SPECIALISE IN A VERY SMALL NICHE AND DEVELOP A CORE SKILL.
Sunday, October 25th, 2009You may recall one of my earlier newsletters (Seeing the wood for the trees.) which introduced Richard Koch’s (The 80/20 Principle) ten golden rules for success. This newsletter is about the first of those rules.
The following extract is taken from the Gallup Organisation’s newsletter about Strengths management. While it clearly addresses how we as business owners should be managing the strengths of our employees, (and not just picking on their weaknesses) I felt it was important to consider from our own perspective – as business owners. The fact is this: whatever applies to employees, applies to us. If we are busy, busy, busy – operating in areas of weakness, or potential weakness, our motivation is going to go down, and so will our success rate. Let’s just consider these statements:
“In the April 2002 edition of the Journal of Applied Psychology, the Gallup Organization published research that proved that a more engaged employee is also a more productive employee. The research also proved, if proof were needed, that a more engaged employee is also a more profitable employee, a more customer-focused employee, a safer employee, and an employee who is more likely to withstand temptations to jump ship. Many of us have long suspected this connection between an employee’s level of engagement and the level and quality of his or her performance. This research laid the matter to rest.
Neuroscience tells us that between the ages of roughly 3 and 15, a person’s brain organizes itself by strengthening the synaptic connections that are used frequently, while those that are used infrequently wither away. As Dr. Harry Chugani, professor of neurology at Wayne State University School of Medicine, describes it: “Roads with the most traffic get widened. The ones that are rarely used fall into disrepair.” Beyond a person’s mid-teens, that unique network of synaptic connections, in which some are strong and robust and others non-existent, does not change significantly. This means that a person’s recurring patterns of thought, of feeling and of behavior do not change significantly.
The practical implications of this are hard to miss. Because a person’s talents do not change much after he is hired, we must be very careful whom we select. We must identify the talent levels common to the best in the role and build our selection instruments to find candidates who possess similar levels of talent. We must begin any developmental work with a person by first identifying his strongest areas of talent. Of course, none of this implies that a person cannot change. Not only can he learn to better channel his talents by stabilizing his values or by developing a measure of self-awareness, but he can also be taught new skills and knowledge. He will learn the most, change the most, and improve the most in those areas of his brain where he already has the strongest synaptic connections.
What neuroscience is telling us is that if we want to develop a person, if we want to net the greatest return on our investment in his growth, the best thing to do is identify where his talents lie and then expose him to skills, knowledge, and experiences that build on those talents to create consistently excellent performances — what Gallup refers to as strengths. In Professor LeDoux’s words, we must help him create new buds on his existing branches, rather than totally new branches.” (The Four Disciplines of Sustainable Growth.)
These comments are very relevant to our organisations as a whole, and wherever possible, I believe it is vital that we begin this process of ‘strength-development’ with our respective work forces.
However, what is even more important is the fact that we need to apply this process to ourselves – to our own contribution to the business. If we don’t, all we’re going to end up on is the treadmill – overworked, over-stressed and under-paid.
SO, – find out what you’re good at, develop those strengths and then use them to specialize in a very small niche. If you’re the owner of a small business, then it’s likely that the business is an extension of yourself. The organisation tends to take on the character of its founder/owner; your core values and belief systems will infiltrate the organisation – even without your knowing it. The business itself can then begin to operate within this specialized niche area, until you become known as the ‘supplier of choice’ to hordes of satisfied customers.
I came across a true story in Michael Gerber’s little book “The E-Myth Contractor” which is relevant. It’s a great story and one which brings tears to the eyes – especially when one thinks of the generally poor service dished out by people these days. It’s quite a long story, but really worth reading:
“Marino Santos us was a framer; he and his small crew subcontracted the framing of houses in Southern California, Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado; wherever the work took them. To the general contractors who hired them they were simply known as Santos’s crew. Within Santos Construction – more like a small band of men than an actual business – they thought of themselves as los apassionados sin igual – “without equal”.
Everyone in the trade new Santos’s crew. They were the stuff of folklore. No one disputed that they were the best, but it was more than that. A mystique surrounded them wherever they went. They were a tight bunch. At breaks they hung together, drinking coffee, eating burritos and whispering among themselves – a cluster of stars!
But when Marino Santos and his crew went to work, there was nothing quiet about them. Their framing hammers fairly flew. Walls went up in record time, first one house and then another. The sounds of their tools at work reverberated off the hills. Often they worked to music. For Santos’s crew, every day on the job was a performance, a dance, a crusade. It was what they did, yes, but more. It is what they lived to do. It was who they were.
And then one July morning on his way to a job in Barstow, California, Marino Santos’s pickup blew a tyre and left the road at 90 miles an hour. It turned over five times, finally coming to rest upside down against a boulder. Marino Santos lay trapped in his truck for thirteen hours before help arrived. His back was broken. What a miracle that he survived the accident, everyone said. He failed to see the miracle. In fact, he was blind to everything except one unassailable fact – He was finished with the framing business.
What does a framer do when he can’t frame anymore? Especially one who is driven to excellence as Marino Santos? This framer drank, and for the next six months was rarely sober. Sometimes he railed at the night, flinging his empty whiskey bottle through the closed bedroom window into the street. For hours, he would sit in his wheelchair amid the shards of broken glass, screaming at the injustice. His crew came to visit him every day. They cried with him. They sat silently with him. And for a long time, nothing changed. Then one-day it did. Marino Santos was getting better. At last, Santos called his crew together and apologised for his stupidity. “I don’t want to be stupid anymore” he told them, “Its time to start a new business.”
The new business would be in construction, but in what field? Yes, that would take some study. In the meantime, he knew this: his new business would have as great an impact on the people around them as the old business had had.
One-day, Santos addressed his crew. “I have thought about this a good deal,” he said. “It comes down to this: Either, we went for a living, like burros, until we can’t work any more. Or we find a way to build a business that works for us. We think about this business; we put our minds to it, and we shape it so that it works like we have learned to work, with precision, joy and energy. “But we must build it so that it works even without people like us. We must make it easy for people who are not like us to act like us. We must learn how to give our fierce pride to people who do not possess it naturally. And we must make it possible for everyone who works in our business to become as good as we are. That will be our gift to them.”
Santos paused and looked soberly into his men’s eyes. “Brothers, what I’m suggesting is a risky venture. I have no way of knowing it will be successful or not. But I know in my heart it is the path for us to follow.” Santos instructed his men to take jobs in a segment of the construction industry that was new to them. They sorted the industry into new construction and reconstruction, commercial and residential. They then broke those parts down into sub-parts, which they analysed using certain criteria. The new business had to be in a segment of the industry that: (1) had consistent growth; (2) did not rise and fall dramatically with the economy; (3) Essentially repeated the same tasks from job to job; (4) wasn’t capital intensive to start or maintain; and (5) could be operated independently of other contractors – that is, they could secure, start and complete a contract without having to depend on general contractors or other subcontractors to do their parts of the job.
Every night the men gathered in Santos’s kitchen to have a cold beer and report their findings. Often, they argued. But gradually, as the men became smarter about their mission and more eloquent in their expression of it, the arguments became less heated. Santos’s strategy was simple; as one specialty after another was eliminated as an option, those employed in that field left their jobs and found work in one of the remaining fields, until, in the end, everyone was working in the same field, the one of choice.
And that’s exactly what happened. After two and half years of dedicated work, research and planning, all signs pointed to the kitchen remodeling business. This was the birth of THREE-DAY KITCHENS.
How many people do you know who are willing to devote such effort, intelligence, care and attention to choosing the right path? Most of us just stumble ahead, hoping it will turn out all right in the end. Even with all that research, Santos still wasn’t satisfied. He and his crew installed hundreds of Kitchens, – just for practice. Every imaginable problem was confronted, dealt with and overcome. It would be another two years before the crew took on their first kitchen for pay.
At night, they gathered to discuss the problems they faced that day on the job, analysing every peculiarity, every exception. No one, they were sure, had ever devoted as much time and intelligence to solving kitchen remodeling problems. They were determined to get it right.
Their goals were: (1) to create a kitchen remodeling system that could produce an absolutely predictable result in the hands of novice workers trained only in their system, and (2) to figure out how to renovate or remodel any kitchen within three days, at a cost lower than the competition.
Actually, Santos and his crew discovered that the competition was not a problem. The crew reported daily on the waste, inefficiency, apathy and lack of management on the jobs they were working. No, other contractors would not determine the fate of Three-Day Kitchens Marino Santos and his men would.
They studied every variation on every theme, created a variety of preplanned Kitchen solutions to address each one of them, and devised a preprogrammed construction and installation strategy for each type of kitchen. Then they recruited, hired and rigorously trained a small crew of inexperienced technicians in the construction and installation system. Finally, they created a management system to ensure that the system would be used exactly as planned, every time. Then they practiced, – practiced, – practiced! In the end, they invented a kitchen remodeling system that allowed them to install a kitchen in three days or less – guaranteed!
After all those years of preparation and study, Santos’s first paid kitchen was a sweet moment for him and his crew. It went off without a hitch, just as they knew it would. They had planned it that way, and practiced until nothing was taken for granted. Their first customer was appropriately astonished. Not only was the job done exactly as promised, but the workers were clean, well organised and fastidious – “almost joyful” the customer enthused. “How you find such good people?” she asked. Marino Santos smiled. “I wish I knew,” he said.
After I’d read the story, I found myself wishing for two things – one, that I could find people with such a passion for what they did; and two, that I could become one of them myself!
