REACHING THE PEAK: Setting yourself up for success, everyday

Published on 30 April 2020

CHANGE VS. AMBIGUITY

While many of us are talking about the 'changes' we are experiencing and responding to under Coronavirus, Aaron Birkby suggests what we are actually experiencing is ambiguity. 

"It's ambiguity, it's uncertainty. We don't know what's happening next. We don't know exactly what's happening to our customers if we're in business, to our staff in terms of their personal lives outside of work. 

"Ambiguity is a real killer here…and in times of uncertainty like this, humans just are naturally out of their comfort zone, because we really like routines and structure with some element of certainty," he observes. 

Aaron maintains while this is a unique moment in time with the entire world dealing with a pandemic at once, in reality, many people deal with ambiguity, uncertainty and change every single day.

"In that category I'd put military personnel who are in combat situations, walking into situations where they have no information, no intelligence about the building, they're walking into or town. People in law enforcement who are undercover having to deal with these situations. 

"But also entrepreneurs of high growth, new innovative companies that are doing things that they don't even know if they're going to work. They don't know who their customer is and they don't know what's going to happen tomorrow," he says. 

Aaron says if we study these people, you learn there are certain techniques or actions they do every single day, habits they have in common. He suggests these people have trained themselves to deal with ambiguity really well. 

"It is all about self. It's actually making you the constant that is always there, always able to rely upon yourself regardless of what's happening around you," Aaron says. 

"The only constant through all change is ourselves"-Aaron Birkby

ENGINEERING A MOOD

According to Peta and Aaron, the main philosophy for setting ourselves up for the best possible day we can have is basic self-care. 

"When we're under stress, we sacrifice the very things that sustain us, like sleep, eating healthily, drinking water, even time with loved ones. If you don't have those fundamentals right, you're on loose ground immediately…you're on quicksand.

"After taking care of yourself, we look at If you bringing in different techniques to optimise your mindset to transition between those of action, which has never been more relevant than right now… we're all working from home, we've got kids at home, we're juggling. 

"You have to switch contexts constantly, but you can use things like music, you can use things like a third space to engineer a mood," Aaron advocates. 

He says a third space might involve doing a morning commute where someone might walk around their block and once back in their house, they switch to being back at work mode.

"Even getting dressed for work…during the day I'm wearing a work shirt, but I'll take this off at the end of the day when I'm with my kids to be back into home mode," he explains. 

So what can business owners do right now to ensure we can deal with the ambiguity, and set ourselves up physically, mentally, emotionally and financially for success?

"When you are employed or have a business in an industry that is quite stable and secure and hasn't experienced rapid change, you can get very comfortable. You adapt to a certain routine; you know what's coming next and you tend to operate in that mode where you have an expectation of what is about to happen.  

"You could settle there and not be inclined to look for different ways of doing things. You don't look for continual small or incremental improvements on what you could be doing to shift, change and adapt, or maybe deliver a little bit more, or focus on better customer service or faster delivery or better quality products" Peta observes. 

Peta says people launching new companies have to do this all the time to stand out and pitch themselves into a busy marketplace, full of competitors. 

"They need a point of difference and need to be operating at a high level. They need to be having better marketing than before, they need to have better usability, better product, better price point. 

"While new innovative companies have to do this to cut through, it leaves everyone else on the backburner wondering what just happened?" she muses. 

FUTURE-PROOFING BUSINESS

Peta believes we are at a point now where every business needs to look at what they are doing and ways they could possibly improve, shift, change or future-proof their operations and their people and the way that they think just like new businesses do. 

She maintains we have had to go through a forced reinvention of the way that we do things, and a lot of this involves harnessing what we already have as a business.

"If you already have customers, how are you speaking to them? Have you brought them in close? Have you actually listened to their problems and pain points even if they've been very happy?," she questions. 

In business, Peta maintains we often tend to rely on people and become complacent that we have a good community, but we do not consider how we can possibly make those incremental improvements or changes. 

Peta argues businesses need to do this more than ever, now. 

"Focus in on those key points of difference because if anything, things can change in an instant and we can't settle on what we knew to be the normal previously. Things change rapidly.

"There's been such a broad range of change forced upon us. How we react now is going to be the way of the future. Be more entrepreneurial in your mindset and look at this as an opportunity.

"Rather than something that's happening to us, we have to look at how this has happened for us and how we can use it to our advantage."- Peta Ellis

BRING YOUR PEOPLE IN CLOSE (WHILE OBSERVING SOCIAL DISTANCING)

One of the key actions Peta recommends every business does now is bring everybody in close and open up lines of communication. 

"We have had this distance between business and customer; only communicating to them through official channels, via marketing and often it's one-way communication. 

"When young start-ups are launching, they have to have that direct feedback from customers, which proves to be their superpower in the long run because they've co-developed things with their customers based on their direct immediate needs," she notes. 

• Bring your customers in - listen to their pain points, be open, be transparent, be more human than ever. 

• Empower your people – encourage them to come up with ideas, give them all the toolkits they can possibly have access to, to lead the company in different ways. 

• Don't always just be led from the top down - open up all channels of being able to improve and change the business.

• Be self-sustainable - avoid relying solely on job keeper subsidies or grants which only alleviate your immediate cashflow problems. Plan past the initial piece of funding as we cannot rely on it. 

ACT LIKE A START-UP

Aaron believes mindset will play an integral role in how businesses respond to current ambiguity, starting with letting go of what was. 

"I think a lot of small businesses are still stuck in trying to make their old model work. The problem is that they are not seeing the opportunity in the market now. 

"Many of the businesses I know have taken Job Keeper subsidy to ensure they can keep their staff and their business is now acting like a start-up. 

"This means listening…listening to the market, listening to your customers, pulling them in close so you can understand what their frustrations are, what their challenges are and how do we solve them?

"These businesses are running little innovation sprints to run new experiments, to test new products in the market to ideate," Aaron explains.

More than ever, Aaron believes the soft skills, practising empathy and listening to understand are critical to business success. 

INNOVATION SPRINT

Business jargon aside, how do you actually do an innovation sprint as a small business? Aaron says it is about solving problems. 

"Go out and listen to your customer base, listen to new customers, listen to everyone and understand their problems. 

"When you hear their problems, get them to pitch to you the solution that they would like to see to solve that problem. They experienced this problem day in, day out, they've probably already thought of a dozen ideas of how to solve it. Your job is to bring that idea to life," he explains. 

An innovation sprint could be asking customers to complete surveys and conducting customer interviews to check in and hear from them. Hear their problems. Ask them "Why is that a problem for you?". When they answer, ask 'Why is that a problem for you?' and so on, until you get to the fundamental problem. 

Then ask them about the solution and do a sprint where you actually create something. What's the smallest version or MVP, the minimal viable product? What's the smallest thing that you could build? 

It is not usually a product, it's more than likely a PDF, like a brochure, a flyer. 

Aaron gives the example of the world's best chefs often change their entire menu once they get their five-star rating, because they need to innovate. 

Therefore restaurants have specials. It is easy for them to put a weekly special out to see if there is an appetite for it, if so, they work it on the menu. 

"You don't have to go and change your entire operation and spend thousands of dollars developing something. Run little tests, put it in front of people, see if they say yes, no uptake or whatever and let that be your guide," Peta says. 

To do this, Aaron and Peta say you need a trusted community and/or open lines of communication and let them know that you really want genuine feedback, not just ratings on an app. 

They say your community will only do that once they feel safe, they feel encouraged to do so and the fact that you welcome anything that comes in the door good, bad or otherwise.

HELLO?

How do we engage with customers who are not currently focusing on our businesses? Aaron advises to be human, pick up the phone and call to your customers. 

"Ask them how are you going? How can we best help you right now? And come from that place of genuinely caring about another human with zero selling.

"You're not selling anything, you're just letting them know that you value them as a customer," he says.

Peta adds that it may not always be appropriate to call if you and your customer have not had that degree of interaction yet. 

"It could be bringing a level of transparency to the business that hasn't happened before. You could start emailing a company update to let your customers, contractors and mentors know how you've actually coped as people and as a business yourself. 

"We assume other businesses keep ticking along and they don't have any problems. If they actually sent out a regular company email explaining it has been really tough but we've done this, this and this or we're really struggling right now. We'd love to hear from our customers what you think…this can be a powerful engagement tool," Peta recommends. 

She says this is our opportunity as businesses to realise we have relied on one-way communication of selling and marketing.

According to Peta, the most effective way to communicate now and into the future is via collaboration or co-creation and making customers feel they are part of something bigger. 

BEING AUTHENTIC

When it comes to talking about your own problems, Peta and Aaron advocate for transparency and 100% authenticity. 

They have observed founders and friends who run companies who transparently shared the severity of the situation built highly bonded teams through that sense of being trusted, being part of the tribe. 

"Not being a boss versus employee but shifting your relationship from vertical to horizontal where everyone is treated with respect and is trusted with this information, creates a more bonded, connected relationship. 

"It's a much deeper relationship and an opportunity to make your staff and customers more sticky to the organisation," Aaron explains. 

While this may be difficult, Peta agrees it is the best approach, with additional payoffs of seeing who rises to the occasion or changes their way of thinking. 

"It highlights who in the team is extremely connected to the purpose and the mission, who are willing to stick by you or come up with some alternative solutions," Peta advises.

She says inviting external opinions, opportunities, solutions in can be a lifeline at that point in time. 

"Open it up. Anyone in the business could have some realistic solutions on how you can shift and change or create a whole different revenue stream. They would never put the idea forward because the invitation to get involved at that level didn't exist before.

"You just never know where your next lifeline may come from," Peta reassures. 

Aaron agrees, saying people don't remember what you say, they remember how you make them feel. 

"People always want to do business with their friends. It's much easier to keep a customer where you have a friendship than just being seen as another company offering a service," he advises. 

PEOPLE FIRST

For Aaron and Peta who work with entrepreneurs and start-ups everyday, the duo say they find it fascinating to watch traditional businesses that have been spoiled by the luxury of complacency and an endless supply of customers, now suddenly forced to offer better customer experience. 

"I've got an electrician coming to the house tomorrow and I've never had better customer service than right now. Why did it take a crisis for this to happen? Why wasn't this just the normal?" Aaron queries.  

He sees this as the real opportunity; to bring back how we do business with core human values, treating each other with respect, being present and delivering value to others.

Peta agrees, proposing open, clear, transparent communication is the new form of marketing for the future.

"People want to know who the humans are behind the business The only way to do that is to bring them in, let them know what you're doing, why it is you do what you do, where you get your stuff from. Are you ethical? Are you sustainable? Where does your price point come from? 

She says being more open and transparent will be how we build trust in our brand, believing people will buy from who they like and what they stand for. 

"If they believe in you and where you're heading, they'll end up buying whatever it is you have to sell or offer because they believe in you as people first.

"People are missing that community engagement because a lot of those businesses have to shift the way that people are still craving connection from somewhere," Peta explains. 

"Any human interaction will always, always outweigh any sales and marketing effort you can ever do" – Peta Ellis

BUSINESS AS USUAL: THE BIG KILLER 

Peta says while change and constant experimentation is important in business, change does not have to be huge. 

She suggests setting up a system with staff to come up with a new idea a month and holding a team chat about it. While ideas do not always have to be implemented, Peta says the process embeds a culture of opening up new ways of doing things with staff and customers as well. 

Making little 1% incremental changes, can make a huge difference over a year Peta says. 

Aaron acknowledges it may not always be apparent to business owners they are stuck in a 'business as usual' mindset and should flip their thinking whenever a staff member pitches an idea. 

"Even if all of your decades of experience tells you it won't work, empower your staff and say, you know what? I'm not convinced this is going to work, but let's see what can we do for $200 bucks and 10 human hours to actually run an experiment on this," Aaron encourages. 

He suggests simple, cost effective tests such as adding space at the bottom of your invoices to pitch a new idea, product or service and invited customers to pre-register their interest. 

For an hour's work to generate a registration form, he says businesses can quash an idea or validate it with an inventory of customers signed up waiting for that product or service.

"You have to give staff the autonomy to fail. Failure shouldn't be punished…every failure should be celebrated as a lesson you learned from. 

"You may have upskilled our team because you've gone through this validation experience. You had an idea and validated it within three days for less than $200 bucks, that's worth celebrating. 

"Ask what can you learn from it? and go again… do that over and over and over and over, all the time," Aaron encourages. 

He attributes the rapid growth of the tech juggernauts Facebook and Twitter to their teams having to conduct at least 10 experiments a week with the goal of failing 70% of them. 

"They are literally doing things they don't know the answer to, they are pushing the envelope. It's about what's my missed opportunity? What's the unrealized potential that we're leaving behind by doing what we're doing?" Aaron questions.  

His concern is businesses may be oblivious to shifting markets, using Uber and the taxi industry to illustrate.  

"Taxi's had so much notice but they never saw it. If they'd been constantly talking to customers, constantly experimenting, putting new things out there, not knowing if anyone would use them to run an experiment and failing, failing, failing, that's how they would have discovered a much bigger opportunity.

"The taxi industry should have invented Uber, but they didn't because they just kept doing what they were doing because times were good," he explains. 

TIPS FOR PEAK PERFORMANCE

• Keep asking. Create an open, clear feedback loop so people can reach out to you, they can ask questions and you can deliver information in lots of different ways. 

• Be human. Bring more human to whatever brand that is that you have or that you are creating and don't always have this perception of what you think people want to see or how they want to see it. 

• Communication channels. We have a preconceived idea of how people like to be communicated to, marketed to, sold to, but sometimes you need to go across all channels in lots of different ways, not just social media.  This could be phone calls, which nobody really does anymore so that does set you apart. It could be actually going back to direct mail campaigns. 

• Build your tribe. Customers will also gain value from connecting and knowing each other as well.

• Instil innovation.  Perpetually innovate so you are so used to dealing with change and whatever happens externally isn't a big deal. 

• Self-care. Don't overlook the basic needs of adequate and quality sleep, good nutrition and hydration, as well as time out for alone time and time spent with loved once (albeit virtually for now). 

Peta and Aaron from Tribe Global are regular guest speakers on Hub Live, sharing their advice to help to founders consciously engineer their lives for success, at work, home and play. Peak Persona will commence their Human Accelerator Programme, three-month course for building high growth humans on 30 June 2020. To connect with Peta and Aaron, contact them via the following channels.

Peta Ellis – Twitter: @Ellispeta | LinkedIn: @ Peta Ellis | Email: Peta@tribeglobal.com  

Aaron Birkby – Twitter: @AaronBirkby |Email: Aaron@tribeglobal.com 

Web: peakpersona.com  

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