coaching
Are you behaving like a COO or a CEO? (and why you should care)
Essentially this boils down to whether you spend most of your time dealing with operational details or do you have your brain free to work on the strategic stuff?
Obviously you need someone in the company to be in charge of running all the operational stuff from keeping the computers up and running to managing communications and the team. However if you are leading the company, planning and delivering its growth etc then there are certain things you shouldn’t be bothering your head with.
One way to work out whether you have the balance of activities right is to look at your diary for the past month and add up all the time you spend on operational things and compare it to all the time you spend on leading and developing the company.
If you’re wondering which of the many things you do fits into these two categories here are a few pointers.
Depending on the size of company (and therefore the number of people it takes to do these jobs) operational stuff is mostly management and includes:
- managing communications in the team, sorting out weekly meetings
- day to day client management
- project management for live projects
- doing the book-keeping
- managing the IT stuff
- looking after the website etc
- admin, travel and meeting arrangements
- delivery of training and workshops
- event planning
- marketing and communications planning and delivery
CEO activities should be mostly leadership and includes things like:
- articulating the firms vision both to clients and to your staff
- working out what the ethos and style of the company is (how do you want to treat your team, how do you want them to think of you and the company)
- leading the strategy development and business planning
- clarifying your position in the market … what business are you in and how does this compare to your competitors?
- positioning the company and its products and services through key presentations, talks and events
- analysing the financial information and working out whether you’re achieving your goals or not (and thus working out what to do differently)
- strategic client development meetings
In a way the greatest risk is not necessarily that you have the balance wrong (though this is definitely worth sorting out) but that you try to cover all the bases and run out of steam when really you should be freeing yourself up to concentrate on the big stuff as this is how you’ll grow the company. This works for businesses of all sizes right down to one person operations – we know of at least one consultant whose turnover grew between 30-40% as a result of hiring a PA to manage their diary and travel … simply freeing up this time and moving beyond a boom and bust of being too busy on one project to go looking for the next.
Can the Christmas staff party give you more than a hangover?
Hopefully it’s not too early to ask you “what’s the point of a Christmas staff party?” You’re probably starting to plan one even if it is just drinks after work one evening.
There are some obvious things like thanking the staff and freelancers for their hard work, relief that you’ve got through a tough year etc. etc.
However, if you’re smart, there are some other messages you could be communicating and feedback you could be soliciting. Firstly, if you’re offering the carrot of a slap up lunch or drinks, night out or similar then why not squeeze a bit of extra value out of it for the company and have some kind of discussion meeting or presentation beforehand. It could be a review of the main achievements in the year (comedy moments and candid photographs are an optional extra here), the opportunity to laugh about the main cock-ups now that you have some distance from them and perhaps a bit of looking forward to what you’d like the year ahead to bring.
The latter is the opportunity to seed ideas in the team and give them something to mull over in the Christmas break so that they come back with thoughts, plans and ‘can I just talk to you about…’ conversations.
You might involve staff by asking for their thoughts on these things ahead of the lunch so that responses/votes can be revealed on the day.
Evidently the message here is … go on, think about it, there’s more you can do with a Christmas bash and with not too much more effort.
Non-business books & films
If you listened to all the business advisors recommendations of books & strategies you’d never get to the bottom of the pile. Personally there’s only so much of that stuff I can handle and I’ve rather reached the ‘tastes good but I couldn’t eat a whole one’ stage.
There are however lots of non-business books & dvd’s that are full of insights and inspiration in a business context….here are a few of my favourites:
-The Salaried Masses, Siegfried Kracauer – it’ll remind you why you don’t want to be an employee 
- The years with Ross, James Thurber (a book about the editor of the New Yorker Harold Ross, a book about how all these creatives worked together)
- First you have to row a little boat, Richard Bode
- Flatland, Edwin A Abbott
- Rock’n'Roll, Tom Stoppard
- I don’t mean to be rude but, Simon Cowell
- Murder in Samarkand, Craig Murray
- Feel, Chris Heath
- Air Guitar, Dave Hickey
- The Alphabet vs. the Goddess
- The Mastership Game, Scott McBain
- The Marketing Plan (a pictoral guide for managers), Malcolm McDonald & Peter Morris
- The New Great Game, Lutz Kleveman
and just for good measure a few films/dvds:
- I’m your man (Leonard Cohen)
- Man on Wire
- Searching for the Wrong Eyed Jesus (Jim White)
- Legally Blonde
- The Corporation
- Rize
- Basquiat
- Enron
- McLibel
- Walmart
- Bull Durham
- The Fog of War
- An Inconvenient Truth
- Big Wednesday/Riding Giants
What would you add???
The IoD’s take on how to be a grade A failure
Here’s an article we came across this morning from the Institute of Directors. They argue that many great entrepreneurs have failed their way to success and that the key characteristics include:
- Ambition
- Activity
- Astigmatism
- Amplification
- Aphorism
- Abidance
We like it for it’s honesty that the path to success is rarely a straight line and that you rarely take that path first time around. We also like it because it implies that you have to find ways to learn from your past experiences … it won’t surprise you to know that we think that learning should include learning from the numbers 
For the full article click here
Business training at Cockpit Arts
Mark McGuinness is running a series of four workshops to help you gain creative momentum in key areas of business. The series will focus on how to motivate creatives and yourself, time management, web marketing and presentation skills. Sign up quickly to book your place at Cockpit Arts in Holborn, London.
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