Just don’t die – the art of growth

I was honoured to speak last week at an event organized by Investible and FD Global Connections for International Women’s Day.

With the theme #SheScalesGlobal, I wanted to focus on what I passionately believe are the foundations for success for anyone in business, whatever their gender in growing a business globally. 

The core requirement for anyone wanting to forge new markets is one of determination and resilience. Making it personal and being super determined with a minimum view of do whatever it takes, as long as you don’t die. See everything you pursue as an opportunity to continuously learn. Scaling into new markets is so much more than translation. It is localisation. And the only way you can localize is to understand the local landscape, the social, economic, political, business and personal aspirations of a country (and for large countries, the counties or regions).

International Women’s Day reminds everyone of what women continue to achieve (Apple’s advertising for International Women’s Day raises the bar I think), and more importantly, it reminds us that our own futures are ultimately in our own hands.

For any list of successful women, whether they are women from history, or women you know and work, I suspect they share a number of traits: they were the first to break barriers, they knew what they wanted to do, and they developed the skills and strategies needed to get there.

I acknowledge that the need to champion women remains, to call out their successes, and to call out entrenched biases when we see them. But I have never wished to measure myself, and any success I’ve had, only against half the population – so I speak not as a woman in business who has experienced success, but as a business leader that has experienced success.

When a vision prevails

One example comes from my time as President and COO at Altium. In the mid-2000s, Altium (a global, listed Australian software company) was expanding into China. We had a huge opportunity there, because China had declared its intent to change from “made in China” to “designed in China”. Altium’s electronics design software, though widespread, was universally pirated. Rather than take a heavy-handed legal route to clawing back revenue, we decided to emphasize and offer the added value users would get from using legitimate versions of the product. 

Our vision was to legitimize our software and our customers, our strategy was to compete with, and not police software.

Noting Mao’s famous statement that “women hold up half the sky”, my experience in China was interesting. I was in my mid-thirties, the most-senior women executive in Altium, and the second-most senior of any executive after the CEO, a mother of 3 children, and they could not understand how this was even possible, for a company so well-known in China, in a culture with a one-child policy still in force.

The question was often asked there how I did it, and I made the answer, especially with the language barrier associated with being in China, very straightforward: because I want it enough.

The second example is of course Digivizer. I’m still often asked how it was that I chose to leave the corporate safety of Altium, to start a new company with new technology, again with still-young children at home. Again, the answer is that I wanted it enough.

This time, though, the vision was mine alone, for what the new company should be, what skills I would need in finance, operations, and leadership, and also to know when things simply couldn’t be done, in a company with a handful of resources. I wanted to help all businesses harness the digital footprint of their customers and prospects and make sure we built a platform that was affordable and easy to use. 

I went from running a company of 450 and 2000 reselling agents globally to starting a company with 2 people, growing it today to a company of 50+ people.

About three years ago, we expanded into south-east Asia, setting up a hub in Singapore and hiring great talent in 12 other countries around the region, including Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Thailand. In Digivizer’s case, we did this by learning as we went. We were moving too fast for the government bureaucracy to keep up, and we went from client contract signature to open for business in five weeks.

And in all of these examples, this has not been about any focus on my confidence as a woman, and everything about my confidence, skills and expertise as a business person. 

It’s been about building the confidence to use radical candour and about managing by Objectives and Key Results, as we do in Digivizer.

Neither of course is gender-specific. And I might add neither does success become a destination reached. It is a continuous journey where I keep striving to the next peak, only to enjoy the view of the next I set to conquer.

Sharing what I have learned

My first point is a simple statement of intent: whenever I’m faced with biases, I acknowledge them, challenge them by ignoring them, going around them or over them. This is not about the empowerment of women, more a fundamental position in life that I’ve chosen to take. 

Universal rules that anyone can apply include: 

  • Focus on seeking to add value to a business or a relationship
  • Embrace people who focus on growth and seek to create great outcomes
  • Focus on talent, not gender
  • Don’t do what is asked, instead deliver what is needed and do what delivers greatest value
  • Remove yourself as the limiting factor. We often place a lid on our growth because we do not think big enough
  • Develop the mindset that you are the best person for the job
  • Choose to pursue where your strengths and passions will best be used, and where they will make you most successful
  • Make sure you understand the problem you solve and the value proposition you are offering, this should guide your priorities
  • Identify what’s negotiable, and what’s not and stick to it (especially around balancing time with your family commitments)
  • Do what makes you happy and pivot when you need to – growth implies change, so recognizing what makes you happy and continuously adapting what you do and how you work to ensure that you feel congruent in all you do!

In short, in business, the first rule is don’t die:then change, pivot, be flexible, then never give up. Put all your energies behind what you believe in, so that you are determined to smash through barriers. Only we can be responsible for our own futures and success. 

I’d love to know more about your experiences and inspirations. Please share your tips and thoughts below!

With thanks to Investible, FD Global Connections, Hotwire Global, and everyone who attended the event.

This article is also published on LinkedIn.

Recently published in the Australian Institute of Company Directors magazine

I was interviewed recently by Company Director, the magazine of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

The interview was about innovation, and how that has driven the development and growth of Digivizer.

Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned in the journey so far, as discussed with journalist Stuart Ridley:

  • build for scale
  • ensure your differentiation, and do everything you can to maintain that
  • back yourself and know it’s OK to face challenges – as long as you learn from them
  • be prepared to disrupt what you’ve done previously – to go after the bigger prize and opportunity (we’ve pivoted a number of times)
  • be prepared to accept new challenges – especially if you move from a corporate position to starting your own business
  • innovation comes from experimentation – build that into your company’s culture, and allow your teams to test, fail and learn
  • be prepared to take risks

You can read the interview here. I’d love to hear your thoughts – contact me via LinkedIn.


People strategies in fast-growth startups: creating sustainable growth foundations

When companies are in fast- growth stage, it is not unusual to have new people, reporting to new people, who report to new people, working with new technology, serving new customers. The growth inevitably leads to a ‘cascade of newness’. Despite your smaller size, you need to be super- disciplined at ensuring that in your haste to build and resource up as fast-growth demands, that you do not make hasty or incorrect hiring decisions. Nor can you afford circumnavigation around deep onboarding and knowledge-transfer programs designed to ensure new people understand the culture, their role, and performance expectations and measures.

Equally in fast-growth you need to resist the urge to prescribe and over- engineer on process. The key to growth is getting really smart people in, making sure they know where the company is heading, and then enabling and encouraging them to forge the path within a “one team, one dream” business focus, yet at the same time be encouraged to take individual responsibility for making smart decisions, and delivering measurable success.

Building foundations

Foundation elements in getting this right start with the talent and skills of those you employ. Alongside these sit attitude – does this person share your values, will they be a good collaborator, and aptitude – are they the right ‘fit’ for your fast-growth environment. You then want to ensure everyone aligns around customer success first. If you focus with clarity on the customer’s success (and what you do to enable it), it is the best way of ensuring your own business and everyone’s personal success.

How do you hire to ensure you have the right people?

For Digivizer, hiring starts with the mandate: look for smart, talented people, who get things done, are infinite learners and are not an arsehole. Our values crafted by our employees themselves are not negotiable, focusing on “one team, one dream”, truth and transparency, responsibility, courage and growth.

Getting our foundations right is one I think Digivizer on the whole has done well. We ensure everyone is clear about our vision, our objectives, our values, our success measures and our recruitment and care of people. We then continually check on progress with everyone. Nothing beats survey data around employee engagement, performance, and satisfaction to ensure we get this part of our business right and the best it can be. Our leadership mantra is simple – grow people and you grow business. Spending time understanding and providing challenges for people, is the surest way to deliver growth.

Despite knowing the importance of getting our people culture right, we have recently experienced growth pains we needed to address. As such, I wanted to share our painfully learned and reinforced lessons to help others going through similar growth periods:

  1. Some people won’t grow with you. They liked it small, they liked it when they were more important and integral. As you grow you need people who can grow ahead of you and those who see the need to continuously grow and learn. People either grow with you through multiple levels and evolutions, or they can’t (or won’t). You need to quickly identify and deal with those who can’t grow or cope with fast change,. They will be happier elsewhere, and so will your team who want to stay focused on the growth challenge.
  2. Employees who come from larger corporates or consultancies, where process and bureaucracy are well-established, can be uncomfortable and unhappy in a fast-growth company. Whilst some say they want the start-up/growth experience, you need to find a way to identify people who have the capacity and the willingness to switch from big corporate steady-state mode, to hectic ground-moving growth mode. Whilst you need principles to guide decisions, it is far more important to hire and encourage people’s comfort in fast-moving environments, where they thrive on continuous change, risk and complex challenges. You want people who want to choose the scary upside-down roller-coaster over the safe merry-go-round. You can’t ever afford for anyone try or desire to make things slower or easier. If you see that is the motivator, you need to address it immediately.
  3. Excuse-making and sub-cultures are like cancer – you need to address it with radical candour and if not completely and quickly realigned, cut it out of your organisation immediately.  Coach those who are willing but never allow those who think there is an option to resist change, or to not take on responsibility for culture, values, performance and outcomes. It is never OK to have an alternative view counter to your company vision. Explain the surgery to the rest of the team once you have acted, to remove any concerns of those who are doing the right thing. It is important that people are encouraged and feel protective of their environment, and see that they are responsible for the changes they want to see, and feel empowered, energised and secure about doing the right thing.
  4. Don’t ever lower the bar on hiring. And the more critical the role, the more important it is to have multiple interviews, and multiple interviewers. Whilst you need to move quickly, you need to get your recruitment right as the opportunity cost on getting this wrong (distraction and what is not delivered from someone who is holding the seat of someone who could be great for you). For hires that you are unsure of, or for teams with a structure in flux, turn these roles into timed contracts which allows you to more easily change and shape your organisation. If for whatever reason someone is not right, deal with this immediately. You can’t afford to allow those who don’t represent your values to erode the teamwork and team values already built.
  5. Ensure the values are real every day – your team must know what they are, you must talk to them, share them, live them, relate decisions to them and ensure they are present in all you say, do and communicate. You can never over communicate the values and drivers for the business.
  6. Make sure your leaders know how to practise radical candour and can do performance management discussions. It is critical that everyone in the organisation has regular discussions around:
  • Here is what you are doing really well – provide specific examples and what behaviours you observed that lead to great outcomes
  • Here is what you really need to be focusing more time on. You need to be really clear about what is expected, how this helps, and how they will know if they are successfully performing. Ensure you commit to a follow-up time to address it
  • Here is something that will be a potential issue and hinder your performance if you don’t address it immediately. Be 100% clear if someone needs to take some immediate action to ensure that their success or ability to stay in their role is not at risk
  • What can we do to help ensure your success (and then help them)!

What does a successful people culture in early-growth companies look like?

It is important to understand that start-up/fast-growth cultures are not for everyone.

Smart people who have traded in roles at larger companies are replacing having lots of other people, processes, systems, money and prestige/leverage that they may no longer have in start-up/fast-growth stage companies. This can cause tension between those used to working at organisations with deep pockets and plentiful resources, and those who understand the tight cash that most start-ups operate within which requires smarter thinking or happiness to do without. I have seen some of the best and creative ideas flourish when being developed within budget and time constraints.

It’s important to keep aspiring to build, change, and improve a people-culture as you grow, and ensure everyone plays their part in its nurture. The most valuable people are those who are happy to work to objectives, no matter how difficult they are, and are happy to be measured by key results, clearly identified, and answer whether they are on track or not. Assume everyone is there to do the right thing, and then build off that base-assumption to improve the results.

Always focus on results, not effort. It’s important to have a results-driven culture rather than one that rewards effort. It should never be around the number of hours someone works, or how much time goes into a project. Either you achieved what you set out to do or you are not doing the job needed. If the latter is the result, conduct constructive retrospectives to identify what needs to be done differently.

A great growth culture has your team happy to be challenged, to continuously learn, test and apply. To change tacts when things don’t go to plan. They are happy to ask whether there’s a better way – and most-important of all, to take responsibility for making that happen.

They are highly adaptable, can roll up their sleeves, take responsibility for delivery and understand all kinds of challenges and options for a company at any of its stages.

They also enjoy the feeling of success that comes with delivering on the objectives for the customer, and in celebrating the milestone achievements along the way,

As a leader in fast-growth, what you do and say impacts culture. Everything must be your own team and your customers success front and center. It will keep your culture grounded in high performance, high enjoyment, high care, and trust in the high rewards that will come.

What are your experiences and tips for managing people culture and performance in fast-growth?

This article is also published on LinkedIn.

5 MBA insights for startups and entrepreneurs

Last night I was privileged to be the guest speaker at a UNSW AGSM Business School Executive MBA dinner of those graduating 2017. (I graduated in 2013.)

The conversation was how having an MBA can make a difference and to talk through my personal learnings and journey. After working internationally for the previous five years, my MBA helped connect me to a local network of key decision makers, it provided the assignment discipline for me to focus my strategy and assessments on Digivizer, and gave me access to first- rate lecturers and a peer brains trust I wouldn’t otherwise have had.

In my final year, I wrote my strategy and plan for Digivizer in which I was able to secure $2 million in funding. It was definitely tough working full-time in my startup, studying for my MBA and raising my family, but it gave me amazing resilience and the conviction to pursue the opportunity I see for Digivizer (now seven years in and 50+ employees).

For those wondering how to make an MBA and a start up work, here are my top-five MBA insights for startups and entrepreneurs.

1. Do, don’t just think

Business success is about actually doing, and this is especially-true for startups. There are plenty of consultants, advisers and commentators in the Australian startup ecosystem. The ones to listen to are those who have successfully launched and grown a company, those who have delivered value to customers, and earned revenue and profits.

Many startups suffer for the lack of a plan, and they can be light on strategy. MBAs are good at helping develop both.

It is important to develop a meaningful plan with key measures of success. Then you need to translate your plan into actions and delivery. You need to measure all that you do and refine on the way. I love Eisenhower’s quote on planning and plans: ‘In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.’ This is true in preparing your business for success.

2. Define, then evolve, your strategy

When I co-founded Digivizer in 2010 we developed a clear vision: to provide value at the intersection of social media, big data and CRM. To help our customers in acquisition, retention and loyalty by knowing more about how to engage their customers. Back then this was new thinking as most focus back then in social was on volume measures of mentions and very little in connecting social to your customer base. Much of our time was spent explaining to marketing managers where the value was to be found in social media let alone linking it to actual customer acquisition and management programs.

Today that vision remains the same but we have had to evolve our strategy. We now talk to boards and C-levels about how to help to better understand the digital footprint of their customers and have this central in their customer engagement strategies and how to measure their digital investment.

Business of all sizes and at every stage in their growth now need to know exactly how their digital and social marketing budget is working, and to be able to take action on real time insights. We deliver those data and insights and have 7 years now of proof points.

We are also now working on going direct to the SMB business owner. A more simple message but largely the same vision (helping them grow their business by helping them know more about how best to engage their customers and know what is working and what isn’t).

Entrepreneurs are good at having instinctive visions, MBAs are good at building out business concepts against changing market conditions. The learnings in a MBA help form points of differentiation and bring frameworks that help you navigate the different stages of organisational growth.

3. Be flexible, ship value early

Back to doing: the value in any company is in what it ships and how that makes a difference to its customers. At Digivizer we started delivering value as soon as we could, and have built our company and technology primarily on the back of bootstrapping through our own revenue and cash flow. We received funding at a point that we wanted to accelerate building out our enterprise technology platform which allowed us to engage and serve some of the biggest technology, telco, financial, FMCG and retail clients. We are at the stage where we will be taking our technology and our learnings into the broader global SMB market in a SaaS model.

Part of shipping early is flexibility: you can’t wait for the perfect plan or the perfect product. You need to ship and learn from customer feedback. Today’s customers and users are very generous when taken on the journey with you, acting as beta testers when you’re developing a product (especially software).

MBAs can be guiding hands on these Agile environments, balancing product usage with product revenues. This helps remind the startup of the direction they should be heading in, and the ways to measure progress along that journey. Nothing validates a product more than a paying customer!

4. Develop your people and leadership teams

People are everything inside the organization. Startups have to compete against larger companies with larger budgets and established brands.

Yet startups also attract talent, often the best in the market. They offer opportunities to make a real difference from the first day at the company, and to do things never attempted or delivered before. And do so in new and more flexible ways.

To keep these people, you need to develop a team culture and develop them as individuals.

This means understanding everyone as unique individuals, having a clearly-articulated vision for the company, having well-defined opportunities to contribute, to share success, and to reward when the big prize is won (and with smaller prizes along the way). The biggest value you can offer is “the MBA every day”. Involving them in strategy, planning, pricing – all key decisions. Ensuring that everything we do is measured by impact on results, not ego or past experience.  It keeps the organisation flat, fluid and provides plenty of ideas and leadership opportunities. It certainly provides learnings.

MBAs can bring insights into structures, systems and programs that can help a start up grow through different stages. For example, at Digivizer we have introduced project management by objectives, and key results (OKRs, as espoused by Christina Wodtke). Anyone at any level can own a x-platform objective to deliver. We can connect all we do to the direction we’re heading towards (and why), and we can support our teams on the way.

5. The customer is everything

A great idea is just that without a customer. And, it must be said, an MBA is just a business degree without a customer. All businesses from start up to established are successful when they put the customer first. MBAs are most successful when they bring their knowledge to bear on the needs of the customer, working through the products and services of the companies they work for.

I’ve benefited personally from having an MBA, and Digivizer has as a company as well. Having an MBA means I can switch between structured thinking and creative development, between the growth mindset and the longer-term business mindset.

The result is that we have accelerated, evolved, and grown. We continuously check we are ready and relevant for our future.

Robert Kennedy said: “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” If there is a difference in having an MBA in the startup world, perhaps this is it: having the business rigour and training to sit alongside your passion, vision and experience, to instil the confidence to take risks, to be prepared to try new things, to be prepared to fail, and to inspire in leadership so you can achieve great things.

This article is also published on LinkedIn.

Are boards being let down by their senior leadership teams?

The Australian Financial Review’s Tony Boyd raises some amber, if not red flags, in his recent article about the lack of preparedness, of most of Australia’s listed boards to the reality of the mobile-first world in which they now operate.

Deloitte cites an Australian smartphone adoption rate of 84% (rising to 94% if you’re under 24), calling Australia a nation of hyper-connectivity and exceeding many western countries permeation rate. With 17 million Australians on Facebook, with most of us checking in at the moment we awaken and checking out just before we turn off the lights for the night on our mobile devices, businesses who ignore mobile as a platform to entertain, inform, engage and delight their customers are at their peril.

We agree with Tony Boyd’s assertion in conversation with Stephen Scheeler that boards need to see digital and social as ways to know much more about their customers, and thereby create better customer experiences.

Given most companies spend between 10 to 15% of revenue on marketing, with now over half going to digital, boards should be asking to see digital and social insights and results in their board packs as a matter or priority.  The beauty of digital is that everything is measurable.  Measuring the ROI of investment in digital should be continuously reported to help organizations learn and do more of what works, and less of what doesn’t.

Boards need to hold their leadership teams accountable to appropriate investment in the strategic thinking and tools necessary to enable them to engage directly with customers, and to track every activity into and away from their websites, digital messaging and social platforms through to conversion.

While it should be assumed digital is an essential part of delivery, the real opportunity is in the ability to delight the customer and create friction-less, positive and outcome-driven experiences when and wherever the customer wants.  Measuring the delight and sentiment of customers in relation to their total experience (including digital experience with your brand), and by focusing on continuous delivery of experience improvements will provide the type of stickiness and advocacy businesses and boards are looking for.

This article is also published on LinkedIn.

Key Speaker for Government’s “Women in Global Business” Conference

Emma is invited to speak and present a case study as to the key ingredients to achieving global success at the July

Women in Global Business Speaker Series.

Here are some of the details being shared to promote the event:

Australian women will have the opportunity to hear from prominent women who have succeeded internationally at the Women in Global Business Speaker Series in July and August.The annual event held in states and territories across the country will feature speakers from a variety of industry sectors, providing businesswomen with practical advice on venturing overseas.

Women in Global Business national program manager, Cynthia Balogh, believe the event is beneficial in helping women overcome international barriers, particularly those in the Middle East.

“The Middle East presents quite specific barriers for women; some of the Asian and South American markets can do the same,” she said.

Balogh told Dynamic Export the event offers business owners the opportunity to learn and network with like-minded people.

“It’s an opportunity to see their role models, who have often had quite tough journeys to expand their businesses into those market places, women often learn from seeing role models. It helps them overcome some confidence issues, whether it’s personal confidence or confidence in business,” Balogh said.

Digivizer CEO, Emma Lo Russo, who will be speaking at the Sydney event can relate to the personal challenges women face when growing their business.

Lo Russo believes the event will provide shared mentorship and allow women to learn from real-life experiences.  “Having real honest examples of what works, is quite empowering. Instead of feeling like you have to navigate the unknown or have a goal and do it alone”.

Details & registration for the event can be found here :

Thursday 26th July 2012

8.30am – 12.30pm

NSW Trade and Investment Centre, Level 47, MLC Centre, 19 Martin Place, Sydney

I’ll post more about my key points to achieving international success here soon.

Choosing the right mentor

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I was recently asked what someone should look for in a good mentor.

The first thing to do is to recognize the value in engaging a good mentor or coach to help you hold yourself accountable for developing yourself and taking your career to the next level.

The value of seeking a career mentor is in how they can help you bring clarity to your career goals over the near, medium and long term, to help you prioritize your next steps towards your goals, how to strategize and evaluate options in light of your goals and values, and to help you stay accountable to the path you wish to take.  Through formalizing this relationship with someone, it provides a regular, safe and confidential sounding board to bounce your fears, aspirations and future challenges.

Finding the right mentor is based on how inspirational they are to you, how experienced, how insightful and how good they are in facilitating the right discussions. High Emotional Intelligence would rate as the key characteristic of a great mentor and just as you would look for a great employee, you want in a great mentor someone who has demonstrated that they are smart, talented, have a history of delivering great results and have built many great relationships and people through their leadership and association.

Finding the right mentor is based on how inspirational they are to you, how experienced, how insightful and how good they are in facilitating the right discussions. High Emotional Intelligence would rate as the key characteristic of a great mentor and just as you would look for a great employee, you want in a great mentor someone who has demonstrated that they are smart, talented, have a history of delivering great results and have built many great relationships and people through their leadership and association.

In a busy working world, it is too easy to rationalize to ourselves what we do and why we do it.  Much harder to rationalize to someone else. Particularly if they are asking you the right questions and you are looking inside yourself to provide the right answers.

Both you and they will know when you are making excuses or seeing things through a narrow field of vision.

If you want to take your personal life or career to the next level, it may be time to engage a mentor. The benefits of having someone else push, question, strategize with you through mentoring can only lead to greater success.

Tips for leading successful negotiations

Make_me_an_offerOften in business or when supporting coaching clients, I am asked to prepare or help someone to lead a successful negotiation. Here I share my key tips for leading successful individual negotiations:

  1. Prepare in advance – understand the principles of bracketing. Plan for, and clearly know your high point, your low point and your mid point.  Your midpoint should be what you are happy to be paid, your low point is your walk away, and anything upside of your midpoint you should be delighted.  Think about your strategy in how you could move your first asking point greater then where it would otherwise be to help raise the midpoint.
  2. Try to avoid putting your price down first – no matter what.   Look to get the person you are negotiating with to state their position, their thinking, their decision-making criteria. You can look to set the agenda and ideal outcomes based on principles before a number or the details of the introduction gets introduced.
  3. Keep your cards close to you and actively listen to the other party to help you determine your approach and negotiation tactics.  To get the other person to state his or her position first assuming the status quo is fine with you and there is no pressure on you to make a move, be bold enough to say to the other side, “You approached me. The way things are, satisfies me. If you want to do this, you’ll have to make a proposal to me.”
  4. Hold to your position for as long as you can – see how far they will come to your point first without you budging or without you budging far.  Communicate all the time that you are prepared and ready to make the deal and find something that works for everyone.
  5. Understand all the influencers and decision makers – you must know  and work with the person authorized to make the deal.  Talk to the key decision maker. Spend time in researching, listening and understanding their drivers and frame of reference.
  6. Discussions should always begin with a clear understanding of the win-win-win.  How do they win, how do you win, how do you win together?  Much research has been done to support the approach of winning for everyone is a much better outcome and brings greater results (financial & emotional) then if you have win by screwing down the other party.  Negotiation is based on the foundations of inspiration and persuasion.  How can you make the other party see your point of view or vision for the future?
  7. Negotiation is not always about money – negotiation can be based on a number of factors. Think creatively and really understand your own drivers.  For instance, in salary negotiations you may be looking at any one of the following elements:  Base Salary, Added Benefits, Profit Share & other short &/or long term incentives, Working environment & flexibility in hours, Additional holiday periods, Job enrichment & satisfaction based on doing more of what you love.
  8. Avoid being the first to double bracket or to negotiate against yourself (you would be surprised at how many people do this – make an offer, then jump in with another based on the other person’s non-response).  Hold and wait until the other person makes their offer known.  Hold too on your final position and get them to talk about what they are thinking and what you can do to help them.  Reinforce their and the combined win in the win-win-win situation. Identify any potential barriers to bringing closure to the negotiations.  Think about how you can remove them or how else they could be viewed and change your tactics accordingly.
  9. There may be variables in a negotiation, understand what they are and be clear (first be clear to yourself) as to what is important to you – eg timing, breakdown, flexibility etc
  10. Consider the power of using time as a variable – what needs to be done by when and how flexible can you or the negotiating party be around that (and what is the value to you around that variability).  Gain a sense of urgency – if the other party is keen to bring closure to the negotiations you may in fact be able to use that urgency to your advantage by moving slowly and looking like you don’t care how long it takes.  However look to ensure the principles of having something that works for everyone remains a priority.
  11. Never negotiate when you are feeling emotional.  Try to keep a level head at all times.  If you need a break, request time to think about the offer until you can think straight again.  Talk out loud to someone else if you need some help in unraveling your emotions and to help reform the confidence and rationale in your approach and  position.
  12. Remember to celebrate the final result of your negotiations. It is important to ensure all parties feel good about the deal that was done.
  13. Once concluded, spend some time reflecting – could you have done things differently for next time? Any lessons learned?
  14. Finally, never let the other party know you were prepared to accept less or pay more in the negotiations.  They will feel bad, and you will lose any goodwill created by the win-win-win principle.

Each of us negotiates many things and many times in daily life and in business. By considering these simple strategies, you should obtain an outcome you are happy with.

For leading more complex negotiations, there are many resources available.  One book that I recommend reading is “Negotiation Genius – how to overcome obstacles and achieve brilliant results at the bargaining table and beyond” by Deepak Malhotra & Max H. Bazerman, Harvard Business School 2007

What have you found works for you?  Do you recommend any strategies or resources that have helped you?  What tips would you offer others who want to lead successful negotiations?

Growth in a connected world

Emma will be the key-note speaker at next week’s business conference “Growth in a connected world” where she will explore in greater detail the forces of change impacting your business, customer relationships and infrastructure.

Understand, Grow and Lead by embracing these changes.

Read Emma’s related post on Driving your own upturn

DETAILS OF CONFERENCE:

GROWTH IN A CONNECTED WORLD

Date:  Wednesday 23 March 2011

Time:  7.30am for an 8.00am start

Location:  Sydney Masonic Centre, Corner of Goulburn and Castlereagh Streets.

NB: Ample parking available close by.

RSVP:

Register your interest by emailing ned@greengoldit.com.au Or

Register online at www.ontrackaus.com Events Or

Call (02) 9261 5111 / (02) 9248 0162

Who Should Attend:

Business Owners, CEO’s, CFO’s, CIO’s and Senior Managers.

Event hosted by:

Green and Gold People to People & Ontrack Systems (AUS) Pty Ltd.

Supported by SAP and NETFIRA.

SAP Business One, is an affordable integrated business management solution for Small and mid-size businesses, turns your existing business assets into thriving resources.

NETFIRA is a B2B supply chain software solution for small and medium businesses, allowing them to buy and sell online without a need for the website or EDI.

Driving your own upturn

Screen shot 2011-03-17 at 9.20.12 PMThere is no more normal.  No back to normal. No creation of normal.  There is only readiness and the acceptance that certainty in business has been removed.

What is required is a nimbleness and a feeling of empowerment to quickly synthesize and work out the emerging opportunities and the dangers that can be found in the ever-changing markets, changing technology, and changing pressures that surround us.

An organization’s readiness to make decisions, to take risks, to learn along the way, to adjust, becomes the new standard. An organizational culture that supports, encourages, embraces and celebrates new information and innovation. One that equates change with opportunity and an exciting future.

Competition has never been greater.  Competition for talent, competition for resources, competition for your customers, competition to be heard and valued by the people who matter to you – your customers.

Choosing to compete on price is no win for anyone – you lose profits and someone, somewhere is likely to do it cheaper, followed by someone else offering it cheaper again.

Competing on first to market is also time-limited.  Someone will follow and offer the same, maybe more, maybe better and certainly followed by a number of others.

Competing with the product and services you serve today will not serve you tomorrow. They will be substituted by new, better, sexier and more personalized or smarter versions or something that supersedes them entirely.

To remain relevant and of interest to your customers, you can compete on one thing only – your ability to consistently evolve and differentiate and to create the best possible customer experience.

You need to implement a model that supports sustainable and continuous innovation.  To build an organization that supports innovation that supports the improvement of your customer’s lives in a way that is valued and meaningful to them.

And critically, an organization that allows your people to be free to innovate, to think, to create, to build, to serve, to deliver growth.

Who is going to be the hero?  The leader of change? The leader of innovation? The leader of your success and future? The leader of growth and upturn?

The answer is You. Yes, You.

You need to create the space in your organization to shine. You need to create space to allow your team to shine and enough to allow all your people to shine.

You need to get every non-differentiating system and innovation-roadblock, innovation-killer and time-wasting activity out of the way so you can spend time on:

  • Finding ways to introduce new products and services to existing customers.
  • Identifying new customer segments to target new, innovative, personalized and relevant offers.
  • Capitalizing on opportunities in emerging markets and enhancing your performance in existing markets.
  • Delighting your customer through their unique experience dealing with you

If you are not already finding this time, thinking or operating this way, then your time is already limited.  Either you will be replaced by others who are, or your organization’s ability to compete will be time-limited.

Tic toc tic toc.

Time is ticking.  Time for change. Time to do things differently. To think differently.

If you want growth and are under pressure to deliver numbers, then take ownership within your organization to drive your own upturn and success.