Article 2 Proper Work: What are we trying to do?

I am not Steve Jobs, Jack Welsh or Elon Musk, and I assume you are not. We can't all be like them, but we can positively impact the world and those around us by being successful in our own lives and businesses. I don't believe competitors are our enemies. Everything in business is not a competition. We are not at war; running a successful business is not about warfare. While I enjoyed reading Sun-Tzu's Art of War, it has no relevance to running a business.?

The idea of "competition" is often used as an excuse for a business's poor performance. Instead of blaming competitors, we could honestly reflect on our ability to outperform them:

• Do we know what we're doing and why we're doing it??
• Do we have the right people on our team??
• Do they know what they need to do??
• Are we all working towards the same goal??
• Do we have the right tools and processes, and are we using them??
• Do we understand our customers' needs??
• Do we communicate the value of our solution??
• Have we failed to deliver on our promises??

The last three questions are meaty. We need to understand our customers and what truly matters to them and deliver that. After all, how can any business be successful if it doesn't provide what its customers need? If we don't give what they need, someone else will. Today, customers have an almost overwhelming array of choices, so understanding your customer needs deeply and aligning your capabilities with their needs is the first step to creating long-term joint value.?

We chose the builder who renovated our house because they understood what family home we were trying to make within the limited constraints of our budget and existing property. They understood our needs and delivered them, thus creating joint value. Let's take a moment here to consider the 'we' I'm referring to here. 'We' is me (obviously) and the lovely Mrs. Cowley. Why mention this? Well, it is worth contemplating the intricacy of customers. Mrs. Cowley and I are very different characters and serve as a great example of the complexity of a customer persona; the Cowleys are not a singularity. The complexity of customer personas and their needs only increases as we transition from a single individual to a business. Complexity further increases as we move from single trader to SME to large multi-national entities. To the best of our ability, we should understand the complex needs of the stakeholders in each customer persona to deliver meaningful value.?

We took a long time, and I mean a long time, to select our builder for the renovations. We didn't choose the cheapest; we didn't pick the one we had an existing relationship with; we selected the one who gave us the most honest and constructive feedback. The one we felt would do the right thing by us during the build. My point is that for business success, you must understand what your customers need; this is a fundamental understanding of your environment. Their environment impacts their needs and, therefore, your business. With this enlightenment, you tune your company to deliver value and ensure you do deliver. Acting with integrity, saying what you do and doing what you say builds trust and repeat customers and helps you sleep at night.

So, to answer this article's question, what are we trying to do? Proper Work is your sincere and compassionate operation of a business to sustainable profit by knowing and delivering what your customers need. Following the three simple rules of Michael Raynor and Mumtaz Ahmed is a good start:

1. Be better before cheaper; in other words, compete on differentiators other than price.
2. Focus on driving revenue before cutting costs.
3. Remember, there are no other rules!

To change anything, you must follow rules 1 and 2. Your goal is to have your business turn a sound, long-term profit without burning out its people, a place (actual or virtual) where people are engaged in their work of delivering value to your customers. Proper Work will help you get there.