- So if you've just joined us
and you're wondering, what does growth mean?
And what does scale mean?
What we're talking about here is the different stages
of technology adoption for businesses as they grow.
We call this a growth roadmap,
and someone's dropped a screenshot into the comments,
and this is the different stages of business
and how these different stages will adopt
and work with technology differently,
and what areas of business that they can use technology
to help with their business challenges.
Cool.
So we wanna talk about when we're working
with database decisions, creating KPIs,
and creating that line of sight,
I've already covered that and shared
how that needs to work.
The next biggest challenge for these businesses
is modernizing old school
and let's call them legacy applications, right?
And so quite often, you're going through
that decision making process that I mentioned,
of finding cloud based software
that's going to replace legacy applications.
But every now and again,
you also have something
like a windows based database
that is just stuck in the business, right?
That you need to use
just because it's the only one of its kind,
or it's an industry specific application
and there's just no cloud based,
you know, alternatives for it.
And so at this point in time
what these businesses are forced with a decision on,
is do you build something custom
or do you try and keep
you know, this old legacy application still running?
And there's heaps of options for,
you know, what different roads that you can go down
and pros and cons,
whether you wanna build something in house
or find something to buy.
What many businesses will now consider doing,
is actually spinning up cloud-based servers
and getting rid of local infrastructure,
so it's all completely, completely in the cloud,
and actually running these applications on either
you know, GCP, Google Cloud Platform or something like AWS.
And once you've got that application hosted online,
you can actually then stream it down
to something like a Chromebook,
so that your team can work on that.
And so that's what these scale businesses are doing.
They're actually removing all of the infrastructure
and completely removing it.
And when I hear of large organizations
taking this step to completely Cloudify their business,
you know, when we think of a company
that has 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 employees,
we think about businesses
that are maybe a little slower to move.
They're in the mid market,
they're more established,
they're probably been in business at least 15 or 20 years,
however, some of those businesses
are doing a better job of modernizing
than small businesses that we talk to.
Some of the small businesses
that are still in in launch scale,
or maybe they're even in startups scale,
have a NAS drive,
or they have all their files stored on their local desktops,
or they're sharing files via USB sticks
or maybe they're still using Dropbox to share files
rather than something that's actually integrated
with the rest of their business suite.
And, you know,
it's funny to hear of those businesses
that are just doing it completely wrong,
when we then have organizations that are large,
that have been around for ages,
and they have very savvy IT teams
which are actually moving things across.
So moving these applications
across the cloud based solutions, gives you data.
And what I mean by that is,
if you're, let's maybe say you're a business
that does a lot of onsite kind of work.
If you move to an application like SIM pro,
then you're able to pull out data via the API,
and we can actually then visualize that data.
If you're a business and you wanna move
to something like maybe NetSuite
to run your, you know, distribution and operations.
And there's lots of data
that can be pulled out of that as well,
and that helps you with more data based decisions.
Really useful, okay, cool.
The last one that I wanna add
and this is more relevant
even if you're still in the growth mode of business,
if you're between like four and 20 employees,
gathering data from your employees
is really, really simple and easy to do,
particularly with the Google suite of tools.
And so, we'll use data gathering for things like HR,
we'll use it for internal surveys.
It's really important for us
as we're trying to maintain culture
and build our HR operations,
which is one of the most important things
that a scale company needs to actually do,
that we gathered data from our team.
And we wanna gather data and look at trends over time.
We wanna look at, you know,
what's the happiness of our team,
when we put on a conference or a training,
we wanna get feedback on,
was that meaningful to them or not?
Because it's about more than just
what the leaders of the business think is a good idea.
When you have a business that is really growing,
a scaled out team, it's important to actually be democratic,
because you're gonna get varied responses and opinions
on how well you're doing,
and where the business needs to go.
It is absolutely not good enough
for your strategy to be exclusively top-down.
And mid-market word, oh, top-down strategy.
What that means is that,
you can't just make things up
that you wanna do because you think it's a good idea,
rely on your team and allow them to bring their ideas
to the table.
So, how some of the ways that we do that,
well, we use Google forms for most of that,
and that's, you know,
simple question and answer forums
that we use when we do things like a team conference,
or when we do a team training
we're always getting feedback.
But I wana share with you one really cool thing
that our HR team actually built out
to keep in check with how the team are doing.
Now right now everyone's working remotely.
And what that means,
is that we need to keep tabs
on how people going on a personal level.
And so our team wanted to do that,
and they built something called the Emometer or Emo meter.
I'm not sure exactly how to pronounce it,
but let me go and search for it.
This is our Google site
obviously, where we store all of our systems and processes,
and of course, all of the forms.
So you can see here we've got
things like company request forms.
We did a 360 degree review previously,
we've got a training evaluation form there.
All right, so let's go to our Emometer.
So this is an Emometer here,
and what this does, is you can fill this out any time.
And I think the team prompted the team
to fill it out from time to time.
And what we do is,
we just select what emotion we're feeling right now,
can maybe put some comments in there,
and it even asks how you feeling at home as well.
So let's say I'm pretty joyous at home
to be completely honest.
So I'm gonna put that in there,
and I can put some more comments in there,
and I can hit submit.
Now this is completely voluntary,
the team don't have to do it.
It's not like we're forcing them to do it
or anything like that.
But what this does,
is it's kind of like, you know,
a bit of a report and a check in for the team.
The team working at home in isolation,
you know, quite often you don't have
that human connection right now
that you would normally get
being face to face with somebody else.
And so, what this little tool does,
is allows our HR team to connect
with the team, see how things are going.
And, you know, you never know.
Sometimes someone might be a little bit grouchy on Facebook,
but they're actually having a great time at work
and everything's good for them.
Or sometimes everyone seems really great on the surface
but you know, there's something else going on there,
on an underlying note and they need a little bit of support,
and so this is one of those old tools
that we kind of built there.
So, using data to your advantage.
These are simple technology tools
that I've shared with you,
that can actually bring that data
into your hands, into you as a leader in the business,
but this kind of data gathering,
is how businesses will be able to continue
to grow and scale.
Because the biggest challenges are around,
you know, I already mentioned things like, you know,
what your customers think about you.
But in a business that, you know,
breaches out of growth mode into scale mode,
it really all becomes about people.
I mean, every business is about people, we know that,
but it really becomes literally all about the people
as you grow and as you scale.
So I've covered off two,
I wanna cover off my third big way
that these scale companies will actually win.
And that is delegation,
and making sure that you are passing on everything
to the team.
Now I've covered in our private group
ways that businesses can actually delegate
and the different stages of delegation.
We've got other videos on that.
So check those out in our group if you haven't already,
but our delegation to our team
needs to be sharing line of sight
on the vision and the goals of the business.
And so, sharing where you want the business to go,
making sure that that's repeated to your latest
and then your latest,
and then repeating that to everyone else
who's a part of the business, is an important thing to do.
So how might we use technology
to make our lives easier in that area?
Well, I have from our friends at Asana,
an amazing new feature that they have just launched,
which is called Goals.
And so inside this Goals feature,
we can actually build out and put down a company goals
and company initiatives,
they can have, you know, sub goals there as well.
And then we can actually share those goals
with anyone who's working on different projects
or different tasks within the team.
And so each one of these individual goals
can be set up to report on progress.
So you can see how the progress
is going towards the goal, which is pretty groovy,
and then the other thing that you can do,
is actually link individual projects
or a portfolio as well, they allow you to do,
so that people who are working on those projects
can see how it's working towards a goal.
And so the thing here is that we wanna use this software,
and we wanna use this tool
so that we're communicating,
okay, here's where we're going,
and here's how everyone's day to day work is meaningful
towards where we wanna take the business
and where we wanna take the company.
And that is just so absolutely critical.
It's one of the biggest challenges
that a scout companies can run into,
is, you know, we talked about things like silos
and communication breakdowns earlier
you start to have the problems.
And I have experienced these myself personally,
very, very intimately in the last number of years,
that the business doesn't always, you know,
run the way you want it to run.
Kind of feels like a bit of a circus.
And you're the ringleader
just trying to keep things in control.
That's about as good as it gets.
You can only ever feel about 80% in control at any one time.
So I'm gonna show you how these goals work in Asana.
This is a paid feature of Asana.
So if you're interested in this,
you can have a chat to our team.
We are one of Asana's newest global partners,
and our team can help you out
with doing a trial or a demo of a paid account with Asana.
So we've got a goal here
and that's to build our concierge business
to a million dollars in recurring revenue.
And so that goal here is something
that I wanna share with the team.
And so I can actually set a progress metric.
And so from here, I can say, all right,
let's jump in and throw in
what is gonna be a metric for progress.
Now you can just do a percentage if you want,
but if it's something that's a dollar figure,
then you know, we may as well actually use dollar figures.
And let's say currently right now,
I think we're at about 500,000.
So we'll put 500,000 in there
and then I wanna go 1 million as a target,
and then we go save, right?
And so what this has done is,
this has set the goal
and it's gona give us the opportunity
to report in progress as we're moving towards that goal.
Now you'll notice here that we can also set up sub goals
and these are probably gonna be the contributing goals
which are gonna work towards our top goal.
So what contributing goals
are gonna work towards our top goal
with something like building up our concierge business?
well, it's going to be working on our customer satisfaction,
it's gonna be making sure the leads
are coming through from our marketing team.
It's gonna be making sure that the sales team
are working on their conversion rate,
and they're setting goals around how much business
they wanna generate per quarter and per year.
And so you can see that pretty easily,
each team is able to enter what their goals are,
and they all kind of roll up
into the top level company goal.
So, that's what we use sub goals for,
but we're actually gonna use our reporting in feature now
to share with you how you can actually report in
when you're updating the status.
Okay, cool.
So let's say once a month
you check in and, you know,
see how you're going to goals,
or it may even be once a week,
whoever's responsible for reporting on this.
And of course, you know,
we'll kind of delegate this out to someone.
I might delegate that to myself, right?
I'm the person who's driving it,
and let's say, all right,
maybe my due date for that is in two financial years, right?
So let's maybe put that June 30, 20 oops,
say June 30, 2022.
I think that was the end date rather than the start date.
Okay, so let's do this start date now.
Cool, all right.
So I've got that there,
now each time I wanna update my progress,
I can say, oh, well, we added another growth customer.
So we've got another $5,000 in our recurring revenue there.
And then if I wanna update the progress again,
I can say all right,
well, let's say maybe we did a little bit more,
we did 10,000, right?
And so I can also choose whether it's on track
or whether it's off track.
And then basically eventually
this is gonna show us a number of snapshots along the way
of how we're going towards that goal.
Now, the best thing about this,
is as soon as you start linking in projects.
And let's say for example
I might link in, okay, let's link in the exact project here,
and I'll link in the marketing project,
which is called attract.
And I also have my portfolio there as well.
So I think it's, here we go,
exact and attract portfolio.
Each time I'm working in one of those,
each time I'm working on one of these,
it's actually gonna show me a long side that project,
or show me alongside that portfolio here
which is another cool paid feature.
It will show me that I'm actually working towards a goal.
And that the work that I'm doing here is actually
working towards a goal.
Now, is that rocket science?
No, no, it's not rocket science.
What this technology is supporting,
is line of sight and communication of goals to your team.
So can you use Asana for this, you can use a whiteboard,
it doesn't matter.
What matters is that you're actually
communicating the goals to your team,
and that they can all see how that's happening.
Let me know if you like that.
Okay, so we've covered off that.
The final little tip that I wanna give you
is around keeping people connected
while you're working remote.
Now, right now, everyone's obviously working remotely
and we don't want our teamwork to drop off.
And we don't want people to feel isolated
even if we aren't physically apart and physically isolated.
Now, one of the things
that we've begun doing
to actually help make sure our leaders
are effectively delegating,
and effectively making sure
that their team members are working
the way that they want them to work
and making sure that each one of our team members
actually has the support that they need
is we've just very very recently
introduced co working for our teams.
Now, previously I've co worked
in my team and it's worked extremely well,
but we're now rolling that out to all of our leaders.
So how do you cowork?
It's really, really simple.
You open up a Google Meet or we open up a Google Meet,
you can use any video conferencing that you want,
and inside that meeting, you just leave it switched on.
So you and whoever team members that you're working with,
you leave it switched on all day long.
Now you might not do it for the whole day.
I tend to do a cowork at least once a week
for three to five hours with my marketing manager Angel.
And so we're pretty much spending
the good part of a day working together.
And we just have that meeting open all day long.
And so it means that we're actually just doing our work.
We're not spending all day meeting.
We're actually doing our work
but we're, you know,
kind of idly chitchatting as we go along
the same way that you would maybe chat with a coworker
if you were sitting in an open plain office.
And so what that gives you the ability to do is,
just kind of like stay connected
and stay checked in
with someone who's important to work with.
Now, this works really great when you end up
with four or five or even more people on the meeting.
Because you're not necessarily
distracting yourselves all day,
but what you are doing is communicating and connecting.
And so our leaders actually have a cowork day every Friday
where they shut themselves off from client meetings,
they jump in one meeting.
Scott my general manager runs that
and they all work together
on their quarterly and strategic tasks,
while we are, or while they are chatting away.
And I like that one
because I can jump into that anytime I want
and have a bit of a catch up or chit chat with the team.
But a cowork is a great way to keep connected
really simple and easy to do.
And so what that does,
is that make sure
that anything your leaders wanna have communicated
to the tea, is actually communicated.
And they're actually keeping tabs on how that is going.
So I hope these were useful for you guys.
We've covered off three different ways
that scale companies actually make sure
that they operate well.
And so they continue to scale
and continue to grow a successful business.
If this has been interesting to you,
please drop a comment below
and let me know,
What's the most useful thing that you have learnt
in this video.
I'd love to hear that from you.
Just a quick recap
we covered that technology is becoming a process
and you need to make sure
that you are thinking about it as a process.
Next up data driven decisions,
how you actually using data inside the business
using dashboards is gonna be the most important thing
for you to get clear line of sight
and exactly where the business is at right now
and what areas you need to focus on.
And then finally is delegation,
is making sure that you have effective delegation
and effective flow
of communication between your different team members.
This is important not only for you know, large businesses
that are actually 20 employees and above,
you know, if you're a business
with just a couple of employees
or you're still in growth mode,
in the desert of that five to 20 employee
growth stage of the business,
these are things that you may wish to have as top of mind.
But now you know, what is around the corner.
Thanks so much for everyone else who has joined.
We'll catch you guys in the next one.
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And inside there, there are other business owners
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I'm gonna say goodbye now.
Thank you so much for being a part of this
and I'll catch you guys in the next one.
Cheers.