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When Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast
Not paying attention to our culture can cost us our dreams — even as a ‘company of one’. (4 min read)
Photo by Jonathan Farber on Unsplash
The title saying is attributed to Peter Drucker, a well-known management guru, so we often think of it with regard to organisations. The unwritten rules of culture will trump strategy any day. But it’s worth also considering with regard to our own lives. How might we be tolerating behaviours in ourselves that undermine our dreams?
I was reminded of this quote in one of the recent modules for ThePowerMBA: Corporate Growth Strategies. This module covers all the ways in which organisations can grow, ranging from product development to Mergers and Acquisitions.
As I’ve shared elsewhere, one of my favourite parts of ThePowerMBA is its human storytelling. Lessons are often illustrated with case studies, which makes everything far more practical and really illuminates the main learnings. Founders share candidly about the mistakes they’ve made, the money they’ve lost, and their circuitous journeys towards success.
But the story told in the Mergers and Acquisitions lesson is the most candid so far. I was genuinely gripped (which, I have to admit, I didn’t expect from a module on corporate growth strategies!).
ThePowerMBA tells the tale of an acquisition that began with a committed, passionate vision for a better world -- and that ended with a cultural crisis that almost threatened to tear Johnson & Johnson apart. That this story is narrated by Jami Taylor, who was part of the J&J team overseeing this very acquisition, makes it even more compelling.
As I heard this story, what jumped out at me was how easy it is to overlook the people element in our desire to scale. Corporate restructurings can be notoriously complex and charged. Exquisite leadership is required to balance the knife-edge of empathy, vulnerability, strategy, and authority that this calls for.
While it’s easy to take this story as a ‘war story’ that other big corporations can learn from, I’ve also been reflecting on what it means at a micro-scale.
How could this story practically translate to entrepreneurs? And how could it be relevant to anyone seeking to build an impactful career that’s also in line with their values?
If you’re a solopreneur in a ‘Company of One’, you may not think of yourself in this way. But of course, we do all create cultures around our work. And being naive about this may mean that our dreams may be undermined by the behaviours that become (consciously or unconsciously) our status quo.
And it’s true even if you’re working for someone else. As a professional today, you need to think of yourself as a ‘business of one’. You’re creating a brand, an ethos, a culture, and a reputation that goes beyond the job that you happen to be in at the moment. As J. T. O’Donnell reminds us: “every job is temporary”.
If our culture is simply a set of behaviors or practices that have become normative, all of us have a culture.
As a founding member of Climate Change Coaches, I recently finished co-facilitating our flagship training programme, designed to help coaches support people around climate change. Our final module was on self-care and resilience.
Most of our attendees were independent coaches, working for themselves.
We asked them to imagine they were instead directors of a coaching organisation, each employing a team of coaches. In this role, responsible for other people, what working culture would they want to create?
For example:
What expectations would they have around their employees’ rhythm of work and rest? For example: how would they view work on weekends or evenings? Would there a maximum number of work hours per day? Would there be guidelines or expectations around email?
How about their employees’ working environments? For example: technology, ergonomic setups, beauty, or natural light?
What budget would they want to allocate towards training or professional development?
What would they want to be the norm for how these people experienced their workplace?
These are really great questions to ask ourselves as entrepreneurs — because for most of us, we don’t treat ourselves like our own star employee that we really want to retain.
We’re guilty of seeing our own energy as an infinite resource: a wide river that — in pursuit of greater and greater achievements — we can just keep on diverting into different streams, and trusting that the water will keep flowing.
Maybe that works if we have five streams. But what if we create fifty? After a while …. they become trickles.
They become more vulnerable to drought.
And the water becomes so shallow that it stops supporting life.
No matter how compelling our vision, if we don’t “protect the asset” — our energy, our vitality, our rest — we’ll undermine the impact that we want to make. Similarly, if we neglect our core values and philosophies in the pursuit of our growth, we might end up with all the trappings of success while feeling deeply unfulfilled. I’ve had mini-cycles of this in my own business. Each one has challenged me to really choose: what kind of person do I want to be, and how do I want my business to reflect this?
So: how can we make sure that culture doesn’t eat our strategy for breakfast?
To play with the metaphor: how can we make our culture the serving dish for our strategy? Something that contains and enhances our vision, rather than subsumes it? (Too much? Ok. Moving on.)
To craft an intentional culture, frame it as a practice, or a series of practices, for us to build into our day. These are designed to live out the values that are most important to us; the values that, if we were asked to design a business for other people, we’d want to be known for.
Here are some really practical examples:
Carve out time to be fully present to your family at certain times of day (for example: once the kids are home from school, work is off the table until they’re in bed). Creating a ‘shut down ritual’ to help close off your workday (and brain) before you transition to time with your loved ones.
Define enoughness for yourself: enough work, enough effort, enough money. And once you’ve got enough, you can take your foot off the pedal. You don’t have to keep reaching for more, just for the sake of more. (This is a great place to get support: find an accountability partner, hire a coach, or join a mastermind. )
Celebrate your achievements with others, and mark them in a way that matters to you, even if it’s uncomfortable.
Build mindfulness into your day. For example: start and end your work day by listing three things that you’re grateful for. Set a timer for morning, lunch, and afternoon to remind yourself to stretch, walk around, and take 60 seconds to breathe deeply and reconnect to the present moment.
Be intentional about the types of companies, suppliers, or clients you support, even if it ends up being a bit more expensive. Maybe it’s ordering books from minority-owned bookstores rather than Amazon; offering subsidised spots in your programmes to minorities, or making B-Corps your first port of call when seeking collaborations.
Consider signing up for 1% for the Planet, or making your business carbon neutral. Find out what practices need to change for you to run your business more sustainably, and begin to make small changes that align with this end goal.
Be diligent about building nature into the rhythm of your day, be it a morning walk, a lunchtime run, or a stroll around the block to help you transition out of the work headspace.
We’re all creating cultures anyway, whether by default or by design.
Let’s be intentional about what we’re practising so that our habits, norms, and behaviours truly support — and more: amplify — the impact we want to have.
Something to chew on: When has your culture undermined your strategy? What happened? And how did you course-correct in response?
Would-be Entrepreneur? Don’t Overthink it.
These tools from ThePowerMBA can save aspiring entrepreneurs a lot of time. (5 min read)
Photo by Kyle Hinkson on Unsplash.
I often coach people who find themselves at a crossroads. Some are considering entrepreneurship in the climate space. When thinking about launching a business, it can be really hard to know how to start. Here, tried-and-tested frameworks can help us move forwards.
I began my own business in 2017. I’ve mostly built it organically, figuring it out as I went along, through a lot of trial and error, and even some deliberate prototypes. Four years into my coaching business, I’m now studying for ThePowerMBA. I’m less than halfway into the programme, but I’ve already learned so much that would have been helpful four years ago.
For this blog post, I thought I’d pull together some of my favourite tools so far from ThePowerMBA, for the sake of aspiring, or early-stage, entrepreneurs who’d like to think more strategically.
1. Don’t think too much
Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup, who co-presents this module. All images are copyrighted property of ThePowerMBA.
This one’s counterintuitive. Surely the best way to be successful is to sit down and write a step-by-step business plan that covers all the bases you can think of. Right?
Well….not necessarily.
One of my all-time favourite modules in ThePowerMBA has been The Lean Startup. It’s based on the book of the same name and is taught partly by its author, Eric Ries.
In it, Eric compares the lean startup methodology to what everyone else does.
For example:
Rather than sit down and write a business plan, get out of the building and start interviewing your ideal customers.
Rather than delay your launch date until your product is perfect, launch a minimum viable product: the smallest, cheapest and fastest version of what you do, that allows you to start interacting with your customers and getting feedback right away.
Rather than assuming you know what’s going to happen, assume you know what’s going to be wrong.
In Eric’s words: “perfection is the enemy of entrepreneurship.” If you’re prone to perfectionism, ask yourself: what is a tiny step I can take right now to test whether my idea has value?
Maybe it’s meeting some potential customers and interviewing them. Maybe it’s running a pared-down version of your product/service in return for detailed feedback.
It’s not sitting thinking about it and not taking any action.
2. Remember: it’s still about humans
Course instructor, Borja Adanero Guinea, walking us through the Business Model Canvas. All images are copyrighted property of ThePowerMBA.
As I’ve written about elsewhere, this is something that I’ve seen purpose-led entrepreneurs (including myself) overlook. We’re so passionate about solving a particular problem in the system, about making a bigger impact, that we forget that we’re still trying to serve a particular customer group through our service/product. And so for our idea to work, that customer group needs to see value in our idea. Enough value that they’ll invest time, money, and energy in obtaining it (more below).
A tool to help us do this is the Business Model Canvas. This framework kicks off the entire programme of ThePowerMBA. It’s a great starting point for helping you think through how your idea offers value to other humans.
If you’re not a student at ThePowerMBA, you can access this tool for free via the Strategyzer website.
3. Learn from prospective customers
Course instructor, Borja Adanero Guinea, walking us through the Business Model Canvas. All images are copyrighted property of ThePowerMBA.
Along those lines, when you’re thinking about launching a product or service, the best way to get under the skin of the people you want to serve is to actually talk to them. Here, ThePowerMBA provides a step-by-step framework for how to interview people.
This framework follows four stages:
(1) Understand your customers
Learn who your customers are. Basic demographic questions around age, sex, location, education, etc, will all be helpful. Ask questions, too, to learn more about their core values and how they make decisions.
(2) Validate the problem
Understand how your people view the problem that you’re trying to solve. Listen to the words that they use. What options do they see as potential solutions to their problem? Learn what they think about all these options.
(3) Validate the solution
Explain or show your prospective solution. (Keep this simple. As above, with the minimum viable product, this can be a simple mock-up to introduce them to what you’re thinking). Ask them what they’ve understood about your idea. Ask: “is this for you? Why?” Ask them what they like most, and why. Keep bringing it back to what it will do for them, and what they highlight as most important.
(4) Validate the pricing
Tell them the price, and ask if they’d like to buy. See what they say. Offer a 20% discount and see if the answer changes.
(Note: pricing validation can be quite nuanced. For example, when the founders of Owlet, the baby monitor, were validating pricing, they found that people answered quite differently depending on how the question was phrased.)
These kinds of interviews will help you work out whether the product you have in mind is right for this kind of customer. You may well find out that this customer isn’t actually a fit for you. And that’s fine. You aren’t able to serve everyone. However, if you really want to work with these particular people, you’ll want to integrate their input into your idea until it offers even more value to them.
4. Speak to the most important benefits and costs
Allie Whitefleet interviewing David Flatow, Founder of Allocate — one of the many case studies in ThePowerMBA — about their value proposition. Allocate was later acquired by Sage. All images are copyrighted property of ThePowerMBA
ThePowerMBA emphasises that entrepreneurs often try to convey their value proposition in a way that’s really ineffective. For example, companies talk about things like functionality, features, and characteristics, how they differentiate from the competition, etc.
While there’s a place for this, it’s not the best way to describe true value. Why? Because these things don’t speak to what actually matters to your users or customers.
At the most powerful level, we humans are driven by very core needs. When it comes down to it, we want to feel happier or less afraid, feel part of something bigger than us, save time and money, etc. As you’re talking to prospective customers (above), listen to the emotional needs that you’re addressing, and how you can include this more in your communication.
At the same time, don’t forget that there are costs involved in using any product or service. These costs go far beyond the price tag. They can include the effort required to obtain the service, switching costs from another service, a learning curve in using it, etc.
As ThePowerMBA encapsulates: “value = benefits - costs”.
So keep asking yourself: how can you maximise the most important [read: emotional] benefits, and minimize the costs to your people? And how can you communicate this really clearly?
5. Pay attention to the right things
Instructor Borja Adanero Guinea, walking us through the difference between Actionable and Vanity Metrics. All images are copyrighted property of ThePowerMBA.
These days, everything can seem to be about likes, clicks, and subscribers. It’s very human to focus on our social media traction to give us a sense of whether we’re succeeding. While these metrics are helpful for when you’re thinking about scaling and want a sense of the ‘size’ of your business, they can be misleading at the earlier stage.
This is because when you’re just starting out, you want to be learning whether you’re meeting a real need in the market (a product-market fit).
For this reason, there are particular metrics that Eric Ries (of The Lean Startup, above) refers to as vanity metrics.
Vanity metrics include:
Followers
Visitors
Leads
Downloads
While high numbers here may make you feel good, and can speak to the reach that you’re getting online, they don’t give you an idea of whether people actually find your product/service useful once they get their hands on it. Instead, take a look at your actionable metrics.
Actionable metrics include:
Conversion rate
How much it costs you to acquire a new customer
How many repeat customers you get
Net Promoter Score, and Reviews
If your customers are getting what they need from working with you, they’re going to tell other people — and that’s the best kind of business growth. So, at the start, focus on the value you provide and the metrics that can help you measure that value.
There’s lots more that we’ve covered so far in the first few months of ThePowerMBA. Overall, I’ve been really enjoying the programme and have been really impressed by the quality of the teachers. I’m looking forward to applying some of what I’ve been learning in the next few months, chief among them, The Journey: the world’s largest climate innovation summer school, which I’m looking forward to being part of once again.
Here’s to strengthening as many purpose-led business ideas as we can!
Something to chew on: If you’re an aspiring or early-stage entrepreneur, which of the above frameworks feels most helpful right now? And what would be the first step towards implementing it?
The Tyranny of Consistency
Trying to create a new habit? The desire for a perfect streak could be your undoing. (5 min read)
Photo by Efe Kurnaz on Unsplash.
Back in July 2020, I signed up with great excitement for ThePowerMBA: the new tech ed programme that’s redefining business education everywhere. At the time, I had a 5-month old baby and was coaching part-time. Covid rates were dropping, the sun was shining, and I was inspired by all that I’d learn. 15 min/day? I could definitely do that – even as a new mum!
Then the rest of 2020 happened.
And as autumn became winter, 15 min/day began to get harder. Here in Scotland, Covid rates began to soar. The winter skies grew dark, and the nights became cold. My energy began to sink. Ten months of being a new mum in a pandemic began to take a toll. I just didn’t have it in me to open my laptop at 9pm and start a class … even if that class was just 15 minutes long.
In January 2021, things got much harder. Covid restrictions meant that we still didn’t have childcare, but by now my work had ramped up to 4 days/week as my mat leave ended. Now, 9pm arrived and ThePowerMBA wasn’t even an option: I was working until 10.30pm just to stay afloat. I was exhausted and burning out. My next MBA class kept getting shunted to the back of the queue. Soon, over a month had passed, and I couldn’t even remember what I’d last been studying.
Back in July 2020, I couldn’t have predicted what was going to happen in the world or in my personal life. While 15 min/day sounded doable, I had no way of knowing the tumult ahead, or the impact that chronic stress was going to have on my energy and emotions.
And so over the last few weeks, I’ve needed to ask myself some hard questions. Questions like: What am I willing to give up to get back on track? Do I even want to get back on track? And if I do, how can I make this work for me in this season of life?
As I’ve done so, I’ve noticed a few practices that have helped me re-centre myself, and choose the right option for me, right now.
If you’re also struggling to start (or maintain) a new behaviour, here are five practices that can help you regain perspective and energy, and make a decision that serves you.
1. Notice the tyranny of the streak
A few years ago, I began meditating with the Headspace app.
Headspace would celebrate any kind of ‘streak’ that I managed to create – even a streak of two days. And even though I hadn’t set out with the intention of ‘streaking’, this feature meant that I began competing with myself to see how long a streak I could get. I soon noticed that if I missed a day, and had to start a streak again from scratch, my motivation would take a nosedive. (Anyone else?)
But then one day, I managed to keep on top of my streak for longer. I reached 15, 20, 30 days of meditation in a row. And I decided I was going to go for a whole year: 365 days of meditating, every day. Headspace gave you a prize if you managed to do that, and boy was I going to win that prize. (Anyone else?)
So, guess what happened?
I pressed ‘play’ on the app every day for a year, just so it registered that I’d pressed the button.
Did I meditate? Well ... I often chose the ‘1-minute meditation’. And I occasionally pressed it as I was in the middle of doing something else, and told myself I was ‘mindfully folding laundry / eating / running for the bus’. More than once, I pressed it as I fell sleep, because I’d forgotten about my ‘meditation habit’ and it was almost midnight.
I cared far more about not breaking my perfect streak than about actually learning how to meditate. My desire for perfection had undone me. The streak had become a tyranny.
In the same way, if you’re trying to establish a new habit, notice whether a desire for a streak might actually sabotage your chance of success.
If you’re like me, you might need to actively remind yourself (again and again) that starting a new practice is not about maintaining a perfect record. If that’s your goal, it will also be your undoing.
2. Cut yourself some slack. A lot of it.
At the best of times, it’s hard to form new and lasting habits.
And these aren’t the best of times.
Most of us have been living with constant low- or medium-level anxiety, dread, loneliness, and exhaustion for over a year now. Add redundancy, lack of childcare, health worries, or isolation into the mix, and we’re very quickly running on empty.
Of course we have less willpower than normal right now. It’s so understandable that we don’t want to muster the energy to watch another class, or go for a run, or eat more healthily, or cut back on alcohol. It makes sense. These are really, really hard times.
It’s ok to not be a high-achiever in times of chronic and collective stress. It’s ok to not have the same drive or stamina or energy that we normally expect of ourselves.
3. Ask yourself: do I still really want this?
Some of us can get fixated on the desire to ‘not be a quitter’. If we start something, we tell ourselves that we ‘should’ finish it, regardless of whether circumstances change. And of course, there’s a lot of benefit to seeing things through. If we gave up when things were difficult, we wouldn’t achieve a lot.
However, if we don’t truly ask ourselves this question, and answer honestly if we do want to stop – then what happens is we can check out mentally, even as we keep showing up physically.
After ThePowerMBA started, I began another course – a taster of a new coach training programme – that was also meant to be 15 min/day. It began really well, but as the weeks passed I realised that I fundamentally disagreed with the main assumption the teacher was making. I have very limited free time, and I knew there were so many other things I wanted to do that would be more helpful than this course.
I decided to leave. I felt liberated! I knew in my gut this was the right thing to do. But, because I was doing the programme with friends, I then convinced myself to stay. I fell into the sunk cost fallacy: I’d already completed so much of it. Plus, I didn’t want to be the only one who dropped out. As a result, I ended up resenting the lessons and the time that they took from me.
I wish I had left that programme decisively, rather than checked out mentally but kept showing up. It would have released a lot of energy that I could have spent elsewhere.
It’s ok to walk away, and it’s ok to set a new goal — even if that means other people are disappointed.
On the other hand, if you do still really want this, then remind yourself of what this commitment will lead to, and why that’s important to you.
I decided that I do still really want to study ThePowerMBA. I loved the classes that I watched, and am understanding the world through a different lens. My own coaching business is already much stronger from what I’ve learned, and I feel much more equipped to support entrepreneurs and leaders. I’ve decided this particular programme is worth the commitment for me. It will help me create the life, business, and impact that I want. It also supports my love of learning, which is one of my core values.
Giving ourselves permission to (re)-commit – or not – reminds us that we always have a choice, if we choose to use it.
4. If you DO still want it, redefine consistency in a way that works for you.
If you do still want to commit to this new practice or habit, then choose to redefine consistency in a way that will support you, rather than undermine you.
Consistency works best as a servant, not a master. Decide what will help you right now, and not in your ideal life.
In this season, where so much is unpredictable and my energy fluctuates, I’ve personally decided that I’m ok ‘falling behind’ on ThePowerMBA. Even though I’d hoped to complete it within ten months, classes are available for fifteen. I’d rather take my time and complete the programme, than run myself into the ground, get resentful, and burn out.
For me, right now, I’ve redefined consistency to mean showing up for ThePowerMBA every week, whether that means taking one lesson or ten. It doesn’t have to be every day.
5. Create an anchor to ‘habit stack’.
Finally, if you do choose to recommit to your practice, find an anchor to which you can attach it. This is a type of ‘habit stacking’: finding a behaviour which you already do every day, which triggers your new practice.
For me, I’ve learned that right after my lunch break is the best time to watch a quick video from ThePowerMBA. I’m not already in the middle of something, and I sip my coffee while making notes, which makes it more fun! On the days where I have a meeting at that time, or pick up my son from nursery, I skip my lesson.
This new system is working for me, and – crucially – doesn’t play into my perfectionist instincts. For you, it might be meditating while your coffee brews, or going for a run after you close your laptop, or calling your parents as you walk the dog.
Creating a new practice can be challenging, especially in times of crisis.
Do you really still want to do this practice? If not, then consider letting it go. You can reclaim that energy for something that serves you better. But if is important to you, I invite you to find a way that works for your lifestyle and personality to help you keep showing up for it. It will be worth it, and your mental health will be much better along the way.
Something to chew on: What new behaviour are you trying to instil right now? What’s getting in the way? And which of the five practices above could be most helpful to get you back on track?
A Conversation with Self-Doubt
We can’t scare Self-Doubt away, but we can reassure it back into safety. (1 min read)
Photo by Niklas Garnholz on Unsplash.
Lately, I signed up for a role that felt like a BIG stretch.
I felt like an imposter. Self-Doubt was telling me (very loudly) that it wasn't safe to show up and be visible.
So, 10 minutes before I started, I sat down at my desk.
I sat Self-Doubt right next to me.
I looked her in the eye.
And I said to her:
"My love, I know you're frightened. I'm about to begin a journey towards my dreams. You're welcomed along. I know you'll always be here.
But you'll be in the back seat. You don't get to touch the map, tweak the steering wheel, or fiddle with the radio. I'm the one driving.
I really appreciate all you do. You do a GREAT job at telling me to be careful. But you know what? I've got this."
I gave Self-Doubt a big hug (with my actual arms)!
Then I took a deep breath, and turned on the computer.
And you know what? Self-Doubt hung around next to me during that call. But she was a bit quieter.
And with every call like that that I take, I help show her that her perspective (while convincing) isn't the truth, and it doesn't need to drive my car.
Self-Doubt never goes away. But we can learn to reassure it back into safety.
An Embarrassing Case Study (Aymara)
How did Sandra take her gutsy first steps towards launching her social enterprise? (2 min read)
Photo by Jorge Barahona on Unsplash.
This is the third in a three-part blog series on real-life people who had an idea to create a social enterprise, and risked going through the messy, embarrassing, vulnerable first steps to explore whether that dream might be possible. Here, I interview Sandra Codd, Founder of Chakana, about those early steps towards launching her early-stage social enterprise with Aymara women in Chile.
What was it like for Sandra to launch her idea? How did she go about testing whether it was viable? And how did she navigate the discomfort that came up for her in the process? Let’s find out.
1) Please tell us a bit about you and your social enterprise.
I’m Sandra Codd, certified NLP coach and founder of Chakana. The idea for a social enterprise was born during my time working as an interpreter for multinational companies in Chile, where I’m from. It had little shape then, apart from the desire to change the way the status quo regarded female entrepreneurs, especially those from indigenous backgrounds. The dream of building a network of support for women living in rural areas in northern Chile and helping them to bring business ideas into concrete shapes took form under the Chakana name.
There’s a story behind the name. ‘Chakana’ is an Aymara word meaning ‘Southern Cross’: the constellation that travellers used to track their route. Like Chakana, we aspire to become a beacon for indigenous women in remote communities, by integrating our coaching and business tools with their ancestral knowledge. Chakana is based on mutual learning.
We’re presently a small team and are in the early stages of our work. We’ve successfully established a caring and respectful collaboration with Aymara women from the small community of Nama, northern Chile. We’re learning from them how we can support small, women-run businesses in their community, helping them preserve traditions, look after the environment, and make progress towards a more egalitarian society.
2) Lots of us have ideas for ages and never act on them. What pushed you to see if you could actually make yours a reality?
The desire to focus on something bigger than my own needs. As a life coach and compassionate resilience coach, I worked on several social projects while living in Chile, where I’m from. Those projects included working in schools in socially deprived areas, and also with minority groups. By learning how those incredibly strong women kept the family going, the idea of creating a bigger support for them was born. It is their strength and sense of humour that pushed me to go the extra mile.
3) Can you tell us about one hypothesis you wanted to test in the early stages of exploring your idea? What experiment did you run, and what did you learn from that?
In the early stages I wanted to test the idea of creating circles of support for women in rural areas, focusing first on indigenous women. As an outsider to their community, I felt that creating a link of trust was pivotal. We set up informal talks to test the waters with a few women already running small businesses, and created a simple questionnaire for them to answer regarding their community needs. Overall, those informal conversations via WhatsApp, and then some face-to-face conversations that my colleague held with them, were extremely successful in building trust and opening channels of communication.
4) What did you personally find most scary or challenging about running this experiment?
Honestly, it was scary to risk the community’s rejection of our idea. If that had been the case, it would have meant the end of the idea or the reshaping of it. I also found it challenging to go beyond my own area of expertise in order to give shape to my original concept.
5) What helped you work through this fear (or act despite feeling scared)?
My turning point was the Good Ideas incubator, where I worked with you, Megan. It really helped me to work with the support of a group of people that were also invested in creating social changes. The knowledge we gained, the mutual support, and the time we committed to explore, test and verbalise our dreams was pivotal in overcoming the little voice in our ears that sometimes is not as kind as we would like it to be. Self-doubt kills more dreams than external rejection.
[Note from Megan: if you’re not currently able to get involved in a formal incubator like Good Ideas, the message to take from Sandra here is to not try and do it alone! There are lots of online support options, whether that’s group support, informal accountability groups, or 1:1 coaching.]
6) What advice would you give an aspiring entrepreneur who wants to test their idea, but feels intimidated by the prospect?
There is nothing worse than the ‘what if.’ Surround yourself with people who support you and are on the same page as you. Don’t listen to the ‘naysayers.’ And remember: ‘success is a collection of well-curated failures.’
An Embarrassing Case Study (Bikes)
How did Steven take his gutsy first steps towards launching a social enterprise? (3 min read)
Photo by Flo Karr on Unsplash.
This is the second in a three-part blog series on real-life people who had an idea to create a social enterprise, and risked going through the messy, embarrassing, vulnerable first steps to explore whether that dream might be possible. Here, I interview Steven McCluskey, social entrepreneur and Founder of Bikes for Refugees (Scotland) about those early steps towards launching his now-established inspirational social enterprise.
What was it like for Steven to launch his idea? How did he go about testing whether it was viable? And how did he navigate the discomfort that came up for him in the process? Let’s find out.
1) Please tell us a bit about you and your social enterprise.
I’m Steven McCluskey, Founder and CEO of Bikes for Refugees (Scotland). We support isolated and socio-economically disadvantaged New Scots (refugees and asylum seekers) to connect with local services and people through the refurbishment and free distribution of donated bicycles alongside the provision of information and signposting.
Bikes provide freedom of movement and a free means of travel empowering New Scots to link with communities and connect with essential services such as language classes, college/university and health appointments supporting the social inclusion and resettlement of individuals and families into Scottish and community life. Cycling also has proven physical and mental health benefits and particularly amongst refugees who have experienced considerable loss, separation and trauma in their lives. Over the past four years, we’ve supported 1,200+ New Scots.
I founded the project and, until recently, had been leading it from the front as a volunteer. This year I’ve now taken on the paid position of CEO and am dedicating my time fully to this enterprise.
2) Lots of us have ideas for ages and never act on them. What pushed you to see if you could actually make yours a reality?
My idea was first sparked by witnessing the difference that a bike made to the daily life of a new friend of mine, Yaman, who’s a refugee from Syria: it really reduced his isolation, helped him connect with local activities and services, and meet new people. I’d been involved in various refugee initiatives in the past, and had been inspired by the many grassroots innovations that I’d seen developed by people with very few resources; people who created really simple ideas that had enormous impact. I wondered how many other refugees, like Yaman, could benefit from such a simple solution.
Initially, I was simply driven by a desire to make a difference. I wanted to help as many people as possible who could find a bicycle helpful to their resettlement in Scotland. I decided to post on social media to request bicycle donations, and was bowled over by the response. And as the demand from New Scots took off, I felt it was time to start becoming more considered and strategic about putting in place more resources and capacity for a long-term plan.
3) Can you tell us about one hypothesis you wanted to test in the early stages of exploring your idea? What experiment did you run, and what did you learn from that?
There were two key hypotheses that everything depended on:
(1) that New Scots wanted bicycles; and
(2) that people would donate enough bikes to meet the need.
For the second hypothesis, I had a lot of conversations within my community. Through interviewing prospective donors, I quickly discovered that there were a surprising number of people who were both keen to support refugees and had unused bikes they were willing to donate.
4) What did you personally find most scary or challenging about running this experiment?
Honestly, the way I looked at it was that I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. In hindsight, the most challenging thing was that we didn’t have the resources in place to meet the huge numbers of people who came forward to donate their bikes. The challenge very quickly became about generating resources and building capacity very quickly. Four years later these challenges remain, except the scale and responsibility is greater. If anything, it’s scarier now than it was at inception. However, that’s also a big part of what makes it exciting and what motivates me.
5) What helped you work through this fear (or act despite feeling scared)?
I trusted in my transferable skills and experience in community development, service design, and fundraising. I didn’t need to know how to fix a bike. I just needed to identify the needs of a community and think creatively about how those needs might be met.
It also helped that I was using tried and tested methodologies. We relied heavily on ‘action research’, where continuous testing, evaluating, and learning is embedded within the project. We also drew on Assets Based Community Development (ABCD), which advocates a localised and bottom-up approach to development and sustainability. In other words, it harnesses existing community assets such as local knowledge, life skills, people, partnerships, resources, buildings, etc. We continue to rely on these approaches four years later.
6) What advice would you give an aspiring entrepreneur who wants to test their idea, but feels intimidated by the prospect?
I’d recommend the concept of Jugaad: ‘the gutsy art of improvising an ingenious solution’. Jugaad is a Hindi word meaning an ‘innovative fix’; an improvised solution born from ingenuity, cleverness, and resourcefulness. In Jugaad Innovation, which explores the mindset of Juggad innovators, the authors suggest six underlying principles that sum up the approach that I’ve taken over the last 25+ years, and have tried to apply to Bikes for Refugees (Scotland):
Seek opportunity in adversity
Do more with less
Think and act flexibly
Keep it simple (not simplistic)
Include the margin
Follow your heart
If possible, make your initiative fun and enjoyable; you’re more likely to stick with it. And lastly, don’t be afraid of failing. It informs and drives creativity and innovation.
An Embarrassing Case Study (Storytelling)
How did Kath take her gutsy first steps towards launching her social enterprise? (3 min read)
Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash.
I wrote last year about the importance of creating embarrassing work: of having the courage to launch something creative or entrepreneurial that’s still rough around the edges, rather than waiting until it feels perfect and polished to make it real. As a coach, I’m particularly fascinated by our internal experience of this. Yes, the practical know-how matters: the experiments to run, best practices to follow, key things to measure, all of that. But we humans are complex creatures. Head knowledge isn’t enough. We also need the willingness to step into the discomfort of uncertainty and exposure … and for many of us, this doesn’t come easily.
I was glad to find that ThePowerMBA includes a lesson on this inner stuff.
The instructor, Borja Adanero Guinea, walks us through what we can expect to feel when we are at the early stage of testing an idea. In a word: fear. Fear of failure, fear of others’ judgment, fear of finding out that we’re wrong, fear of actually interacting with prospective customers.
I loved that ThePowerMBA named this reality and made space to normalise it. Honestly, though, I was left hungry for more. I could literally spend months exploring entrepreneurs’ experiences of self-doubt, discomfort and anxiety, looking for patterns and developing programmes to address them!
I know that’s not the mandate of the programme, however, and that most students aren’t coming at it from my perspective. In the meantime, it’s just whetted my appetite for the upcoming Leadership module, where I’m really looking forward to seeing what we cover.
Now, I’ve already shared my own experience of launching something embarrassing. And so for this post, I wanted to get a feel for how others have found it. What was it like for them to launch their ideas? How did they go about testing whether they were viable? And how did they navigate the discomfort that came up for them in the process?
I decided to interview three social entrepreneurs I’ve previously worked with at Good Ideas, Scotland’s incubator for social innovators:
Dr. Kath MacDonald, Founder of ListenUp Storytelling.
ListenUp Storytelling supports professionals who care for others to care for themselves.
Interview below.
Steven McCluskey, Founder of Bikes for Refugees (Scotland).
Bikes for Refugees (Scotland) refurbishes and gifts used bicycles to New Scots (recently arrived refugees).
Interview here.
Sandra Codd, Founder of Chakana.
Chakana provides collaborative support to businesses run by Aymara women in Northern Chile.
Interview here.
If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur but don’t know how to start — this post is for you.
In their interviews with me, Kath, Steven, and Sandra talk very openly about:
What prompted them to see if they could make their ideas a reality
The experiments they ran to test their ideas, and what they learned from them
How it felt to take that risk, and how they navigated their uncertainty and vulnerability
The advice they’d give to would-be social entrepreneurs.
I’m sure that you’ll find their insights really helpful.
To make our conversation more readable, I’ve split up their answers into three blog posts: one for each person. You can read Kath’s answers below, Steven’s answers here, and Sandra’s answers here. All their contact details are at the bottom of their blog posts.
Conversation with Dr. Kath MacDonald, founder of ListenUp Storyteling
1) Please tell us a bit about you and your social enterprise.
I’m Dr. Kath MacDonald, Managing Director of ListenUp Storytelling. I spent many years as a senior lecturer in nursing, and I became keenly aware of the rates of stress, burnout and compassion fatigue among caring professionals. I founded ListenUp Storytelling as a response to this.
We’re a social enterprise that supports caring professionals to care for themselves. We do this through creative storytelling workshops; facilitating time out for reflection on practice, and to support wellbeing and development. We’re currently working on a storytelling project related to people’s experiences with Covid-19.
2) Lots of us have ideas for ages and never act on them. What pushed you to see if you could actually make yours a reality?
At the university where I work, I saw a flyer for an event run by Good Ideas, the social innovation incubator where I met you, Megan. It invited people who had a good idea to come along and share it, and I thought ‘why not?’
I didn’t really know what I was getting into, but I ended up attending the full incubator. The support and knowledge I gained through the programme encouraged me to take it from a passing thought to a real-life business.
3) Can you tell us about one hypothesis you wanted to test in the early stages of exploring your idea? What experiment did you run, and what did you learn from that?
One of my early hypotheses was around student nurses and the reasons they left the profession -- or at least their nursing programme. I wanted to find out what their main sources of stress were.
My hypothesis was that dealing with death and dying was number one. To test this, I took a subset of a year group, and asked them what things they found most stressful and whether these things would make them leave. There were some findings that I hadn’t considered, so I repeated this with a different year group, incorporating new questions. My findings were inconclusive. There were some similarities between the two groups, but also some divergence.
I also learned that my question design was flawed: some people got the Likert ranking scale numbers mixed up, so thought 1 was 10 or vice versa. I was able to correct this on the second test, and then follow up my test with a focus group which was much more useful. The outcomes of these multiple rounds of interviews ended up showing me that my target customers are not, as originally planned, student nurses; but registered (working) nurses.
4) What did you personally find most scary or challenging about running this experiment?
As a researcher I wasn’t scared about approaching people; I’m used to that. But when it came to the results, I did feel vulnerable, especially if my findings didn’t match up to my hypothesis. I was also embarrassed that my design was flawed. I thought I should know better!
5) What helped you work through this fear (or act despite feeling scared)?
Working with my peers and facilitators in the Good Ideas incubator really helped. You feel you’re not alone, and the interactive exercises, and ongoing reflection, gives you action plans to take forward and try again. Failure is not a bad thing; it’s a great way to learn.
[Note from Megan: if you’re not currently able to get involved in a formal incubator, the message to take from Kath here is to not try and do it alone! There are lots of online support options, whether that’s group support, informal accountability groups, or 1:1 coaching.]
6) What advice would you give an aspiring entrepreneur who wants to test their idea, but feels intimidated by the prospect?
Just do it! Use any help you can get from people in the know. Sometimes it’s good to pitch to people who have no idea. It helps you see what assumptions you’ve made and can help clarify basic questions that you may have taken for granted. Gathering evidence to support your idea, and prototyping that over and over again, is really important. And always make space after to reflect on what went well and what learning you can take from your experiment.
Overnight Success Takes Years, and That’s OK
The stories we tell ourselves about success? They matter. A lot. (5 min read)
Why do we tend to imagine successful people as having brilliant ideas right from the get-go? I know with the people I admire, I often assume that their businesses were born fully-formed as an idea — a bit like Venus emerging from the sea. Well, one of my biggest learnings from ThePowerMBA so far is that this really is not the case. Not for anyone. In fact, for most people, success takes far longer and looks far more chaotic than we imagine. It’s less Venus emerging from the sea; more building a sandcastle on the shore, and seeing which design stands up best to the tide.
I’m about three months into ThePowerMBA so far. We've covered a lot of content, ranging from Business Model Analysis (where we learned to diagnose any kind of business model) to Engines of Growth (unit economics and metrics of growth), to segmenting and targeting our markets, and creating and communicating our value proposition so that it packs a punch (including some really intuitive tools like the Value Curve).
For me, the single biggest value-add of the programme has been that all this theory is constantly fleshed out through real-life case studies.
So far, we’ve met the founders and executives of Shazam, Waze, Sugarfina, Rent The Runway, and many more. Without fail, they speak very candidly to us about their journey of entrepreneurship: having an initial idea, trying it out, making mistakes, trying something new, losing money, experimenting with an idea, abandoning an idea, and eventually — through a lot of trial and error — landing on something that works.
For example:
Uri Levine co-founded Waze, a traffic and navigation app acquired by Google for over $1.1 BN. In ThePowerMBA, he shares that his team needed to try out different ways of monetizing the product. They weren’t quite sure what would work and had to try a few different ways to get there.
Shazam is one of my all-time favourite apps. I love pointing it at the radio and instantly discovering the song that’s playing so I can add it to my playlists. But in ThePowerMBA, co-founder Chris Barton reveals that it took them literally years to learn how to monetize it. I actually counted nine separate strategies that they experimented with. And as the streaming market evolved, strategies that had been successful in the past had to be adapted so that their business model would survive.
Honestly, I love these stories.
I loved getting the inside scoop about these people’s process. And I’ve been reflecting on the fact that how success looks on the outside is often worlds apart from how it feels on the inside.
My own version of a graph that seems to be all over the internet. Original author unknown!
Most often, when we’re in the thick of it, we have no idea whether we even are succeeding. In fact, at the time, an idea that succeeds might feel exactly the same way to an idea that peters out.
(It’s worth stating the obvious: sometimes the idea doesn’t work out. There’s a reason so many founders have a few failures under their belts: you don’t get to succeed without failing. That’s why we need to be willing to create embarrassing work on the way to something great.)
And so I’ve been reflecting on the stories that we tell ourselves about success.
The myths that we buy into.
The expectations we have for ourselves.
When we ignore the twists and turns of real-life success stories, we do ourselves and our work a huge disservice.
And this isn’t just an abstract problem. In fact, it can have at least three very serious consequences in our lives:
1. We give up too soon.
When we expect that our success should look as fast and straightforward as our stories about others’ successes, we start getting impatient at how long it takes, and how much of the work is just a bit … dull.
We have grand dreams about what we can create, and imagine launching something with great fanfare only to find the response a bit anticlimactic. I speak from first-hand experience here: I once spent, literally, months agonising over the shape of a new programme I was creating: procrastinating, polishing it, changing the font on the website, and finally announcing it to the world with great trepidation. And what happened? Not one. single. person. signed up. (I learned the hard way: I didn’t do my homework. I didn’t test my idea enough before I decided to make it. That’s why I’ve drastically changed my approach, with much better results.)
When our expectations for success don’t include the slow and unsexy grind work behind the scenes, we don’t have the stamina or the vision to keep on experimenting. We don’t see the twists and turns as an essential part of the journey towards our long-term goals (the very parts that make us more resilient and wise). We don’t remind ourselves that everyone starts small; that everyone begins at the beginning.
2. We reduce our capacity for uncertainty.
I don’t often hear world-famous entrepreneurs talking openly about how exposed it can feel to go after a dream. But I hear it all the time from my clients. When we’re trying something out, experimenting in the public arena or with real-life customers, we can feel deeply exposed.
When we tell ourselves that our mentors simply went from strength to strength, we don’t allow space for vulnerability as part of the process. But when the founders of Shazam or Waze were in one of the squiggly bits of the graph above, I’ll bet they also felt exposed and uncertain.
Uncertainty is part and parcel of being creative. It may make us want to shut down or run away or panic, depending on how we’re wired. But when we can acknowledge our anxiety or discomfort around uncertainty, even ‘make friends’ with that discomfort and reframe it as adventure or excitement or potential, we can slowly expand our capacity to act in the face of the unknown.
And this, of course, expands our lives.
3. We think in terms of absolutes, not experiments.
This is something that the Strategyzer team communicates brilliantly. If you’re trying to work out whether an idea will succeed, what’s the cheapest, fastest and easiest way to conduct a small but robust experiment to find out? And then another experiment? And another?
For example:
If you want to design a 6-month personal development programme for working parents, could you run a two-hour beta workshop with six people in your living room next month?
If you want to create an app tackling food waste in student dorms, could you create a simple mock-up on a piece of paper, then interview 30 students to see how and if they’d use it?
If you want to launch a stationery brand featuring art by refugee children, could you order a trial run of 100 cards, market them to your community, and see which ones sell best?
This baby steps approach is exactly what I’m doing with my approach to my current group coaching programme. I’m running a series of prototypes in order to learn, iterate, and experiment with a new type of format for me. It’s not something I’ve seen many coaches do, but it’s an approach that we can all take, no matter our background.
Expecting ourselves to succeed right away, with the first iteration of our idea, puts a lot of unnecessary pressure on us. What if we could free up that energy? Just imagine what we’d learn, not just for our current idea but for all the ideas that follow.
Something to chew on: Next time you catch yourself telling yourself a story about what your success should look like, try reframing the story. How do you want to look back on this experience? From the perspective of your future self, what did you learn from this? And who did you become along the way?
