“A thick tree grows from a tiny seed.  A tall building arises from a mound of earth. A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. Contriving, you are defeated; Grasping, you lose.” - Laozi Ancient Chinese philosopher

So for Man City, the bubble has burst. For the time being at least. Ka Ka has turned down a £500,000 per week salary and Robinho has gone AWOL.

It has been mooted that Ka Ka turned the offer down on moral grounds but I have a sneaky feeling that he has more business sense than the whole Man City board put together.

Ka Ka realises that if a business (in this case a football club) aspires to great things it needs to map out the journey in believable bite sized chunks. It needs credibility. And business credibility needs to be earned and not bought.

Ask a horticulturist and they will tell you not to plant a seed in a pot that is to big. Better to replant it repeatedly into pots that are progressively bigger.

If you’re launching a new small business into an already crowded market then aim to beat the competition in steps. Prioritise building business credibility. Find an energetic and competent intrapreneur to drive your business, but don’t throw money at Stuart Rose (CEO at M&S) and expect him to either say yes or actually be a good fit anyway. He may be right for a few stages down the line but not now.

Don’t take on premises that are too big. Resist the temptation even if you are sure that you will outgrow them. You may never get there because the cost burden on your business strangled its chances to ever reach that stage. Be prepared to move, perhaps more than once.

Success, even dramatic success, is a journey as well as a destination and needs to be mapped out accordingly.

The stakeholders in your business need to see some business credibility. They will demand it: directors, employees, financiers, suppliers, customers, even your family.

Aspire to the extraordinary but achieve it through repeating the ordinary.

If you’re not convinced that you can attain great heights other than in one giant leap then try this:

Sit down with a bag of rice and a chess board. Pick up a grain of rice and place it on the first square. This grain represents your first product sale which profits you, say, £1.

Now place two grains of rice in the next square. You have demonstrated business credibility by doubling your turnover, albeit from a low base. Now, when you report that you are going to double your turnover again (placing four grains on the next square) everyone will believe you. Because you have business credibility.

Doubling again (eight grains) only enhances your credibility further. The stakes get higher (16 grains, 32, 64 etc). You continue. Your credibility keeps rising even when the stakes get serious.

And guess what? By the time you complete that chess board, your total profit will have reached £18,446,744,073,709,600,000. (That’s £18 hexillion for the purists, or a trillion trillions.)

OK the numbers are fantastical but you get the point. You have achieved something extraordinary through a succession of ambitious, credible and ordinary steps. The speed you move from square to square is down to you.

It’s OK to reach for the stars, but plan to get there in credible steps. You’ll get there faster than taking one giant leap.

Business credibility is the key. I have already sent my bag of rice and a chess board to Manchester.

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How did Virgin Mobile become the fastest business in United States history to reach a $1 billion turnover? (Yes, Faster even than Microsoft or Google)

How did a man who set out to sell records in the 70’s become one of the world’s most influential social entrepreneurs with friends to count on such as Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton and the Dalai Lama to name just a few?  Business Stripped Bare provides the answers.

Before you even make it to the opening credits you get a flavour of what being a truly global entrepreneur looks like. On the inside cover in rough handwriting (presumably Branson’s) are notes detailing some of the things he managed to achieve last year: Ordered 6 new 747 400’s; Opened a game reserve in Africa; Bought 5 miles of Majorcan coastline for new hotel; Secured site for largest cinema in the world in Tokyo;Opened first megastore in Beirut; Richard Branson is without question a truly global entrepreneur.

Business Stripped Bare is broken down into the fundemental ingredients that Richard Branson sees as critical to all businesses: People, the Brand, Delivery, Innovation, Leadership and Social Responsibility. On one level, Branson’s wisdom is relatively straightforward and unoriginal. However, it is because that wisdom comes from one so successful that the lessons are so powerful and drive so deep.

Richard Branson refers to ‘setting his people free’. Engendering an entrepreneurial atmosphere through the whole organization. He tells us that fighting the outside world is easy, trying to make peace among one’s own staff, hell.

When discussing brands, Business Stripped Bare describes how Virgin manages its brand across 300 separate businesses and how it is the only company to have created from scratch eight $1 billion dollar turnover companies in eight different sectors. Truly astonishing.

And of course the key to protecting the brand is Delivery. Delivery is about communication and attention to detail, plain and simple. With a bit of luck thrown in.

When reading Richard Branson’s thoughts on Innovation, we are left gasping. A company that started out simply selling vinyl records, Virgin is now at the heart of the major global issues of our day. Space travel for consumers. Increasing the lot of Africas poor. Global warming. Stem cell technology. Renewable fuels. In fact, social responsibility in all its guises.

Business Stripped Bare tells us that innovation is the key driver of any business. For small companies, the distinction between innovation and day to day delivery is barely noticeable. It’s all just business, creative, flexible and responsive. However, as businesses grow, complexity tends to gum up the works and it is the achievement of innovation in a fast growing empire that is particularly captivating.

The book at this point was in danger of becoming a 320 page pat on the back for Virgin but then Branson admirably changes tack and dedicates a whole section to Virgin’s mistakes and setbacks. So we gain some insight into where Virgin Cola ran out of fizz and why their Northern Rock bid in 2008 literally hit the rocks.

Business Stripped Bare wraps up by talking about social responsibility. Richard Branson suggests that all businesses would do well to put this high on the agenda. In fact, as your business grows it will have no option as large businesses without a social conscience will not survive.

We are left wondering how one man grasps the essence of so many complex and disparate businesses. I believe it boils down to Richard Branson’s ability to see complicated issues in a very simple light and because he truly wants to make the world a better place.

As Richard Branson spends an increasing amount of his time considering his legacy the question is this: will Virgin be able to maintain the philanthropic edge and customer service passion so admirably driven by him for many years, or will it take on a harder edge and perhaps, over time, lose the very essence of what made Virgin great in the first place?  We will have to wait and see.

So who should read Business Stripped Bare? Well there’s pretty much something in it for anyone with an interest in business. If you’re thinking of starting your own business the building blocks are laid out for you by someone who really knows. Perhaps you just feel like immersing yourself in a good news story. If that’s the case then you’re in for a treat. Perhaps, like me, you’ve been intrigued for some time about the Virgin story and wanted to learn a little more.

But in my view Business Stripped Bare is talking most directly to entrepreneurs and those currently running businesses of any scale.

Business Stripped Bare is an opportunity to take stock, to calibrate performance against one of the very best and to readdress business values in order to move forward stronger and with a renewed focus.

I hope you find time to read this book to learn more about Richard Branson and Virgin.  It will be time well spent.

So in this enforced pause for breath let me use it as an opportunity to wish great things in 2009 to all people who’s business is business.

To those full of hope incubating an idea that has yet to blossom into a successful business: I wish that you ask yourself two questions: 1. Is your idea going to change the world and 2. Has it been done before? If your answers are yes and no then it is only you that lies between its success and failure.

To those in business for whom business has become a metaphor for pain, hardship, suffocation; for whom the promise of eternal financial and social freedom has become a distant footnote: I wish that your 2009 resolution be that you break out at all cost, whatever it takes. Visualise your exit with a renewed gusto and plan that you succeed without fail.

And to those for whom business is synonymous with success, happiness, wealth beyond measure and an unparalleled self worth: I salute you. My wish for you is that you channel some of your good fortune toward the help of others still striving to reach your high ground.

To all I thank you for popping by and look forward to your next visit. But most of all I wish you a Happy Christmas and life fulfilling 2009.

The perceived importance of innovation has reached heady heights. But innovation hasn’t just arrived so why now?  What’s the fuss all about?

Man has survived and thrived on innovation since day one. Cavemen realised the importance of innovation when they discovered an ability to create fire from sticks.  The wheel rolled in to our lives in about 3,500 BC whilst the canning industry was born out of Napoleon’s need to feed his army in the early 19th century.  The Anglo-Saxons, Normans, Tudors, Stuarts and Victorians were all innovators. George Stephenson gave us a steam locomotive, Henry Ford modern assembly lines bla bla bla ……..

And yet now its “all about innovation”. The importance of innovation is unrivalled. Nothing else matters.

Corporations preach innovation with the smugness and self-satisfaction of teenage lovers convinced they’ve pioneered great sex for the benefit of mankind.

Before Innovation the buzzword (or should that be buzzphrase) was Customer Service. Before that it was Efficiency. In the 80s the buzz was Ergonomics. What will the next buzz be? Environment? Carbon Footprint?

Let’s not be fooled by big companies over egging the importance of innovation. That’s just marketing speak. Corporations defining themselves as modern, creative, progressive. Innovative. Fair enough. Can you imagine Bill Gates presenting to Microsoft shareholders at the AGM that this year they have pushed forwards the frontiers of administration and grievance procedures?

So where does this leave us small businesses? Is innovation important? Of course it is. Should we worry about innovation? Of course we should. But we should also worry about efficiency, customer service, business planning, financial control,employee performance and product quality in equal measure.

Good small business practice is about all these things. Evenly managing the interweave of day to day activities. Ensuring all thrive without detriment to the others.  The importance of innovation gauged carefully against the importance of the other business functions.

Innovation will live on. But without the buzz. Just like before.

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Failure is an “act that does not achieve success”.  So to ask “how does failure breed success?”, we must first define success.

Success is “the act of achieving a desired or planned outcome”.  This definition makes no reference to an absence of failure. In other words, success and failure can co-exist.

Pairs of muscles in the human body work antagonistically. One pushes and the other pulls. For instance, the biceps and triceps are a pair of muscles that work antagonistically for the common good of the arm – allowing it to bend and straighten.  The arm cannot function without the presence of both.

In a similar way, success and failure work antagonistically for the common good of the project, task, or whatever.

They say that success is a journey not a destination.

But surely failure is the journey, success the destination.

You can’t reach the destination without the journey.

Why then don’t we value failure?  Its negative connotations stand alogside the likes of “cancer”, “obesity”, “poll tax”, “Gordon Brown”.  All would claim to be misunderstood.

Failure comes in three flavours:
1. not getting off your backside and participating at all
2. getting off the ride before achieving the desired outcome
3. participating in intellingent acts of trial and error to ultimately achieve success.

Let’s assume that you’re not having a problem with no. 1.

No. 2 is characterised by a business culture where a fear of failure paralyses our ability to act.

But failing provides us with the roadmap to success. An intrapreneur who has embraced failure has attained a mass of knowledge far in excess of one who has not.  We need to create a business culture where failure is valued for the lessons it provides, where staff are encouraged to push the boundaries without fear of reprisal, in other words no. 3.

So, how does failure breed success? Well…..

If you never fail, you’re not pushing the boundaries hard enough.

A word of caution here before you rush out headlong looking to make your first major howler free from fear or guilt.  To fail successfully needs an element of intelligence.  Promoting a catastrophic failure of your business for instance would certainly teach you many lessons but you’d have nothing left to play with.  Similarly, to make the same mistake twice would be a bit dim.

The answer is to paint a clear picture to your staff of what failure looks like as part of a process towards success. Engender a business culture of empowerment, energy, a willingness to push the boundaries, a passion to succeed, an absence of blame and retribution. If your staff don’t get it, then chances are you have got the wrong staff.

If on the other hand the whole concept is making you feel a little light headed, don’t forget that there is one surefire way to avoid failure.

Stop asking yourself how does failure breed success and……

………..do nothing.

“An Entrepreneur is someone who has the skills, passion and financial backing to create wealth from new business opportunities and is willing to take full responsibility for its success or failure.”

“An Intrapreneur is someone who manages that business with entrepreneurial flare in line with the expectations of the shareholders.”

Immediately we can start to see a difference.  The Entrepreneur is typically a visionary who spots an opportunity in the marketplace and has the passion, guile and contact base to set the wheels in motion.  The Intrapreneur has passion and drive but also has the operational skills of running the “clockwork” of the business to enable a good idea to be turned into commercial reality.  He is the “inside entrepreneur”.

Both “preneurs” set themselves aside from employees in a number of ways but perhaps the most significant is in their relationship with the business.  It’s a question of committment over involvement. Employees are involved, “preneurs” are committed.  A little bit like the egg and bacon breakfast, the chicken is involved but the pig is committed.

I’m busy setting up a new business and haven’t got time to worry about this.  What’s this got to do with me?

There is a very simple answer to this:

Not every small business needs an Entrepreneur, but every business needs an Intrapreneur.

In the same way that the seed of a business idea needs an Entrepreneur to shape and cultivate it, so the Entrepreneur needs the Intrapreneur to pluck from his grasp those seeds of opportunity, convert them in to a viable commercial plan and then manage that plan to a profitable reality.

Without the intrapreneur, ideas entrepreneurs and small business are doomed to fail.

So before you go any further, ask yourself which you are, Entrepreneur or Intrapreneur, and take action accordingly.