My brand or Excellerate ..........................my brand

People do business with people.........it's a well used expression but its true. In a sales situation the person communicating with the customer is the incarnation of the brand. Many sales people leave companies taking their best clients with them..... So whats' more important the brand that I represent or my personal brand? Well maybe it depends on the type of product or service being offered, in highly commoditised situations the "corporate" brand may be more important, but high quality coaching is not in this bracket and inextricably linking to the individual providing the coaching. So high quality coaches should be associated with a high quality, high profile brand..............without endangering their own personal brand.

Stewardship

Martin Lyle lent me Peter Block's book Stewardship. After having read through quite a bit of it, it strikes me as one of those books that has one central good idea padded out to the length of a proper book. He proposes that leadership is not something that we should look for in an organisation, but a sense of personal authority. He proposes that big companies like General Motors, AT&T and Xerox should forego a strong visionary leader and instead have everyone responsible for their own area of responsibility. I think he's half right, but I see a problem in relating this to what he says are 99% of the total number of companies in existence - SMEs. What I see is very simple: companies like GM, AT&T and Xerox would not exist if someone hadn't started them. Lots of people have good ideas about the way things should be done, but very few people put those ideas into reality, and attract other people into that reality.

A solution needs a seed in order to form crystals. And change in the way that Block suggests needs someone to take that first step. I think Block describes leadership as a bad thing by implying that leadership is something that a CEO takes by virtue of the job title or personal power, rather than something which is granted by his or her followers.

Having said that, he has some interesting principles which I believe apply to excellerate. He calls them the 'Four requirements of partnership' of which there are five...

• Exchange of purpose (i.e. shared purpose rather than dictated by one person at the top)
• Right to say no
• Joint accountability (I think this is a bit vague. How can we be jointly accountable? The UK legal term here is 'joint and several' which I think is better. Neither of us can simply blame the other)
• Absolute honesty
• No abdication (We don't back out when it gets tough)

In fact, a lot of what he says is very similar to what I have said in Change Magic, so I believe these ideas have simply come of their time. I believe that we are seeing the death throes of the industrial revolution here.

The way I see excellerate evolving is simple, but not so easy to describe. Here's one metaphor that I came up with.

Imagine a fleet of ships. Each ship has its own captain. That captain is you.

Sometimes, you are the only person on your ship, but it's still your ship and you are the captain. Sometimes, you might enlist your own crew because you are embarking on a particular kind of voyage, something that is very unique in itself and doesn't require you to be part of the fleet.

When you are sailing alone, you are the captain of your own ship and introduce yourself as such. When you are sailing with the fleet, you are a captain of the fleet.

You are not Captain Bloggs of the HMS Bloggs, working with the excellerate fleet.

You are Captain Bloggs of the Excellerate Fleet.

Sure, the fleet has an Admiral too. Without an Admiral, the fleet would be uncoordinated and would not survive an engagement with the enemy. The fleet would become a flotilla, an aimless collection of ships each heading in different directions, some crashing into each other, others sailing off in random directions. The role of the Admiral is to keep the fleet together.

So having chosen an adventure that requires a fleet to be assembled, you have the chance to join your ship with the fleet and sail off together in pursuit of that dream.

Choice

Human beings evolved through our ability to make choices. The industrial revolution brought corporate hierarchies that restrict choice, so by forcing people into job descriptions or values that they don't quite fit into, that choice is suppressed. In order for you to live to your values or pursue your own interests, you have to steal time or make time for hobbies and other interests.

I spent 17 years in the telecoms industry and saw a direct correlation between a person's happiness and productivity and the alignment between their personal identity and their job description. This is obvious - we know through concepts like NLP Logical Levels that alignment through Identity, Beliefs, Capability, Behaviour and Environment leads to congruence, the absence of conflict both inside and outside.

The industrial revolution created restrictive job descriptions that say you can't have ideas because you're an 'administrator' not a 'creative director'. As a pre-sales consultant I sometimes had to take sales people along only to write a contract because it wasn't in my job description, so the processes didn't allow for it.

So in order for people to fully express their individuality, they have to steal time from the company, they have to make time at weekends and they have to find time amongst the housework and overtime.

What companies want is 100% commitment, but they go about this by interviewing people - management selection - in order to find people who fit the job spec with the minimum of squashing. On the other hand, executives and executive search consultants work by taking a person's skills and creating a job around them. They will say "We have to have this guy - what can we get him to do?" Investment banks create whole new departments and products around the skills of talented people.

Well if it's good for the bankers and executives, why shouldn't we all have some of that?

Because, as the middle managers will tell you, if everyone was allowed to fully express their skills and interests, who would put coal in the furnaces? Who would man the checkouts? Who would clean the toilets? The country would grind to a halt! Our industrialised society would fall apart if people didn't do what they were paid to do - whether or not they want to do it.

The end result of this is that we no longer have the job for life. Is this because companies don't care about us any more, or is it because the demands of globalisation, shareholder returns and business process re-engineering have created job specs so narrow and process driven that no-one can stand to be squashed for more than a few years, and their natural individuality finds a way out - through finding another job, or through a stress related illness.

Well I don't know if anyone can do it, but I know one thing for certain. I can, and if I can then you can.

And I know that if we can do it within excellerate then we can do it with our clients, and our clients can do it within their own businesses. We can't change the world, but we can change the minds of the people we touch.

excellerate is therefore founded on a simple principle, that choice and commitment are not mutually exclusive. For me to commit to a business, I don't have to give up my choice to pursue other interests. For me to have choice over my interests, I don't have to sit on the fence, hedge my bets and fail to see the returns on my efforts through a lack of commitment.

With excellerate, I can wake up each morning and decide what to do. Then I can fully commit to that course of action.

I can wake up and be the Director of excellerate, I can wake up and be an Ascent coach, I can wake up and be Millie and Isobel's Dad, and I can fully be any of those identities without any compromise to the others.

So tomorrow morning when you wake up, who will you be?

Why should I join excellerate?

At this stage in the game, following the emails, website info, blog and our meeting on 13th February, the answer is very simple.

If you still need me to sell it to you, it's not right for you.

What's cooking?

This blog is like an open plan kitchen in a restaurant - it allows clients and casual visitors to see what goes on within the company. There are some commercially sensitive and contractual conversations that still take place in the 'office' .

I think the blog provides a forum for us to hold R&D conversations within a semi-public forum, so that anyone can see what's going on and comment.

Some people worry that we might give away secrets to our competitors. Actually, our competitors are our allies because they are helping to grow the market. Sharing our ideas here doesn't cause that kind of problem because other companies still don't work the way we do, they are still bounded by the laws of the industrial world, not free to create new ideas and new ways of working as we are.

This blog is part of our constant evolution, as individuals and as part of the excellerate community.

Branding and identity

Which is the more prominent brand?


Mars or Masterfoods

Heinz or Baked Beans


Let's say you're a specialist in leadership coaching. Do people buy your service because of you or because of the brand?

Do you buy products from Masterfoods by accident, because really you're buying Mars Bars, or do you buy Baked Beans only from Heinz rather than from HP or Tesco?

Where customer buy your expertise, regardless of the name on the invoice, there is a good fit with excellerate because having a bigger brand to work in with a bigger reputation for innovation and service adds value to what you do. If you are developing a brand within which to sell your services, you will probably see excellerate as a competitor. You might hedge your bets in the hope you'll get the odd bit of business, but then you should know by now that if you hedge your bets, you never get the big pay off. What makes a venture a success isn't the product, the timing, the market, the support but your commitment.

So in deciding whether to commit yourself to excellerate, consider this. Are you a Mars Bar or a Heinz Baked Bean? Are you the star of the show, or are you creating a show for you to star in?

Personal branding

One of the reasons that people become self employed is that they can no longer stand the rigid control hierarchy of the traditional company. The flipside of this is that they lose the social cohesion of working in a team, sharing ideas, venting frustrations and just gossiping at the coffee machine. Is there a way to maintain a balance between the two? I think so - and I think this is such a powerful and compelling proposition that we can base a successful business on it.

Companies lose many vital skills when people leave to work for themselves, so they hire those skills back in, often in the form of contractors. Agencies spring up to take advantage of this situation, offering a simplified buying interface in return for a cut of the contract rate. In time, the agencies become more prominent than the specialists they represent and that cut gets a lot bigger. Eventually, the contractors now work for the agency and are back where they started. There must be a better way.

A typical way to start this kind of business is to set up a brand as a commercial vehicle. Some people go for the 'XYZ Ltd' option and others for the "Fred Bloggs Ltd" option, depending on how much they like the sound of their own name, or how much they want to create the perception of a corporate entity.

The problem is that, even with XYZ Ltd, the company is still only one person. The company stops working when you stop working, and you can't sell the company because there is no goodwill in it outside of your own personal relationships.

This is an ideal position from which to join excellerate, because you don't have a large investment in the brand, what you really need is a vehicle to enable you to do more of what you love with your clients whilst at the same time being part of a team you enjoy being with.

In order to grow, you need other people committed to your cause. You need to entrust your brand to other people to sell, deliver, etc. You can stave off this problem for a while by offloading work to accountants, virtual PAs, but in order to really grow you have to take the leap of faith and bring in more people to run the core program - whatever that is for you.

To succeed, a company needs to keep on growing. Sooner or later, you have a number of people working in it, and you are either one of the team or the leader of the team. You might want to carry on working with clients, but the team now needs leadership.

For someone in this situation, joining excellerate is probably not the right thing to do. Where there is a sufficient gap between the activities of excellerate and XYZ Ltd, new ideas and opportunities will develop as a result of the two teams collaborating.

Often, where the person starting the business has a real marketing talent or a very strong proposition, the brand quickly outgrows the person, even when no-one else is involved. People in this situation are often stuck on the fence, living up to a perception bigger than 'sole trader' yet not actally stepping into the leadership role and growing the business by bringing in more people. No matter how big the brand looks, it is still only one person.

This is no longer a question of whether to join excellerate or not - it is a question of whether you are ready to commit to the growth of your business or not.

A useful question in this case is "Which is bigger, you or the brand?" If the brand is bigger, maybe it's time to commit to growing the business with a team of your own. If you're bigger, then your clients probably don't notice it anyway, they buy you. In this case, you would probably benefit from being a star player in the excellerate team.

The excellerate structure

excellerate is a very unusual business, it is certainly unique as far as I know in the professional services world. I wanted to create a business where people could participate based on choice.

I know this is the right thing to do because I strongly believe that the industrial revolution caused a 200 year long set back in cultural evolution. We had an artificial control hierarchy placed upon us which stifled the basic human need for choice and self determination. We are seeing the end of this now, with home working and flexible benefits schemes, but these are still only tentative steps and I wanted to leap forwards, to do something truly innovative.

excellerate is built on a foundation of choice, about who we work with and what we do. Consider going to work for a new company. You go for an interview, and maybe meet your new manager and someone from HR. Sometimes you might meet one or two or your colleagues who get wheeled in to 'look you over'. Then, on your first day, you meet the whole team and many other people. Some people you connect with, others not. Some welcome you, others fear you. Some think they will manipulate you in their own power games, some think you represent a threat to their power. You go through this only because you have come to accept it, not because it is what you want.

excellerate is based on every member of the team choosing to be there and choosing who they work with. Everyone also has outside interests which may include working for companies which traditionally would be competitors. By doing this, we have the most committed and dedicated team with the most up to date skills and leading edge thinking.

As well as helping our clients to transform their businesses by unleashing the potential of people, we are a role model for the way that successful businesses will be organised in the future.