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More on a Likkle Man

Growing from being a Likkle Man performing a service or selling a product in the Caribbean means more than just expanding the top or revenue line of the business.

The pathway for growth must include some basics – there has to be a market, and there has to be some basic means of supplying it.

Beyond these basics, there must exist a company that is able to provide what the market needs. This is where the Likkle Man typically runs into problems, and has no clue how to get himself out of it.

A business can grow by just being in the right place at the right time – in other words, from luck. A friend of mine just happened to be selling roller-blades in Austin Texas, when no-one knew what they were. Then, all of a sudden one Christmas, everyone had to have one under the tree and she sold enough roller-blades to make a tidy profit.

However, most companies are not lucky. Their growth comes from careful cultivation of a market, and the organic growth of their capabilities to meet that market.

In one sense, my friend from Austin was “lucky.” However, she also told me that she spent several months giving away free classes in roller-blading at a time when no-one was interested in the sport. In other words, she systematically created the demand for the product by giving people an experience of it, at a time when no-one would pay for the classes.

She gradually built up an organization that could take advantage of the sudden demand that kicked off what became national fad.

And that is what the Likkle Man must do – build up an organization that will enable his company to create demand and take advantage of it. This is where the Jamaican entrepreneur is weak.

Based on my experience working in the region and beyond I would say that we Jamaicans have no problems dreaming big, and envisioning what a business idea can become. The challenge comes when the dreams must be translated into an organization that must deliver the product or service reliably.

The typical entrepreneur’s approach is to do it all themselves, and then hopefully find someone else who is willing to learn to do it themselves to pass it on to (often an heir). However, the problem with this approach, unknown to many entrepreneurs is that this approach keeps the company at about the same small size.

While there is nothing wrong with being a Likkle Man forever, a lack of growth does less than it could for owners, employees, customers and countries. Most company owners are not interested in remaining small.

However, it is fair to say that they do not know what it takes to grow and develop their organizations to be anything other than small.

The good news is that this is one of the skills of entrepreneurship that can be taught. The work done by Michael Gerber, author of The eMyth books, is a method that I continue to use years after reading his original book, and has the simplest and best prescription on how to develop an organization over time.

Even a Likkle Man who has no desire to grow can use these skills.

When we Caribbean people ask someone if they know a Likkle Man, what we are asking for is only a lower price, not a lower standard of product or service. A Likkle Man such as a shoemaker who operates out of a converted container (like the one I used 3 weeks ago) can use Geber’s techniques to consistently maintain extremely high standards that cause customers to keep coming back, and referring others.

In our region, there is nothing like a high standard to attract attention from customers. This is unfortunate, because so very few businesses are able to produce anything at a high standard.

On the other hand, it makes for lots of low-picking fruit. When the market is used to low standards, a higher standard comes as a welcome surprise, and even a shock. In many of my blogs, I have written about the presence of higher and lower standards indirectly.

The ongoing quest for higher standards of product and service delivery are critical to the entrepreneur’s goals of revenue expansion, market growth and greater profits. This quest is also important to countries, such as Jamaica, that have high unemployment and years of stagnant GDP.

This is where all Caribbean need to be very, very careful to empower the Likkle Man, but demand that he deliver at an ever-increasingly high standard. Perhaps we have failed ourselves by not demanding more.

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Slowly writing but not blogging

My two blogs seem so lonely nowadays.

The irony is that I have been writing more than ever (I think).

What has changed is that I am writing more for publication to my ezine and in white papers, and while I can throw out a blog here and there with little or no editing, I find that I cannot do that with my other publications.

So, I have been writing and writing, and editing and editing. Just as much activity as before, but much less to show for it.

I hope the quality shows, at least!

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A Likkle Man

Here in the region, we delight in finding a “likkle man” who can do something at a fraction of the cost of a much bigger player, at the same perceived level of quality.

Shoes need to be repaired? Take it to the likkle man on the corner. Oil in the car needs to be changed? Take it to the likkle man down the lane.

Empowering the likkle man is an everyday form of rebellion, perhaps going back to plantation days when holding back business from Massa was an imperative. Giving it to the likkle man kept the business in the community.

However, giving business to the small man is only the beginning, and unfortunately, we in the Caribbean are very weak in helping the likkle men around us to turn into big men. We don’t challenge them to achieve high standards.

That is not to say that they are not able to produce samples of high quality. In Jamaica in particular, we have hundreds of artisans in the arts, for example, who are incredibly ingenious.

The problem is that we mistake the importance of technical ability, and vastly underestimate the importance of entrepreneurial ability. Our schools are organized to produce technicians in all fields, and from age 16 a student must narrow down their course of formal study (for life in most cases) to four subject areas and General Paper.

The truth is that educating another lawyer, doctor or accountant is unlikely to contribute much to our GDP. Narrow technical abilities are admirable, but nowhere near as vital to countries in which the large mass of people cannot afford to use them.

What most developing countries need are not more professionals with masters degrees in contract law, but more entrepreneurs who are willing to hire ever increasing numbers of ordinary people.

In the Caribbean, we have developed First World values that have no basis. In other words, we cannot afford to produce more and more sophisticated cardiologists, when the people who need them are selling icy-mints and steering-wheel covers on the corner.

What would it be like if we as a society were to value entrepreneurs, and determined to make their way easy?

What if that ingredient were to be taught in schools as a subject? Included in every profession as a subject to be studied? There could be subjects in medical school, engineering school and law school on starting and running successful small and mid-sized companies.

What would it be like to know that in the bigger picture, the company that creates opportunities for others enables all professions to thrive, all families to eat, and all children to be educated?

As an engineer who started his own company with little or no formal training in entrepreneurship, I made far too many mistakes that could have been avoided. When I graduated, I had no idea I would end up owning my own company, and it was not until my father started his that I could imagine that it was something I ever wanted to do. That was 14 years ago.

It is about time that we not only loved our likkle men, but gave them the environment that they deserve to grow from being likkle. It is about time we gave them the laws they need to be successful, and about time we gave them the support they require to hire the unemployed youths who sit around our corners deciding each day whether or not to join the local gang or not.

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Harvard Business Review (ed)


Is it just me, or has the shine paled on the institution that the Harvard Business Review once was?

It used to be that the articles were weighty, and almost all were worth reading, if only to broaden one’s understanding. I vividly recall reading it from cover to cover, learning about obscure ideas in unfamiliar industries that just might apply to my own. It seemed to regularly give me food for thought, and pointers to great books with powerful ideas that I could use.

Since it moved to a monthly format, however, things changed to my mind.

More lightweight stuff-started to make its way in, and in my field there is a lot of it, consisting of little more than re-treaded ideas said just a little differently. I have found the good articles to be more rare, and the best reading to come from the short “forethought” articles that track new trends, and new ideas. I used to think that the articles were the place to find new ideas, but not so anymore…

Of course, could just be that I am a bit older than when I first started reading the journal in my early twenties. Being forty does change a few things, and it might be that I have been around the block a bit, and heard some of the same ideas over and over.

Maybe it is just a bit of both.

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An Employee’s Worst Nightmare

Life in Caribbean companies can be chaotic. Employees take advantage of the chaos by trusting that managers will forget about half the things they ask for in a matter of minutes. Changing circumstances will render unnecessary a good number of the other requests, leaving employees required to keep track of perhaps only 10% of all the things a managers asks for.

The tricky part is to figure out which 10% is important.

I remember a US executive I once consulted with, who expressed some frustration with his direct reports. They apparently could get little done, leaving him feeling frustrated at their collective lack of progress.

I interviewed his direct reports, who admitted that they freely ignored his first few requests for any action, knowing that he would either forget the request, or resort to making the request of several people at once.

When I asked him about repeating his requests to different people, he freely admitted that he used this practice because “that was the only way to get stuff done around here.”

Did I mention that he was a Senior Vice President, and that his direct reports were all Vice Presidents?

Into this morass of confusion comes a product that a colleague of mine, Scott Hilton-Clarke, has been refining for the better part of the last 6 years.

Executive Slice has been through several iterations, and its latest test release is the most innovative and provocative, which tells me that Scottie is on the right track.

The new promise of the software (which is shared between executives, managers or professionals on the same team) is that it “Prevents Promises from Falling Through the Cracks” (or something quite similar.) It does an amazing job.

What Scottie has done is to imagine the conversational “space” between the members of a team, and the promises that keep things together, or allow them to drift apart.

His thesis (in my words) is that managers have no business trying to remember all the promises that they have made, and others have made of them. They world is moving too quickly, and situations are changing too frequently to even try.

It is no mistake that Scott is a Caribbean consultant, who led the Y2k implementation at Jamaica’s largest bank. He knows a thing or two about managing against a background of chaotic events.

Whereas a manager in North America and Europe might try to reduce the chaos, Scottie seems to understand intuitively that that approach is doomed. Instead of wasting energy in that direction, it seems that he has instead focused on managing the promises that fly around organizations un-managed, and unrecorded.

The chaos will never go away, but we can become highly effective in managing or thriving in spite of it. (From my point of view, this could become a company’s competitive advantage.)

His software offers a powerful way to shape the promisphere, that space of promises and commitments that exists between managers and their reports.

In Executive Slice, promises that are made are immediately captured in the programme, and then “remembered” by the system’s players all the way through completion. As useful as this feature set is, the real power of the system comes after the promise has been made.

The manager to whom the promise has been made has a variety of interesting ways to follow-up on progress, and ask for updates, information and clarification. The system automatically reminds him when promises are overdue, or in limbo.

At some point in the future, it will offer coaching on how to have difficult reporting conversation, and even coaching conversations so that a manager who has two minutes to prepare can do so effectively.

Over time, the effectiveness of both a manager and their reports can be tracked by simply measuring how well they are managing the promises they are making, and the ones they are receiving.

To go back to the example of the Senior Vice President and his hapless Vice Presidents, a reasonable performance review system would show who are the effective and ineffective players in the promisphere.

But let us not be fooled – this is an employee’s worst nightmare, regardless of level. The time is coming, through tools such as Executive Slice, where chaos and change will no longer be good excuses to not get work done.

The 10% game will be over, as will its cousin – the game of working ridiculous hours to fulfill unrealistic deadlines. In its place will come a level of rationality and communication that will help teams to deal with chaos more effectively, and this will be no small blessing for the Caribbean manager.

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Launching : One Page Digest Issue 1.0

Framework One-Page DigestIssue 1.0 Oct 2006

We sent you this digest because we believe you have an interest in this topic.
If we are incorrect, please send us email at newsletter@fwconsulting.com.

Links

Quality Consultants (website): As far we know, there is only one company in the region that has done employee opinion surveys across several countries. Their database is the deepest that we know of, and can end any speculation you might have about the scores you received on the last company survey.

Caribbean360.com (online newspaper): Simply the best one-page source of news across the region, issued three times per week. Available via website or email.

Accountability (Framework white paper): We believe that this particular value is critical to the success of Caribbean companies. Learn how to create a culture filled with this ethos in this paper.

Trinidad-Jamaica Chamber of Commerce (online discussion): Too much suspicion and misunderstanding remains between the business-people of these two regional leaders. Read about, and comment on an idea whose time has come. Stay tuned for more.
Did you miss the Framework white paper?
The Service Inventory: A Tool for Touch-Point Analysis. Gearing your Caribbean company to develop a precise customer experience.

About This E-mail

The Framework One-Page Digest is produced monthly by Framework Consulting, Inc. and is intended to provide E-level managers with a reliable source of new ideas for managing Caribbean companies. To join the mailist list, visit http://urlcut.com/digest and follow the instructs to subscribe to FrameworkDigest.

You are receiving this mailing because you are listed as a friend of Framework Consulting. To remove yourself from this mailing, send email to newsletter@fwconsulting.com with the words REMOVE in the subject line. To ensure delivery, add fwconsulting.com to your address book or as an approved sender.

Framework Consulting Inc, 3389 Sheridan Street #434, Hollywood FL 33021

Comments: I recently launched this One Page Digest, primarily for busy executives who don’t have time to search out ideas on my blog, or even find FirstCuts too long to read.

There is a still a lot of information I have that is worth sharing, and I created the Digest to get more of it into the hands of Caribbean executives more quickly. To subscribe, follow the instructions above.

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Internal Networking

Following a presentation I gave on Regional networking to the HRMAJ conference, I was asked the following question:

Can you please give me some tips on internal networking? I am new in my HR dept and at times the going may be tough.I have an MSc in HRM but based on feedback I have not made the transition from theory to practice as yet. It is noted however that I am not necessarily using most of the concepts learnt in school as yet.

I think this is an interesting question to sink my teeth into, and with her permission, I’ll answer the question she raised here.
———————————————————————————————–
OK, permission granted. Let’s call her “Q.”

First off, Q, I would forget about all that was learned in school. Not that it wasn’t interesting or valuable, it is just that so little of it is applicable that it is better to focus your energy on other things than trying to remember or use everything you learned. When you need it, it will be there, so relax . The workplace is not just another step from your masters, like a PhD might be. Outside of the classroom (in which you have spent probably 20 years of your life) the rules are very different.

This I know from experience… I graduated thinking that I should be using as much of my classroom learning as possible, but in retrospect it was just not as important as just about everything else I will mention here.

I would focus on the following:

  1. Developing the critical interpersonal skills that you will need forever but did not even begin to learn in school. I would look for skills that help you give feedback, communicate, sell, public speak — all those skills that involve speaking and listening. I would sign up for every course possible, because you can never get too much of them. Join Toastmasters and get lots of practice speaking in public.

  2. Start reading books and taking courses that require serious introspection into why you do the things you do, and don’t. Start to learn about what makes you tick. Take diagnostic tests such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, read books such as “The Road Less Travelled” and take personal development courses that help you think about your career. The sooner you decide what your passions in life are, and face up to the kind of courage it will take to pursue them, the better.

  3. Find some good people to emulate. This might be the most important. Don’t copy them, but learn from them, taking the good and leaving the bad. Understand that you will outgrow them at some point, but until you do, learn.

  4. Work with people who will stretch you. Look for tough projects to volunteer to be on. Often, the best people are attracted to the most challenging projects. You will be networking with them as you work alongside them. Stick your hand up and volunteer to come in on weekends and to stay late to work with them.

  5. Pick a single area you are interested in and learn everything there is to know about it in your job. Become the expert and go WAY beyond what people are asking you to do and be. It may not pay off for a year or two, but when it does, it will.

  6. Look for chances to take a leadership role in ANYTHING. At this point in your career, if they have a Garbage Committee, you should be trying to head it up! If there are no such teams, then form them. As a young employee I helped to start a group called “The Gang of X” in my department, from our my own initiative. It was not just fun, it was quite an empowering experience as we looked at ways in which the department could improve.


Pitfalls:

  1. If you get bored on the job for more than a few days, get yourself going by asking your boss for more to do. If you find yourself bored for weeks on end, then for the sake of your career you need to quit.

  2. If negative people like to spend a lot of time hanging around your cubicle, “run dem.”

  3. If you ever find yourself holding on to a job for the money, know that it is the beginning of the end, and that you have given up on being a professional. Just because everyone else you respect might be doing the same thing, that means nothing in the grand scheme of things in which your self-esteem and respect are more important than your pay.

  4. If you fail to keep in touch with people, read The Tipping Point where Gladwell talks about mavens. Find excuses to stay in touch by sending material that you find of interest to see if they also might be interested. I regret not doing this earlier in my own career. This takes tons of time, and you will do it clumsily at first — just make sure that the things you send out are truly of interest to YOU, and not just done because you should.

For example, I am sending out 500 Christmas cards this year to fellow professionals in Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados and the USA. They are all hand-written. Many gasp at the idea (and the cost), but the first few times time I saw a card I sent on the wall of a couple of different people I did business with, I realized that I had discovered something of value.

I am not saying that you should use this particular method yourself, but you must develop one that you authentically enjoy.

Q, I hope this helps. If you recall from my conference presentation, I believe in starting with what you are passionate about first, rather than what logically “should” make sense. Engage the heart, and your mind will follow — when it comes to networking. Only then, will it not feel like a burden but more like doing what comes naturally.

P.S. Consider me to be your test case. How are you going to “network” with me from now on?

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Customer as Number Two

The Customer as Number Two

A few years ago, I was sitting and eating lunch while reading the
overseas Jamaican paper (name?), when I had to drop what I
was eating in disgust. I was stopped in mid-meal by a picture
of a mad-man, his head full of live maggots.

I happened to know the editor of the paper and I immediately
called. She was not in office, and I was put onto the head of
advertising, who I also knew, as I had recently placed several
ads.

I complained vehemently.

She exclaimed – “Mi know how you feel! When I went to the
printers and dem show me de picture… dat was when I know dat dis
week’s paper wasn’t coming anywhere near me!”

I was flabbergasted.

I had expected her to explain, or defend, and not to react as if she had nothing to do with the paper. The best that I could do was to ask her to pass on my complaint to the editor, and hung up — but I have never forgotten her reaction.

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RBTT’s Gambling Problem

Today, in a taxi to the airport, I heard the worst advertisement ever.

RBTT Bank’s newest promotion involves the following promise – spend over US$1000 before Dec 31st, and be automatically entered to win a chance to have the entire balance paid off in January. In short, the bank is encouraging its customers to make over a thousand dollars in new purchases, in order to qualify to win the promotion.

My problem with it?

It just all seems to be encouraging gambling – paying cash in order to have a random chance of winning big.

For some reason, I doubt that RBTT has imagined the full range of outcomes. Let us, on their behalf, perform a thought experiment and imagine what would happen if the promotion is wildly successful.

One person “wins” and ends up with a nice zero balance. Hundreds or perhaps thousands of customers end up with new balances over US$1000. Many of them might well have changed their buying pattern or choices in order to win the promotion. Some will have used credit instead of cash. Others will have decided to make purchases they never intended to make in order to qualify.

All will have new balances of more than US$ 1000 on their RBTT card on Dec 31, and the majority would have them because of the “success” of the new promotion.

RBTT would seem to be a winner, if the promotion succeeds. After all, new balances mean new interest income.

But does RBTT really benefit in the long-term? I cannot imagine that the kind of customer who would change their buying habits in order to take on new card debt to win a lottery is the kind that RBTT wants. After all, a gamble on that filly in the 5th is not the same as a gamble on a new US$2000 card balance. When the 5th race is over, the transaction between the track and the bettor is over.

However, on January 1st, RBTT will have a new long-term relationship with a debtor who is essentially a gambler.

I cannot imagine that this fits the profile of the ideal customer. If I were RBTT, I would immediately “assist” these new debtors to break their addictive habits. Maybe Gambler’s Anonymous? After all, surely RBTT does not want their customer to repeat the behaviour.

If the program is successful, and other banks decide to play copycat, I am sure that RBTT does not want them jumping ship in time to gamble once again.

Instead, RBTT must want the gambling card-holder to settle down, see the error of their ways, and become a faithful and trusted customer who pays the monthly bill like clockwork.

All this, rather than chasing down the next card, dice, scratch, domino or internet game of chance. Hopefully, when this unlikely “transformation” occurs, they will bear no resentment towards the bank for profiting from their weakness for the thrill of a win.

P.S. I received the following email at left in my inbox on 12/22.