We often hear about entrepreneurs as if they are standalone individuals making magic happen, rather than people with support behind them. When people succeed in business or in life, you can bet there's a team of people working together to achieve results. After you have constructed your product ecosystem, your GSB will need a small team too. Without a team, you'll fall into the typical trap of being self-employed: doing everything yourself, feeling guilty taking holidays and finding it hard to switch off. With a well-developed team, creativity and productivity spring up all around you. To cultivate a successful GSB team you will need to assign four key roles, get into the habit of following five routines and adopt nine maxims that help you make difficult decisions.

THE FOUR ROLES

There are three classic roles most small businesses try to fill in order to build an effective team.

The marketeers. These people focus on winning new business and apply their skills in marketing to move plenty of gifts and PFP into the hands of the right people. They then set up sales conversations to discuss the core business, handle objections and secure clients. The core skills for marketing and sales people are lead generation, appointment setting, presenting and selling. These skills are enhanced through feedback loops of data that show the costs per lead, conversion rates and sales figures as quickly as possible. The best people in these roles are driven to achieve targets and love to earn commissions and bonuses for performance. Your business will generate its revenue based on the performance of these people, so make sure you're hiring and training as best you can.

The technicians. These people are masters of delivering value to your clients. If you have a business installing kitchens, these people are builders who install kitchens. Google employs technicians to build their software, KPMG employs auditors to audit their clients' accounts, Superdrug employ pharmacists – these are all examples of technical roles. Your business will build its reputation on the quality of these individuals, so make sure you do everything you can to find the best technical people you can afford. These people typically have qualifications and a body of work they have completed. Be sure that in addition to their technical capability they are a good fit for the vision, mission and values of the organisation too.

The administration. These people manage the key resources of time and money and create reports and forecasts that lead to better decisions. These people might have titles like Bookkeeper, Financial Controller, Executive Assistant, CFO, COO or General Manager, and although they are typically behind the scenes, don't underestimate their value to the business. Without these people, the business becomes chaotic, unmanageable and inefficient. In this role you want people who are detail-focused, orderly and passionate about eliminating wastage or bringing it to the attention of others. They also need to be OK with the chaos and creative flair that accompanies entrepreneurial teams – be sure they understand what they are getting themselves into, especially if their last job was for a big corporation.

These three classic roles are needed to form a boutique team, however there's a final role that you need if you want to grow a successful GSB that's right for the times we are in – the Key Person of Influence.

The Key Person of Influence becomes known, liked and trusted in the industry. They go out and do deals, publish content, get in the media, speak at events and generate buzz. Rather than working in the business, they should always be out in the market leading from the front. Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson proudly says he's never had a desk in any of his hundreds of businesses and prefers to be out meeting people.

When I launched my first company, I knew I wasn't ready to play this role so I did a deal with a respected industry statesman who agreed to be the face of the business for a percentage of total revenue. In our first year, we paid over A$100k to him for very little work – some speaking engagements, introductions and training our team. It was worth it though, because his name came up in every conversation. Being under the wing of a Key Person of Influence propelled us forward at a speed we couldn't have achieved just as three 22-year-olds.

Throughout my 20s I always did deals to ensure we were associated with Key Persons of Influence and we could leverage their reputation and insights. After 10 years in business, I had built a reputation of my own and naturally felt more comfortable in this role. Today I am paid in fees and equity to be the Key Person of Influence for several start-up businesses who grow faster because of the introductions and insights I can provide for them.

In the Entrepreneur Revolution, every business relies heavily on media, content and reputation to reach people far and wide. Without a Key Person of Influence your business won't achieve the cut-through it needs to succeed in a noisy market. If you feel ready to play this role yourself, you might want to read my book Key Person of Influence next; alternatively, you can find someone who's already well known and pitch them to become associated with your brand.

Once your team is assembled, you need to bond the team together with routine and culture. It's often the case with GSBs that the team are dispersed across time zones and are rarely in the same place at the same time. This is an obvious strength, but it can quickly turn into a weakness without a few ground rules in place.

THE FIVE ROUTINES

It's important to install routines first that will bond the team. I use these five routines to bond teams and keep them performing.

1. The Monday morning huddle. This 45 to 60-minute meeting sets up the week and it could take place online using a video-conferencing tool like Skype, GoTo Meeting or Zoom. If possible, it's worth doing in person, preferably over breakfast, at least once a month. Each person shares their goals for the week and gives specific measurable outcomes that they will have achieved by Friday. I've found it's best to have no more than six outcomes for the week, and to share the expected time it will take to achieve each outcome and its priority in relationship to the other outcomes. For example: ‘This week my first priority is to follow up with the 46 sales leads that came in from the email campaign, I estimate it will take 7.5 hrs to call through the list. My second priority is to deliver six sales presentations to the appointments that were booked last week, it will take 9 hrs in total.’
2. The Friday afternoon debrief and celebration. This 60-minute meeting can also be virtual but if possible I like to do it in person and conclude with a glass of Prosecco (or fresh carrot juice). The meeting covers what was achieved for the week, with each person sharing what they set out to do on Monday and what was achieved as a result. It also finishes with a round of ideas on how to improve, what to celebrate and who to acknowledge. For example: ‘This week I called 46 leads and set eight sales appointments for next week. I also presented six sales appointments and made one sale with another sale pending. A key learning for me this week was to send a text reminder an hour before the sales meeting so the person is ready.’

   

3. The quarterly retreat. This can be hosted at a boardroom or a nice hotel for a half or full day. If absolutely essential, people can join virtually but it's best to get as many people on the team together as possible for this meeting. This retreat should look at all the key areas of the business performance, what the plan is for the next 3–12 months, the campaigns and promotions that will be run and the innovation required to achieve the mission. This might be a good moment to bring in a business coach or facilitator to help get the best out of the team and address gaps that are being overlooked.
4. The communications centre. This is a daily commitment to use one central form of communication between the team. This is so communication isn't lost and doesn't require endless emails to bring people up to speed. This could be software such as Slack, Workplace, Yammer or even a closed group on Facebook. Create some rules that work for your team to keep things orderly and to capture the important ideas as they unfold.
5. The vault. This is a routine that involves filing and storing documents and important data in a central location and keeping it safe. Many companies are using Dropbox, Office365, iCloud or Google Drive. It's less important which one you use, but essential that you commit to keeping it well organised and secure. The vault should contain your database, your accounting reports, your product brochure templates, media and slide presentations. If someone needs to find information about the business, there's only one place it could be – in the vault.

With the five routines in place, your next focus will be to instil a high-performance culture in your team that ensures you work well together and make the most of the exciting times we live in.

THE NINE MAXIMS TO CULTIVATE A CULTURE OF RESULTS

If you have people in the four roles discussed and your team are following the five routines, you are ready to ramp up the dynamic culture that will allow everyone to thrive together in the Entrepreneur Revolution.

Along the way you will encounter many difficult choices. Every entrepreneur's journey is complex and, without the right culture, you simply can't make the right decisions consistently.

A powerful tool to cultivate culture is through ‘maxims’. In business, maxims are designed to be principles of high performance that help shape decisions and behaviour.

Maxims represent a core philosophy designed to inspire a way of being that produces the results you want.

Maxims become your compass. These home truths, or principles, help guide your team through the complexity of building your empire from concept to multinational operation.

Facebook has maxims like ‘move fast and break things’ and ‘fail faster’ to maintain its risk-taking, start-up culture.

Nike has maxims like ‘We're on the offensive always’ and ‘It's in our nature to innovate’ to keep them on track as a competitive sporting brand.

I am going to share with you the maxims of high performance that have helped guide me and my teams. These maxims have helped us to perform – despite recessions, setbacks and costly mistakes.

Attempt to adopt them as your own. When you are ready, I also encourage you to develop your own maxims that inspire you even more.

MAXIM 1: YOU GET WHAT YOU PITCH FOR… AND YOU ARE ALWAYS PITCHING

A pitch is a powerful set of words that you deliver to the world again and again. Eventually, if you stick at it and really get the pitch perfected, you will get what you pitch for.

In your business, if you get your pitch right you can raise money, attract a team, engage partners and inspire new clients. If you are a change-maker with a great pitch, you will eventually attract a following, upset the status quo and see a shift in your cause.

A client of mine, Lazo Freeman, began to pitch ‘I'm the UK's top body transformation coach, I work with wealthy men who are brilliant in a boardroom but ordinary in a bedroom and make them lean, fit and toned in 12 weeks’. As a result, he has attracted very high-paying clients and he earns 500% more than he did when he simply pitched ‘I'm a fitness trainer’.

Another example is my friend, Jeremy Gilley. In 1999 he began to pitch ‘I believe the world needs a day of peace which will serve humanity as a starting point for bringing us together despite our differences’. By 2001, Jeremy found himself in the United Nations witnessing a unanimous resolution for a fixed calendar day of peace (September 21). He got what he pitched for; today, over 100 million people celebrate Peace Day each year.

A powerful pitch, delivered hundreds of times, will allow you to speak your best ideas into reality; but it doesn't end there.

When you repetitively pitch a bad idea that doesn't help you, it will have just as much power. If you are consistently pitching people ‘I have no money because, as a child, my parents complained about not having enough’ you will also speak it into reality. People will begin to reinforce your belief, support you in making it real and reinforce its validity. You will get what you pitch for and you will have no money!

If you say ‘I'm overweight because of my age and because I have a slow metabolism’, your pitch will start to work. You will have other people agree with you, you will start to see new reasons why this is absolutely true, you will have others feeding you research that spurs you on in your conviction. You will get what you pitched for and you will stay overweight!

When you consistently pitch an idea to people, it gains strength. Soon enough it becomes real to you and you can't see the world any other way.

So be careful what you pitch for. A pitch will bring you followers, believers, supporters, research and reinforcement, no matter what you are pitching.

If you pitch ‘the world is miserable’, more misery will start to show up. If you pitch ‘there's not enough’, you will get scarcity. If you pitch ‘people aren't interested in my business’, you will get more of that.

It is a choice. However, you get to choose what you want to pitch for. If you choose to pitch ‘life is good and I'm very lucky’, you will get more of that too. If you pitch ‘there are clear opportunities in my life right now’, you will start to see them.

Pitching is powerful, so be deliberate with your words because you will get what you pitch for and you are always pitching.

MAXIM 2: INFLUENCE COMES FROM OUTPUT… NOT CONFIDENCE

Don't wait until you feel confident in your abilities before you create something. Confidence is not required.

Recently I watched a short video about influential people. It was beautifully shot but it didn't say very much. Just some very basic observations about people who have been influential in the past.

The opening line stated something that I flat out disagree with: ‘An influencer has a certain confidence that not many people have.’

Take a look at Whitney Houston, Kurt Cobain, John Candy and Michael Jackson, and you won't see people who were supremely confident. You will see people who were perpetually tormented by their insecurities, plagued by self-doubt and a lack of confidence, resulting in their own demise. Yet they were all massively influential.

Influence is not about confidence, influence is about output. You can lack confidence, you can be racked by self-doubt and you can secretly fear an imminent alien invasion but if you create amazing output you will gather influence.

Influencers are producers. We only know about influential people because of their prolific output.

They might have big houses and fancy things, but that's not how they became influential. They create, not consume, for their influence.

The Beatles created the world's most valuable music catalogue in just eight years; they were prolific, not confident.

Stephen Spielberg has written over 20 screenplays, directed over 50 films and produced close to 200 movies; he's prolific, not confident.

Oprah Winfrey did 4561 episodes of her iconic talk show, she's written five books, published monthly magazines and produced daily radio shows; she's prolific, not confident.

Steve Jobs built three separate companies, was listed as the inventor on 317 patents and is credited as reinventing seven industries; he was prolific, not confident.

It is creation that creates influence. It's your ability to write and publish, record and duplicate, design and produce. It's your ability to finish the job and put a completed product into the world.

The idea that influencers are simply cool, hip or trendy is superficial. It overlooks the enormous amounts of energy that influencers put into constantly reinventing their output.

It does not matter if you are confident or not. Produce something of value, create a product, publish a book, make a video, prototype a widget. If it's excellent output, you will gain influence.

I've worked with dozens of people on creating new things. Most of the people I've worked with had self-doubts to begin with, but we pushed to keep producing. Often the confidence came after the project was complete, but not before.

Logically, real confidence can only come after you have done something, not before. It may never come at all. Fear not, it doesn't matter, keep creating and your influence will go through the roof.

Don't let your perfectionism stand in the way either; prolific beats perfect too. Getting stuff done will create more momentum than waiting for everything to be perfect.

Creating all the time is fun and it generates all sorts of results. Wealth, influence, recognition and joy all flow from creating.

MAXIM 3: INCOME FOLLOWS ASSETS… NOT EFFORT

Your job each year is to create new assets. An asset is anything that would still be valuable if you or your team disappeared.

Using this definition, it's easy to see why a house or shares are assets. If you were hit by a bus, your house and your shares wouldn't change in value.

In business it's exactly the same. Your business needs to be built so that it would still be valuable if you weren't around.

To do this, you need IP assets. You must develop systems, methods and procedures. You need a brand and a culture. You need a system of marketing and selling your products and services.

When your business is in a position to carry on without you, then you have built yourself a whopping big asset.

You don't need to be overwhelmed by this concept. It takes time to build a whole business that can continue on without you, however, you can chip away at it each year. Every time something goes wrong or you don't get the result you wanted, ask the question: ‘What asset are we lacking that would have helped?’ You'll realise that things like checklists, training videos, websites or business plans would have helped to solve the problem.

Create documents, systems and media that address the issues in your business. Every year create more and more of them. Sales scripts, training manuals, videos, podcasts, databases, brochures, reports, checklists and best practices.

Put them in writing, get a graphic designer to make them look pretty, then make sure they get used.

It seems challenging at first but pretty soon, you can't imagine running a business without them.

My mentor gave me this advice when I was really struggling. I had been through a tough year and had considered selling my business for £300k.

My mentor looked at my business and said: ‘Income follows assets but you haven't built many.’

Under my nose we discovered several great strategies that hadn't been documented. For a year, our team became driven to create documents and 12 months later the business was valued at £4m!

There are 24 asset categories that I've identified as the most important, and you can discover which ones you have and which ones you need at www.24assets.com.

Your team must learn that in order for them to be paid more, they must become more connected to the assets of the business. Highly valuable people on any team create new assets, sweat existing assets or protect assets from being eroded. If you can't directly connect your work to asset creation, utilisation or protection, you'll find it hard to earn more income on any team.

MAXIM 4: GET KNOWN BY THE SUCCESS OF YOUR CLIENTS

The best way to become famous is for what you have done for others.

If you focus on creating success for your clients, they will go out and tell the world. People are unlikely to believe what you say about yourself, but they will be very impressed by the favourable stories your clients are telling about you.

Most great businesses grow because of what others are saying about them. Google grew because people showed others how magical the results are when you ‘google’ something. Facebook grew because of the sentence ‘Add me on Facebook’ spoken between friends. Apple's meteoric growth in the 2000s was down to ‘raving Apple fans’.

People who crave the spotlight rarely come across as aspirational; people who want to put other people and ideas in the spotlight often end up with positive publicity. It's unhealthy to want fame and recognition for its own sake, but it's a worthy goal to add value to people to the extent that they talk about it.

My own business success really took off when we focused centrally on the success of our clients as our business and marketing strategy.

As soon as people started hearing our client success stories, we had people beating down the door.

When it came time to invest in a social media campaign, we sent camera crews out to our clients’ offices and let our clients tell their stories. As a result, we have dozens of video case studies that help us to generate all the business we can handle.

Rather than you beating the drum for yourself, beat the drum for your clients. Help them create a huge success story and then showcase it.

In many industries, if you genuinely do focus on the success of your clients, you will stand out like a beacon. The key is to publish the success stories in documents, videos, audio and the media. Enter your work for awards, get accredited for the work you do and turn your clients into billboards for the results you achieved together.

Your team must be on the lookout for ways to create success stories for clients and to showcase them to the world.

MAXIM 5: YOU ARE IN PARTNERSHIP WITH EVERYONE WHO TOUCHES YOUR BUSINESS

Seeing everyone who touches your business as a partner is a radical shift away from short-term, transactional behaviour towards long-term success for everyone.

See your team as partners, your suppliers as partners and even your customers as partners. Take the extra time to explore what success really looks like for everyone involved. Create deeper alignment in the needs and wants of everyone who's interacting with your business.

Don't see your business as an independent entity that can survive all on its own. See your business for what it is: a set of relationships that must last if success is to be achieved.

I'm not saying that you can never fire a poor-performing staff member or that you can't end a supply deal on a product that isn't working out. Of course, any relationship can grow and evolve and it can also part ways when there's no longer alignment.

Start by asking more questions to discover why each person is doing what they are doing, what success looks like for them and what they want to achieve in the longer term. This knowledge will move you from transactional relationships to meaningful partnerships.

Transactional relationships are geared around getting the most out of an exchange in the immediate short term. The spirit of a good partnership is about working together to create success, now and in the future, for everyone involved.

Sometimes this means you can't take an immediate win in the short term and you have to look at the bigger picture.

When the recession hit, many big, cashed-up companies saw it as an opportunity to squeeze their suppliers and extend payment terms so they didn't have to pay suppliers for months after the invoice. In the short term they would definitely get a win by squeezing their suppliers for every drop but, in the long term, these suppliers began to go bust, they looked for ways to cut corners, they got sloppy and they simply couldn't produce their best work.

In some rare cases, big companies like the British retailer Waitrose worked closely with their suppliers to ensure that they could ride out the recession and still produce good products. They found ways to support their long-term suppliers who were vulnerable to the financial crisis and, as a result, their suppliers found ways to help Waitrose. Their premium-price brand has continued to expand, despite the recession.

The spirit of partnership is a powerful driving force. It makes us think about the needs of others and work towards creating long-term success for everyone involved. Focus your team on cultivating meaningful partnerships.

MAXIM 6: IDEAS ARE WORTHLESS, IMPLEMENTATION IS EVERYTHING

One of the most frustrating experiences of being well connected in the world of business is the constant question: ‘What do you think of my idea?’

My response normally shocks people. I say: ‘Ideas are worthless.’

Anyone can sit around and have a big idea. Few can make it brilliant.

Let me give you two examples to illustrate my point.

Most Londoners love the experience of grabbing a sandwich from the UK fast-food sandwich giant, Pret A Manger. Pret stores are clean, the food is good, the service is friendly and you rarely have to wait too long in line. For that reason there are hundreds of Pret stores and the business is worth hundreds of millions of pounds.

Can you imagine the founders asking the question: ‘We're going to make sandwiches; what do you think of our amazing idea?’

It's a dull idea. No one is going to get excited about a sandwich shop. Not until it's implemented with excellence. Even a boring idea becomes valuable when implemented insanely well.

In 2002, Bill Gates was telling people that the tablet PC would be the future of personal computing, so why isn't Microsoft the company famous for introducing us to these devices? They had the idea for tablet PCs in 2002; Steve Jobs didn't release the iPad until 2010!

Microsoft didn't implement the idea beyond its prototype. They waited around to watch Apple conduct the world's most successful product launch. Apple implemented the launch of this product so perfectly that they control the market for tablet PCs, and no one seems to be able to catch them.

In the example of Pret, a boring idea, beautifully implemented, became a hugely successful business. In the case of Microsoft's tablet PC, a brilliant idea, poorly executed, created no real value at all.

The value is in the implementation. It's one thing to know that an ATM would be good for your business, but it's dedication to excellent implementation that will produce the results.

Having an idea is easy. Creating something is difficult. Creating something takes focus, discipline and dedication.

If I told you I had created a cake, would you expect to be able to eat the cake?

Of course you would, because the word created literally means ‘to bring something into being; to cause something to become real in the world; to make something happen’.

It does not mean ‘to have an idea, to think up something or to think about how something might happen’.

Therefore, if I told you I ‘created’ a cake, you have every right to expect to have a slice.

The word ‘creative’ used to refer to the power to get something done. In some circles, however, it's come to mean ‘possessing the power to think things up’.

Regularly, I hear people say to me: ‘My problem is I never finish things because I'm too creative.’

I've also had people say to me: ‘I'm not very creative, but I'm very good at getting things done.’

This tells me we have lost our way when it comes to understanding what it means to be ‘creative’.

We've bought into the myth that what's going on in someone's head has value in the real world; it doesn't.

Thinking about murdering someone doesn't make you a murderer. Thinking about having a date with Jennifer Lawrence doesn't make you her new boyfriend.

Thinking about a business idea, a product or a new service doesn't make you its ‘creator’.

What makes you creative is your ability to bring it into the world in a way that other people can understand and value.

As long as it's in your head, you haven't created anything yet. You must get it out into the real world in a way that shows up as valuable.

We need to use the word ‘imaginative’ for people who have a lot of ideas. Imaginative people love to dream things up, but the word does not imply they have brought their ideas into the world.

Being creative isn't easy; you need to decide upon the idea and then do everything required to bring it into the world. The process can take months or years to get a single creation completed. It's blood, sweat, tears, risk and sacrifice.

We should separate the dreamers from the doers and give more credit to the people who are truly creating things into existence.

MAXIM 7: RESULTS TELL THE TRUTH

Effort, creativity and dedication feel like they should pay off, but ultimately the market decides what's valuable. No matter how attached you are to an idea, you have to acknowledge the feedback you are getting from the real-world results. Your goals, dreams and plans at some point will meet in a head-on collision with results that make you question everything. Successful entrepreneurs can stand in the debris of poor results, without losing enthusiasm for their mission, and find lessons that move them forward.

Inexperienced entrepreneurs make the mistake of letting poor results dampen their enthusiasm or worse, ignoring the results all together. I know an entrepreneur who has poured hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of dollars into creating an online learning portal for a particular topic. This all-singing, all-dancing educational hub answers every question, delivers lessons with downloadable workbooks, features interesting experts and has special touches like animation and quizzes. It should be selling, it should be getting great reviews, it should be profitable but it's not. Far from it. This portal has had less than 20 sales for a subscription that is £39 per month, which doesn't even cover the costs of running the site let alone the set-up costs or profit.

The market doesn't lie. It gives you raw, brutal, honest feedback in real time on what you are doing or not doing. The market doesn't care about how much you've spent, where you got the money from or how much you desire success. It only cares that you've created something it wants at a price it can't refuse. The market is fickle and impatient.

The market isn't concerned about what's 99% done. If you've written 99% of a book, the market gives you no points for books. If you're 99% ready to get out and pitch to people, the market gives you no points for pitching. If your product is almost complete, the market can't give you any credit for the work you've done until you release it.

The market will devour some products and it will ignore others that are almost the same. The market will go cold on a hot product that has had its day and will suddenly take interest in an old product that comes into vogue. The market will never tell you what it wants but it will give you feedback on what you present to it.

Your job as an entrepreneur is to put forward your best guess as to what would be valuable, collect data and make changes. It's not wise to ignore the market because it's never wrong (although it can change its mind quickly at times).

The results tell the truth. About sales people, about products, about marketing campaigns, about systems, about culture and business plans. In every aspect of your business, you're being served real-time results that give you honest feedback. Ignore the truth at your peril.

MAXIM 8: IGNORE YOUR AWARENESS AT YOUR PERIL

Other than the feedback you receive from the market, all you have is your internal awareness to guide you. Your awareness is a full-body system that alerts you when something isn't right. Your awareness is a finely tuned instrument that gives a warning sign but doesn't give you the specific details.

My father, Andrew Priestley, is listed as one of the UK's top 100 business coaches, and has written a book called Awareness. He explains that: ‘You might meet someone who looks fabulous on paper, you Google their name and it seems clean but your awareness is telling you something isn't right with them. You have a choice – you can ignore your awareness or you can tune into it and gather more information until your awareness gives you a clean signal that it's OK.’ He says: ‘Bad things almost never happen completely randomly; you will almost always have an awareness something isn't right in advance – whether you choose to stay silent or speak up is what matters.’

If you get into the habit of ignoring your awareness, you will train yourself and your team to become skilled in ignoring the biological feedback systems that have kept humans safe for millennia. The more you ignore your awareness, the better you get at ignoring it and pretty soon you'll walk into all sorts of traps that could have been avoided if your senses were sharp.

Tuning into your awareness doesn't mean that you don't take action because you have a bad feeling about something, it just means that you explore the situation more fully. You ask more questions, you have longer conversations, you provoke difficult conversations and sit in the tension while you gather more information.

Entrepreneurs and their teams aren't walking a clearly defined path, at best they are directionally correct most of the time. Entrepreneurship often feels like being in a dark room and you are feeling around for clues. One of the few clear clues you'll get is your gut feeling, so be sure to give it some credit and train it to become more sensitised to real problems.

Additionally you want to make it OK for your team to ‘raise an awareness’. Your culture should encourage people to share with you that something doesn't feel right. I don't agree with the old Teddy Roosevelt saying ‘don't bring me problems, bring me solutions’, because sometimes your team will spot something that's not quite right and will need to discuss it and explore it before they can even articulate the problem; the solution might take some difficult conversations after that.

MAXIM 9: IF YOU SPOT A PROBLEM, RAISE IT… BUT EXPECT TRAFFIC

On our team, whoever notices a problem or experiences something they don't like has an obligation to raise it. Everyone is busy, no one has powers of telepathy and problems don't solve themselves. Whoever notices a problem needs to put their hand up and express it.

I once had a team member working remotely who expressed that they had felt disconnected from key conversations for over a year. They felt left out because their time zone made it hard to join certain meetings and they were quite upset about it. Initially they felt it was my fault for not noticing, apparently they had given me plenty of ‘signals’ but I seemed to ignore them. After we discussed this maxim, they realised that the fault was squarely on their shoulders for not clearly articulating their frustration. They had a problem and didn't say anything directly about it – no one should be expected to know what's happening in someone else's mind unless they say something.

With that said, just because a problem is articulated doesn't mean the solution will be fast or easy. The second part of this maxim is ‘expect traffic’, which is something every Londoner comes to learn while living and working in the city. There's really no quick way to get around London, and you simple must expect delays on your journey. It's quite common to jump into a cab and then watch people walking past you or to jump onto the Tube and sit still in an underground tunnel because of a signal failure. Sometimes important meetings get cancelled because of delays in London traffic – that's the nature of big, exciting, valuable cities at times.

In the same way, a business is a complex ecosystem and sometimes problems take longer to resolve than we would hope. If you do raise a problem, rather than expecting a magic wand to thwart it in an instant, expect that you might have to raise the same problem again in a month because it hasn't yet been resolved. That doesn't mean the problem wasn't taken seriously, it doesn't mean your voice wasn't heard, it doesn't mean there are no solutions available, it just means we hit some traffic in getting that problem solved.

Without adding emotion to it, if the problem still exists – and you spot it – raise it. Again, then expect more traffic – that's the nature of exciting, valuable, entrepreneurial teams at times.