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My name is Annabel Kaye My company name is Irenicon
I help people get value from the people they pay
I come from that dreaded discipline of compliance and rules and regulations and
irritation called HR
but I am an HR heretic I don't believe that you should follow processes
that have no point to you Is everybody in the room running a business
of some description or another? Anybody on the run-way?
How many of you do it without anyone else? You never pay anybody to do anything?
Well done.. You don't even get your husbands, kids to
occasionally pitch in? You are at a fabulous point in your business
You have total control Everything is done the way you want it to
be done The problem comes when other people get involved
in your business Are you planning to never ever pay anyone?
What motivates that thinking? "I think it is outdated business thinking"
Anyone pay freelancers? Anyone outsource?
Absolutely you are kind of paying people to do things for you but you are not handing
your cheque to them as employees . This is the modern business model
We do this for a reason
If we don't there are only so many hours you can work in the day and only so much you can
charge for your time and if that number isn't big enough for you, you've got to get some
other processes or some other people engaged in your business, haven't you?
Or win the lottery - I am working on that one, but it is not going too well right now.
That's the kind of get lucky business plan which very few people advocate.
Before you start paying people as you correctly identified, you need to start thinking - for
what? If you are paying people to do stuff that
no-one should do, you are not really getting very far, are you?
We all think, I am a really smart entrepreneur, I would never pay someone to do something
there was no point in doing.. but habit is a wonderful thing,
we get our little twitches, we do this every Monday
we get really busy the instinct is to outsource doing that
So now you are going to pay for the rest of your life to do something that is totally
pointless? You can laugh, but we do it all the time
If you are starting to get overloaded in your business, before you start paying other people,
ask yourself the question Should anyone be doing this at all?
Get rid of it The next question should be should you automate
it? We have heard from some great process speakers
today, haven't we? About mapping our business processes
I still deal with businesses who pay a VA to hand type their invoices every Monday
because that is called outsourcing and that's efficient!
I'm like OKwhy don't you have a cheap invoicing package - why is anybody doing this?
There is a real difference between outsourcing the task of automating what you want to do
and outsourcing the task of doing it
Because the first one if you get your packages right will set you free
And the second one will create a commitment to pay someone to keep doing that thing
How do you decide whether you want to automate something?
Don't you just love those electronic intendant queues when you get in a queue
and you get in a queue and you get in a queue
and nobody answers? Do you speak punjabi very well?
Me neither I've had some interesting exchanges with Indian
call centres One years ago when my my mother died
They tried to tell me they wouldnt pay out on her life insurance unless I could prove
that she hadn't already had a funeral or died before
Cross cultural misunderstanding or what? There wouldn't be anyone I believe in a UKcall
centre who would seriously put that proposition because of course
we don't have a philosophy of reincarnation and we certainly don't apply it to our customer
service model I am now launching
trans migration of souls life insurance policies Buy one anytime you like
Get my next reincarnation to pay out when you need it
Great business model Outside of this madness, the great thing about
being an entrepreneur is that your business is all in your head
It's like having a baby It's kind of there and it doesn't crawl off
or do stuff when you put it down, you walk out the room
and you come back and it's still there - might be yelling
But it hasn't gone off and done weird stuff As soon as you are outsourcing with people
what happens? Ever paid someone to do something for you
and then had to do it again? Ever missed a deadline because a sub contractor
or a mate let you down? What's going on there?
Is it really them? If it's once it's them isn't it.
But after the eight time, what are we beginning to think?
Can't be everyone in the world is useless except for me?
Can it? The problem is that when you are used to being
out solo, you are not used to specifying success We have had some great talks this morning
from people who map processes, look at the speed of change...
If we come from big organisations like the army or the police, success has been specified
for us. Disassemble that gun in 3 minutes put it back
together again - you succeeded Live through that war, that's success isn't
it? You don't have to worry about that bit.
When you are running your own business you need to be able to specify the process and
the method and the outcomes you want Whether you are outsourcing it to be people,
automating it, or employing people This is where our trouble begins
Should you use employees? Who is afraid of the big bad wolf?
Employment law.. How many of you refuse to supply product because
you can't handle trading standards? Right, compliance is not really the issue
is it? Whether you should be employing people or
using freelancers or automating should depend primarily on your customer service model
Outsourcing newly bereaved people to Bangalore may not be the best method you can come up
with. It is also to do with commitment and continuity
I've got clients who have businesses that require 24 hour a day 7 day support from people
with an in-depth knowledge of what's going on and they've got it all on sub-contractors
who can say no I am not doing it tomorrow. It's not the most robust business model.
When it comes to your business have you got learning or important pieces of culture in
the hands of sub contractors that you have no contractual relationship with?
These are indicators that you need to start looking at should it be outsourced, should
it be employees, should it be modelled in a more ongoing way..
Not for everybody, but this could be coming up for your decision
I was working with a business that was for sale recently
they couldn't sell it because the core processes in the business
were in the head of a sub contractor they had no contract with
How much do you think it cost to get him to sign?
How much would it have cost to have got him to sign five years ago?
How do you get value from the people you pay? I don't want to be too stroppy about it but
you need to do your job as a boss Doing your job as a boss is different to doing
your job as an expert When you're an expert, let's imagine you're
all plumbers, the successful plumber is good at plumbing..
They come round, they fix leaks, put up radiators.. When you are a plumber who employs other plumbers
your job is to get those people to: be good at plumbing
to turn up on time to be profitable
to get the whole thing done Very different skills
A lot of entrepreneurs go on strike as a boss They were absolutely great as a plumber or
a massage therapist (see me after if you are one)
but they are absolute rubbish as a boss and I hear small business owners say
But why do I have to tell people what to do? It's like but you started the business
you got them in What do you mean why?
Delusions R us - aren't they? Your job as a boss is to set standards and
methods If you don't like doing that don't be someone
else's boss By all means be a solopreneur
but don't engage other people in your process Have the conversation with people
This is what we are trying to achieve This is how we are going to measure it
Don't keep it a secret So many bosses are the secret keeper of the
sucess measure It's like the holy grail
You know but no-one on your team can ever find out
If you keep it close your kind of safe They can never please you if you don't have
the conversation One of the things I get engaged in is a little
process called "How do I delight the boss?" It was a spontaneous development for me with
my own staff You could see how that would arise
I have radiated it out into other places Most people don't know
What really delights the boss We need to remedy that..
You need some form of agreemet By agreement I mean something in writing
in plain english that you and the person you have got an agreement
with can both understand
If you both speak Urdu, have it in Urdu there is no other excuse for having an agreement
that is not in plain english When you talk to people and build these processes
make notes When you go to someone and you are going
you know the perfect report would look like this
or I want it like that make notes
If the thing works you can hand those notes to someone else an say do that..
if it doesn't work you can go through those notes and think what did I set up that went
wrong and amend them
To me, your job as a boss is about this scanning process
it goes round and round and round All of HR has to fit inside that
just like ISO stuff You don't run a business to be compliant
you use these techniques to get value from the people you pay
Has that cheered you up?