What a Year!

I took the opportunity over the holiday season to reflect on the year gone by and thought it would be worth sharing some of the high's and low's; the lessons I've learned about running a small business, attracting and retaining good customers, the pro's and con's of self-employment, the challenge of employing and contracting with people and developing my own understanding of my personal strengths and weaknesses.

Without doubt 2019 was a crazy year which thankfully ended on a high but there were times last year when I was ready to throw in the towel, tuck my tail between my legs and start searching the job ads! When the going gets tough sometimes even the toughest people want to go into hibernation!

This blog covers my year, warts and all! I have amended some details to protect people's privacy and to prevent getting sued(!) but as I spend a lot of time preaching about how Courageous Leaders needs to hold the mirror up to their own behaviours and performance and find themselves wanting, it's only right that I have the balls to start with me!

I hope you enjoy it - excuse the bad language and dry sense of humour which I hope comes across as humour and not sarcasm and drop me a line with some feedback or reach out if I can support you in any way!

Cash Flow

Probably the most challenging issue this year for the business was mine and Mick's struggle to get to grips with Cash Flow. We have all heard the saying 'Cash is King' but we didn't quite realise that it naturally flows the wrong way most of the time, i.e. OUT! When you're clients want to pay you by cheque in 60 days' time but your staff and consultants need paying in 2 weeks there is no mathematical equation that can dig you out of the shit! It is agony, pure and simple. There were at least two occasions in 2019 when we were quite literally on the brink of shutting up shop and going home. We are very lucky to have some very good friends and family who came to our rescue at the 11th hour. We are also very lucky to have the best team of people working with us that we could ever wish for and whilst nobody went without payment, we owe a debt of gratitude to some of our folks for believing in us and Paradigm enough to stay the course and graciously allow us to negotiate longer payment terms. When the proverbial hits the fan you really do find out who your friends are!

Lessons learned?

1. Turn away work we can't afford to fund or negotiate shorter payment terms with clients. If the client really can't flex to accommodate us, despite our excellent service and niche expertise as a small enterprise, they are probably not going to be agile enough to embed what we teach about high performing organisations and human performance anyway! Their core systems are flawed!
2. Don't commit to paying suppliers quicker than we can get paid ourselves. It sets us up to fail and we let people we really, really care about, down - badly.
3. Speak to the bank first and fast! We had a mindset that we should only speak to the bank when we were 'naughty'; we treated it like the Head Master's office. We now have a monthly call with our Business Account Manager whether the business is doing well or not and this has quite literally been a game changer for us, Andy is now our first port of call and not the last! We ask his advice on business decisions and he has got to know us, our business and our hopes and aspirations for the future so we're all playing the infinite game!

Winning Work and Retaining Customers

For the three years (give or take a couple of months) we have been in business we have never yet lost a customer. I have always maintained that this is because we have wonderful clients who love working with us and who truly value the service we provide, and it is! However, it is also because I am very picky about who our clients should be! I start every year with a 'Dream Client List'. This consists of 10 organisations who I aspire to work for. The Top 3 are my 'Absolute must haves'; the 2nd three are 'Very nice to haves' and the last 4 are 'opportunities to explore new industries, countries, cultures, etc.' Every year we have secured work with our top 3 which have all grown into incredible long-term partnerships, we have secured a high percentage of our 'nice to have' clients and each year we have secured 1 or 2 of our 'opportunities to explore'. Significantly, we have turned potential clients away or ended provision of our services at an early opportunity, with those who's ethos, values and long term missions are at odds with us and the services we provide. I don't want my company to be one of those consultancies that just take the money and turn the handle - I want to make a significant change, we want to add value, we want to help our customers to be better, more effective, efficient and profitable organisations who create safe and healthy work environments for their people. In short, we want to improve the working lives of the people who run and work in those organisations and in order to do that we need to have an alignment with the Senior Leaders which enables us to be straight talking, pull no punches and get shit done! We do not want to occupy a desk in our customers' offices for the next 10 years feeling safe and warm. I want my people to start working themselves out of a job from the minute they arrive! We want to leave each customer with their own internally trained, competent and capable 'Paradigm' team so that they can sustain the improvements and continue to drive them long after we have moved on! If we want to reach our strategic goal of educating at least 30,000 organisations by 2030 we won't do that sitting on our asses doing the same things in 5 years time that we're doing today!

Lessons learned?

1. Don't be greedy! Only work with clients who understand and appreciate the value that we add through the services we provide.
2. Pull the plug early on those who don't get it or us!
3. Don't take good money from organisations who only want to pay lip service or tick a box for a regulator - that's their prerogative but it's not our playground!
4. Provide opportunities for our 'Must Have' clients to experience the value we can add without cost, inconvenience or obligation.
5. Accept there are horses for courses. Not every consultant will be a good fit for every customer; don't take it personally, work as a team and find the best fit - even if it's another company! It's another opportunity to grow our team and collaborate.
6. Recruit extraordinary people who understand the bigger picture for Paradigm and are passionate about making their success our success and vice versa.
7. Understand what is important to the customer and meet them where they are today, not where we think they should be!

Employment and Collaboration

Having had a very bad experience with an employer prior to starting Paradigm, I have always been adamant that I want to be a good employer who puts people first, is fair, level headed and consistent; I wanted people to be rewarded commensurate with the amount of effort they put in and for their potential - personally, professionally and financially to be limitless. I absolutely did not want anyone to experience the shitty feelings of worthlessness, incompetence, criticism, sexism and cynicism I had felt during the worst three years of my career. I sat with Mick very early on and we wrote down a long list of the ways we wanted people to feel when they worked with Paradigm. We still reflect on that list often. Sadly we failed. There have been times during 2019 when working with Paradigm hasn't felt that great - for us and our team. Mick and I became so stressed due to money worries that we separated for three months, we continued to run the business but our team knew things were bad. A member of our team struggled to cope with a long stint abroad and had to be sent home earlier than planned. Another was deported because they didn't have appropriate travel documents. The business grew very fast during the year resulting in all of us working long hours, driving long distances or having to stay away from home for long periods of time. Staying in touch with our own people became virtually impossible when we were working 18 hour days trying to serve customers on 3 continents getting up at 3am to talk to UK clients from Kansas and staying awake to talk to Australian clients until 3am the next morning! The people who suffered were our own because we cancelled meetings, one to ones and budget reviews to prioritise customer requirements. There are no easy answers to some of these things when you are so tired you can't even think straight or string a bloody sentence together! We were failing to learn all the lessons we were trying to teach our customers and as a result some of our people became totally pissed off with us. I guess the saving grace was the fact that they were able to stand together and call Mick and I out on our poor behaviours and our failure to adhere to our own strict standards! They let us know how they felt and they also suggested some solutions which would help to improve the situation! Whilst I was very proud of our team for standing their ground I also took it very badly personally; perhaps because by the end of November I was so freaking knackered I just wanted to hibernate, but I spent much of December tearing myself apart, dwelling on some personal things that had been said about me by members of the team and wondering how I'd managed to get so far off course. A good friend gave me some cold, hard truths during a post Thanks Giving lunch about how, as the owner of the business, being talked about was just par for the course and I just needed to 'grow a pair' and accept it. It was great advice and has resulted in us making some organisational changes which will remove some of the 'personal feelings and emotions' from our recruitment processes and allow our people to crack on and realise their own aspirations within the now much safer confines of the business.

Lessons Learned?

1. Employ or work with the best people for the job not just the people we like! Whilst we want our team to be cohesive and effective we have come to accept that not everyone in the team will like each other and that's fine, so long as there is trust and respect.
2. It isn't always best to just tackle issues head on, as is my usual style. No matter how many opportunities we provide for someone to tell us what is concerning them or upsetting them, the direct approach and frank feedback isn't for everyone. I need to learn that my decisions as the owner of the business can't always be agreed by and acceptable to everyone and that is fine. I will try to listen and take everyone's opinions and feelings into account and then make well-informed decisions, just as we teach our clients to do!
3. People come and go. Some people will spend longer parts of the journey with us than others. Some will go and return, some will not stay long and others will remain long term. De-personalising the recruitment process and outsourcing the initial advertising, interviewing and shortlisting saves time, money and effort and results in a much better fit for the team and this is more important than whether they are a good fit for us as the owners.
4. Letting go of control. Like all new parents(!) we wanted to put a protective barrier around Paradigm but it has become increasingly obvious that we can't do everything ourselves. Our new organisational structure which will kick in from mid-January enables us as owners to focus on specific areas of the business which play to our strengths and to leave our weaker areas to those we have entrusted to play a part because of their strengths! It's hard to let go but we have to understand and accept our own limitations for the benefit of our company, our customers and our incredible team.

And the highlights are!!

As I am sure some of you will already know, 2019 was also an absolutely fantastic year for Paradigm and the team so I wanted to end this blog with a list of fantastic achievements!

1. Gareth Lock made a documentary about human errors in diving (look out for more on this a bit later this year).
2. We welcomed 8 new customers to our portfolio this year and are absolutely privileged to serve each and every one of them.
3. We secured 2 multiple year programmes of work with blue-chip global organisations and are currently negotiating another 3.
4. We built our team from zero to 8 full time employed people this year - welcome one and all!
5. We increased the number of collaborative partnerships to 10 full and 5 part.
6. We were shortlisted Finalists for business awards from FSB and Wales Start Up Awards for the second year running.
7. I was awarded the Rising Star of the Year Award at the SHE Awards.
8. We attended, sponsored or took part in 16 conferences, workshops or seminars around the world.
9. We reached over 400 organisations with our education and training programmes.
10. We relocated our UK Head Office to Plymouth, Devon.
11. We incorporated our US company, Paradigm Human Performance Inc.
12. We introduced over 1000 people to the Principles of HOP thanks to our one day introduction courses.
13. We supported a number of charity partners including Toucan for Children, Plastic Oceans, World Wildlife Fund and Cancer Research.
14. Finally, after a very testing year professionally, Mick and I ended the year stronger than ever, relocated back to my home city of Plymouth and very much looking forward to a more settled but even busier 2020!