Without people, the world would certainly be a dull place. Business cannot function without them. So the truism that every business is a people business needs careful examination. Those starting their own business who plan to work on their own face a particular set of circumstances. They will need to motivate themselves and be capable of working in isolation, which does not appeal to everybody. We will deal with some of these issues, and the lifestyle choices that they represent, in Chapter 8. So this chapter is dedicated to those who intend to start a business involving partners, colleagues or staff. Hiring and looking after these people takes a lot of time and attention.

Before we get into the detail, we need to revisit an important element of the original plan. In the same way that you will have decided whether you need to borrow money at all to start out, you will also have had to ask whether you need any people at all. Your business may require other people, but it might not. Careful thought at the beginning can make a huge difference to costs, morale and effectiveness. ‘High maintenance’ members of staff are one of the most time-consuming issues in any business. No one is suggesting that you become a hermit, and perhaps your business genuinely cannot function without a workforce. However, if you are working for yourself, you do at least have the option to consider structuring a business that minimizes the effect others can have on your fortunes. You owe it to yourself to consider whether there is any possibility that you could run your business without anyone else. If there is any chance that you might, it is a strongly recommended option that will enable you to make clearer and faster decisions, avoid having to deal with politics, or having to handle relationships with colleagues.

CREATING A TEAM SHAPE

Let’s assume you have decided that you do need to work with others to make your plan a success. Your first issue to address is the shape of the team. Consider the definition of a team: it’s a group of players forming one of the sides in a sporting contest, or, in this case, a group of people organized to work together. You will want to know what the skills needs are, who complements whom, who can cover for whom, and what the optimum combination is. Take a blank sheet of paper and design what would work best. Consider your favourite team in any walk of life and work out what makes them so admirable. Then try to create something that emulates its qualities. You’ll want to make sure that there is a sensible balance of empowerment and ownership in it. Analyze your own skills and hand some of your responsibilities over, particularly those tasks you are less good at. Many of the tasks that you regard as menial will be regarded by others as interesting new challenges, so don’t be shy or hesitant.

Try to hire team members who will expand the business promise beyond you, not just replicate it on your behalf. It was Brian Tuckman in 1965 who first proposed the stages that groups need to go through in order to be a success. Consider these stages for getting a team to work well:

• Form – put the team together carefully
• Storm – collect ideas from every member
• Norm – watch it settle down and adjust if necessary
• Perform – enjoy the results

Draw it all together and make a plan. Give the team a purpose and a style. Find a way of articulating it to your team, make sure it reflects your personality, and tell them clearly what is expected of them. Then tell them what their specific personal action is to make the whole thing work. To do this you need to consider their individual qualities and work out how to work with them. Make sure you consider how you come across. Picture a person or customer you have met for the first time. Write down your first impressions and how they come across in a meeting. Now do the same exercise for yourself as though one of your team members is analyzing you. What are you really like? Which of the following are you? Child (poor little me); parent (bossy); or adult (confident, sensible, not all ego). This is a system that psychologists use to classify leadership skills at work. Consider your findings and adjust your behaviour if necessary. Part of doing this is to set a good example. Behave as you would want your team to. Be honest, enthusiastic, optimistic, resilient, and a good listener. Don’t be a bully, or panic stricken. Manage your team with control and inspiration. Listen carefully and always make time for them. Never allow two people to do a job that one could do. If you want action, talk to them – don’t issue written orders from on high.

Reward good things appropriately and develop a performance review system to keep everybody on track, but do add your own informal chats regularly. Pay attention to what they are going through, and try to make it fun to work in your team. When people aren’t having any fun, they don’t produce good work. Don’t forget simple treats like chocolate and biscuits as well as the odd drink. But before you reward somebody, think clearly about why. What signals does it send to the rest? Can you spread the rewards around a bit? Reward staff that demonstrate a good aptitude for problem solving, innovation, decisive and confident action, smart work (not necessarily just busy work), quiet and effective behaviour, loyalty, teamwork and cooperation. Praise judiciously. There is nothing worse than a boss who relentlessly claims that everything and everyone is brilliant, when they clearly aren’t. Share the credit whenever possible. It costs you nothing. As the old saying goes, the way to get things done is not to mind who gets the credit for doing them.

Try to delegate calmly and maturely. Do some of the nasty stuff yourself, and then delegate the rest to a team member. Remember that one person’s drudgery can be another’s enjoyment (or greater responsibility). Also delegate some of the nice things too. Let them know they are eminently capable of doing new tasks, but offer help if they need it. Share the responsibilities and let them enjoy it. Ask for consensus, but make the decisions. The buck stops with you. Relax and enjoy it.

RECRUITING THE RIGHT PEOPLE AND KEEPING THEM MOTIVATED

Once you have decided on the shape of the team you need, you can set about recruiting. This is often easier said than done. Each role will involve different skills. If you require staff with specific skills, then these need to be explained and made plain in the job specification to avoid wasting time. General or non-trade-specific skills may be teachable quite quickly, which means you need to build training time into the early part of the job, or consider an assessment day before deciding who to hire. If soft, service-type skills are the main thing, then you are more likely to have to rely on the vagaries of interviews to make your decision. Interviewing is imperfect in giving an accurate view of what someone will be like at a job, but in many instances it is the only choice employers have.

Once you have met a candidate you think fits the bill, do take the time to make enquiries via references provided by previous employers. Although these are requested and provided at most interviews, it is surprising how few prospective employers take the time to follow them up. If you are still uncertain, consider a trial period in which either side can say that they don’t think it is working out. Particularly in the early days, it is important to have open lines of communication so that both sides can make it clear how things are going. Talk to your staff and find out if they feel they are making a difference, if they are learning anything, and whether they are enjoying themselves. Sometimes being very busy stops you taking the time, but there are lots of ways to build team morale when things are manic. Try to deal with problems by making them impersonal. To a large degree you can create your own luck by having lots of ideas and enacting them as fast as possible. Every now and then, reflect on the achievements of the team and tell them what they are. Don’t dwell on misfortunes or label yourself or the team as unlucky. Recognize the difference between bad luck and probability, because nothing goes smoothly all the time.

Every now and then take time out to go and congratulate a colleague for their good work. Be natural and offer to help. Take an interest in what is happening in their lives outside work. Try to learn from mistakes and share in success. Be as objective as you can about past performance – if things weren’t great, say so. Good leaders regard everything as a learning experience, and are not ashamed or frightened to admit deficiencies. They harness the findings as a team, share the responsibility, avoid defensiveness, and move on to the next thing better informed.

If something the team is working on is patently not going right, don’t be scared to ditch an idea, service or product. If things go wrong, work out why and make changes. If things are great, work out why and spread the word to replicate success elsewhere. Think of things you can do differently to make work more enjoyable for you and your team. Create enforced thinking time so they can reflect on how things are going. Pay attention to the ideas and suggestions they come up with. Spend time simplifying things to make them shorter and less time-consuming. Don’t just tell them what to do – help them to improve their efforts collectively. Often the combined thinking of the team is better than anything you could come up with on your own.

HOW TO DEAL WITH PROBLEMS

Minimize politics and try to deal with problems fairly. Taking sides or trying to engineer staff into situations doesn’t usually work. Team members who behave in this way are often divisive, so it is important to set an appropriate tone. Relax and let your confidence and experience speak for itself. Do you have politics in the team? If so, work out why and try to eliminate it. Identify any problem children in the team, and resolve issues as quickly as you can. If you have to take unpopular remedial action, do so swiftly and fairly. Don’t make a drama out of it, and explain to the other team members what has happened and why you have done what you’ve done.

When problems with staff do arise, it is important to know how to conduct a proper review meeting or appraisal. In preparation, take time to consider whether there is likely to be a severe discrepancy between your view of the person and their performance, and the self-perception of the individual. This happens more often than you might think. Ask short, open-ended questions, and don’t interrupt the answers.

• Ask if they are making a difference in their role
• Ask if they are learning anything new
• Ask if they are enjoying their role
• Ask if they are happy in themselves

If you don’t think you are getting the whole story, ask simple questions to probe. Don’t ask any loaded questions that are biased or merely reflect your side of the story. Don’t insult the person by being late, or delaying the meeting, or being unprepared. Show as much interest in the review as the individual does, and remember that, to the individual, this could well be their most important meeting of the year. Be clear and calm throughout, and be receptive to new ideas – don’t squash them on the spot. Instead, offer to go away and attend to issues. This shows authority and flexibility. If there is a nasty problem area, then don’t be afraid to reconvene later when you’ve attended to it, or sought advice elsewhere. In any event, don’t make promises on the spur of the moment that you can’t keep.

One approach to keeping problems to a minimum is to only do business with people you like. This is quite a tricky area but it really is worth spending the time to work out how you feel about your business relationships. The principle can apply equally to your staff and your customers. As the employer, you should have the final say on the nature of the team you hire. So try to make sure as far as possible that they reflect your style. With regard to customers, if you run a retail outlet then clearly you can’t vet everybody with whom you have a transaction. But you can choose the nature of your suppliers and associates. And as you develop your own personal style, you will become better at working out what other people are like to deal with. Eventually, you should be in a position whereby it is you who chooses to do business with somebody, not the other way round.

Why is this important? Because ultimately, if you do not enjoy the company of the people with whom you have to interact, you will effectively have engineered a state of affairs in which you don’t like what you do. This is a disaster for anyone who runs their own business. Indeed, the whole point of starting your own business is to design a set-up that suits your particular style. Of course, sometimes it takes a while for someone to show their true colours, and there will be times when somebody you really like lets you down. Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do about this, and it is undoubtedly true that any disappointments will be felt harder by you as an individual than by companies in the collective sense. However, in the long run, your judgement will improve with experience, and your goal should be only to do business with people that you like.

SUSTAINING RELATIONSHIPS

Building a network of contacts will provide excellent moral support as well as potential business. You should network nonstop – this is a job that should never be finished. Running your own business is as much about relationships as it is about content or product. Concentrate hard on communication, particularly with partners and staff. Try to leave your ego at home – no one else is interested. Look for the best in people. Treat everyone with the same respect, and smile a lot. A crucial component of your business network should be others that have started their own business. They all go through what you go through, and there are few more unifying features than this one crucial bit of common ground. So whenever business owners meet, they usually end up with lots to discuss. The sort of stuff they talk about is often very wide-ranging, precisely because they are juggling all the work and personal issues that this book covers. This may sound self-evident, but consider the number of business meetings between those who work for large corporations that rarely get near to touching on their feelings or social lives – the things that matter to them most.

So the conversations between those who run their own businesses are very broad and have a tremendous capacity to generate genuine empathy. Put simply, you are very likely to sympathize with each other and to get on. That’s a good basis for a relationship. You will both want to pay significant attention to what the other is good at, and what they enjoy doing. This makes sense because you are in the same boat and you might be able to help each other. That’s a good equation in anyone’s book. If this state of affairs is repeated over multiple conversations for a year or two, you are going to develop an extensive set of contacts with other business owners with whom you can swap experiences and other contacts.

Many small business owners use a mentor to provide helpful background support or ‘air cover’. This could be a respected family member such as a parent, or an official business mentor, or even a non-Executive Director. Whatever their title or position, their role is to provide calm occasional advice, words of wisdom, and a steadying hand if things are veering off track. They also provide a valuable sounding board if there is an issue you cannot discuss with your own staff. Their views and experience are valuable whether they work in your sphere of business or not. Those who do similar work to you can compare specifics about your field, and they may be very useful to know about when it comes to referring surplus work. But those who do not work in your sector are equally fascinating to talk to. As well as all the general issues that confront those who work on their own, you may well find that it is their very lack of knowledge about your area that makes their comments all the more valuable. You have all heard people say ‘I’m too close to it’, so this type of encounter offers the equivalent of an objective commentator whose opinions are not biased by what they think they already know about your subject. This is also where social media, email, and online chat rooms come into their own. If you use them for this moral support purpose, you are using them well.

How would you feel if the phone rang and there was a business contact on the line offering you work? Not a full-time job, you understand, just a really decent piece of business of the type where you usually have to invest a lot of time to secure it. This time, the pre-sale work has all been done, and they are offering it to you because they can’t do it themselves. There could be lots of reasons. They are too busy. They are going on holiday. They were asked about it, but it isn’t precisely what they are best at. So they call to ask if you would be interested. It’s a great feeling, and it happens when you have let others know what you do, and when you have offered to help them if they ever get stuck. It works both ways. You may well have been in the same position yourself and referred some work to them some time in the past. Whatever the reason, it is one of the most cost-effective calls you will ever receive.

This is a ‘golden phone call’, and they really can work in both directions. These calls move back and forth between well-connected people all the time. They come about because you have presented your skills well, been thoughtful in introducing contacts to each other, and often because you have already generated business for the person who is calling you now. Even better, these calls are completely free. They involve none of the usual investment of time and effort that most new business pursuits do. And once you have set the ball rolling, they start working their way back to you. Sometimes these interrelationships can progress a step further by turning into proper working alliances and subcontracting arrangements. Having an overflow facility for your business is good, and so is picking up work from contacts when you have not had to over-invest in securing it.

STAYING IN TOUCH

Enjoying the camaraderie of other companies is a smart way to stay in touch. Any company with two or more people in it will begin to develop its own culture. This usually happens the moment two people decide to take a break and go to the pub. By the time there is a full payroll, all sorts of social activities start to develop. Banter in reception. Jokes around the coffee machine. A quick drink after work. Sporting challenges. Mutual hobbies. The bigger the company, the more there is of it, so this will inevitably develop as your company grows. And chances are that many of your customers and suppliers are in a similar position, which means that there is a hybrid of business and social life waiting out there for you and your colleagues to join when you need it. There are probably hundreds of enjoyable opportunities lurking within many of your customer relationships, so it is your job to work out what type and frequency of interaction provides you with the right balance. Chances are that these social interactions will have a positive bonding effect on your customer relationships too.

Blurring the lines between work and social life is generally good, assuming that in the main you choose to do business with people that you like. Is it likely that your business could generate a lot of business out of social situations? Certainly. The old-fashioned lines of demarcation between work and play have become more blurred. We know that you can’t permanently be in work mode, but equally you can’t be in constant play mode either. What you can do is take a more relaxed view about whether you are ‘on duty’ or not. This does not cut only in favour of relaxing more. It also means that when you are socializing, you may equally be ‘working’. The balance you create here is really important. It doesn’t have to be arduous either way. That’s why you need to have your antenna scanning for work opportunities, common areas, contacts, ideas, and so on, but all in a relaxed social context. Don’t force it or get uptight. Keep it loose and stay open-minded. You really never do know when an amazing opportunity is lurking in the next enjoyable night out.

The owner-manager network can be viewed like an extended family. How often do you see the members of your family? The answer to this question varies enormously by individual. Some people live next door to their family members and see them all the time. Some have emigrated and are lucky to see them once a year. Somewhere in the middle lies a mixture of contact points and frequencies that the family members work out amongst themselves. You will know roughly how often you speak to your parents, siblings, grandparents, cousins, and so on, and in return, so will they. Your business contacts can be viewed in exactly the same way so that you can judge the appropriate frequency that suits the relationship. Once you have thought about this, you will have unwittingly designed a latticework of contact points. The family analogy may also help you to classify some of your contacts. Who are the ‘must call once a week’ customers? Who are the less well-known relations who are happy to chat once every few months? Once you get the hang of it, you can extend the metaphor from phone calls to meetings, anniversaries, parties – pretty much any interaction that has a bearing on the business but that can spill into a social setting.

Bear in mind that, in the main, if you stay in touch, they will too. Although there are always some people in the world who never seem to return calls or invitations, most right-minded people do stay in touch. Once you get rolling with your ‘keep in touch’ programme, it will start to generate contacts in return without you actually doing anything. You will soon discover that you are not the sole initiator of an outbound contact programme. Don’t forget that other people will be doing exactly the same thing. The number of people with whom you stay in touch, and the frequency with which you do so, is critical. You must not fritter away your energy by frequently contacting people who won’t keep in touch with you in return. It’s a waste of your time, and that ultimately means money. So it is important that you review regularly the people with whom you stay in touch, and whether it is worth your while. At the beginning, you need to develop an initial pool of contacts, and of course until you have attempted to stay in touch with someone for a reasonable period, you won’t know what their track record is in this regard. But as soon as you realize that they never really bother to stay in touch and so do not represent any kind of business opportunity, then you need seriously to consider whether they should be dropped from your Contact List.

Perhaps not surprisingly, people can be one of the hardest issues you have to cope with. You have to love what you do and stay true to it so as to send out the right consistent message to the people with whom you interact. Equally, there are some people it’s just not worth trying with, so don’t be afraid to move on from something if it is not working. Be with the people you enjoy being with as much as possible, and never be afraid to ask advice from someone you admire. Treat everybody as you would expect to be treated yourself. Believe in what you are doing and at the same time listen to healthy criticism. Forge a team that you believe can do the job and work hard at keeping them motivated. Deal with problems fast and fairly, and sustain your relationships with care and attention.