Finding my voice October 2, 2013

For the past 5 weeks or so I have been fortunate to meet a great guy called Nic Paton. Over 20 of us were able to spend a little time with him and were exposed to his knowledge of music. He took many of us out of our comfort zone by taking us back to a time when we were unafraid to sing. To a time when little worried us and our confidence was not curbed by the judgement of others. I will admit that at first I was reluctant, but Nic managed to provide a space where we could all feel comfortable. I guess what I drew from it most is that as an entrepreneur you are always going to be faced with situations which make you feel uncomfortable; issues that you feel may be out of your depth. It is then the task of the individual to take up this challenge for what it is, an opportunity to learn and to grow as a person.

A theme that resonated through out the course was that of finding your voice. Below lies an excerpt of something that we had to write which encompassed the value we had taken from the sessions:

“One word expresses the pathway to greatness: voice. Those on this path find their voice and inspire others to find theirs. The rest never do” (Stephen Covey). Covey expresses the idea of finding your voice in a way which is both honest and daunting. It is scary to think that achieving greatness can be reduced to one word, your voice. It is even more intimidating that you can exist on either side of line, that is with it our without it.

On a regular basis I am faced with the question, what is your passion? What is the one thing that you feel will get you out of bed every morning with a smile on your face? The ease with which this question is asked suggests that the answer should be equally as effortless. It is not. An interesting two part question was posed which looked to address this question. The first pertained to describing a moment in my life which was felt to hold the most meaning. A time where I felt like I did something that has added a somewhat indescribable value to my life as well as somebody else’s. The second question related to whether I had found my calling; that one thing that I could see myself doing for the rest of my life.  I knew instantly that I could not give an answer for the first question, and that this delay in reaction whilst I thought of a valuable moment meant that I hadn’t been fortunate enough to have lived through such an experience. In that moment I realised if I couldn’t answer this question, then by default I would be unable to address question two, my calling. For me, the two are interconnected and cannot be viewed in isolation. As soon as I reach the point where I am able to live through both questions, is when I feel I will truly be able to find and connect with my voice.

 

Closing the Business October 1, 2013

So the team met today to discuss the closure document – which is no joke. It is a huge document with a lot of learnings. As you can imagine, this year has been full of learnings, so we have to get all of our learnings summed up into one document which is no easy task. We also have to show our financials, what is going to happen with the business next year and how the process of disolution is going to take place.

As it is such a vital document, we would have loved a bit more time to get it all together however we have until friday to get it all done.

But as i have blogged about this week we will work together as a team and get it all done on time.

This year has been all about good time management, good team work and a high standard of quality work so this is exactly what we will deliver and have delivered so many time this year.

How to Manage your business partners

I am not claiming this as my post but thought that this was a very interesting article for you all to have a look at! 

When Ari Mir, 31, and Amos Elliston, 38, met as coworkers at a Los Angeles startup, they instantly clicked and began bouncing around ideas to hatch a business of their own. Seven years later they launched Pocket Change, which seeks to build a universal rewards currency similar to American Express points but accumulated through apps on your phone.

Launched in 2012, the San Francisco-based company has already raised $5 million in venture capital. While Elliston and Mir enjoy each other’s company, they say the partnership has been successful largely because they’ve set boundaries and maintained their own lives outside of work. This work-life divide limits their overreactions when it comes to business matters, says Mir. “We’re not best friends,” he says. “You need some sort of distance or you are always going to take things a little too personally.”

Co-founder disagreements and misunderstandings can sink a company before it starts. Here are four ways to manage your partner and set the business up for success:

Get an outsider’s perspective.
Most startups don’t have a board of directors but still need an outsider’s viewpoint. Frank Demmler, an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, advises founders to give a monthly presentation about company goals and challenges in front of two or three mentors. Presenting to a third party keeps partners from blaming each other for company decisions gone wrong. For example, partners who disagree about how to price their product can present their cases to their mentors instead of getting into a direct conflict with one another. Getting into this habit also helps the founders gain perspective on their decisions, since their mentors are removed from the day-to-day ups and downs.

Related: Essential Elements of Working With a Business Partner

Solve problems before they happen.
Just like you would create a business plan, it’s a good idea for founders to sit down together, write out potential hot-button issues and think through solutions in advance. For example, you’ll want to outline each partner’s time commitment to the company and how you’ll handle personal problems, such as illness. It’s also important to discuss how and when the partners will be paid and strategies for growing the business, says Demmler. For instance, one partner may want to keep the profits, while the other may prefer to re-invest them in order to scale. Taking the time to address what’s important to you upfront can help prevent future breakdowns in communication, he says. “Do it at the beginning when rational minds are engaged.”

Clearly outline job responsibilities.
If one or more founders isn’t pulling their weight, it can breed resentment. One way to avoid this is by assessing and redistributing the amount of work each one does through weekly partner meetings, says Shahab Kaviani, chief executive at CoFoundersLab, an online co-founder matching service based in Rockville, Md. Knowing you will meet regularly to discuss the workload can help ease any lingering tension. Keep in mind that a balanced division of labor doesn’t necessarily mean divvying up every project. For example, instead of splitting the marketing work down the middle, one partner can focus on marketing while the other concentrates on operations. Of course, you’ll want to consider each other’s strengths when making those choices.

Consider all partners when making decisions.
For many business partners, making even the smallest company decisions can turn into a drawn out, painful process, which can slow down the company’s upward trajectory. Learning how to effectively negotiate with your co-founders will help smooth out potential gridlocks. When negotiating a big decision, Douglas Noll, a corporate mediator in Clovis, Calif., suggests that partners focus on their overarching goals, rather than quibble over specifics. For instance, if you’d like to take more money out of the business to pay off company debt, make a list of the long-term benefits of doing so, such as added financial security. When you come to the negotiating table, discuss ways that you might be able to achieve your ultimate goal of financial security, and offer directing funds to pay off debt as one possible method.

At the same time, Kaviani advises against making concessions without getting something in return. For example, when negotiating a hiring decision, one partner might agree to hire someone they’re not sure about, if the other agrees to a three-month trial period for the employee. Then, both sides feel they have gained. Finally, he says it’s important to stay calm during these discussions, because losing your cool can escalate the conflict rather than resolve it.

You can read more on this article from this website 🙂

 http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/226772#ixzz2gTclQsQM

 

 

Teamwork in a business context.

Leading on from my last post you can see how crucial it is to have a good way of controlling your business. I now want to share a post on the importance of teamwork – something that Pandacoustics has worked hard to get right this year. It has definitely ensured that we have worked well together and that we all get on well with eachother.

The Synergy of the Four Pillars

While all four processes have their place, they are not implemented separately, but rather in concert. Using the example of implementing a new social media tool for increasing informal learning:

• Command communicates the vision or goal to the best people who can implement it. Throughout the process, it adjusts to new knowledge and refines the vision.
• Management allocates the resources and helps to organize the activities that will make it a reality. This is normally a continuous process, rather than a single activity.
• Leadership helps to guide, coach, and motivate the people to do their best throughout the entire process.
• Control looks for opportunities to reduce risks, which in turn makes the process more efficient.

The four pillars need to be in harmony with each other. As the diagram below show, when one or more of them is too strong, the organization falls out of balance:

 

Likewise, if any of the pillars become too weak, it drives the organization out of balance:

 

 This year has been all about getting the balance between, our academics, our Genesis project and our social life – something that has been very difficult to do.

Thus, the four pillars must consistently be weighed against each other to ensure they are in a proper balance that allows the organization to grow and prosper.

 

Learning to Lead and Leading to Learn

Its incredible how much one not only learns about oneself but also about the people around you when you form a team out of people that you never new prior to this year and then learn all about leadership together.

Every day we grow as a team, we learn about the strengths and weaknesses of not only yourself but the rest of your team. We build on each others strengths and make up for each others weaknesses. The stronger you are as a team the more successful you will be! You may have the most impressive individuals in a team but if they do not work together then there is little point in being a team.

Every day your team is challenged – but challenges are good, if you don’t succeed then you learn and if you do succeed then you become closer. This year has definitely brought pnadacoustics closer together, ensuring that we work well together to get things done.

Have a look at this post on leadership that i have found. Some interesting insights into what leadership is in an organization.

 

Leadership, Management, Command, & Control

While there are plenty of discussions about leadership verses management and the need for command and control nowadays, these are important concepts that every leader must be aware of to successfully guide their organization. In fact, they are the four pillars of every organization as they directly drive the organization. Used properly, the business will grow; used improperly, the business will sink.

These are not distinct processes, but rather concepts that all leaders perform in order to build and strengthen their organizations.

As the above diagram shows, the four pillars overlap, thus they are not separate processes. This blending gives the organization the ability to focus on opportunities and deal with threats:

• Leadership drives the interpersonal aspects of the organization, such as moral and team spirit.
• Management deals with the conceptual issues of the organization, such as planning and organizing.
• Command guides the organization with well thought-out visions that makes it effective.
• Control provides structure to the organization in order to make it more efficient.

Benefits of the Four Processes

Command and Control

While most people think of command as simply telling others what to do, it goes far beyond that. Command is the imparting of a vision to the organization in order to achieve and end-goal. It does this by formulating a well-thought out vision and then clearly communicating it. Command emphasizes success and reward. That is, the organization has to be successful to survive and in turn reward its members (both intrinsically and extrinsically).

An example would be visioning a process that helps to increase informal learning and make it more effective. A bad vision would be implementing a social media tool, such as a wiki or Twitter. This is because social media tools are the means rather than an end-goal. That is, they are more like specific objectives that enable you to achieve your end-goal (vision).

Now you might implement a social media tool as explained below, but the real goal is to increase interactions that lead to informal learning, while a supporting process is the tool itself.

Visions do not have to come from the top, but rather anywhere within the organization. Informal leaders are often good sources of visions; however, if the vision requires resources, then they normally need the support of a formal leader.

In contrast, Control is the process used to establish and provide structure in order to deal with uncertainties. Visions normally produce change, which in turn produce tension. These uncertainties cause tensions that leaders must deal with so they do not impede the organization. This is far different from most people’s conception in which they think of control as controlling others.

For example, an organization might implement a new social media tool to enable its worker to interact with others and aid the process of informal learning more effectively. After implementing the tool the leader might ask, “Is the tool we provided to increase the effectiveness of informal learning really working?” Thus, control is also used to measure and evaluate.

Inherent in evaluation is efficiency—the act of examining the new tool often leads to processes that make it more efficient. This can be good because it can save money and often improve a tool or process. The danger of this is if the command process is weak and the control process is strong then it can make efficiency the end-goal. That is, it replaces effectiveness with efficiency.

A good example of this is our present economy that caused many organizations to perform massive layoffs. Now the very same organizations are complaining that they cannot find qualified workers. Efficiency over road effectiveness—they failed to realize that they would need a trained workforce in the future.

I don’t want to make this post too long so will carry on with my next post. But as you can see from the article leadership is vital and there are different ways of commanding and controlling not only your workforce but your company as a whole.

Business Law 101 September 27, 2013

As our politics of enterprise assignment is due today, I thought it would be quite fitting to talk around the concept of this course where law of business is particularity important in entrepreneurship.

For someone who has never take a single law course in my varsity career, it is extremely important to pay attention to this subject later on when I have my own business. The most practical thing for me to do having little knowledge around this area of expertise would be to have a specialist accompany me with startup. It may seem like a large short-term expense but doing this course has emphasized the trouble that could come about, so easily and so quickly for someone who has little idea.

Our Shareholders Agreement has been the only element of our group that has been law related this year where I think I underestimated the importance of knowing for myself, what I should be capable of in this area. I think for beginners such as myself, the important areas for new startups to look at are:

Your business entity. What form of ownership are you going to take on. If a partnership or a Close Corp, then look at the strengths and weaknesses in relation to WHO you are working with, WHAT you are working with (retail or service) and those who will be directly and indirectly affected by any actions of the business. It is here that I think its quite important to really think about who you re going into business with. Friends are great, until its business related and then… friends aren’t that great. This may not always be the case but this has been emphasized throughout the year by lecturers and board of directors, so I would rather take their word for it.

Another area that you should look at as a startup would be your contract law. You will ALWAYS have legal obligations with relationships in business, so best deal with them upfront in an ethical manner to avoid any problems later on.

Whether it be with your partners, sharholders, customers, suppliers, distributors. You need to keep check on all of these areas and make sure an agreement is made: this will be a binding contract. I think that this would also be a good way to experience ones attitude and commitment to the business. You will be able to see within their reaction if they are suitable business partners.

These are just two areas that are key, but a good start as a 101 of Business Law. My suggestion would be to do it soon, properly and have it checked by a expert.

Ernest Shackleton and leadership September 26, 2013

As part of our management theory in practice module we had to watch a film based around Ernest Shackleton who was a Polar explorer leading 3 expeditions in his lifetime. This particular film is based around his 2^nd expedition, where his ship landed up freezing into the ice and he lead 12 of his men to safety after months of being stranded. We particularly viewed his leadership styles, along with level-5 leaders: those who lead good to great.

Throughout this year I have been quite fascinated to find out the different types of leaders. Before this course I didn’t know what leadership really is. And although there isn’t one answer to this, I believe our group has a very good idea now of what a true leader looks like.

If you are loud, controlling and know what you are doing, it does not make you a good leader. If people look to you for answers, you are not particularity a leader. A leader is someone who praised in public and practices in private, someone who bring out the best in their team and everyone around them, someone who doesn’t always have the answer but have an ability to extract great things from others.

Ernest Shackleton was a man who was very good at showing his emotions. If he was anything like they portrayed him to be in the film then I would have thought he had everything under control. He had a vision, and nothing was going to get in the way of that. And most important to me, was his absolute indistinctive drive to protect his men.

He was not necessarily the most appraisable or friendly man, but he would do anything in his power to make sure those around him came first. This is a true leader. In his success, he praised those around him and where he showed heart, it was for a good reason to either motivate those around him, or build his men up to the strengths they needed to be.  Everything was done for a particular purpose.

We have 7 great leaders in our group who have grown and developed over the year. Each individual has their special talents and characteristics which we have come to realize of those around us, and of ourselves.  We have put ourselves in each others shoes in order to better understand each others and have never lost focus of our team goal. We pull each other back onto the path we want to be on, the path that will make us achieve.

I would definitely recommend this film in seeing how one great man lead his team back to safety, as we strive to be as great a leader as he was,

Pandacoustics- “We are leading to learn, and learning to lead”.

Heritage Day: Bread making elective September 25, 2013

Today is a public holiday!! Wooohooo but as we have learnt this year, public holidays are simple a day given to more time dedicated to work, or catching up on work.

I’m going to take the opportunity here to talk about creativity in business, and as Shani spoke of creative writing last week, I’ll full you in on the elective I did: bread making.

What on earth has bread making got to do with creativity in business? Yip, that what I asked myself too. it sounded fun, and I love food so it seemed an appropriate elective for me. So we met at Gardeners Cottage in Newlands where Jeremy and Kim from BreadRev took us through the process of making bread, the creativity behind it and just bakeries as business in general. We had a chance to bake our own bread as well as make our own dough to show ’em what we got.

It was quite interesting to hear the expenses behind baking and what it takeS to being a baker. Basically, Jeremy explained to us that there are three, only THREE, places in Cape Town that sell actual proper bread…when you read on Woolies Rye bread “100% Rye”, it’s actually a lie.  But the sad reality behind it is that it is just too expensive to make proper bread, the time, contents and electrical costs do not weigh up the benefit of trying to convince the nation that “this is the real bread”.

So Jeremy looked at these costs and decided to start a project of making  bread for cheaper. He realised that buy making his own ovens that are run on heat from firewood, he could get more for less. Besides from the creativity of making the bread and the freedom of what to put in, ingredients and the fun of making shape, patters and mixtures, this was the creativity that I was interested in. Jeremy and his wife Kim, have taken this project to the less privileged areas to show the ease behind it. These people live on bread as a staple diet, and if they are taught the ease behind it, they won;t just be saving money, but will have available fresh bread to full their stomaches every day.

I think its really incredible when people like this step back and bricolage with new ideas, and what makes it even better is their act towards the South African population. They are generating a new way of thinking, acting and eating which are key factors in the development of South Africa. Well done to the breadrev crew…and now I can make my own bread;)

Week 10/13…Genesis award what?? September 24, 2013

Where has the time gone?? Is it just me or are you all starting to get a strange feeling of being extremely excited to say “We’ve done it” and move on to great new beginnings, but at the same time look back and get a little sad that the best year is almost over.

I think what has triggered these feelings even more was the making of THE GENESIS AWARD video we did this weekend. I’ve written it like that as its a big deal, its a really big deal.

For those who do not know, the Genesis award is the prize given to the group that best meets the criteria of sustainability, innovation, academics and eco-friendly factors in which the course aims to extract from each group throughout the year. But the catch is that it doesn’t just go to the group that best meets this, they have to achieve this to a point where it is great. It has to be at a certain level, otherwise no one gets it. This is what happened last year…no group from 2012 won the Genesis award.

Now what entrepreneurs doesn’t like a challenge like this? The reality of it for our group, from my perspective, is that we really feel like we can do it. No words can really describe how badly we want to achieve this, for no other reason than to know that we did the best with what we had.

It has been an absolute privilege to be able to be part of this course and I don’t think anyone will quite understand unless they have been a part of it themselves. I didn’t even realise until we really got started with the year, what great things you are able to achieve with the course. So to prove our appreciation to being able to experience what we think is the best course one could do, we wanted to make the most of everything we did, put 100% into everything and come out saying “we tried our best, and stretched ourselves to the absolute maximum”, we wanted to take an opportunity presented to us, and squeeze every last bit out of it. Thats what we want to prove.

We want to prove how we listen to instruction, we did what was asked. By ticking the boxes on all the criteria asked of us:

storage: it stores your cellphone

student market. We then discovered it wasn’t just students who will be interested, but now big corporates too!!

sustainable: we provided jobs to many people but most importantly, we hired two South African’s to help us manufacture our Bamboombox’s. And will be passing the business on to them in 2014

eco-friendly: The Bamboombox is a 100% eco-friendly

innovative: We didn’t just add value to an already establish product, we created a new s-curve

100% markup. We did better- we made a simple thing look wonderful

South Africa has never seen this product before. People have to ask “what on earth is that”- and they are damn impressed with it.

Prove your academics excellence: Our groups systematic ways and cooperation with each individual was something we all know we are grateful for in our group. Other groups tease us and say we are “the organised group”, but I think its because we established a set of goals in the very beginning that we all adhere to as having a set agenda for the year.

We are passionate, we motivate each other, we have time for each other and we are grateful for what we have in our group and in the PDE course.

This is the video that sums it all up for us:

Hold fingers for us 🙂

Holding Thumbs September 20, 2013

We have a Genesis Award video due next week Monday. We are up against some tough competition, but we are enthusiastic and hopeful that we will be walking away with the award this year.

It has been our goal from the start, to direct all aspects of our business to meet all criteria in order to give us the best shot at winning this award. We too have put hard work into our academic hand-in and have delivered through and though to make this business a sustainable and efficiently driven business, incorporating what we have learnt and putting it into practice as well as applying practical knowledge and learning from our mistakes.

Amy is really putting in some tremendous efforts to deliver a solid video that shows our academic strength as a group, our ability to create jobs in South Africa, how GREEN and BROWN we are and most importantly the SUSTAINABILITY of our business as a whole.

Holding thumbs!