Tuesday 29 September 2015

A Broken Heart and How to Fall in Love Again



Background and Context

September 2015 will always be a watershed mark in the history of Certus. The last month has been a whirlwind of activity and with the exception of losing one deal (and trying to overcome the disappointment of England losing to Wales in the Rugby World Cup – I still don’t know which one I get more upset about!) it’s been our most successful period in the company’s lifespan which has seen five major deals close; two new Oracle ERP & HCM Cloud implementation projects commence; an existing project at one of Britain’s largest brands reach a major delivery milestone and embark on an R10 upgrade; a go-live of the entire Taleo suite at one of the largest local government councils; and an invitation to join the EMEA Oracle Partner Advisory Board. Certus is now the largest it has ever been in terms of people and delivery capability, and we go into Q2 + 1 month already having doubled our contracted revenue for 2015-2016 over the previous year. Many challenges lie ahead and we have set the bar for future success even higher for ourselves.

My thanks goes out to our people who win, deliver and provide customer service excellence day-in-day-out, so what I am posting against this backdrop of success may seem negative, however I wanted to tell the other-side of the story of what happens when you lose the love of what you do and you have to pick yourself up, provide inspiration for yourself and other’s around you and then continue to move forward. Believe it or not during this period of incredible success this has happened to me personally, so I hope those who take the time to read this post will take something positive away against the context against it is set against.
 


A Broken Heart and How to Fall in Love Again

Running your own business is a very personal love affair that generates such a driving passion that it becomes all-consuming to the extent that even your family and closest friends struggle to understand. To be successful in anything you have to be 110% committed, if you’re not you won’t achieve your goal.


So let’s explore for a moment what happens when the passion suddenly leaves you? What do you do when negative events in your personal life rock your world and collide with your work life making you feel low? What do you do to recover when the dark clouds gather around you and you just don’t feel like giving your all? What happens when you suddenly feel like walking away and you discover you have fallen out of love with the very thing you have created and nurtured? And more importantly how do you rekindle the love affair and not end up with a broken heart and shattered dreams?


All of us who have ever run a business have experienced this at some point. There is always that moment when the challenge seems just too much; when it seems just too big; when things just stop happening and the market moves against you; and when despite all your drive and desire you just cannot make something happen.


A combination of passion, desire for success, utter total self-belief and a “can do” attitude usually carries us through these dark moments. However when your confidence takes a knockout punch and self-doubt creeps in, this isn’t always enough.


So just like when you fall out of love or suffer rejection and heartbreak, you have to overcome it, accept what has happened and decide if rekindling the love is what you want. I don’t have the answers (especially in regard to love and life!) all I can offer is what I do:

  • Stop any self-pity and remember that you create your own luck in life. Nobody owes you or will give you anything, you have to do it yourself
  • Remember why you are doing this? What were you setting out to achieve and make better? (and it should never be just be about the money!)
  • Make yourself feel good – look at your successes and what you have achieved to date
  • Reconnect with the sacrifices you have made to get you where you are
  • Put a smile on your face - if you can’t do this then don’t expect anyone else too and subsequently believe in what your trying to achieve
  • Think positively, take a step back, look at your options (there are always options!, there is always a way to succeed), and most importantly regain perspective
  • Finally “evaluate, focus, execute” - force yourself to take that next step and find the way forward

It’s not easy, in-fact it’s really really bloody hard!


To experience success, you often have to experience pain and everyone has a different pain threshold. To run a business I think it is a right of passage. I saw a post recently by Piers Linney that said “you can always see the pain in entrepreneurs eyes”. It’s true you can. It’s the pain of losing the passion when your business and the market moves against you, no matter how much you love what you do. To inspire others you have to inspire yourself first.


…and what happens if you really cannot get the passion back, then perhaps you have reached that point when you do need to re-evaluate what you are doing and more importantly ask the question why you are doing it?


Business, in my opinion, just like anything else in life is supposed to be fun and when it stops being fun it is time to stop and look somewhere else. Personally for me the fun part is that business is the ultimate competition where you find out what you as an individual and as a team player are truly capable of; being able to continually to develop, learn and advance not only oneself but the people around you; and finally being able to smile and laugh with one another is what makes it worth-while.


Remember you only get to live your life once and everyone deserves the chance to be happy both in work and hopefully in love – you just have to be brave and go find it.


Wednesday 23 September 2015

Building a Great Team


One of the biggest complements I have ever received about Certus was from a respected industry Partner of a Tier 1 Management Consultancy I met recently who said “The nicest thing about Certus is that it works like an exclusive members club, to work there you have to be invited to join. Many want to join but very few are accepted”. I remember walking out of the office and into the sunlight of a hot summers day smiling. 

Now this should not be interpreted by any means as arrogance but our mantra at the company is simple we focus upon looking after our employees and ask in return they look after us as a company. We achieve this by being open and honest with them about the state of the company, where we are heading short and long term, the challenges we face, and what we need them to focus on to make us successful. In doing so, we look out for one another and the result is we know that our people will look after our customers. Without our customers we don’t have a business, but it is our people that do this and not the cloud technology we implement. Hence our people are actively involved in the hiring process, their opinion matters and their voice needs to be heard especially as we expand, and most importantly we need to listen! 

We hire people that we feel we like to work with on a day-to-day basis and we have a positive connection with. As a team we make the choices (right or wrong) and we continue to surround ourselves by the people that we feel we can depend upon. (I can hear my Head of HR now rolling her head at this moment as I write this!). But regardless of all the legalese around employment law all businesses ultimately are people businesses and our relationships are the foundation to our success. We can teach anyone with a degree of aptitude the technical skills of the job. What we can’t teach is likeability, positive attitude and how an individual can integrate and work as part of a great team. The ability to do this is what we look for. 

As a consequence we have built a great team at Certus – and before anyone says anything - no we don’t always get it right either! But we try and that’s all we can ask of one another that we continue to give it our best day in and day out in building a great company. We want all our people to be happy and enjoy working for the company. It needs to be fun! 

Teams at Certus win business deals – not individuals, and teams at Certus implement Oracle Cloud solutions successfully, and most importantly teams at Certus focus on ensuring our customers are happy and have a positive experience and become advocates. A bit cliché to finish this blog entry off with a Steve Jobs quote but hey what the hell did he know? “Great things in business are never done by one person they're done by a team of people”. The most successful organisations have this, so go on ask yourself the question “are you one of them?”

Tuesday 22 September 2015

The Power of The Dream


A dream encapsulated into a focused vision is the vehicle for making positive change regardless whether it’s in your business or personal life. Fundamentally our dreams contribute to who we are as people and the ability to make a change that positively benefits others, even if it is only one person in any shape or form is truly a wonderful thing. How do we inspire greatness? – through our dreams! However in order to follow your dreams you need to be brave; be prepared to take a risk; and then go make something happen. Worrying about whether you will succeed or not is merely a distraction and an excuse for guaranteed failure. 

As General Colin Powell said “A dream doesn't become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work”. So don’t settle for “What if?” or “If only”; don’t look back with regret on missed opportunities whether in your personal or business life. I know I have and continue to do so and I still constantly struggle to come to terms with it despite Certus being a successful business. 

My favorite quote often attributed to Robert F. Kennedy quoting George Bernard Shaw “Some men see things as they are and say, why; I dream things that never were and say, why not.” 

You only have to look at what people have created through their visions, and continue to do so today big or small for inspiration – At the extreme Nelson Mandela united a fragmented country and built a nation; Steve Jobs back in the 70’s wanted to get a computer in the hands of everyday people and Richard Branson vision for the future “is to turn capitalism upside down – to shift our values, to switch from a just profit focus, to caring for people, communities and the planet”. For most of us mere mortals our dreams can be simpler but just as powerful from having a family; getting into university; following a career of one’s choice and most of all to be happy in life. 

My advice is simple and something I drill into my own children “Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do something?” I know if I had done that when I was 18 I would still be printing bank statements in a basement somewhere instead of building the leading Oracle Cloud consultancy, positively disrupting the Oracle Partner network, and being a pioneer into the unknown of the cloud and having a lot of fun in the process. Why? All because I had a dream that I could build a great company that could enable organisations to transform their businesses through Oracle technology better than anyone else in the market! and also for the most common reason people climb mountains simply “because it’s there and I could” – don’t ever under estimate the power of a dream.

The Power of A "Can Do" Attitude


Running your own business can be the most exciting and thrilling experience you can ever imagine. It is a roller-coaster ride of emotion from fantastic highs to deepest lows married with the harsh reality that you will lose more than you win. The psychology of how you manage this personally and get yourself mentally prepared quickly to go again is a key element of the makeup of any leader. This is even more critical when you have a great team of people around you that you need to keep motivated and focused on the goal in hand. To be successful they have to believe in you and be willing to follow.

Seeing my vision becoming a reality, bringing together, building and maintaining a great team of people; "winning" new business and turning prospects into customers and then into advocates to me is the ultimate challenge. Achieving and maintaining excellence in customer service and providing a positive customer experience has and still is critical to any successful service industry - digital or face-to-face.

Equally all of this does not come without a lot of hard work and at times significant personal cost. The stresses and strains can take you to breaking point and back, but also you find yourself and the people who have come on the journey with you suddenly capable of things you couldn't previously imagined. You are constantly learning, not just in acquiring new business and commercial knowledge, but more importantly about one’s self. You just never stop learning.

Underpinning all of this is having a “can do” attitude. Your attitude to calculated risk taking becomes highly refined, and your of fear failure becomes immaterial as your outlook and approach to everything is "don't tell me 99 reasons out of a 100 why something cannot be done, but give me the 1 reason out of 100 why something can be done and just do it!". Whilst to be clear I am not advocating being reckless and being a complete maverick is a fast path to bankruptcy, success at all levels is a combination of a focused positive "can do" attitude and being able to look at any type of problem as a challenge and sometimes being highly creative in over-coming it.

So when in your next meeting (business or personal!) and someone says no or something cannot be done just remind them in 1963 President J.F Kennedy laid down the challenge that “before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth”. On 20th July 1969 Apollo 11 (Armstrong, Aldrin, Collins) did just that with less technology and raw computing power that fuels your mobile phone we take for granted today.

You just have to want to do it and then make something positive happen!