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Lindsay’s In Business: PART 50: All change
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What happens when you realise your path is entrepreneurship rather than employment? Lindsay takes up the challenge and shares an account of her journey as it unfolds…
Just on my way back from a one week trip to London – wow. It seems like everything is changing so fast!
Great response from a conference on Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday morning’s intro meeting with a Strategy Implementation consultancy was very positive. My new Director was able to join – I think it really gave him some confidence. The next steps agreed were:
- let’s run a Quick Scan with his team
- let’s produce a one-pager to share with a current client.
On Thursday, the leader of the conference I’d attended on Monday (who also runs a consultancy) got in contact to say he’d approached one of his clients who is potentially interested in running Mirror Mirror across multiple teams.
Both consultancies were talking about delivering the whole customer facing process themselves. This means we would effectively then just ‘license’ the use of Mirror Mirror. Taking on that business model – to sell licenses and mainly, or fully, work with consultancies to deliver – has a number of refreshing advantages. It isn’t a million miles from the way we’d been thinking before, but if we move away from being consultants ourselves and can scale up that way, it makes our job much more focused, lean, and simple.
Then to top it all off, Friday, a Head of Comms in an international European organization sent me a meeting request. That wasn’t unexpected, but it felt new. Normally I’m the one doing the polite chasing – but here we are – I’m being chased! It felt like we were on a whole new flow.
But back to the license-sales model. Thinking more on that, immediately, 2 new priorities go straight to the top:
- We need to train the trainer – to get that design and content ready – not too difficult.
- We need to upgrade our software – the black box that could now be our main revenue stream – needs to upgrade. That’s a major cost and I’ve got some ideas about the funding for that.
Now, instead of losing sleep because I’m worried about the future of the business, I’m losing sleep because my mind is whirring with excitement about the future of the business!
And new challenges come up with every new era. With two new team members joining, how to strike a deal with them that balances an offer of ownership / revenue shares with what they will provide in return, and that is also fair to the two of us who have already been working at this for 2 years. Tricky stuff. The answer isn’t obvious and I discuss it 1-1 with each team member.
With the new wave of confidence being generated by all of this good news, I pick up hints of guardedness among what the other three may be ok with in a new configuration of arrangements that I haven’t felt before in the business. I realise that I’m feeling nervous about handling this issue properly. I’m not great with interpersonal conflict and fear this topic may jeopardise the goodwill and harmony we need to move forward as a team of four.
But I have to pick myself up and get out of fear-mode. I can’t solve this immediately and there must be a good solution at hand. Relax – this is inevitable. My goal is to be transparent with all four of us so that we understand and are happy with the various arrangements among us. The skill now is to mediate towards that understanding and come up with something that has been properly thought through instead of acting impulsively.
Then it crosses my mind that maybe I am being completely naïve – maybe it won’t be possible to find a win-win for all. Was transparency a mistake here? I hadn’t even considered NOT being transparent because the values of the business are grounded in openness, respect, and inclusivity.
But I’ll press on with finding a solution that fits. I don’t want to lose anyone and I want those values to be real.
Mirror Mirroris a proprietary organizational effectiveness process. It is the quickest and most cost-efficient way to accelerate shared understanding and ownership within teams as a means of improving strategy implementation.
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Lindsay’s In Business: PART 49: Status today
What happens when you realise your path is entrepreneurship rather than employment? Lindsay takes up the challenge and shares an account of her journey as it unfolds…Down to brass tacks. What’s the status as at June 2018?
- It’s been 21 months since I registered Mirror Mirror as a business and got started.
- It’s been 18 months since Mirror Mirror went to market.
- Countless contacts have been approached.
- 3 excellent case studies have been completed.
- I dedicated Masters’ thesis (University internship) is nearly complete.
- I’ve written lots of articles and blogs, done 3 speaking events, and presented 1 webinar.
- I have now 3 fantastic people are on the core driving team.
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Lindsay’s In Business: PART 48: More epiphanies and hot developments
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What happens when you realise your path is entrepreneurship rather than employment? Lindsay takes up the challenge and shares an account of her journey as it unfolds…
I’m just going to list all of the amazing developments that have happened in the past week – it seems like so much!!
A guy I used to work with – very senior, very credible, very well-connected and an EXCELLENT leader – has taken an interest in a role with Mirror Mirror. He loves the idea and wants to get involved in a start-up – I’m so flattered! We had a one-day workshop and talked through a load of stuff: he’ll get involved in providing advice, sales prep & activity, commercial housekeeping, and business development. That’s so massive. He will change the game here. Our workshop was so inspiring and much of the list items below came out of the discussion I had with him. Let’s call him my Director.
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Lindsay’s In Business: PART 46: Another mountain range
What happens when you realise your path is entrepreneurship rather than employment? Lindsay takes up the challenge and shares an account of her journey as it unfolds…
I can NOT believe that just the second you think you’ve scaled the mountain and can relax at the top, you look over the ridge only to see yet ANOTHER, higher mountain top to climb. And you know that the higher you go, the better it will be, so the feelings are a mixed sense of incredulity, exasperation, and energy to take on a fresher challenge.
I’ve just been to London again – it always pays to meet up with experts, people in related fields. I get something out of every meeting and this time I met with people with experience in learning, HR, philosophy, and leadership. Referrals, people I used to work with, people I met at conferences…
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LEARNING TO DELEGATE
As women, we are not naturals at delegating – while often men are.
Maybe it is due to our genes, hormones or just our ability to multi-task, but for most of us it is easy to go into overdrive. We tend to slip into the responsibility mode all too easy.
And still we tend to think that “delegating” equals asking for help because we are not able to do something, when for most men it means a sign of leadership.
Most of us, still feel this need to show that we are able to do everything ourselves to avoid being perceived as weak.
Our lives might be so much easier and less stressed if we could let take someone else take some of the burden.
Sharing tasks allows you to focus on the things that you need and want to do, rather than extra work that just needs to get done.
Delegating to others is not only helpful, it’s crucial to your success. As you advance in your career and begin taking on larger and larger projects, you won’t be able to juggle all of your responsibilities and keep up with a high standard of work, too.
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The power of TRUST – trust in the workplace.
By: Angie Falls
While reflecting on the day during the weekend I could not help myself to pick up my mobile phone and check the office mail. The first glimpse was an email from my new manager. She turned out to be a micromanager who can’t function without being part of everything on a very detailed level. It is so exhausting and it drains all my energy.
I wondered why this was the case. What could I do to make it a more agreeable situation and work relation? I feel that one of the most important things a manager can do is to trust team members.
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Lindsay’s In Business: PART 44: We’re only human after all
What happens when you realise your path is entrepreneurship rather than employment? Lindsay takes up the challenge and shares an account of her journey as it unfolds…
It’s 8pm and I’m at Copenhagen airport waiting for my flight back to The Netherlands. For the past two days, I’ve been at a communications conference in an amazing old University building. All considered, it was a worthwhile experience. I presented at my best on the first morning – “What is Social Alignment and How It Links to Performance”. Today I got two solid leads. Very pleased.
The other presenters talked about communicating in change, about how to facilitate a virtual group, about psychology, and about all sorts of other stuff. I find the stuff about how humans work most interesting. Apparently, the average person makes around 35,000 decisions every day. Great stat! (Trying to find out where it came from). And I really liked a guy called Antoni Lacinai – great speaker – who argues that the analogue world is more important than the digital world. His piece included this (paraphrased):
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Lindsay’s In Business: PART 43: On values
What happens when you realise your path is entrepreneurship rather than employment? Lindsay takes up the challenge and shares an account of her journey as it unfolds…
For a long time, I’ve had my doubts about ‘values’.
- In terms of behaviours, don’t people use different values under different circumstances?
- How can an organization say they want people to ‘take on’ certain values when we all have our own?
- How do values relate to personality?
I was interested in this because of the design of Mirror Mirror. Was I missing something?
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Self-Reflection my greatest asset
By: Angie Falls
Just the other day I came across an article about Winston Churchill. The part that stuck with me;
Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never — in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.” —Winston Churchill
The focus was on Winston Churchill being stubborn and determined.
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