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When the Business Idea Just Will Not Work…

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Pet Rocks

I am currently putting together a professional development programme for people who provide a range of ‘enterprise support services’.

I am trying to establish the challenges that they face and where professional or service development support might help. One of the commonest problems reported is that of helping the client to recognise when their business idea is just ‘not viable’.

The implication of this is that as ‘professionals’ we know whether a business idea can or cannot be made to work. We understand the financial dynamics of the business and the marketplace and we can foretell the future – absolutely. The challenge is how to get the client to recognise what we already know to be true.

  • Do we just tell them that we know the business won’t work?
  • Or do we carefully lead them to the same, ‘obviously right’, conclusion.
  • Or do we recognise that our beliefs could be wrong and focus on helping the client to develop their own business idea free of any negative bias from us?

My guess is that there are many, many very successful businesses that would never of started trading had their adviser not carefully and skillfully pursued this third option.

For example there is this company that sells tumbleweed (‘I would just like to talk to you about an idea that I have for a business. You see all these weeds that are blowing across the prairie? I reckon I can sell them mail order over the Internet….’). Any takers for the first Dandelion Emporium or Himalayan Balsam Wholesaler?

  • Then, closer to home there is this company that makes haute couture for ferrets.
  • Then there are doggles (goggles for dogs),
  • And a guy who will sell you a ‘pixel‘ on the Internet for a dollar (don’t laugh, he has sold them all and made his million!).
  • Or this company who make plastic ‘wishbones’ so there are no more fights over who gets the wishbone (does anyone still do that?)
  • Or this company who sell plastic balls to go on the end of your car aerial and make them look pretty!
  • Or the pet rock company that started in 1975 and swept the planet!

The big lesson for me has to be that it is impossible for us to ‘know’ whether a business idea is viable or not.

Some real stinkers have made millions and even more really great ideas have bombed. Learning to recognise and set aside our own prejudices and beliefs so that we can help the entrepreneur to explore and develop their business idea and manage there own exposure to financial and psychological risk must be an important professional development goal for many of us.

There is a link here to my earlier post on barriers to enterprise. ‘Adviser negativity’ surely has to be added to the list!

Let me know your favourite ‘business ideas that should never of worked’ so we can grow the collection.

Maslow on Management

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Maslow on Management

First published back in the 1960s Eupsychian Management made neither the best sellers list nor the bookshelves in airports and railway stations. In fact it barely sold its first modest print run. No doubt this was in part because the business book industry had yet to take off, and in part because of his obscure choice of title. Re-published as ‘Maslow on Management‘ almost 40 years later it seems to be creating a bit more of a stir.

Maslow was one of the the fathers of ‘Third Force’ or ‘Humanistic Growth’ psychology. (First force psychology was that of the Freudians and Jungians; second force was that of the behaviourists – Skinner and his pigeons.) Third force or human growth psychology was developed by Freud, Rogers, Fromm, Adler and Maslow as a serious attempt to understand human potential and how it can best be realised.

In the early 1960s Maslow spent a summer observing life in a business and maintained a journal that reflected his observations and thoughts on  the practice of management and the relevance of third force psychology to the world of commerce – and vice versa. This journal became ‘Maslow on Management‘.

Maslow was a contemporary of Drucker and one of the things he found was that much of what Drucker had written about effective and efficient management as a theorist and consultant with no psychological training was aligned with Maslow’s own thinking. Management theory and Third Force Psychology converged on a set of ‘truths’ about management and the realisation of human potential – individual, team organisational and social. Wow!

As Maslow said:

…this is not about new management tricks or gimmicks or superficial techniques that can be used to manipulate human beings more efficiently. Rather it is a clear confrontation of one basic set of orthodox values by another newer system of values that claims to be both more efficient and more true. It draws on some of the truly revolutionary consequences of the discovery that human nature has been sold short.

Barriers to Enterprise

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The Separation Wall - Palestine

I am starting a collection of barriers to enterprise – reasons why people do not put their enterprising ideas into practice.

My collections is a little small at the moment – so please help me by using the comments box to add to the collection:

  1. If I start my own business I will lose my benefits and be worse off – The Benefits Barrier
  2. I don’t have the ability to run my own business – The Confidence Barrier
  3. I don’t have any ideas for a new business – The Creativity Barrier
  4. Whatever I try to do will end in a mess – The Confidence Barrier II
  5. I don’t have any cash to help me start up a business – The Access to Finance Barrier
  6. I can’t start a business – who would look after the kids – The Childcare Barrier
  7. I haven’t got anywhere to run a business from – The Premises Barrier
  8. I haven’t got any way of getting around – the Transport Barrier
  9. If I start a busniess the taxman will not make it worth my while – The Taxation Barrier
  10. I don’t know how to go about employing people – The ‘HR’ Barrier

So please add to my collection – either new barriers or different examples of the barriers already identified. Then perhaps we can look at ways to remove them…

PMN at Hamara Healthy Living Centre

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Images from Hamara

The Progressive Managers’ Network is coming to South Leeds, in partnership with the Hamara Healthy Living Centre.

Would you like to learn a management tool that is guaranteed to:

  • Save you time
  • Increase levels of trust in your team
  • Improve communication
  • Make you a noticeably better manager
  • Get more done – more quickly
  • Accelerate the professional development of your team, and
  • Reduce the pain of performance reviews?

The launch event, Brilliant 121s, which will be free of charge is to be held on April 29th with other dates planned as follows:

28th May – Giving and Getting Great Feedback NB -date changed from 27th

24th June – Practical Coaching for Progressive Managers

15th July – Effective Delegation

At the event you will get a free gift to help improve your management worth more than £25.

Places are strictly limited so please book your place online here. Or call me for more information on 0113 2167782.

The first event is free of charge.

Subsequent events will be charges at £120 per session. We will be offering a limited number of reduced price places at just £20 per session. Please get in touch and make your case to secure a reduced cost place.

If you know of a manager who might be interested please forward them a link to this page.

The point of the excercise?

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The point of the exercise is to do work you care about with people that matter.

Managers who can help employees find the ‘space’ to do work that they care about with people that matter will soon find themselves recognised as an outstanding leader of a high performing team.

  • Do you know what your team members care about – really?
  • Do they get to work on those things?
  • What are the success stories that show that your organisation and its people (still) matter?
  • What can you do to make your company ‘matter’ more?