Images_Digital_Edition_March_2020

www.images-magazine.com 42 images MARCH 2020 BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Marshall Atkinson is a production and efficiency expert for the decorated apparel industry, and the owner of Atkinson Consulting and co-founder of Shirt Lab, a sales and marketing education company, with Tom Rauen. He focuses on operational efficiency, continuous improvement, workflow strategy, business planning, employee motivation, management and sustainability. www.atkinsontshirt.com you for your permission to do the next thing? Great company culture is 100% about who you let on your team. Are you fielding a team of superstars that work in concert together with teamwork? Or are you staffing with a bunch of finger- pointing excuse-makers? Maybe a mix of both? For culture, when you talk all the time about execution and performance it is more than likely to happen. If you never discuss it or don’t champion it, you’ll find your results will be lacking. In his book The Excellence Dividend , Tom Peters cites the McKinsey 7 S model to define culture: strategy, structure, systems, style, skills, staff, and shared value. In your shop, how would you rate those seven Ss on a scale of 0 to 10? As a business owner, it is your job to ensure that your culture is the best that you can build. This is what is going to give you a competitive edge. Your challenge: Build a better culture American humorist and entertainer Will Rogers once said, “Never miss a good chance to shut up.” Spend time with your employees. What are their problems? How do they see the future? What are their ideas? Remember, if you ask a question and don’t ask two or three follow-up questions, then you weren’t really listening. Your customers will never be any happier than your employees. Your aim is for your company to be the best place to work. Remember, “a fish rots from the head”. The culture of your company is a reflection of you. Are you focusing on how or on who? Earlier in this article, I wrote about how managing your time is crucial to your success. For this point, I want to add something to it. The difference between working on how or who. ‘How’ is simply a statement on “How are we going to solve that problem?” or “How are we going to do something?”. These are the steps that you should take to accomplish something. For example, the production schedule isn’t functioning correctly and you are backed up by at least four business days. “How are we going to get caught up?” ‘Who’ is something completely different. ‘Who’ points to the champion that you can align yourself with to solve that ‘How’. In our example, the production schedule doesn’t work. “Who can you bring in to build a better process so the schedule is on time and correct on a consistent and predictable basis?” Why be backed up in the first place? As a business owner, your job is to think outside of the company and realise that there are people, products, equipment and education available to you that can help you master your business. ‘Who’ is the connection that can streamline those processes. The right ‘Who’ solves the ‘How’. Your challenge: Networking It’s easy to sit in your office bubble and think you know everything. The fact is that this industry has too many variables and problems. If anybody tells you they know everything, they are full of it. We are all on our journey of learning, and someone out there has the exact answer for what is plaguing your business. Your job is to discover the ‘Who’ that can help you best. This is where networking opportunities at trade shows, industry events, social media groups and meet-ups can save the day. Get out and meet people. Introduce yourself. Ask questions. Remember, your best friend is only a handshake away. Feeding your owner’s brain What is a sign of intelligence? Being able to change your mind. Understanding that you don’t know everything and, because of that, craving new information is a hunger. I personally like to read books. I’ve written about that before, but I also know that it isn’t everyone’s style. Podcasts are great. Videos too. But nothing will feed your brain more than setting up a stretch goal and with the help of your team, building a plan to achieve it. This is how practical knowledge is gained. But it’s scary, as it involves real work and more than likely a good dose of failure. That failure is where education starts. Thomas Edison once said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” This is how you learn to cater to a new market in your area. Add a new decoration technique to your offerings. Use a new product. Hire a salesperson. Learn to delegate responsibility. Build an employee-training programme. Redesign your website and include voice search capabilities. Set your direction and go. Learn how to do it. Your challenge: Get out of your own way It’s hard to admit that we aren’t the experts we pretend to be… especially if there has been a record of years of success. A lot of business owners get to a certain level of achievement and then they plateau. You know what I’m talking about as you know these people too. Forward progress stops. But it doesn’t have to be that way. If your business owner’s brain is focused on developing ‘new’ six to eight weeks ahead of the date on the calendar, what initiatives could you start? What could you learn? Right now. Today. If you invested 30 minutes a week into learning something new, exploring a different way of doing something, or creating a new business channel, what would the pay-off look like two months from now? Would you have traction into something good? Maybe some in-roads with a new partner or customer? What new product would you be able to bring to your market? Simply pushing the same orders through your system might not be enough: complacency equals irrelevance.