Kevin W. McCarthy

The Professor of On-Purpose

Business plan

Are You Doing Business By Design?

By

Most start-up businesses begin with great intentions but are at risk of being haphazardly led with little to no regard for the founder’s spiritWalt Disney Creating Happiness or original intent—even when the founder is still running the business! It is a costly loss of strategic advantage, employee and customer engagement, and business profits!

Some companies get it right and thrive. The Walt Disney Company’s 2-word purpose can be stated as Creating Happiness. They do a great job of living into that purpose.

Susceptibility

Most susceptible to this drifting from the founder’s spirit and intent are large organizations and institutions where work is highly fragmented across divisions and/or countries. Specialization must be paired with a sustainable corporate culture that honors and innovates upon the strengths of its past.

For example, did you know that universities and colleges such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and other Ivy League colleges were started as seminaries to train and equip ministers in the Christian faith? Today, these academic bastions of intellectualism and secularization are so far from their founders’ intent that their roots are obscured, if not outright ridiculed.

Candidly, most large businesses have lost a measure of their soul, and so they resort to conveying and communicating corporate values as the “fix” to the deeper loss of authenticity and congruency. When values need to be more codified and communicated than caught, then ethical business problems are predictably on the horizon.

Right behavior can be reinforced, but it can’t be legislated.

Hellegation™

Least susceptible to drift are micro-businesses or one-person entrepreneurs, freelancers, and such—provided they have clarified what matters most. Otherwise, they’re susceptible to the “chasing bright shiny objects syndrome.”

Solo owners face a different challenge, however. Founders of these SOHO (small office, home office) businesses are typically wearing far too many hats and are preoccupied with personally providing production, sales, and customer care. They’re easily caught in a vicious swirl of learning, working, and selling or overwhelmingly stuck in procrastination.

Fortunately, their passion to perform typically enables them to muscle through and deliver on a small scale basis. My term for this is Hellegation™—a condition where the solo owner has no one to delegate work to in order to be freed up to focus on more important matters to the health and well-being of the business, its customers, and society.

Years ago, I had a client who was starting an IT business. He got so lost in his software development, he soon forgot why he started a business. His intent was to help clients, employees, and his family, but he lost sight of the larger picture—becoming buried in the details. His strategic confusion produced a bewildering business design supported by a confused business infrastructure.

In my client’s case, lines of code were the means for creating value and making a contribution. He, however, got caught up in the making of money (financial profit) versus creating a profit for everyone (adding value). The true value of his business wasn’t code or cash but grounded in how his software improved the lives and productivity of his client companies and their customers.

By Design, On-Purpose

It sounds so basic, but the fundamentals of business really don’t change. Ultimately business is about people serving people. As today’s On-Purpose Business Minute encourages: do business by design. Clarity of purpose is your market advantage (or disadvantage if absent!). The difference from company to company is its business style, design, model, and infrastructure in alignment with its purpose, i.e. being on-purpose.

Any kind of plan or business plan for small businesses tends to be scarce. Who has the time to plan? or so the thinking goes. Understandably so because the plans are really not all that appropriate or useful in many businesses (see: What is the Purpose of a Business Plan?). Nonetheless, that doesn’t mean strategy and planning are useless and meaningless. They have a specific and powerful place in a company of any size.

(Special plug: A couple of years ago I met Jim Horan, creator of The One Page Business Plan. Here’s a great planning device for businesses of all sizes. It is, however, especially apropos for solo owners.) I also offer The Service Model as a similar but different way to analyze, build, and design your business. You can purchase instructions and a worksheet at The On-Purpose Shop.

Having a strategic context for building your business matters.

The On-Purpose Business Plan is a 9-minute video providing the essential steps to integrate the business design, plan, model, and infrastructure to reach and serve your customer base. This “map” of what’s needed is too often a missing perspective for those leading organizations. Admittedly, the agenda is full so connecting this many dots seems like busy work. In fact, it is vital business work to the development and growth of your team, culture, and business performance.

Regardless of whether you are an entrepreneur of a one-person show or the CEO of a billion-dollar business, as your business advisor and designer, you don’t call me until there’s a problem in the business that your team or you can’t fix yourselves. Your SWOT Analysis only takes you so far.

Stuck?

Let’s assume that you are competent at delivering your product or service, but the business isn’t growing. That means problems lie in the design of the business or the leadership or both! Conversations and conventional wisdom swirl around business infrastructure, business planning, and the business model, but it is like a fish swimming in water trying to see water—you won’t see it because you’re too close to the matter.

Times like this demand depth, not shallow manipulations of the status quo under the guise of change management. In the strategic depths of an organization, a slight adjustment in understanding, a tiny shift in strategy, or an orientation toward greater alignment ripple powerfully into positive results.

The simple articulation of a 2-word purpose statement is the tiniest of acts—but the most potent of all strategic initiatives.TOPBPerson cover

Tweaking the fundamental design of the business is not for the faint of heart. Eventually, failure to do so will be manifest in every facet of the business … and that’s costly at every line item on the budget. Strategic business design can elevate the business to the next level of performance, profits, and expression of its purpose.

———

The On-Purpose Business Person provides a solid framework for any person at work to learn how to be strategic and to approach their work as a business owner. Click here or on the image to the right to purchase it for $16. It is also available on Kindle for $9.97.

Get The Service Model worksheet here!

Business Building: A “ME” or a “WE” Business?

By

Business building is exciting.

Don’t let the excitement get the better of you. There’s a fork in the road in your business design that is too easily missed or goes unrecognized. The strategic and performance implications are profound.

If you are planning to start up a small business or are already running one, then you have a deep leadership decision about the orientation and attitude of your business as a “ME” business or a “WE” business. This orientation will play a major role in defining your corporate culture as well as the long-term sustainability of your organization—even its viability to be sold.

Here are two basic ways to go about business building:

M.E. = My Ego

or

W.E. = Winning for Everyone

Many professionals’ offices and mom and pop businesses are “ME” businesses simply by default or lack of knowing any better. “ME” businesses may provide adequate customer service, but they are more likely a source of periodic customer service nightmare stories.

Being a business advisor for over three decades, I’ve observed that most ME businesses do not have happy endings for the business owners who are unaware of the “ME or WE” business model. Either the business success is so dependent on the person that there isn’t a viable exit strategy, or the reputation of the business is so poor there’s no goodwill worth buying.

  • The employees are workers doing the owner’s bidding, so in the boss’s absence they’re lost or unable to act independently.
  • Sale of the business is next to impossible, or it will be bought for pennies on the dollar.
  • Family members capable who would be a logical part of the succession planning have long since departed the scene to carve their own way. Or worse, they’re still around as dependents. This latter situation can get ugly fast.

Generally, these ME enterprises close when the dominant or alpha personality departs by either retirement or death. If by chance, the business is sold, the valuations are almost always discounted or only asset-valuations based because the business is so revenue and operationally dependent upon the owner.

However, if you’re unwilling, unable, or just don’t care about the long-term sustainability or saleability of the business, and if you’ve made an informed decision about having a “ME” business, then press into it all the way.

As long as you’re building a ME business by design and you understand the downside and can accept it, then there’s nothing inherently wrong with just shutting the doors when you’re done.

“WE” businesses are looking for win-win outcomes for everyone involved.

Candidly, the “Everyone Profits” mindset is a challenge to design, create, and execute, but done well is far easier to sustain and manage. (Here’s a huge tip: use The On-Purpose Business Plan as a guide.) When the people thrive, the business is more likely to follow suit.

An owner who cares about people infuses that attitude to the employees, who pass it along to the customers, who in turn send their referrals.

The spirit of customer service begins with a decision about whom the business serves. If you’ve never thought about your business orientation as “ME” or “WE,” then invest a few minutes to take a hard look in the mirror. I promise you that you can improve your lifestyle, position, and business performance if you will make a TOPBPerson coverdecision regarding your business orientation and then take it deeply one way or the other.

Don’t stay in the mushy middle. Pick a direction and run to it.

The On-Purpose® Approach is a service concept with “WE” checks and balances. Yes, it is more difficult to design and develop, but it brings a sustainable and durable dimension to the business. If you need help forming or transforming your “WE” business, let us know. We have business advisors who can guide you regardless of the size of your business.

Do You Want to Grow into Maturity?

By

What does it mean to be a grownup, to mature, or to assume adult behavior?

Sadly, far too many adult women and men haven’t a clue what it means to act, live, and be an adult. The process of growing into maturity eludes them.

We men, in particular, seem slow to grow into the responsibilities of manhood. It has less to do with the physiology of aging and more to do with psychology and social norms. Matters like avoidance of responsibilities and lack of clarity around modern male roles complicate it and make it that much easier to put off being a man.maturity is

Perhaps the story of Peter Pan is too taken to heart and we’ve decided to “Never Grow Up.”

Women suffer from lack of maturity as well. My mother is in a retirement living situation where the women outnumber the men probably 3 to 1. When I speak with the female staff about many of the senior women, they tell tales of a new man arriving on the scene and it is like junior high girls bickering and posturing.

What a loss!

We can’t really be a very fully engaged on-purpose player when we’re living below our maturity level.

When our identity is tied to something other than our purpose, we’re subject to the whims of the world or the mercurial nature of other people’s opinions about us.

Maturity, like anything worthwhile, begins with a decision to grow up.

Yes, it takes practice, often a mentor or coach, and the desire to keep at it. And work and emotional management! Practice does pay off. The rewards of maturity are to live into the life designed for us and to make a greater contribution with our life.

Seek out a mentor, life coach, or counselor with whom you can create a structured relationship for personal leadership growth and development. This intentional approach and relationship provide the benefits of accountability, fresh perspective, and experience.

On-Purpose Partners can help with On-Purpose Peace through Do-It-Yourself (DIY) or Do-It-Right (DIR) with one of our coaches.

If you want to learn something new, then invest in becoming a more mature and capable person.

Take one step toward being more responsible for yourself. Then another step, then another. Soon you’ll discover that growing up isn’t such a big deal if you take care of the small deals along the way.

On-Purpose Tip: The process within The On-Purpose Person provides a methodology to better answer some of Life’s Great Questions about our identity and place in the world. If you don’t know who you are, then you’ll likely overcompensate by living life either too small or too large. The posing can become a preoccupation instead of being about your true occupation.

Stop wasting your years! Decide to grow up.

What Is In Your September Plan?

By


(This video mentions the year 2010. No matter the year, having a September plan is good for your business.)

Summer is almost over.

Many of us are just returning from vacation and others are just getting ready to close out the summer by heading on vacation. We’re executing on our family and personal plans put in place some months ago. Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together?

Northern hemisphere is highlighted in yellow a...Image via Wikipedia

September in the Northern Hemisphere provides a restart of sorts.

It isn’t like New Year’s Day, but in a sense it can function much like it because it gives us the opportunity to finish the year strong. September is a time to reboot the business.

From now until New Year’s Eve is a great stretch to really make strides in your career or business.

But you need a plan. So let’s talk about a September Plan.

With just a couple of weeks left in August, let’s get our heads ahead of the game and start making plans today for September through the remainder of the year.

  • What do you want to accomplish?
  • Who do you need to see?
  • What decision do you need to make?

Plan now and you’ll hit September in full stride and have the momentum to carry you through the fall and into the first days of winter.

What Is Your Cost of Poor Direction and Communication?

By

At a client management roundtable I facilitated, the participants emphasized the lack of direction and communication. Their sentiments were echoed and validated by an employee survey. When asked to perform a financial assessment on the cost of poor communication and direction, within two minutes these leaders had calculated over $12 million in costs or 25% of the company’s gross revenues.

Is this high cost an exaggeration? Not at all. Their experience is typical.

Through the years I’ve invited clients to assess the cost of being off-purpose. Consistently, it is a breathtaking percentage of revenues. Here’s why: every line item on the financial statements is affected. The effect, however, is mostly indirect so the true cost is out of sight on the typical performance metrics.

Broadly insufficient direction and communication reflect on the top leaders. Experience tells me it isn’t that the top leaders won’t direct or communicate, it is that they don’t know what to communicate.

Direction and communication are deep strategic matters residing in the office of the CEO and C-suite.

Purpose, vision, missions, and values form the basis of core strategy that informs the business plan. Generalities instead of strategic clarity muddy direction and communication. When the leadership and management team are fuzzy, then the supervisory and frontline people are left guessing what to do.

Interestingly, those who “guess” better than most, get promoted. They imagine being in management will give them the opportunity to manage better than they were managed. In fact, they soon discover they’re just closer to the source of the problem and are even more exposed to the risks of managing through the mud. This can lead to a feeling of being squeezed between upper management and frontline workers.

On one hand, one wants to be loyal to their employer; yet, on the other hand, it is really hard to defend dumb policies and procedures with no basis of strategy or logic. In top management’s defense (to some degree), it is a fine line to walk between leading and managing versus dictating and micromanaging.

If you are the CEO, figure out your strategy and direction and commit yourself and your team to being true to it. Sell it consistently with great internal communication and reward right behaviors.

One of the great movie lines of all time comes from the movie Cool Hand Luke starring Paul Newman. The chain gang prison captain says to Luke after rendering a whipping on him, “What we’ve got here is … failure to communicate.” Watch Video.

Indeed, we do have … failure to communicate. Imagine being in my shoes and seeing huge gains and savings to be had in a business, yet the leader is out of the comfort of his or her experience or they assume they are communicating.

Expecting others to be mind readers is frustrating for everyone.

Purpose is the beginning of clarity in life and business. It pays big dividends to be on-purpose.

 

 

Who’s Reviewing Your Business Plan?

By

So you’re making plans for 2017. Who’s reviewing your business? Who’s challenging you to think about things differently? Without a review, you’re at risk of management myopia. So who’s reviewing your business plan?

Heading into the new year provides a fresh start of sorts for your business. The holidays are here, but business tends to slow down in many industries. Now is the ideal time to be planning for the future, to make great strides in your business, to re-think, re-tool, and re-engage your team based on lessons learned in the first 11 months of the year.

Reflecting on the lessons of the year so far and projecting into the future are beneficial exercises. Committing your thoughts to paper provides your team (and you) with a blueprint for building the business.

Are you willing to risk an end-of-year review and make adjustments to your business plan? You better be! It will be some of the best time and money you’ll ever invest. An independent business assessment provides sight into your blind spots. This reveals danger spots as well as missed opportunities.

The closing days of 2016 can be some of your most productive planning days. Don’t blow it by being content or simply checking out.

Mark Goldstein, the president of the Central Florida Christian Chamber of Commerce, often says, “No one loves the creation as much as the creator.” As the creator of a business, isn’t it great to have such devotion and love for one’s work? Yes, but, as Mark so rightly points out, there’s a side to being the creator that can bite us in the long run. Blind devotion to our ideas can lead to folly.

What if you don’t have a business plan to review? That’s manageable! There are plenty of options out there to help you, including On-Purpose Partners.

Writing a business plan need not be onerous. Know the reason why and assess the context of your business plan. Sample business plans and templates are widely available on the web. Business plan software programs are helpful. Candidly, a formal business plan is typically overkill for most small business owners unless you are raising money or borrowing from the bank.

How do I write a business plan? Here’s a simple suggestion: in lieu of writing a business plan, create a strategic plan at the top level of your thinking using The Service Model from The On-Purpose Business Person. It will help you identify relationships of essential activities in each level. You’ll also discover gaps in your thinking that may have been hidden from you under the surface of business activity and customer service and care.

There are two prominent weaknesses in the “Process” level for most small and mid-sized businesses:

  1. Marketing and Sales
  2. People

Most entrepreneurs who start businesses often have an operations or technical expertise rather than a sales or personnel background. Pay particular attention here when creating your business plan! Get help here sooner rather than later by outsourcing to agencies.

No matter what, your business (plan) will be “reviewed” by the marketplace in terms of revenues earned. How well your customers receive and respond to your products or services will provide amazing feedback. Avoidable poor performance, however, is an expensive price to pay for just mindlessly heading into the next season.

Now, are you willing to have your business plan be reviewed? Before you invest and commit your time, money, energy, and team to a hope and dream plan, consider having your business, marketing and sales plan, and people plan scrutinized if not by me, then consider some of the resources below:

  1. A SCORE (Service Core Of Retired Executives) volunteer.
  2. Your trusted industry or business peer group and advisors.
  3. Me! I’m available to review your business plan and to help you refine it so you aren’t blindsided and have better success in the market.

Think you can’t afford to have your business plan reviewed? Think again! You can NOT afford to NOT have it reviewed. To paraphrase an old saying, “An ounce of planning is worth a pound of cure.”

We get annual physicals for our bodies, but what about the body of one’s work … the business? On-Purpose Partners provides an independent check-up on businesses to assess what’s working, what isn’t, and what to do about it.

Let me help you anticipate some of the land mines as well as focus your energy and effort on what matters most to get the results. I offer small business advisory packages starting as low as $1,000 for businesses with revenues less than $2 million. Email me to make the arrangements.

How Do I Focus My Small Business?

By


As you stare at the walls of your office, your mind swirls with a hundred different items on your mental To Do List. You haven’t got a clue what to do next because everything seems important. By default you open up your email so at least you’re keeping up with something. A couple of hours pass at the keyboard and your list is only longer and you’re further behind than when you began. A sinking feeling leaves you even more overwhelmed and disappointed with yourself. Ugh! How do I go about organizing the business? How do I get more focused and productive? I’ll deal with it … tomorrow.

Admit it, you know this scenario all too well. And it bugs you because it is sabotaging your business, your dreams, and your finances. With so much on the line, you wonder, How can I be so stuck? 

Over the decades of working with business owners, this shallow pattern of performance is most often associated with an ill-defined or out of focus business. While brilliant ideas abound in your brain, there’s no blueprint to build the business. Would you hire a home builder to construct your house who didn’t have blueprints? Yet, you’ll build your business without the most basic of plans.

There’s a reason most SOHO (small office, home office) business owners don’t write their plans. It is called flexibility and responsiveness to opportunity. Unfortunately, keeping your options open typically results in a cycle of learning, but not one of earning. The secret to building your business is to create an economically efficient engine of profit. Once the engine is up and running, you can afford to invest in your other ideas. Depth, not breadth, is essential. This takes discipline and commitment … to a well designed, thoughtful, written plan.

Here are three On-Purpose® tools to help you gain focus and sustain it:

  1. Use The Discovery Guide to clarify which of your many options is the best. This “Want List and Tournament” tool is a free download and can be used for many situations, such as clarifying which opportunity makes the most sense for you and why.
  2. The Service Model is a simple tool to map out why and how to design and build your business on one page starting with purpose. 
  3. My On-Purpose Folder is a self or small group guided process to develop your personal leadership capacity. When you’re in mental disarray, your business will reflect it too.

You may think you have a plan, but you may not. Candidly ask yourself, Just how isFocus my plan working? If you’re not obtaining adequate results, speed to market, or profits, then please consider a small business advisory package. Let us help you bring order, focus, clarity, and direction to your business enterprise by guiding and documenting your business plan and model. Organizing the business is a couple of clicks and a few hours away.

Is a Startup Business a Smart Career Move?

By

Are you unemployed, underemployed, or just plain finding that your corporate job is slowly sucking the life out of you? Are you gasping with this suffocating sense of being stuck with just enough air to breathe, yet barely enough to thrive? Is some combination of your income, lifestyle, family relationships, and health suffering because of dissatisfaction and frustration with your present work situation?

Start Small. Keep Your Overhead Low. Work Hard. Pray Unceasingly.

Starting a business isn’t just for people with business degrees and experience. Motivation, hard work, and a willingness to learn serve any budding entrepreneur.

Plan ahead for starting your business off right. In time, you’ll ease into the transition. Sometimes it is thrust upon us from necessity. Regardless of whether it is a retirement, layoff, job elimination, or simply what you want to do, starting a business is a smart move.

Here’s my list of 10 compelling reasons for starting a business:

  1. Escape the rat race. Get out of that corporate job and transition to more meaningful and enjoyable work.
  2. Personal expression. A business can be a creative outlet for a hobby or passion.
  3. Independence. Set your own hours, decide who you want to target as your customers, and don’t have a boss.
  4. Retiring to work. Retirement looms in a few years so growing a business represents a smooth transition and new sense of work identity.
  5. I need the income. Your small business may provide extra income to cover the bills for braces, college, and vacations. As it grows it can replace your current salary and become full time.
  6. Tax breaks. A small business is a vehicle for deducting some existing expenses from your tax return. Consult your CPA, but when the business picks up a fair share of the bills, it can ease the household budget.
  7. Ambition. A small business can become a big business! Put your ambition to work.
  8. Change the world. A business can be the means for you to truly change the world with your business idea, invention, or service.
  9. Plan B Security. A sour economy can be a ripe time to start a business. In such times it may be the means to provide for one’s family and self in the event of a job loss or cutback. Security matters.
  10. I can do better. Many businesses have begun because the founders knew they could do better than their employers or what was offered on the market. I’ve seen women-owned businesses blossom simply because the founder wanted equal pay in parity with men and to do better for her family.

Do you need to be the next Elon Musk of PayPal, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Steve Jobs of Apple, or Bill Gates of Microsoft?

Not really … but what if you could be? Are you ready to trust your dream? Starting a business may be one of your smartest moves yet.

Be On-Purpose!

Kevin