The following articles by Paul Winans appeared in Professional Remodeler Magazine and have relevance for all small service businesses.
Tomorrow Will Come
In my work as a consultant to remodelers I am hearing from clients about the challenges they are facing. A downturn looks different in each person’s world. A signed job (or two or three) is canceled. Permitting obstacles delay or prevent a project from starting. Pricing pressures tempt or force the reduction or absence of profit, as work is needed simply to cover overhead. And so on.
It is worth noting that there are remodelers who have work and are doing more than well. Why? To some extent the answer to this question is the same for both situations, both good and not so good. For most remodeling companies, getting the job or not getting the job makes a huge difference. If your company does twenty jobs a year and you don’t get 5 in a row that can be devastating. On the other hand, if your company gets an unusually large job the business can be carried for several months until more sales occur. In doesn’t take a lot to make a big difference, one way or the other.
So what can you do?
Consider all possibilities
In general, people tend to get wrapped up in the way things are. The thing is that is just the starting point. Take some time for yourself to reflect on what you would do if…. Many of us never think about such things. We just work a little harder and a little longer thinking it might make the difference.
In the meantime we are miserable, finding very little satisfaction with anything.
Break the patterns and do something different. A client loves to fish but had a hard time finding the time to do so, particularly with the down market he is in. He realized he could take a great client fishing, building the relationship that will translate into more business and referrals, while doing what he loves. What is the equivalent for you?
Live in the present being pulled forward by the future
It is very hard to get up every day and go to work when yesterday was not as successful as you wanted it to be. More of the same old, same old, with likely the same results being realized.
That mindset can cripple your business. You set the tone for your entire company. If you are in sales it is imperative to be focused in a positive way on your future, not being anchored by a yesterday you wished you never experienced. How can you do that without being a wishful thinker?
A client was experiencing real hurdles with his team. They just were not performing the way he thought they could. At the same time, he was not clear about his own goals, the life he wanted for his own life and for his family.
Sales were down. This was before the downturn. Getting people to commit was impossible.
He started getting clear about the life he wanted. He began by doing some simple exercises that got out of his head thoughts that were in there but to which he was not paying much attention. The resulting clarity changed his expectations of his people so that all in the company feel more successful. Clients are signing contracts and the company has work, even when many other companies don’t.
I am not saying it is magic and it works in all cases. I do think that being clear about the point makes you more effective in all areas of your life, not just in business.
Tomorrow will come
For many of us our work is how we define ourselves. After all, we spend most of our working life at work.
Running a small business is very hard, even in the best of times. It does not take much to make it close to impossible to succeed.
I remember in the early 90’s living through a set of circumstances that felt like a perfect storm. Dealing with several difficult remodeling clients, the prospect of no upcoming work in the foreseeable future, and new challenges coming every day: when was it going to end? I was doing everything I could think of and nothing seemed to be working.
I found that stepping away, in even little ways, made a big difference. Carving out some time for me to stop being a remodeler and be a person made me able to be more effective doing what the business needed me to do. For me it was taking walks, reading, spending time with my wife and children, and taking inexpensive short vacations.
You are not your business. Things will get better. What do you want your tomorrow to be? Craft a vision that will pull you forward. And start living it today.
Remember going to the playground when you were young and riding the see-saw? Some people call it the teeter-totter. Little more than a board centered on a fulcrum, you and a friend would get on each end, alternately pushing one another up and down. After doing that for a while (sometimes trying to move the see-saw so violently that you would knock your partner off!) you might work with the person on the other end to try to get the see-saw balanced, so nobody’s feet were touching the ground. This took a little more work than simply pushing up and down, and you and your playmate had to work together to make it happen. I mention the see-saw because the way we played with that is a lot like how we approach trying to create work-life balance in our lives as adults. It IS possible to create it, though not without investing effort that is often counter-intuitive for motivated people. Why bother creating such a balance in your life? My wife, Nina, and I went to a wedding recently. The bride was the daughter of dear friends we met 33 years ago. We knew them before their daughter (the bride) was born. Now we were watching her get married. Sitting in the chapel I couldn’t help but reflect on where did all the time go? How did she get to be such a beautiful young woman, no longer the young child who once played with our children? I was grateful for the choices I had made which allowed me to see much of the growing up their children and our children did in all those years. At the same time, there were times when I was too consumed with work. So much so that I was not able to appreciate how ephemeral so much of what I took for granted as being permanent truly was. My see-saw got out of balance pretty regularly. My experience of being alive for all these years so far is that each year makes it easier to understand how important it is to get the board level. Yes, there will always be that tension between work and life on either ends of the see-saw. Those choices about what to pay attention to are your life in the long run. How to make it happen in your world? Simply put, take a long term perspective when trying to decide what to do today. What does that mean in real practical terms? Consider this: When you are lying in your death bed what will you be reflecting on? Probably not that you wish you could have worked more hours and days! Rather, you will likely be thinking about the relationships and memories you helped sustain and create. Try keeping that in mind when the board is being pushed down by the weight of work and all its attendant obligations. Put into your planner all those things which will help keep you healthy and keep you connected to family and friends. THEN fit in the remaining space your work. This looks like a simple thing to do and I know that it is not. Remember how you had to work with your friend to get the board balanced and that it took more work than simply pounding your side of the board up and down? Your life is as balanced as you take responsibility for making it be. There is no right way or wrong way to live your life. Do keep in mind what you want to be reflecting on when watching people who used to be your age going through one of life’s wonderful transitions. That is all up to you. What’s Next? I want to share with you some thoughts about what you can do to take “interesting times” and work in them without being destroyed by them. My perspective is a product of having run a remodeling company for 29 years and having worked with 100’s of remodeling contractors as a meeting facilitator and consultant for the last 9 years. I also do a fair amount of reading of newspapers, periodicals and books as I try to find different ways of seeing the world. What can you be responsible for? As remodelers we are very focused on results. After all, results are the reason why clients pay your company. Clients don’t buy process. In these times it is very easy to get frustrated and depressed because the processes and actions that you have been taking for several years are not producing the same results. You cannot be responsible for results not occurring. I can’t stress that enough. Results are beyond your control. You can only be responsible for what you decide to do, what processes and actions you decide to take. And for doing what you think will be effective when you say you are going to do it. The big challenge AND opportunity these interesting times give you is to examine thoroughly what you have been doing and to decide what you are going to do differently, with an eye towards what might be more likely to produce the results you want. And I am serious that you regard this as an opportunity and not a curse. The only thing you can change is your attitude! Marketing is a good example. Many remodelers spent money on different strategies that “worked” in the recent past. By “worked” I think that means that work was coming in and sales were being made. The question of whether or not the strategies were producing the work did not get asked as much or as often as it should have been. When sales are happening who cares that much anyway? Now the money to invest in the typical marketing strategies and their true effectiveness is becoming apparent. Your choice is to keep on doing the same thing or to consider some new strategies that are likely to be more effective and cost less to implement. You have already probably read about the power of face-to-face marketing. It is inexpensive and very good at creating relationships. Calling past clients, taking people to lunch, learning about them and simply letting them know you are interested in them is very powerful. People buy from you if you have invested in creating a relationship with them. I believe it is less important what you can do for them then how a potential client feels about you. But you are uncomfortable interacting with people, the whole idea of networking drives you nuts, and you would rather keep on doing what you were doing to generate business. Okay, then be prepared to live with the same results! Be the person you WANT to be, not the person you can get away with being Now that what you decide to do is so important it is imperative that you do what you really want to, not what comes easiest. As a leader you are always sending messages to those you work with and for. What is the message you are sending? Are you doing what you say or doing what will simply get you by for now? The strong will survive is a saying that can be applied to these times. I think that the truth might be better put. The people who are disciplined will survive. Doing what you know needs to be done, and doing it over and over will be the keys to success in 2009. If you decide a strategy is worth doing then calendar when it will be done. When engaged in the strategy be 100% present. Track the results. If it is effective keep on doing it. If it is not, then come up with some different strategies. We are what we do, not what we say. In interesting times that is so important to keep in mind. Perspective is key to success You will be challenged in the coming days, weeks and months. Embrace that fact, don’t bemoan it. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. A powerful saying is “You can’t stop the waves but you can learn to surf”. Never surfed before? In these interesting times it is time to learn! Many of us tend to get swept up in the immediate and obvious, not necessarily what is most important in the long run. As a small business owner, it feels natural to be responding to clients’ needs and concerns, dealing with the employee’s truck that is broken today, and helping the trade contractor get that critical needed item so his work can proceed. These are all important matters that merit the serious attention of the company. However, if all the attention of the company is focused on this un-ending flow of important and short-term concerns it is very likely that serious challenges will not be anticipated. The trick is to focus on both the present and the future, without excluding one or the other. That is the only way to truly see the big picture. SWOT is an acronym that stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. By doing a Situational Analysis (otherwise known as a SWOT Analysis) it is possible to look ahead, as a company, to see what needs to be seen before the company is operating in an environment in which it cannot succeed. This is an exercise best done with most, if not all, of those who work in the company. It is surprising what can be learned from a carpenter’s helper about these different categories, as such people are often the ones who have the most realistic view of what kind of experience the company is actually providing to clients. If at all possible it is most effective to do this download with the assistance of a facilitator. When the business owner takes the role of facilitator in this exercise it is normal that the openness of the attendees is diminished. Simply by body language responses, if nothing else, the owner sends messages approving or disapproving of what he is hearing. Okay, so all those who work in the company are gathered and there is a professional facilitator running the meeting. What is first asked of the attendees is what are the Strengths of the company. Wikipedia defines Strengths as attributes of the organization that are helpful to achieving the objective. We do not spend enough time celebrating what we do right. This is a good starting point for this exercise. It is also an opportunity for attendees to acknowledge the good things that co-workers do on behalf of the company. The powerful thing about Strengths is we can decide to focus on how we can do more of what we know really works and is effective. Sometimes, simply stopping and noticing can make a big difference from that point forward. If this works so well in this situation why don’t we do it more often? Weaknesses of the company are often stored up in co-workers’ heads. Why do we handle this need in this manner as opposed to a different way when we know the way we do it is not as effective as anyone wants it to be? Wikipedia defines Weaknesses as attributes of the organization that are harmful to achieving the objective. This is an extremely important area to explore thoroughly. The insights generated are critical in helping to decide what the company is going to stop doing regarding its operations. Wikipedia defines Opportunities as external conditions that are helpful to achieving the objective. Working together the members of the company talk about do they see in the marketplace that the company could exploit to achieve even more success. This will involve a little stretching, as Opportunities don’t always seem that obvious. What do we do really well for our clients and how could we find more clients to do this for, is an example of the kind of questions that are worth considering. Finally, it is time to focus on Threats. Wikipedia defines Threats as external conditions which could do damage to the business's performance. What is happening with market conditions that could be a challenge for the company? Who are our competitors and how healthy are their businesses? And so on. A thorough examination of Threats makes it less likely that the company will be blindsided by something that could have been anticipated, if the time was taken to think about what could go wrong before it happens. The SWOT Analysis has really galvanized the company! It has been a wonderful day. The hard work of setting current concerns aside and looking to the future has really paid off with a more focused group of people, all attuned to what is and, more importantly, what could be. It is the beginning of the year. Once again, on your list of to-dos is “Business plan”. You are stuck, as you have been in the past. How does one create a plan that means something, that makes a difference in the day-to-day operation of a company? The best place, as usual, is the beginning. The owner started the business for a variety of reasons, one of which is likely to be the need to earn money! However, that is not a truly compelling vision for the company, particularly for all the people who work in and with the company. What is your vision for your company? What are the drivers, the motivators, the reasons for it to exist? What is the company passionate about? What is it about what your company does that gets you out of bed every morning? These are such important questions. The person who holds the answers is the business owner. The typical remodeling business owner wears many different hats. It is not unusual for the owner to be wrapped up in what Steve Covey in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” calls the important and urgent, the stuff that needs to happen right now, the work that earns the company money. This is a seductive trap that prevents the owner from being the vision setter. Yes, the business exists but it is stuck, going no place fast. Only by stepping back and looking at the big picture can the owner start focusing on those issues that are important and not urgent. According to Wikipedia, a mission statement tells one what that company is about now. It concentrates on the present: it defines the ideal customer(s), critical processes and it informs one about the desired level of performance. A vision statement outlines what a company wants to be. It concentrates on the future; it is a source of inspiration; it provides clear decision-making criteria. I like these definitions because they clearly distinguish between the two statements and provide the direction needed to get started with writing some drafts. Keep in mind that these are to be, at most, several sentences. The easier they are to remember the more likely they are to be referenced on a day-to-day decision-making basis. Kraig Kramers, in “CEO Tools”, stresses the importance of creating a vision that all your stakeholders can buy into. The vision must be exciting and relevant for everyone in the organization. When well crafted such a statement makes working together towards a challenging goal fun and encourages all involved to be productively creative. In “Built To Last” and “Good To Great” Jim Collins talks about the Hedgehog Concept. Imagine three over-lapping circles. One is what you are deeply passionate about. The second is what you can be best in the world at. The third is what drives your economic engine. The place where all three circles overlap is the Big Hairy Audacious Goal, or BHAG. A well-written BHAG is clear, compelling, and people get it right away. It serves as a unifying focal point of effort. It is interesting to note that neither Kramers nor Collins talk at all about a mission statement. Their point is the need to provide a focus that moves the company forward, in writing, that all who work in the company can reference. Michael Gerber in “The E Myth Contractor” suggests that there are three questions that need to be addressed when creating a plan for one’s business. They are: Who are we? What do we do? How do we do it? It could be that the answers to the first two questions are great starting points for creating a mission/vision statement. You have probably noticed how diverse the opinions about what a mission statement and a vision statement are and whether one or both are statements needed. That very diversity can be a stumbling block to getting started on this important and essential work. Don’t let it stop you! How to get started? As you go through your work week jot down notes about the reasons your company exists and what it would look like if your company was successful. Ask your employees for input. This can be done informally, at one of your regular company meetings, or done in writing. Ask several of your best clients, trade contractors and suppliers for input. They all have opinions about what your business is about. It is useful to hear what they have to say. Review your notes. Start to winnow them down. Then create a draft. Don’t wordsmith it too much. Print the result in a typeface that is easy to read. Share it with your people, letting them know that you are interested in their feedback. Consider the feedback, incorporating what you think makes sense. Now post it where all involved in the company see it everyday. This is a good start! You have never made it this far before. With what you have created and how you put it together you have a great beginning to your business plan! As part of a fully developed business plan your company needs to define its values. What do I mean by values? Values are those guiding principles that do not change over time, even while an individual or business changes. Many of us live spend our lives without really addressing our personal values. We do what we do because “that is the way I am”. That lack of self-reflection diminishes an individual’s ability to effectively lead those he works with. And without understanding your own values it is difficult, if not impossible, to codify the values of your company. The reason this is true is all companies reflect the values of the owner. You haven’t yet formulated your personal values and are stuck trying to do so? Consider trying these exercises. Stephen Covey suggests in “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” that you imagine you are at your own funeral, listening to what the attendees are saying about you. What do you think they would say? What do you want them to say? Write down what comes to mind and look for the values embedded therein. Carry a piece of paper and a pen with you for a week. As you are faced with decisions and choices, consider the legacy you are creating. Who you are is what you do. What did you reference when you were faced with a tough choice? What comes to mind is often what you really are about. Ask those who love and care about you what their thoughts are regarding your values. Who do they think you are? Just listen, don’t respond. Note what you hear and then reflect on it. You might be surprised by what you hear. If you are not hearing what you think about yourself and you don’t like what you are hearing, consider it an opportunity. We are the choices we make. Values are why we make the choices that we do. The clearer you are about yours, the better you feel about the choices you make. Okay, so you have your values clearly defined. It might look like a list of 4-7 touch points, possibly with some explanation attached. Words like Integrity, Caring and so on might be in the list. What is next? Now you are ready to work on the values of your company. How to get this process started? As I mentioned in my previous column, ask the people who are part of your company. What do they think the values of the company are? This can be done a couple of ways. One way is you can ask them to write their thoughts down and give them to you. If you take this route, do arrange to meet with your people individually for the transfer of this information. As part of each of these meetings, thank the person for taking the time to do what you asked. Then ask them to talk about what they wrote and why they wrote what they did. Listen, don’t correct. Take notes. As part of this process you might interact with your very best clients, trade contractors and suppliers. They are all part of your company. Doing so makes them feel even better about your company and gives them a story to tell. Compare what you have heard from everyone. Distill it down. These are the company’s values. Once you have the values in hand do present them to your employees. As you present each value ask your employees for examples of how it is brought to life on a day-to-day basis. Doing so will help all connect the dots from this session to the everyday business of the business. Another way to approach this process is to engage a facilitator who would work with you and your people, typically over a day away from the business, to do a download from all the attendees. The facilitator will then work with the group to distill the resulting information into the company’s values. Either way helps to create a wonderful sense of team. Your company is clearer about its drivers, the non-negotiable principles that make it what it is. And you are ready to take the next step in building your business plan! Over the course of this year I have been writing about the steps involved in creating a business plan. We started with the power of crafting a vision for the company. That then led to preparing a succinct and powerful list of the company’s core values. Using these as a basis we then discussed the benefits of doing a SWOT analysis. With all this work done how do you bring the company’s business plan to life? How do we get beyond the thinking and start the doing? Start by taking the results of the SWOT analysis and create a short list of goals for the company. Keep in mind that too many goals actually will hold back your company, as the focus will be too scattered. When conceiving a goal make sure it is specific and measurable. If this is not done it is difficult to strive to achieve the goal and it is impossible to know if you have achieved the goal! It is important to have all in the company own these goals. Consequently, this is work that might be done by a small leadership group and then brought to the entire company for review and discussion. The book “Five Dysfunctions of a Team”, by Patrick Lencioni, lays out a very effective process for creating ownership and buy-in in a company. An important insight is to the leader’s role includes making sure that all participants have their say before the decision is reached. Absent that there is less likely to be united support for the idea/goal. With a list of measurable and achievable goals in hand the next step is create a list of action items for each goal. These are the steps that are needed to bring to realize goal. Without these items being done the goal will not be achieved. Again, be straightforward and complete without being overly complicated. A short list of actions steps which, if done, do help achieve a goal, is better than the perfect list, onerously long, daunting and undoable. When thinking of action steps for a goal it is often useful to start from the perspective that the goal has been achieved. Looking back, what had to have happened to be able to achieve the goal? Those are the action steps, the stepping stones, needed to be taken to make the goal be realized. The clearer you get with the action steps the more likely you will be to achieve the goals. It is very similar to doing an estimate for a remodeling project. The more complete and thought-through the estimate the more successful the remodeling project. For each action step you need to determine what it would look like if the step were successfully achieved. In other words, make the results measurable. Absent the ability to measure the results how will you know that the result has been accomplished? Again, what if you told a painter to paint a room but if the discussion regarding level of prep desired, coats needed for coverage, and similar specific need-to-know-to-be-successful items never took place how will all concerned parties feel when the painting is “done”? Get specific about the measurable results. There will be a logical sequence that the steps fall into. One step needs to happen before the next can be taken. Getting this clear makes it more likely that all the steps WILL be taken. Each step needs to have a person who is responsible for making it happen. Lay this out in your action plan. By getting specific about who will be paying attention to each step the company now has a champion who will own the respective outcomes. If the overall goal is to be achieved by a date certain then what are the dates that the action steps that support the goal are to be done? Getting clear about these dates when the action plan is being created allows less wiggle room and helps all involved manage the realization of the goals. In the absence of a deadline driven schedule how long will a remodel take? Likely pretty much longer than anyone likes and probably with a lot of circumstance-driven compromise. Deadlines are lifelines, as they help us get done what we know we should be doing. Do keep in mind that an action plan is not set in stone. You and your people have the ability to modify and update the plan as needed. The better the job done of crafting the action plan to begin with, the less likely it is that it will need to be completely redone. You and your people have just a fantastic job of working “on” the business, which is SO hard to do because we are more inclined to work “in” the business. Michael Gerber has written so compelling about this principle in “The E-Myth Contractor”. What next? With the business planning process complete your company is now ready to take a series of linked small steps which, when done, creates goals accomplished. Now you all can go get ‘em done! Here we are at the beginning of 2007. All is possible at this time of year. Leaving the past behind. This is the year I will… Working in the remodeling industry is certainly a good way to learn about new beginnings. Change has been one of the few things we can count on! As a high school student working summers starting in 1965 with a builder on Long Island, New York, I worked with a brace and bit, a Yankee screwdriver and other non-battery operated tools. I never imagined how constant and unpredictable the extent of innovation would be. Laser levels, battery operated everything, nail guns: thirty-one years later it is impossible to imagine building anything without these tools. When my wife Nina and I moved to San Francisco in 1974 we loaded everything we owned into and on top of (what else?) a VW van. With a mattress in the back and our cat joining us we set out to discover the rest of our lives. The sense of possibilities and driving to encounter the unknown were wonderful things to experience. We had a place to move into when we got there but had no jobs and knew virtually no one there. Taking that chance was a turning point in our lives. Most of you have had a similar pivotal life experience. Looking back over the passage of time you wonder what if I didn’t do this? What would my life have been like? That is the reality regarding change and choice. You will never know. However, I believe you are better off for taking the risk. In 1978 I had a chance to build a house. To do that I would need to be a licensed contractor. I didn’t want to do that. That would mean I was one step closer to being a businessman and that was something I never wanted to become! As a member of the counter culture I wanted to keep at arms length anything that hinted at me selling out. Needless to say, I did get the license. The house was built and taking that chance gave me the opportunity to learn more about estimating accurately and building in an urban environment. These good lessons I have capitalized on over all the years which followed. I was often attracted to doing projects that were unusual and challenging but not always easy to be successful doing. Money? Profits? Yes, they were important but life is short and it was going to be so cool to be driving 50 miles one way to do the library restoration or trying to figure out how to build a third story addition on a house with no parking in front of it. Over time being a businessperson became more comfortable. I still look for challenges but the change that occurred was that I decided to run a business that made money. If taking on a challenge came with making a profit I was interested. I got into this industry to shape reality, to bang nails and watch change happen in the world I was working in. I did not start building and remodeling to become a salesperson. Me, a salesperson?! Never in a million years. Then I realized that I already WAS a salesperson and my only opportunity was to become a better one. Doing the same project for more than less money was a no-brainer. So I decided to learn a selling system and develop my sales skills. I think we resist a lot of what we know we need to do. If you are lucky you realize that you need to introduce innovation into your mind set, your life, sooner than later. Often times it is more comfortable to simply do what you did the day before, even if is painful or ineffective, simply because it is familiar. As we move into 2007 each of you will be faced with new choices and challenges. That is what makes life interesting. There is no way to know what your particular life-changing events are going to be. Do pay attention! Sometimes they are right in front of you and you don’t recognize them. What have you been postponing? What would you do if…..? Make a pledge to yourself and your loved ones that you will introduce at least a little of those activities and experiences into your life now, while you have the time to enjoy them, instead of waiting. Remember, all you can count on is that you never really know what the future holds. Find your trip from Long Island to California soon. Change your perspective and live your future today!
There is an old Chinese proverb: May you live in interesting times. The premise is that when things are going well and the living is easy one tends to learn and grow less than when times are more uncertain. Well, I think it is fair to say for most of us working in and with the remodeling industry we are being “blessed” with many opportunities to learn and grow, and we will be given even more through the New Year!
What Could Be Better?
Over the course of this year I have written about some key things to keep in mind when working on your business plan. Given all the people who work in and with your business a clear sense of what the enterprise is about is one of the over-arching purposes of preparing a business plan. That is why the business’s vision, mission and core values are so important. With this foundation in place it is easier to look forward, trying to see what the future holds for the company. A process for doing this is called a SWOT Analysis.
Values and Choices
In my previous column I talked about the importance of defining the mission/vision for your company. Absent that the company is really a collection of companies, with each individual employed there deciding for himself what the mission/vision is for “his” company.