Extending on one of my favourite strategy topics – terrorism, click on the little Al Qaeda dude below to read my latest Australian Anthill rant!
Enjoy!
Category: Marketing Insight
Succession planning
Sadly Roc Kirby the founder of the Village Roadshow empire in Australia died last week. While reading an article in the Australian Financial Review the reporter mentioned how his kids had taken over the organization with great success. But we also were given another clue as to why.
As soon as his kids were old enough they worked the concession stands serving soda and popcorn and selling cinema tickets. Not in junior executive positions. They learnt the business bottom up.
No amount of explaining spreadsheets, balance sheets, P & L statements, and public company boardroom battles can prepare someone for a running a business like working at ground level can. The real understanding of any business comes from being where the money is exchanged with actual customers. This is what builds the foundations for a deep understanding of what’s important in a business – operationally and strategically.
If you’ve got a business which is succeeding and you need to think of succession. Startup blog says – think bottom up, not top down.
Your school teacher was wrong
It’s not cheating, it’s collaborating
It’s Ok to draw outside the lines
Neat handwriting is not a pre-requisite
Touch typing is not a pre-requisite
You don’t have to all wear the same clothes
You can have a respectable job and wear jeans
Conforming does not necessarily lead to success
the ‘Soft’ – subjects are the most important
Talking is not evil, it’s the most important skill you ever learn at school
Having a contrary opinion is fine
You can have a future and be bad at maths
Being different is OK
Doodling on your paper is good for the mind
Daydreaming is fine
…add yours here….
School is vital to our learning. But just remember which bits to ignore.
Money follows ideas
Lacking the cash to commence a start up is a misnomer. There’s so much cash floating around western markets at present that the owners of this cash simply don’t know what to do with it.
All money in the world resides somewhere based on an idea. Let me explain:
Money in your wallet – based on the idea we’re going shopping, will need cash for lunch or maybe just for an emergency.
Money in the bank – based on the idea we’ll need it at a later date for something more significant and want to save it for this future transaction
Money in shares – based on the idea that this companies fortunes are improving and the money will grow and provide us with dividends and or a capital gain.
Money loaned to us – based on the idea that we can use this money to create something of bigger financial worth than the original loan and the cost of interest repayments.
All money follows an idea. Sometimes both parties profit. Sometimes one party profits, sometimes we all lose. But the thing which there is no doubt about, is the fact that money is out there for any idea, any time.
If our start up is that idea we ought chase it and give that idea the money it deserves. The better the idea the greater the chance of accessing the money.
Access vs ownership
We often have a default thinking that we must ‘own’ something to benefit from it. Particularly when it comes to assets. The truth is more like this…
we only need access, not ownership.
We don’t need to own a Boeing 747 to fly to Sydney, New York or London. We just need a seat on it – access to it. A lot of the time it doesn’t make any sense at all to own something.
It’s just as silly to think we need to have (own) all the technical skills our startup or business requires. And here’s an example which will makes us all very excited.
Yes Skype. The founders of Skype, Zennstrom and Friis, are not programmers. They outsourced all their technical requirements to a team of coders in Estonia. They wanted fresh eyes on the project. None of the coders had telecommunications experience either. They just told them what they wanted and made it happen.
No need to discuss what happened next.
Over reactions
Over reactions are omnipresent in humans. The best example is the sharemarket. It is rarely priced at ‘fair value’. The sharemarket sentiment is either overly optimistic or overly pessimistic.
it seems that managers tend to over react
it seems that employees tend to over react
it seems that VC’s tend to over react
it seems that suppliers tend to over react
it seems that customers tend to over react
The funny things is that over reactions never solve the problem, and often compound them.
Isn’t it refreshing when one of the above has a balanced and considered response to the inevitable issues which pop up in any start up business.
Be refreshing.
10 years from now
You’ll look back in way in which you can’t grasp how much opportunity lay before you.
You’ll consider the freedom of choice you really had which made anything possible.
You’ll see your business ideas, predictions and philosophies transformed into an abundant economic reality.
10 years from now you’ll be able to look back on your choices today.
In 10 years….
…don’t be the shoulda, coulda, woulda guy*.
*guy means person at startupblog in a 2008 kind of way!