Reach Further

These aren’t really New Year’s resolutions, but things that any small business owner would be well advised to do as soon as possible and then review regularly:

1. Google your own name, your business name and/or product name(s). What websites come up on the front page and can you improve your entry on those sites? View the later pages: what are people saying about you?

2. Look into how the Web can save you money. Social media optimisation can replace at least part of costly marketing campaigns: perhaps you can use web applications or cloud computing to reduce the cost of software.
3. Can you be more green about the way you do business? Can you resist printing off documents, recycle, travel in a greener way?
4. Look for opportunities: startups especially can go into high growth during a recession, some of the reasons being: because there is less competition, finance may be cheaper, and you’ll start up lean and motivated.

Here are some more ideas:

Guy Kawasaki suggests testing out your service from the point of view of a prospect or customer and has other helpful pointers.

Robin Grant offers Five social media New Year’s resolutions for your business.

Bill Murphy, managing director of BT Business, looks at small business technology for 2009.

Give your business a kick start in 2009 with these straightforward business practices.

Frederick Taylor wrote The Principles of Scientific Management in 1911. His principles became known as Taylorism. He was the original proponent of the time-and-motion study, and setting up clear workflow processes. This was developed into a process of essentially getting workers to function like a machine. His principles included:

• Develop a “science” for every job, including rules motion, standardized work implements, and proper working conditions.
• Carefully select workers with the right abilities for the job.
• Carefully train these workers to do the job, and give them proper incentives to cooperate with the job science.
• Support these workers by planning their work and by smoothing the way as they go about their jobs.

Now observers are reporting on an adaptation of these principles in “Digital Taylorism”, which aims to make workers more like computers, with tasks timed down to the nanosecond.

Digital technologies monitor keystrokes, emails, workplaces are under surveillance with an under-reported assault on privacy. Continuous monitoring and an emphasis on results takes all control away from the employee.

By digitising intellectual work practices, companies aim to get a “working knowledge” that is independent of the people involved. Individuals’ working knowledge related to their jobs may end up no longer valued if processes are valued more than expertise.

So what’s wrong with this scenario?  It can be deskilling and dehumanising. Employees who feel they are cogs in a machine will not be an engaged and contented workforce, and a process that suits one group or individual may not be the most efficient way for another to work. So it’s inflexible. And in a fast-changing situation like that faced by most businesses today, that’s the last thing management needs.

A talented and engaged workforce with the ability to solve problems and adapt, draw on, share and develop expertise and knowledge, will equip a company far better to survive the downturn. Flexible and agile workers with a variety of experience and the skills to apply knowledge and approaches appropriately are the kind of people who are needed, as well as a selection of training and professional development opportunities to leverage their potential.

Since Reach Further is a company advising on social media, community solutions, e-business and e-learning, we deal with innovative Web applications quite often. We regularly evaluate various solutions that can help our clients save money and time. We were looking for an efficient, Web-based task and project management software when we came across Wrike. We liked  it so much that we adopted it for our own team, and we’re finding that it works very well to support our remote and flexible working practices and management of multiple projects. We find it handy to be sent an email every morning detailing our tasks for the day - and it’s very convenient to be able to update or set a task by simply forwarding an email.

Reach Further now features as a customer story on the Wrike website.

Any tips on how to be successful, in business or otherwise, are always welcome. It’s been reported that research has shown that excellence at a complex task requires a critical, minimum level of practice and the “magic number” for true expertise is 10,000 hours (equivalent to roughly three hours a day, or 20 hours a week, of practice over 10 years). (Malcolm Gladwell on Success in the Guardian)

And dogged journalists have actually managed to strike a blow against spam! The BBC and other news media have been reporting a real success on behalf of all Net users. Worldwide spam was reduced by 70% when two ISPs in the States disconnected from the Net a company known to be harbouring spam gangs. Unfortunately it’s only a temporary respite as it’s likely the gangs will just move to ISPs that are further away from controlling societies. Well done to the Washington Post newspaper whose story precipitated this action.

Amplified individuals are the new superheroes in organisations and networks. They are the people who embrace new tools and applications, try out new practices, experiment and make them work. Others in the organisation can then follow on behind, taking advantage of their research and expertise.

Such individuals present a huge opportunity for small business as they amplify what small businesses do really well - they establish relationships of trust, understand niche markets and are entrepreneurially agile in exploring new areas.

Amplified individuals can make up for what small businesses lack - overcoming problems of finding and retaining staff, training, access to capital, negative perceptions about small and new businesses, and limits of infrastructure.

Such people are highly social, providing social filters for massive amounts of information - they allow small business to filter information. They typically use very effectively tools such as social bookmarking and social networks - in fact networks form around such people and they are able to tap into and contribute to the communal intelligence - the “wisdom of crowds”. Find the amplified individuals in your sector and/or local business community and you have a huge benefit.

Or perhaps you aim to BE the amplified individual, providing useful information and the benefit of early adoption and experience via blogs, Twitter, networks, events, social bookmarking etc.

Andrea Saveri spoke about this at the NLAbs Social Networks conference back in summer 2008: Amplified individuals, amplified organisations: an emerging small business ecosystem (Slideshow)

Predicting the future and tailoring your business strategy to suit can be difficult at the best of times, but did you know that effective futures scanning can help companies through a downturn such as we are experiencing today?Particularly in difficult times it’s vitally important to think creatively about the long-term future, to consider what are the long-term consequences of technology change for one’s own business sector. From foresight comes insight which leads to action that takes the business through and keeps it successful.

One way is to create narratives or stories about how the future might look, to explore possible futures. It can seem a strange exercise for a business leader - creating fiction - but it enables one to think about practical scenarios and become aware of a variety of aspects of the business that are affected. It also enables leaders to view the future very intensively from the point of view of customers, clients, partners and other important stakeholders.

Looking at the future leads us to ask what does this mean for me today? What strategies do I need to develop, and what do I need to do now? It enables us to make better decisions in the present.

Creating stories, including narratives and stakeholder biographies, is a powerful tool that Reach Further uses to plan social media and online marketing campaigns, community engagement plans and elearning strategies for our clients. It helps that both key partners Helen Whitehead and Liz Cable have won awards for their creative writing!

Whether you’re trying to improve your work/life balance or focus on growing your business or just get fitter, setting goals is a great way to start the journey. Once you’ve set your goals it’s useful to be able to keep track of them. Ian Smith has created a useful goal tracking application on the Web. As usual for web-based applications, there’s a free version and a subscription version. Joe’s Goals

Planning is well in hand for tomorrow’s Women on the Web in Leeds (17th September). This all-day conference at exciting venue NTI will bring together over 40 businesswomen. A Forward Ladies event, it is sponsored by NTI and Reach Further, who are organising it. With Meg Pickard as our keynote speaker and a galaxy of local businesswomen sharing their tips and tricks on how to use the Web to further their business, it should be an enjoyable day looking at how women can make the most of the Web for work, learning and play.

Use the Web to:

• Save time
• Save money
• Create new income streams
• Make friends and influence people!

A few spaces still left, booking is available at the Forward Ladies’ website.

The BBC reports today on the number of “mums” starting their own businesses. Apparently the number of women working for themselves has leapt by nearly 20% since 2000, according to official figures, and now tops a million.

It’s not surprising that more and more people - and not just mums either! - are setting up for themselves. The biggest motivation for going it alone - according to 70% of those polled by a Government survey - was to be able to work more flexibly, and get a better work/life balance.

Anyone who starts a new business knows that you have to work much smarter if not harder to make it in business. It isn’t an easy option. Nevertheless three out of four people said that their work/life balance was better when they ran their own business, according to the YouGov survey.

Some interesting stories on the BBC website  and to be reported on The Money Programme: Mum’s The Business, on BBC2 7pm, this evening, Friday 8 August. (Something of a niche interest then - as the programme is competing against the Olympics opening ceremony!)

We are still looking for stories - from mums and from anyone else - who have made a big change in working patterns to get a better work/life balance. If you have such a story please do contribute to our collaborative project The Turning Point at our flexible working site, Beyond9to5.

Just putting the final touches to our next blogging course - How to Blog. We call it “an online course with everything you need to know to start blogging - in just 2 hours a week (for 9 weeks).”

There are places on the next course still available and participants can start any time in the week 11-17 August.

If you might be interested, here are the details: Learn how to take control of your web strategy, drive traffic to your website, establish your expertise, take control of your online presence, and create conversations with clients. Alongside other course delegates you will spend around two hours a week online, at whatever time suits you, creating your blog, learning where to find and how to write topical posts, experimenting with marketing and monetising tactics, and learning from the others on your course as we build your own online blogging community and resources.

Previous students are now established and successful bloggers and we had a blast last time around with the varied topics, styles and types of posts favoured by different participants.

(Added) Special for readers of this blog:  £495 (+ VAT) (quote RF blog when booking).

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