very high for elite athletes – and for entrepreneurs and other businesspeople. In backing ourselves to win we often fail to recognise or prepare for the possibility of failure.
Because there will be setbacks. There will be times when you feel like it’s time to give in. But that’s probably the very moment when you most need to dig deep, ‘double down’, and keep backing yourself to win.
Like Hamish Carter. In 2004 he earned selection for the Athens Olympics, but by then he was no longer the New Zealand triathlon king. That crown had been passed to his friend, Bevan Docherty. Ranked an outsider, his chances looked poor when he finished the swim stage in 33rd place, well behind Docherty. But getting on his bike, Carter dug deep and ended the hilly course in the group of six leading the field by half a minute. During the final run, the six became three, then two. Carter and Docherty raced each other for the line – and Hamish Carter took the gold by eight seconds.
The incredible truth is that during the previous year he had been thinking about retiring. Imagine if he had!
An example I often use from my own life comes from when I started Blackhawk Tracking, what was then a tech start-up making car alarms but has since gone on (after I sold it) to become a growing technology company specialising in leading edge Internet of Things (IoT) solutions.
I’ll be honest with you: it was tough going in those early days. How tough? Try working for 13 months with not one dollar coming into your bank account. I slept under my desk or on couches or at my parent’s place. I went to every function I could if they served food. It really didn't matter what it was because if I didn't go, I didn't eat. (I also learned a lot about obscure stuff like ‘gap accounting’, but that’s another story.)
The point is: I kept going even though failure was staring me in the face. Month after month. That’s what perseverance demands of us.
“Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up” – Thomas A Edison
On 28 August 2011, Usain Bolt, the fastest man alive, exploded out of the starting blocks in the Men’s 100m Final at the Athletics World Championships in Daegu, South Korea – but something was very, very wrong.
He had made a false start. Jumped the gun. Immediate disqualification under new rules that no longer allowed sprinters any false starts. Failure. Anguish. Watch the video and you can see his pain.
Flash forward six days to 5 September and the Men’s 200m Final. Usain Bolt lines up once more at the starting blocks. Is he nervous? Is he worried? It’s impossible to tell.
He fist-bumps the girl minding his pile of discarded warm-up clothes. He feels the cameras on him and breaks into a huge grin. He licks his fingertips and smooths his eyebrows, then sweeps his hands across his chest into his signature lightning bolt pose. The crowd goes nuts. He blows them a kiss.
Meanwhile, the other runners look more inwardly focused. The Frenchman, Christophe Lemaitre, is all intensity and concentration, staring at his feet and ignoring the cameras.
The runners step up to their marks, the crowd cheers. Usain Bolt puts a finger to his lips and the crowd goes ‘Shhhhh – shhhhhh’ and is silent.
This time when the gun goes off there are no false starts, only the awe-inspiring sight of the fastest runner the world has ever seen chasing down a historic victory – and the fourth quickest 200m, ever.
Clearly this is someone who knows how to handle pressure. But how does he do it?
Flash forward a few weeks to 23 October 2011 at Eden Park, in Auckland, New Zealand. The All Blacks face down their old rivals, the French, in the Rugby World Cup Final.
The pressure couldn’t be more intense. This is the same team that had beaten the All Blacks in the quarter finals of the RWC in 2007. The All Blacks hadn’t lost a game at Eden Park since 1994. And yet World Cup victory had eluded them since 1987.
Yet, as we now know, the All Blacks refused to choke. So how did they do that?
We all face pressure – in business, in our personal lives, in sport – it’s how we react to that pressure that determines our success or failure.
“Pressure is expectation, scrutiny, and consequence,” according to Gilbert Enoka, mental skills coach for the All Blacks, Canterbury Crusaders, Silver Ferns, and Black Caps.
“Under pressure, your attention is either diverted or on track. If you’re diverted, you have negative emotional response and unhelpful behaviour. That means you’re stuck. That means you’re overwhelmed.
“On the other hand, if your attention is on track you have situational awareness and you execute accurately. You are clear, you adapt and you overcome.”
At pivotal moments, pressure can push our thinking in unproductive directions – like fixating on what could go wrong – and shut down our ability to make quality decisions. The results can be catastrophic.
To combat this tendency, Enoka teaches the concept of Red Heads versus Blue Heads. You may have heard of it. Basically, you have a Red Head if you’re tight, inhibited, results-oriented, anxious, aggressive, over-compensating, desperate. Whereas, Blue Heads are loose, expressive, in the moment, calm, clear, accurate, on task. You can see where this is going.
Clearly we want to have a Blue Head, even in the midst of crisis and chaos. But how?
The answer lies in controlling our attention, according to James Kerr in ‘Legacy: What the All Blacks Can Teach Us About the Business of Life’.
“It works like this: where we direct our mind is where our thoughts will take us; our thoughts create an emotion; the emotion defines our behaviour; our behaviour defines our performance. So, simply, if we can control our attention, and therefore our thoughts, we can manage our emotions and enhance our performance.”
In practice this means mastering the art of shifting your state of mind – from Red to Blue – when the chips are down. To work at peak, the thinking, instinctive, and emotional parts of our brains need to work together. But intense pressure can shut down the thinking part, leading to poor decision-making. To stay in the Blue, sometimes we have to step back, create space, and reconnect with our better selves.
One of the ways the All Blacks do this is through ‘anchors’. These are specific physical actions deliberated practiced and repeated during moments of calmness and clarity so that state can be easily recalled in a pressure situation. So when you see Richie McCaw take a deep breath, hold his wrist, and stamp his feet, you’re watching someone relinquish his fear, control his attention, and bring himself back into the present moment.
And all that apparent clowning around that Usain Bolt does before a race?
“When you get to the line, it makes no sense in you worrying any more, so all you gotta do is just relax and go in and execute,” he says.
“You practise your start, you practise your run in a certain way, so when you get to the Olympic finals all you have to do is go out and run, pretty much. And everything will come back. But if you go out there thinking, “I need to do this,” or worry about that – overthinking things – then you start making mistakes.
“So, for me, the things that I do at the start line are what makes me relax and not think about the start, which is my biggest issue.
“The only thing I try to tell myself is “listen, listen, listen”. And then when he say “set”, I just listen. Because the moment you think about anything else, that’s the moment it’s going to go wrong.
“To me it’s not a pressure. It’s me being me.”
On 28 August 2011, Usain Bolt, the fastest man alive, exploded out of the starting blocks in the Men’s 100m Final at the Athletics World Championships in Daegu, South Korea – but something was very, very wrong.
He had made a false start. Jumped the gun. Immediate disqualification under new rules that no longer allowed sprinters any false starts. Failure. Anguish. Watch the video and you can see his pain.
Flash forward six days to 5 September and the Men’s 200m Final. Usain Bolt lines up once more at the starting blocks. Is he nervous? Is he worried? It’s impossible to tell.
He fist-bumps the girl minding his pile of discarded warm-up clothes. He feels the cameras on him and breaks into a huge grin. He licks his fingertips and smooths his eyebrows, then sweeps his hands across his chest into his signature lightning bolt pose. The crowd goes nuts. He blows them a kiss.
Meanwhile, the other runners look more inwardly focused. The Frenchman, Christophe Lemaitre, is all intensity and concentration, staring at his feet and ignoring the cameras.
The runners step up to their marks, the crowd cheers. Usain Bolt puts a finger to his lips and the crowd goes ‘Shhhhh – shhhhhh’ and is silent.
This time when the gun goes off there are no false starts, only the awe-inspiring sight of the fastest runner the world has ever seen chasing down a historic victory – and the fourth quickest 200m, ever.
Clearly this is someone who knows how to handle pressure. But how does he do it?
Flash forward a few weeks to 23 October 2011 at Eden Park, in Auckland, New Zealand. The All Blacks face down their old rivals, the French, in the Rugby World Cup Final.
The pressure couldn’t be more intense. This is the same team that had beaten the All Blacks in the quarter finals of the RWC in 2007. The All Blacks hadn’t lost a game at Eden Park since 1994. And yet World Cup victory had eluded them since 1987.
Yet, as we now know, the All Blacks refused to choke. So how did they do that?
We all face pressure – in business, in our personal lives, in sport – it’s how we react to that pressure that determines our success or failure.
“Pressure is expectation, scrutiny, and consequence,” according to Gilbert Enoka, mental skills coach for the All Blacks, Canterbury Crusaders, Silver Ferns, and Black Caps.
“Under pressure, your attention is either diverted or on track. If you’re diverted, you have negative emotional response and unhelpful behaviour. That means you’re stuck. That means you’re overwhelmed.
“On the other hand, if your attention is on track you have situational awareness and you execute accurately. You are clear, you adapt and you overcome.”
At pivotal moments, pressure can push our thinking in unproductive directions – like fixating on what could go wrong – and shut down our ability to make quality decisions. The results can be catastrophic.
To combat this tendency, Enoka teaches the concept of Red Heads versus Blue Heads. You may have heard of it. Basically, you have a Red Head if you’re tight, inhibited, results-oriented, anxious, aggressive, over-compensating, desperate. Whereas, Blue Heads are loose, expressive, in the moment, calm, clear, accurate, on task. You can see where this is going.
Clearly we want to have a Blue Head, even in the midst of crisis and chaos. But how?
The answer lies in controlling our attention, according to James Kerr in ‘Legacy: What the All Blacks Can Teach Us About the Business of Life’.
“It works like this: where we direct our mind is where our thoughts will take us; our thoughts create an emotion; the emotion defines our behaviour; our behaviour defines our performance. So, simply, if we can control our attention, and therefore our thoughts, we can manage our emotions and enhance our performance.”
In practice this means mastering the art of shifting your state of mind – from Red to Blue – when the chips are down. To work at peak, the thinking, instinctive, and emotional parts of our brains need to work together. But intense pressure can shut down the thinking part, leading to poor decision-making. To stay in the Blue, sometimes we have to step back, create space, and reconnect with our better selves.
One of the ways the All Blacks do this is through ‘anchors’. These are specific physical actions deliberated practiced and repeated during moments of calmness and clarity so that state can be easily recalled in a pressure situation. So when you see Richie McCaw take a deep breath, hold his wrist, and stamp his feet, you’re watching someone relinquish his fear, control his attention, and bring himself back into the present moment.
And all that apparent clowning around that Usain Bolt does before a race?
“When you get to the line, it makes no sense in you worrying any more, so all you gotta do is just relax and go in and execute,” he says.
“You practise your start, you practise your run in a certain way, so when you get to the Olympic finals all you have to do is go out and run, pretty much. And everything will come back. But if you go out there thinking, “I need to do this,” or worry about that – overthinking things – then you start making mistakes.
“So, for me, the things that I do at the start line are what makes me relax and not think about the start, which is my biggest issue.
“The only thing I try to tell myself is “listen, listen, listen”. And then when he say “set”, I just listen. Because the moment you think about anything else, that’s the moment it’s going to go wrong.
“To me it’s not a pressure. It’s me being me.”
It looked like the game was going the All Blacks’ way.
They had emerged from the bruising first half of the 2011 Rugby World Cup ahead 5 points to 0. Then 4 minutes into the second half Stephen Donald kicked a fairytale penalty to put us 8 points in the lead.
Two minutes later, the French lost the ball forward and Israel Dagg scooped it up, opened the taps, and stormed 20 metres to the halfway line. It looked like a good set-up for another try.
But then everything changed.
François Trinh-Duc intercepted a loose kick by Piri Weepu, setting in motion the chain of events that resulted in Thierry Dusautoir's try in the 47th minute. Trinh-Duc’s conversion took the scoreline to a nailbiting 8 to 7.
In the space of two minutes, the All Blacks winning margin had to be cut to the bone, their momentum was dead, and the possibility of defeat was staring them in the face. Memories of previous crushing RWC defeats welled up in their minds and a mountain of renewed pressure came crashing down on their shoulders.
To a greater or lesser degree, we have all experienced this kind of moment, when you suffer a sudden reversal of fortune, when your expectations are shattered, when you feel the ground crumbling beneath your feet. The sudden in-rush of pressure can lock you up with fear, shut down your ability to make good decisions, and trigger poor behaviours that can actually make matters worse.
Your situation can turn into ‘quicksand’, as described so eloquently by Keanu Reeves in this scene from the sports movie ‘The Replacements’:
“You're playing and you think everything is going fine. Then one thing goes wrong. And then another. And another. You try to fight back, but the harder you fight, the deeper you sink. Until you can't move... you can't breathe... because you're in over your head. Like quicksand.”
In professional poker they call it ‘tilt’. The term comes from ‘tilting’ a pinball machine when you see the ball going in the wrong direction but instead of correcting the ball’s path, you cause the machine to lock up, freezing the flippers and ensuring defeat.
In poker, it refers to the state of mental and emotional frustration experienced by a player when he or she loses a big hand, especially to a bluff. This mental confusion leads to over-aggressive play that results in even bigger losses – and potentially even worse tilt.
It sounds like a vicious cycle. But that doesn’t mean you have to buy into it.
The All Blacks talk about ‘blue heads’ versus ‘red heads’. Being red means being in a negative cycle of self-judgement, rigidity, agression, shut down, and panic. Being blue, on the other hand, is a state of mind where you remain calm, flexible, on task, and in command. As a team, the All Blacks spend a lot of time training themselves to keep their heads blue regardless of what is happening on the field.
We can do the same thing in our business and personal lives. In every moment we can choose how we react to what’s happening. If we’re late for something, we don’t have to get stressed about it, start shouting at the kids, or cause a road-rage incident. If we were raised in a violent home, we don’t have to grow up to be a violent person. If something goes wrong at work, the red mist does not have to descend.
We can choose to remain calm, we can choose to change how we feel about the situation, and we can choose what we’re going to to do about it.
Viktor Frankl, world-famous author of ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’, puts it like this:
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Great leaders and effective people learn how to live in that space, how to widen the gap between a negative event and their reaction to it, how to break the vicious cycle before they get sucked into it.
In his blog, Stephen Covey, author of ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ says he is often asked which of the 7 habits is the most important. Pressed for an answer, he picks Habit 1: “Be Proactive”.
“Habit 1 is, undoubtedly, the foundation for leadership at home or at work because it begins with the mindset ‘I am responsible for me, and I can choose’. All the other habits are dependent upon being proactive and choosing to master and practice principle-centered living,” he says.
“The key to being proactive is remembering that between stimulus and response there is a space. That space represents our choice— how we will choose to respond to any given situation, person, thought or event.
“Imagine a pause button between stimulus and response—a button you can engage to pause and think about what is the principle-based response to your given situation. Listen to what your conscience tells you. Listen for what is wise and the principle-based thing to do, and then act."
Sidestepping the quicksand: 6 steps towards mastering your reactions when things go wrong
1. Observe your reactions. When things go wrong, what do you do? What’s working for you and what isn’t?
2. Understand where your reactions come from. Consider how you react in negative situations and pinpoint the causes of those reactions.
3. Picture the person you want to be. If you have a tendency towards certain negative reactions, develop a clear vision of yourself as someone who rises above them.
4. Imagine better ways to respond. Take your vision of your ideal self and think about how they would react.
5. Choose to be your best self. When the pressure comes down, widen the gap between stimulus and response, and choose to react positively.
6. Be gentle with yourself. Don’t get down on yourself if you fall short. Failure is your greatest teacher – without failure we would never learn to succeed.
Returning to the All Blacks story I began this post with, when the pressure was at its most intense in the final moments of the 2011 Rugby World Cup Final, Richie McCaw drew on the hard work that the team had done to prepare for exactly these sorts of situations. He remained calm, widened the gap, thought clearly, and took control.
Graham Henry and Wayne Smith actually passed a message to the captain that read: “Kick deep for position. Get the ball in behind them. Play the game in the French 22.”
Richie McCaw ignored them.
According to Graham Henry: “Richie thought it was a better idea to keep the ball and grind it out because he was worried that a kick would spark a strong counterattack. We couldn’t understand why our instructions were being ignored but Richie was right.”
After the game, McCaw said, “the big thing was not panicking”.
"The senior players, we talked about being in those situations over the years. Last thing we wanted to do when momentum went against us was panic.”
Don’t panic! Keep calm, widen the gap, and be your best self no matter what happens.
Billy Beane: What's the problem?
Grady Fuson: The problem is we have to replace three key players in our line-up.
Billy Beane: Nope. What's the problem?
Pittaro: Same as it's ever been. We've gotta replace these guys with what we have existing.
Billy Beane: Nope. What's the problem, Barry?
Scout Barry: We need 38 home runs, 120 RBIs and 47 doubles to replace.
Billy Beane: [imitates buzzer] Ehh! The problem we're trying to solve is that there are rich teams and there are poor teams. Then there's 50 feet of crap. And then there's us. We've got to think differently.
This scene from the Oscar-nominated baseball movie Moneyball lays bare an often overlooked truth: before you rush into devising an actionable business strategy, you first need to dig deep into what the real problem is.
In Moneyball, Billy Beane, general manager of the impoverished Oakland Athletics baseball club, has just come off a great 2001 season. But instead of victory, this perversely signals the potential demise of the club, as richer clubs asset-strip the Oakland Athletics of its star players.
Here’s the thing: Billy knows that ‘business as usual’ is not going to cut it this time. Everyone else in the room thinks they can do what they’ve always done and somehow it will work out. They are wrong. They’re defeated before they even begin. Why? Because they are basing their strategy on old or existing thinking and incorrect assumptions. Worse, they are looking at the symptoms of the problem rather than facing up to what’s really going on.
To build an effective strategy, first get to know your problem
The key to great strategy is gaining a deep understanding of the problem you face – not devising a strategy that only addresses your superficial needs. If you fail to define what the real problem is, how can you find the right strategy to resolve it? If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got – or worse.
On the flipside, if you come up with a strategy that truly addresses the deep, underlying problem, you will do more than simply solve that problem: you will gain a real competitive advantage in the market.
In simple systems where you know the facts and all the variables, you just need to do the maths and you will get better results. If you were selling something that everyone wants and no one else sells, then all you would need to do is visit people and take their orders. To get more orders, visit more people. Simple.
But the world doesn’t tend to be that simple. In the more complex systems most of us actually work in, increasing inputs doesn't necessarily result in increasing outputs. If your competitors have what you have and is out visiting the same customers that you are, your only lever is price. And that’s not a good place to be.
At the risk of over-simplifying: only with a competitive advantage can you outsell your competitors in a complex market.
Defining the problem: time to roll your sleeves up
A pessimist says the glass is half empty.
An optimist says the glass is half full.
An engineer says the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
Each of them has a valid viewpoint, but which one of them, if any, has truly defined the problem? Especially if the customer says, “Actually, I’m hungry”.
Your team will bring a range of viewpoints to the table, based on their insights and experience. And they will have conflicting ideas on the problems your organisation faces. Whittling down everyone’s input to the real nitty-gritty takes time and ingenuity. In fact, coming up with a strategy is the easy part: defining the problem is where you need to focus the most effort.
There are lots of ways to get to the real problem, that thing that if you resolved it would give you a competitive advantage. This is how we do it our company, Bobux - it’s broken into three tools that we run at the same time but independent of each other.
5 Whys, 80:20, and 3 SWOTs
First we look at a list of things that our senior management and board of directors believe are problems for Bobux, and we start asking ‘why’? These problems are generally discovered through qualitative conversations either with customers or at board meetings.
The famous ‘5 whys’ technique was developed by inventor and genius Sakichi Toyoda (founder of Toyota and sometimes called ‘the Japanese Thomas Edison’) and is a proven method for zeroing in on the root cause of the problem.
It works like this: first you must define the current situation and the most urgent problem. Then you ask: “Why is that a problem?” This is the first ‘why’. By repeating the ‘why’ question over and over, you are forced to find deeper reasons for the problem until you arrive at the root cause. It can take 5 whys or 15 to get to the nub of the matter – so you have to stick with it.
Using the Moneyball example, the apparent problem is this: the Oakland Athletics baseball club has lost three of its star players to other clubs and needs to replace these stars.
1. Why is that a problem? The loss of these three star players makes the team uncompetitive.
2. Why is that a problem? Being uncompetitive means losing games
3. Why is that a problem? Losing games means loss of funding and the club will have even less money than other clubs to buy players in the future.
4. Why is that a problem? Star players are rare and expensive.
5. Why is that a problem? Oakland Athletics can’t afford to outbid the other clubs in the league for star players so they will either lose, or must find a better way.
So the end problem that if they solved it would give them a competitive advantage becomes: “We need to find a way to win without star players”.
After digging more deeply into the problem, the team at Bobux also conducts an 80:20 analysis on what is working and what is not. The 80:20 rule also called Pareto Principle after the scientist that found it – Vilfredo Pareto. The principle states that 20% of your customers will account for 80% of your profits; and similarly that 80% of your problems will be caused by 20% of your customers.
When we do this at Bobux, we can see what products are working better than others, what systems are causing more issues, and what customers are our most profitable and least expensive to serve. This helps us to identify our ideal customers, our ideal product set, and any potential horizontal or vertical integration strategies.
The final tool is called 3 SWOTS. At Bobux we perform SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) on three groups to get a handle on our problems: on ourselves, on our top 10 global competitors, and on 10 amazing companies that we are inspired by in completely different fields (for example US eyeglasses manufacturer Warby Parker).
Then we line up our main strengths and opportunities against our competitors’ weaknesses. (This works because it's more effective to focus on building your strength than fixing your weaknesses – unless they are critical weaknesses.) We also compare ourselves with the inspirational companies and look at their competitive edge in the marketplace: is there any mapping into our industry that we could borrow?
So combining all of these tools, we have a well identified problem, an understanding of what is currently working and what is not, and a space where we have a strength that maps to a competitor or market weakness. All up, this equals a strategy that will give us a competitive advantage.
Getting closer to the real problem gets you closer to the solution
However you choose to go about it, the process of rigorously defining the problem will actually tend to point you towards a strategy that is going to solve that problem. So you’re probably more than halfway there already.
The process of developing an effective strategy is something I’ll get more into in a subsequent post, but right now let me just say this: solving a problem that doesn't give you a competitive edge is not good strategy – it’s a waste of time. Once you understand the problem, a good strategy aligns your resources, actions, and policies with solving that problem – and you will get the competitive edge.
Remember the situation in Moneyball? Billy Beane realised he couldn’t buy his way out of the problem: he had to think differently and work within his budget. This realisation led him to sabermetrics, a mathematical study of baseball statistics. (This scene in Moneyball neatly sums it all up.)
Billy Beane started using sabermetrics to select players and filled out his roster with players who actually performed consistently well, but had been undervalued by the other clubs.
He faced universal scorn but the Oakland Athletics team started winning games. During the 2002 season they won 20 games in row – a new record for the league – and went on to become the American League West champions. Billy Beane’s methods changed the game of baseball – all because he dug deep, faced up to the real problem, and used that knowledge to uncover a winning strategy.
Working with Insight Creative, I wrote lots of content for Deloitte's 2012 and 2013 graduate brochures, which aimed to attract new grads to join the firm. My role involved interviewing recent recruits and turning their answers into engaging articles and other content for print and online.
I wrote all the website content for New Zealand-based parking technology manufacturer Global Parking Solutions. Sound dull? Not so much actually. These are the chaps who invented TXT-a-Park, which was a world-first, and who also make Metro Parking Terminals, which have consistently been voted the world’s best parking machines. The website was commissioned as part of the company’s push into the US and has proved an excellent sales tool.
Working with digital agency Gladeye, I wrote a series of cheeky but useful blog posts for Cafe Direct, based around the business benefits of excellent coffee.
Most people spend about a third of their lives working (some 90,360 hours over the course of a typical lifetime) and yet employees are chronically disengaged worldwide.
A 2013 Gallup study found that only 23% of New Zealand employees were engaged at work, 62% were not engaged, and an alarming 15% were ‘actively disengaged’. That means for every motivated worker actively engaged in producing value for their organisation, there were three other workers just watching the clock.
This is bad for organisations, bad for employees, and bad for society as a whole, because all that dissatisfaction will tend to find expression somewhere, and you know it ain’t gonna be pretty. That’s why it’s vital we do everything possible to increase employee engagement, improve staff productivity in the workplace, and generally ramp up everyone’s enjoyment.
So here are 7 proven ways to start achieving these noble goals without breaking the bank:
Why not start by asking your people what they really think about their work, their office space, their co-workers, and a whole host of other important work-related matters? Employee survey software enables employees to provide anonymous feedback directly to senior management about what they like and what really jerks their chain.
Applications like SurveyMonkey, Officevibe, and Clarity Wave send out mini surveys to all your employees. They only take a few minutes to complete and the resulting data tells senior management what’s really going on inside the organisation – and even suggests possible solutions.
It’s an effective way to amp up employee engagement and productivity because it helps drive real change a lot faster than the traditional six-monthly reviews. And because it lets you see what’s going on in real time, you can nip problems in the bud and fine-tune the direction of whole teams of people, boosting their morale and retention.
Acknowledge merit, recognise victories big and small, celebrate birthdays, weddings, babies, new qualifications, buying a house – whatever important stuff is going on in your employee’s lives make it your business to know about it and hang a lantern on it.
Why? Because that’s what people who care about people do. If you want your employees to feel valued, if you want to create a real team spirit, this is a great way to do just that. All it takes is a small gift, a card, tickets to a show, or a special morning tea to make your employees feel like part of a larger family. And that’s a great way to build loyalty and staff productivity.
Recognition doesn’t have to be connected with achievement – a few words of encouragement for a staff member who is trying hard but hasn’t quite succeeded may be all that’s required to get them over the hump. Many organisations claim that their people are their biggest asset but words are cheap: your staff are much more likely to believe you if you back your words with actions.
Open-plan workspaces filled with workstations have become the default solution for most offices in the hopes that they will foster collaboration and flatten hierarchies. And while that has worked to some extent, the resulting noise and distraction is the enemy of focused attention. Not every business has the luxury of being able to redesign its floor plan or spend pots of cash on fancy interior design consultants, but there are some simple things you can do to cater for different work styles within the same space.
Installing a few glass walls can help people maintain a sense of connection and activity while cutting down on noise. You can create ‘nooks’ with funky furniture for private conversations near common areas and kitchens – so people can bump into each other, start talking, and retire to a nook for more in-depth discussion.
Private areas for phone calls, Skype meetings, and teleconferences don’t have to be separate rooms: a couple of high-backed chairs facing a window may be all that’s required. Take a poll of your people, observe what activities they’re doing day-to-day, and think creatively about how your office could be better organised to help them be more productive and happier.
Just giving your people a 15-minute expert massage at their desks can reduce their stress by a massive 85%, improve their quality of sleep, reduce headaches by 48%, lower blood pressure, reduce RSI, and increase mental clarity, according to incorporatemassage. The results are increased staff productivity, employee retention, and office morale, and reduced health problems. If you want to engage and delight your employees, and make them feel appreciated, this is a truly cost-effective way to do it.
Enabling employees more flexibility about where and when they work has been proven to positively affect employee engagement, motivation, staff productivity and satisfaction, according to the WorldatWork Survey on Workplace Flexibility 2013. Teleworking, flex time, part-time schedules, compressed workweeks, job sharing – there are many options and a flood of stats that say the more access people have to flexible work practices, the more engaged and productive they become. Of course, a corresponding shift in your company culture may be harder to implement, as managers with entrenched views may equate flexibility with a lack of commitment.
You know what they say: all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. The same could be said of teams of people. Everybody needs a bit of fun and relaxation – and if you make it possible for your people to do something together outside of work, it’s almost guaranteed to build stronger ties between workmates, greater cohesion within teams, and a happier, more motivated workforce. A barbeque, a cycle trek to a winery, or getting some of that pent-up aggression out of their system at a paintball park could be all it takes.
Water cooler conversations are OK but everyone knows where the real action is: over by the awesome new workplace coffee machine. Don’t underestimate the goodwill and staff productivity you can build up simply by saving them the cost of their daily coffee fix. Plus you’ll be saving a ton of downtime that they currently spend standing in line at the local café. You’ll reap the benefits of a more alert, more motivated, and more productive workforce.
If you’re still not convinced, check out our guide to supporting wellbeing in the workplace.
Please feel free to share this article with your managerial team. And check out more information about our range of coffee machines and supplies.
Ah, coffee. Elixir of life, stimulator of great thoughts, comforter of the weary, and … protector from the pains of this world?
Yes, you read that right. Beyond tasting good, smelling great, and making you feel like a million bucks, drinking coffee confers a host of benefits you’re probably completely unaware of.
Want to know more? Alrighty – strap in for our list of the top 14 benefits of coffee.
1. Drinking coffee makes you smarter
The caffeine in coffee helps you think better and focus more by increasing the amount of neurotransmitters in your brain that help your neurons get all fired up. You know the expression ‘firing on all cylinders’? That’s what we’re talking about.
2. Drinking coffee makes you feel happier
Studies show a 20% lower risk of depression in regular coffee drinkers and a 53% lower risk of committing suicide. It’s sunshine in a cup.
3. Drinking coffee sharpens you up
No surprises here. Lots of studies confirm that coffee increases your energy level and improves vigilance, reaction times, alertness, and a bunch of other desirables.
4. Drinking coffee makes you more gorgeous
Caffeine reduces swelling so it combats puffy eyes and gives you smoother skin. You can even apply coffee bean oils directly to your skin to make it extra silky – and if you want to surround yourself with that moreish coffee aroma. Mmmmm-mmmmmm!
5. Drinking coffee makes you sportier
Coffee stimulates the release of adrenaline into your bloodstream, which readies your body to either stand and fight that rapidly approaching sabre-toothed tiger or run like the wind. It can actually improve your physical performance by up to 12%.
6. Drinking coffee makes you more relaxed
Sounds counterintuitive, right? It’s true that coffee gives you energy and wakes you up, but it also has stress-relieving effects according to some studies – even if you simply smell the beans. And who doesn’t love the smell of coffee?
7. Coffee contains massive amount of antioxidants
Antioxidants are our friends. They protect our bodies against damage caused by free radicals. Drinking coffee may contribute up to 79% of our daily antioxidant needs – more than we get from fruits and vegetables.
8. Coffee is full of nutrients
We kid you not: coffee contains vital stuff your body really needs like riboflavin, pantothenic acid, manganese, potassium, magnesium, and niacin. So drink up – it’s good for you.
9. Drinking coffee helps you burn fat
Caffeine can boost your metabolism by up to 10% so your body burns fat faster. It makes your fat cells break down body fat and release it into your bloodstream so your body can use it as fuel. Thanks coffee – you rock!
10. Drinking coffee makes your workout a breeze
An experimental study has found that drinking coffee before exercising helps people go harder at the gym – completing 38% more reps on average.
11. Drinking coffee can improve your memory
Some studies suggest that so long as you remember to regularly drink coffee, you’ll keep remembering a bunch of other stuff too.
12. Drinking coffee helps control pain
Headache? Have a strong cup of coffee with your ibuprofen. Studies show that taking caffeine with painkillers makes them substantially more effective.
13. Drinking coffee gives you better erections
Listen up, men! Coffee has properties similar to Viagra, according to a recent study, increasing the blood flow to your penis and helping to ‘stiffen your resolve’, so to speak.
14. Drinking coffee can cure constipation
A good strong coffee can stimulate the muscles in your digestive system to contract, helping nature to take its course. Oh the relief!
So there you have it: drinking coffee makes you smarter, better, stronger, faster and you owe it to yourself to have a delicious espresso right now. The only question remains – what’s the best way to make it?
For some helpful answers to that very question, find out more about our coffee machines, and even get a free quote.
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