 Hi, I’m Andrew Horder!
A Busy Fool, running about like a headless chicken, desperately trying to please everyone who asked me to do anything. A Busy Fool, petrified to turn down any work that came my way, regardless of whether I’d enjoy it – in case nothing else came along. A Busy Fool trying to grasp every single opportunity that passed through my radar, and never quite having the time to do any of them well. A Busy Fool, spinning my wheels and wondering why I could never seem to get any traction. That’s all changed for me now – read on to see how it can change for you too |
The Busy Fool Newsletter – Edition 1 So, why are you getting this newsletter? You probably don’t remember signing up for it – you will have signed up for either the Opportunity Matrix or the KAMpro (Key Account Management Process Review) newsletters. I realised a while back that they are both aspects of the same thing – Opportunity Management – so now I’ve combined both newsletters into one, that covers all aspects of making the most of your best opportunities, whether that’s your best ideas or your best customers. I’m sure you’ll find it useful, and if at any time you no longer want to receive it, each issue will have an “unsubscribe” link at the bottom. The newsletters will come out each month, and each newsletter will contain articles, tips and tools to help you to get focussed on the opportunities, ideas or customers that will best get you where you want to go. That will range from prioritisation tools to articles on how to maintain focus in a world that is constantly changing and rapidly becoming unfamiliar. And they will contain recommendations for things you can personally use to stay ahead of the game. If you come across any ideas you find useful, I’d be delighted to include them – just submit the details to newsletter@thebusyfool.com – anything I use will get a free 3-month subscription to the Opportunity Matrix online prioritisation tool. |
In this Newsletter:
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FOCUS: ENTREPRENEURS: KEY ACCOUNT MGMT: TIME MANAGEMENT TIP: |
To celebrate the launch of The Busy Fool newsletter, I’m offering a special deal on the Opportunity Matrix online tool. Anyone who signs up for a year’s access to the tool will get the full twelve month’s access for just £47 – that’s less than half the normal price! All I ask in return is that you write me a great testimonial of how Opportunity Matrix has propelled you forward in your career, your business or your life. And for the first 3227 people who sign up, I’ll throw in a FREE book – not one of those 15-page e-books (you get one of those too), a quality 300+ page hardcover copy of the Institute of Directors accredited “The Growing Business Handbook”, worth £25. So you can read my chapter in it on the importance of focussing on the right opportunities for you, as well as more than 60 other chapters on all the things a growing business will want to know. And I won’t charge you postage either, not even a pound for charity, I can’t be fairer than that, can I? For those who don’t act quickly enough to get one of the physical books (there are only 3227 free books available), there’s the online version that I’ll make available for free (hmmm – online book that needs internet access, or real physical book you can scribble pencil notes all over – I *know* which I’d prefer!) So to get your copy, just go to the website and sign up – and remember, you get a full year for the price of just 6 months. |
| FOCUS: Value or Values? What makes an opportunity attractive to us? Have you ever wondered what it is that makes one opportunity more attractive to you than another? For most people, that’s driven by their values – the things in life you consider to be really important. So if your answer to “what makes an opportunity attractive to you?” was “Money, of course!!!”, that gives us a pretty clear indication that money or reward features strongly in your values. Or maybe you answered “Challenge!” – that would suggest that achievement or winning might be an important value for you. The important thing to realise is that it’s not only about the money – there are other values in play. And they are different for each of us, so it’s important that if you work in a team, the team has similar values. Maybe, like me, you’ve found yourself working in a team that’s doing very well, yet you don’t feel satisfied, while other members of the team are over the moon about the team’s success? Very often, that’s the result of a values conflict, and it can be very destructive – we can overcome our core values for a while, but in time our performance will drop if our work isn’t aligned with our values. Here’s an exercise to help you work out your values. It’s best done in the context of a specific area of your life – such as work, health or relationships. Sit quietly with a pen and paper, perhaps with some relaxing music playing, and ask yourself “What’s important to me in the context of ………?” You’re looking for single words, or maybe two or three word phrases. Start to write down all the things that come to you – don’t judge them, don’t qualify them, don’t criticise them, and certainly don’t reject them – they’re what matters to you, no-one else. After a while, you’ll come to a point where you think you’ve got everything there is – a blank spot where there’s nothing more to come. Here’s the hard part: you need to push through two such blank spots – you’ll almost certainly find other values you’d forgotten on the other side of the blank, often your deepest values that are so much a part of you that you don’t think of them consciously. There’s no magic number of values – some people have dozens, others just half a dozen or so. Often, those with the strongest values have the fewest. There’s no right or wrong, just what’s right for you. So how can knowing your values help you not to be a busy fool? Simply keep them in mind, and use your values as your compass in life. When faced with a choice, ask yourself, which of these opportunities has the best fit with my values – and (other things being equal) focus your efforts on that one. I can’t think of a better way to get focussed than to spend your time pursuing the things that really matter to you. If you’d like to explore your values some more, and a lot of other things around mindset that could help you do better at making the most of your best opportunities, I’d highly recommend attending Christopher Howard’s “Breakthrough to Success” weekend – you can get free tickets here (yes, it is an affiliate link, and no, that’s not why I recommend it – I crew at these seminars, for peanuts, because I really believe in its value – and of course, it’s great fun!) ENTREPRENEURS: One of important principles I adopt in business to make the most of my time, effort, money & resources is to match risk and reward. I see a lot of people who are not really suited to starting a new business from scratch who get hung up on the idea of being an “entrepreneur”. But what is an entrepreneur, really? The word entrepreneur is borrowed from the French, and essentially means someone who undertakes a business. Does that mean that anyone who starts a new business is an entrepreneur? In this interpretation, the ex-corporate CEO who raises funding and starts up a manufacturing business with a factory and dozens of employees is an entrepreneur. So is the worker who uses her redundancy to buy a retail franchise. So is the guy who takes his redundancy and sets up as a painter and decorator. And so is the senior executive who sets up as a consultant. Is any one of those more of an entrepreneur than the others? One of the prime distinctions of an entrepreneur is the willingness to take responsibility for the risks of the business. Each of our examples above is taking on one type of risk – the risk that they won’t get enough business. The ex-CEO is also risking that he won’t be able to organise the business efficiently, and that he won’t be able to create a demand for his products. And he’s taking on the responsibility for his staff. While the franchise owner’s not risking a totally new set-up, she is taking on the risk that her revenue won’t cover the regular franchise fee. The painter and decorator may be following an established trade, but he still takes on the additional risk of investing in the tools of his trade and a vehicle, and that he might spill paint on a client’s carpet. And the consultant … erm, what risk does the consultant take, really? If entrepreneurialism is defined by a willingness to take risks, how much of an entrepreneur are you, really? And is it important that you’re an entrepreneur, or is it more important that you take on an appropriate level of risk for your particular circumstances. A single person with no mortgage or dependants is in a far better position to take a punt on a brand new start-up than someone with young children and a big mortgage. The latter would probably be better off with an established franchise, where they don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Or even as a consultant. So it’s essential to match your opportunities to your circumstances, and focus on those that are truly possible – for you. I’m sure you’re thinking, I’m a fine one to ask about entrepreneurialism, as a nice safe consultant/analyst – and I’d agree with you. I don’t think I would call myself an entrepreneur – not in my main business, at least. Though I am also working on a real start-up business that has real risk (and a real opportunity to create both value and jobs) so maybe I am an entrepreneur after all! KEY ACCOUNT MGMT: You’ve probably read the report* I co-authored with Richard White (The Accidental Salesman), where we concluded that key accounts are defined not just by turnover, or even profit. I believe that any company’s real key accounts are those that contribute most to where they want to go. An example I frequently use is an innovative alarms company, who had the largest DIY retailer in the market as their “No1 Key Account”. Except that the retailer had a clear policy of not being first to market with innovations – their strategy was clear, they were a fast follower. So for the alarms company to put all their efforts into this retailer wasn’t taking them where they wanted to go – into making the most of their innovation opportunities. Now, it’s all very well in theory to say that your biggest client may not be your best account – but try telling that to the CFO, or the bank manager! So how do we get around the dilemma of accounts that provide significant revenue and profit, but take us away from the company’s strategic objectives? The Account Category Evaluation (ACE) spreadsheet (and Prof Malcolm McDonald’s “Key Account Selection Matrix” that it’s based on) give you a way to look at all of your accounts, and understand how they interact – both in the market and in your P&L – to support your goals. In the example of the alarms company, the big retailer wasn’t especially attractive from a strategic perspective, but they were from a volume and revenue angle. Understanding that, and focussing our efforts with them on stability and efficiency, allowed us to get the most from our relationship with them, and to allocate the right amount of the right kind of resource. Far from pulling away from them, as one might expect from the conclusion that they weren’t supportive of our innovation, we were able to refocus the resources we had allocated to them. With a supply chain process expert on the case we were able reduce our stock and expediting costs, while simultaneously satisfying their service and stock availability requirements. In most cases, the clients you think are your Key Accounts, are your Key Accounts. But without a robust and effective way of understanding how they contribute to your business – and how your operation adds value to theirs, you can’t realistically expect to make the most of the opportunity they present. * Report available here : TIME MANAGEMENT TIP: “This is top priority, rush job, need it right now!” How often do we hear that in our working lives? And we jump to it, dropping all the other work on our desks, to get the rush job out in time. And then find that one of the things we dropped has become the new rush job, “Come on, that’s urgent, I can’t believe you’ve not done it yet, you’ve had it ages!” Even if the person who declared the first job to be max priority had the right to do so – maybe a boss, or a major client – by accepting their definition of priority, you’ve ended up looking bad to the owner of the other job. After all, they gave you a reasonable time to complete the task, and you blew it! Oh well, maybe they’ll understand that something else was higher priority. Probably not – all they’re interested in is that they’ve been let down. And of course, there’s always the possibility that the same person owns both jobs. So that’s alright then – they’ll understand, won’t they? About the late job. They’ll remember why you couldn’t get it done, despite all the notice they gave you. After all they have full knowledge (and recollection) of your workload, don’t they? Hmmm … So how can you avoid such a situation, how can you retain control of your own time? The first thing is to remember that other people’s priorities don’t have to be yours. And the second is to understand how others define and set their priorities. That way, you’ll be in a much better position to judge which job is the real priority. For example, if one of the job owners is always demanding jobs get done right now and then sitting on the finished work for a bit, you can always ask when they need to actually deliver it to their client / boss / whatever. Or if another only ever asks for a rush job when it really needs to be delivered that day, you know you’ll need to get on with it. Another key part of taking back control of your time is to educate your colleagues, bosses and clients in the art of timely instruction. There will always be times when things go awry, but most of the time it should be quite possible for people to give sufficient notice of jobs, so they don’t need to become rush jobs in the first place. So if you get regular rush jobs from the same person, maybe it’s time to educate them. You don’t always have to accept the priorities that others put on their jobs. And maybe by imposing your own priorities from time to time, you can help persistent ‘rush-jobbers’ to learn to prioritise their own work better - and take back control of your time. And finally … I hope you’ve enjoyed this first edition of The Busy Fool newsletter, and also found some of the tips useful. As not all readers will have seen all the various free items – you each came here from a number of different places – below are links from which you can download any of them. Each will ask you for your details – don’t worry, I won’t send you duplicate e-mails, I just need to know which items people find most useful (so any feedback would be great, too). I hope you find them useful. In the meantime, any comments or suggestions about the newsletter you have will be most welcome.
Free resources:
Time Allocator™ is a free tool from the providers of OPPORTUNITY MATRIX™ Most of us are faced each day with decisions about what to spend our time on – there just aren’t enough days in the month to do everything we want to do. But how do we decide how much time to dedicate to each thing we could do? Just by entering a few details, Time Allocator™ can show you how many days each activity should get. Click on the image above to get your own copy.
IDEA ASSESSOR: to assess which of your ideas is best for you using our unique Idea Assessor™, click on the image above. A few simple entries will give you your answer.
VALUES ELICITATION: click on the image to get an mp3 version of the Values exercise described above.
ACCOUNT CATEGORY EVALUATION (ACE): click on the image to get trial version of the ACE spreadsheet mentionned in the Key Accounts article above. |
