I never think of shopping as a time for excitement, but in 2019, I was in for a mild shock when I visited my local mall. There, I saw something that only a few years ago would have been unimaginable.

Sears, which took up over a quarter of the mall’s entire floor space, was pulling down its signs. What was once a powerful retail giant is now a glaring symbol of one company’s inability to change and adapt. Sears, however, is not an exception. As we brace for further impact from the global pandemic, more giants are expected to fall. In 2010, in the middle of another crisis, researchers Ranjay Gulati, Nitin Nohria, and Franz Wohlgezogen showed that during the recessions of 1980, 1990, and 2000, 17 percent of the 4,700 public companies they studied did not survive. One out of every three public companies will cease to exist in their current form within the next five years — a rate six times higher than 40 years ago, according to BCG, a global consulting firm.

As I stood in the mall and looked at the shadow of what was once a remarkable brand, I was reminded of another story of heartbreaking failure: the Titanic. Titanic’s story offers eerie parallels between the behavior of the ship’s team and that of today’s at-risk companies. Effective leaders know that understanding why things fail can help to avoid repeating mistakes.

Most of us know the story of what happened on that chilly Sunday, April 14, 1912, at 11:49 pm, when the Royal Mail Steamer Titanic — en route from Europe to New York City — collided with an iceberg and sank within three hours, leading to the deaths of 1,514 of the 2,224 passengers and crew on board. The largest moving human-made object at the time, the Titanic was considered unsinkable by all: experts, media, and the public. The ship was equipped with the most advanced naval technology available and a crew of experienced and respected naval leaders. So why did it sink, and what can we learn?

Failure #1 / Ignored Warnings

The Titanic’s crew was warned about the area’s dangerous icebergs. But why were these warnings ignored?

The radio operating team was so concerned with keeping the high-paying customers satisfied that they told the passing ship Californian, “Keep out; Shut up!” when interrupted on-air by his counterpart warning of the upcoming ice field. Customer satisfaction is all the rage. But killing it for the wrong whim of the customer might accidentally kill your business.

Failure #2 / No Binoculars

Overconfidence can be blinding.

The night of the collision was clear and still. Perched 50 feet above the forecastle deck, in a small open box called “the crow’s nest,” lookouts Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee worked their two-hour shift. Inside the nest, Fleet and Lee had a large bell to grab public attention and a telephone to reach the captain’s bridge. What they did not have, however, was a pair of binoculars.
A hundred years later, with all the advances in modern technology, it is still hard to imagine any ship in the open waters without binoculars. The Titanic, too, had several binoculars on board, but for much of the trip, they were locked up in a storage cabinet. This was, quite literally, a case of overconfidence that was blinding.

Failure #3 / The Role of the Iceberg

It’s easy to blame the iceberg.

We’ve reviewed some of the causes of the disaster, but we’ve missed the main one: the iceberg. Whenever I work with a company or discuss the Titanic story, the iceberg is the first cause mentioned.
When I’m asked to work with a company to reinvent its products, processes, or business models, I wasn’t there to experience their good times. By the time I’m called, things are already deteriorating — the iceberg has been hit — and oh boy, is it easy to blame the iceberg!

Sneaky competitors, overbearing regulators, lousy weather, bad design, late suppliers, lazy customers, those finance-department knuckleheads: I’ve heard it all. It is so easy to blame it on someone else.
But here is the thing: While you cannot prevent the iceberg from appearing, you can darn well make sure you don’t hit it. The choice is in your hands.

Of all the things that went wrong on the Titanic, there was one problem more glaring than all the others: the arrogance and overconfidence of past successes.

Failure #4 / Previous Success Might Destroy Your Ambitions

What got you here may not get you there.

On the night of the collision, the captain had already gone to bed. First Officer William Murdoch was in charge. At 39, Murdoch had 16 years of maritime experience and was known for his masterful record of averting ship collisions. For instance, before the Titanic, he had served on the Arabic when a passing ship came bearing down from the darkness. Murdock grabbed the wheel and held the ship steady. As a result, the two ships passed within inches without damage.

The Arabic incident was one of many Murdoch mastered in his career. In the 37 seconds between the first sighting of the iceberg and its collision with the Titanic, the officer fully relied on his past successes to make executive decisions in the present. We all know how that turned out.

Are You too Big to Fail?

History can be a great mentor.

The Titanic story is the most powerful example of a too-big-to-fail mindset. Sometimes the sheer size of a company creates an illusion of being untouchable and unsinkable. Enron, Lehman Brothers, Blockbuster, Toys-R-Us, Borders, Myspace, and Sears all went through the same process of blind belief in their own ability to withstand any storm or disruption.
The Titanic Syndrome has sunk many companies. It can be summarized as a corporate disease in which organizations that face disruption bring about their downfall through arrogance, excessive attachment to past success, or an inability to recognize and adapt to the new and emerging reality.

Slow Adoption is Gone

Start your new lifecycle now.

Once upon a time, our companies enjoyed long and healthy lives, with a slow rise to the top of financial performance and a gradual decline to annihilation. The rate of change was so slow that it was easy to develop the Titanic Syndrome and still survive — we had all the time in the world to renew a business on our terms. If a new “iceberg” showed up on the horizon — a competitor, a technology, a regulation — a company could adapt slowly and even enjoy the ride. But that fairy tale is long gone.

The increasing level of globalization showcased so painfully during the 2008–2009 global economic crisis and powered by the ever-increasing access to knowledge means that more of us are inventing every day and sharing those inventions globally. With all these pressures, the demand for corporate (economic, communal, and personal) reinvention has grown even further.

Does it mean that we are doomed? Absolutely not. What separates companies that survive from those that go down is the ability to start a new lifecycle, to pivot their company far enough from the path of destruction to find a new opportunity for growth. But if before you had 30+ years to reach your prime, today you might only have a few years.
How many exactly? To answer this question, we launched a global reinvention survey in 2018. Thousands of participants took part, giving much-needed insight into the speed of change and ways to deal with it. Our 2020 results showed that to survive today, 60 percent of us need to reinvent every 0 to 3 years, with a whopping 16.1 percent needing to reinvent every 12 months or less. This means that barely into a new business, you must start the reinvention process anew — again and again, in a continuous cycle of renewal.

The business you’re in today cannot be the business you’re in three years from now. By then, you’re either entering a new business model or you’re on the way to extinction. Period.

• An 18 year old woman wants to “bring humanity to business” but doesn’t know how. More than 35 years later, and despite having no role models, she still hasn’t surrendered her values.

• Brigitte Baumann was told that a CEO must simply look after the bottom line. That’s all.

• Go Beyond is born; an angel investor company that shows that social impact investments can make a profit and change lives.

• While recognizing that women ‘get’ certain projects more than men, she wants to harness the ‘gets’ for the benefit of male investors too.

There can sometimes be a downside to being an early adopter. Brigitte Baumann (pictured above), founder of Go Beyond, discovered this harsh fact as an angel investor 17 years ago. The term “impact investing” hadn’t even been coined yet and she innocently assumed that investors, shareholders and board members shared her values. It was a big mistake. “I wanted to find companies that had values which represented the business of the future,” she says. “The idea of people over profit, an uncommon idea back then, was how I thought all business should be run.”

She encountered resistance from big corporations and eventually decided that it was much easier to support entrepreneurs for profit – but who considered all stakeholders, not just shareholders. As they say, if you can’t win people over, find people who already think like you. When Baumann entered the workforce 35 years ago she had expressed a desire to focus more on people. Short-sighted work colleagues told her to pursue a career in Human Resources, to which she replied, “No, I want to be the CEO.”

A stint at Wharton and then Mackenzie at Oxford in the 1990s had people whispering, “Wow! She’s going to be a CEO really fast.” Yet little-by-little she kept seeing the people-centric values and ethics she held dear beginning to divert. She recalls thinking, “Do I really need to give up my personal values and ethics in business?” When she eventually became a CEO people laughed at her approach and called her idealistic. “Don’t you get it?” they said, “This is how you should act as a CEO,” and gave her tired and stereotypical formulas.

Baumann’s had an uncompromising streak in her since she was 18 years old. When asked what she wanted to do with her life she’d say, ‘”I want to bring humanity to business.” She had no idea what “humanity” meant or even how business worked at the time. Fast forward to the present and Baumann has now founded her own company, Go Beyond. It allows novices and sophisticated investors alike to build, manage and exit portfolios and invests in young and fast growing companies. This year she was named European Business Angel Of The Year after delivering annualized returns of 15 percent and quadrupling investors’ money over a two-year period.

Seventy rounds of investment and 30 start-ups later, Go Beyond has created social impact within the traditional for-profit sector that now outweighs anything Baumann might have achieved if she’d stuck to the “traditional” way of investing.

Charitic in France is a web platform that brings charities and companies together to develop resources and corporate responsibility. Inakis is an online shopping guide for bio, eco and fair trade. Shadow Government is a simulation game that allows players to explore strategic planning models for countries, encouraging people to solve the world’s problems without a single election. Ecowizz helps utility customers better understand their energy consumption.

“We filter every deal on impact,” says Baumann. “Our dream is that impact will be how everyone does business one day. Yet, importantly, we don’t label it as such. We’re aware that some of our investors will look at our impact criteria carefully and others less so.” Baumann wants her impact investments to be shining examples of standalone returns, rather than having investors think they are simply supporting a good cause.

Angel investing in the early 2000s also had no women. “There are a lot of products that we as women totally ‘get’, and that most men don’t,” says Baumann. Once again, rather than creating a niche image that might alienate some investors, she decided against creating a women’s-only network, but rather a gender-inclusive one that incorporates ideas and inspirations on how to encourage more women business angels. Some of these considerations have been around the hours they set for meetings or calls, mindful that many female investors are still busy raising families or caring for aging parents. Go Beyond is now the only angel investor company in the world that has over a third women membership.

“I’ve found with women that we tend to want to do good and do well, as opposed to first doing well and then hoping it will do good,” says Baumann. “When you create an angel network and you want to attract more women, you need to have certain products and services that women can connect to – ones that suggest, ‘Hey this is useful to me, but it’s also useful to society.’”

A profound insight came to Baumann when she was pregnant, highlighting the magnitude of the responsibility she has to future generations. “Something happened to me physically, it wasn’t intellectual at all,” she recalls. “I felt my baby in my womb and thought, ‘Oh yeah, that’s what I am living for.’ I became more sensitive to how my investing would impact people in the future.”

Have you ever been faced with a dilemma at work where you’ve been forced to choose between your values and the status quo? Have you ever tried to introduce values in your business that go beyond profit?

Golf has a reputation for being a very easy, laid-back sport. Some may even call it boring, although I find that a little harsh, but I understand it’s not for everyone. But I’m here to tell you that golf isn’t only one of the most challenging games you can play, but arguably one of the most frustrating.

Even golf legend Arnold Palmer has repeated this same sentiment, famously saying that “Golf is deceptively simple and endlessly complicated.” In other sports, you’re usually competing against one or numerous opponents. If you lose, it could be because the other side was stronger, had more endurance than you, or was more cunning. But in golf, you’re competing against yourself, the course, and the weather. Sure, you might be trying to outperform your competitors, but how well you play is entirely contingent on you and you alone.

Like in business, your ultimate fate is in your hands. I know — comparing golf to business might seem a bit absurd, but I’m a firm believer that some of business’ greatest lessons come from outside the office. Both exciting and humbling, below are some of the biggest lessons I’ve learned from golf that have helped me grow in my career.

Practice Makes Perfect

The only way to improve your game is to get out on the green as much as you can. Sometimes life, busy schedules, and bad weather can get in the way, but golfers who are committed to greatness will find time to get some practice in, whether that’s a quick trip to an indoor course or taking a few minutes out of your day to practice on an online golf simulator.

The goal isn’t to spend hours out on the course but to consistently and intentionally dedicate as much time as you can to your passion, even if it’s only a few minutes every day. The same is true in leadership. No one is “born” a leader, no matter how innate their abilities seem to be. Rather, great leadership requires a continuous journey of professional development.

Every time you lead your team through an issue or emergency, for example, be cognizant of what you did well and what you could have done better. Put this into practice the next time you run into a problem and, soon enough, you’ll find that crisis management will become second nature to you.

You should constantly strive to be better. Seek mentorship from a fellow colleague or another professional in your industry. Take advantage of any career development programs offered through your organization, or seek these opportunities outside of the workplace. Even if you’ve held the same position for decades, there will always be room for improvement.

But You Don’t Always Have to be Perfect

Golf is hard. It may not be physically demanding, but it can be mentally tedious. The second you start thinking you’re perfect is when you’ll play the worst game of your life. This is why golf is such a humbling sport.

You’re going to miss shots or hit hazards during gameplay; it’s impossible to play a perfect round every time. How you react in these moments is key to your success. If you’re too focused on being perfect, you’re going to get flustered when you make even the smallest mistakes, which will only lead to a greater number of bigger mistakes. It’s the same thing in business.

Every leader makes mistakes, from startup entrepreneurs to the world’s richest CEOs. No one achieves success by being perfect; they excel by taking risks, learning from their mistakes, and pushing themselves outside of their comfort zones. I once read a quote from the former CEO of IBM, Tom Watson, that said: “If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.” It’s stuck with me ever since.

We can only become the leaders we all dream of being when we stop convincing ourselves we need to be perfect.

Take Time to Relax and Refresh

One of my favorite parts of golfing is the opportunity to go outside and enjoy the fresh air. I love it so much I opt out of using golf carts whenever possible so I can walk the course. It’s a time for me to leave all my outside worries and stressors behind and, instead, put all my focus into the game. Even though golf can be incredibly frustrating sometimes, it’s also the perfect way to relax and refresh. Even when I play my worst, I always leave feeling better than when I arrived.

As leaders, we spend all of our time focused on our duties, our team members, and the state of the business. Most of our days consist of meetings, while the other half involves putting out haphazard fires that happen throughout the day. If we don’t pull ourselves away from this environment from time to time, we make ourselves susceptible to burnout and stagnancy.

Leaders need to find time away from their responsibilities and their desks. Innovation and growth can’t flourish if we don’t give ourselves some mental reprieve from our jobs. Mine happens to be golf, but find the thing that allows you to reset yourself.

Golf has been pivotal to my career and shaping who I am as a leader. Whether you love golf or not isn’t the point. The point is that there’s inspiration and insight to be found in anything you do. Use this to influence every aspect of your life. You’ll be surprised just how much you can learn from the little things.

People who have a sense of direction and purpose feel empowered. Yet only 10 percent of people have written professional and personal goals. Imagine how great it would feel to take all your good intentions and make them a reality. In other words, to get laser-focused on the things that matter most — and have the motivation to actually do them! 

A friend named John is an accountant and has several children. He’s been successful in many ways and always had a seemingly great life. However, he was a point where he felt like he had plateaued and was in somewhat of a lull. He’d done well financially and accomplished a lot, yet he felt like he could accomplish more and do more than he currently was. When asked about goals, he responded, “I’ve never really set goals in my life outside of work. I’ve thought of a lot of things I want to do but never really turned them into goals.” After a short discussion, he decided to set his roles and goals for the first time in his life. That year, he developed five specific goals — just one for each role. 

For example, in his “personal” role (taking care of himself), he came up with a goal to run a 5K in less than 30 minutes before July 30th. Another goal was related to a financial performance target for his role in the accounting firm that was a big jump from where his performance was the previous year.  

To John’s amazement, he accomplished all five of his goals by year-end. He said, “I wouldn’t have done a single one of these five things had it not been for my written goals.”  

He’s now a believer in the power and focus of roles and goals. The next year, he added more goals to each role and has continued to see significant growth in each area of his life. It took him 40 years, but he finally sat down and identified what mattered most to him. Goals took the impossible and made it possible. He designated five targets, and he landed the arrow right in the bullseye for each one. 

To set your own roles and goals, follow these four steps: 

1. Review your vision. 

A person’s goals should align with his or her vision. Rather than focus on the problem, shift the playing field to the vision. The vision is the purpose or destination, and the goals are the path to make the vision a reality.  

2. Identify your roles. 

Look at your life through the lens of the five to seven roles that matter most to you. For example, some of your roles might include manager, sales rep, parent, spouse, and friend. Your personal role is your most important role.  

3. Set SMART goals in each role. 

At some point in your career, you’ve likely heard of the SMART acronym. Goals are SMART when they are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-specific. The same acronym can apply to your goals. Never use the words more or better; be specific with timeframes and amounts. In addition, give yourself flexibility within a goal and avoid the “daily” goals.  

4. Send your goals to three people who you trust. 

Several studies indicate this step significantly increases the likelihood of a person accomplishing his or her goals. Once you develop your annual goals, send them to three people who you trust. One of the keys to accountability is to share them with someone whose opinion you respect.  

What’s the impact? 

These simple steps will empower you. More importantly, they will cause you to look through the “Do What Matters Most” lens and lead a life by design. Like John, you’ll find yourself accomplishing things that previously never made it past the all-to-common phase of good intentions. 

As the Cheshire Cat in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland points out, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” 

For a free roles and goals template, visit BYBgoals.com. 

The World Bank predicts that global annual waste generation will have reached 3.4 billion tonnes by 2050. That’s almost a 75 percent increase on the 2 billion tons we generate today. Building a circular economy will play a crucial role in reducing this forecast. Here, Mats W Lundberg, head of sustainability at global engineering group Sandvik, looks at why circularity needs to be considered from the initial design process; otherwise, it’s already too late.

Product lifecycles traditionally follow a linear economy, where materials are transformed into products that are then used and thrown away in a ‘take-make-waste approach. This is unsustainable.

The primary principle of a circular economy is keeping assets in use to create a responsible way of using resources while reducing waste. Circularity is crucial in closing the loop of product life cycles.

A key component of this is keeping products in use for as long as possible, such as sharing, maintaining, reusing, and remanufacturing the product. The preferred end-of-life strategy is recycling, which is perhaps the most common circular economy approach adopted.

Time to Act

Manufacturers should take steps to reduce waste in line with goal 12 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which is ‘responsible consumption and production’. In addition, a 2020 survey by IBM found that over seven in ten consumers say it’s either moderately or very important that brands are sustainable, environmentally responsible, and support recycling.

The circular economy is applicable for all products, no matter how large or small. For example, a mobile phone is a relatively small piece of technology but can produce a high amount of waste. The average person replaces their phone every two years, which can amount to as many as 35 phones in a lifetime.

Producing a single phone can require 240 gallons of water, and scientists have warned that many vital earth elements are becoming increasingly scarce due to the rate at which phones are manufactured and thrown away. This exemplifies how all products can require a large amount of materials, energy, and equipment to manufacture and are therefore part of a bigger chain of use and waste.

Conscious Design

This wider chain of consumption must be taken into consideration when designing a new product. Addressing ‘leakage points,’ where materials and energy escape out of the circular system, will maximize recovery of resources and help close the loop.

Redesigning products for sustainability is one of the advised actions in the World Economic Forum’s recent report, Net-Zero Challenge: The supply chain opportunity. The action recommends design choices that reduce waste, improve recyclability, and increase the share of input recycled materials.

Sandvik incorporates a number of these practices in working towards its goal of achieving 90 percent circularity by 2030. For example, metalliferous waste and other by-products from its sites are reused or recycled to the greatest extent possible. In addition, around 82 percent of our stainless steel and special alloys are based on steel scrap or secondary raw material, as we call it.

Sandvik also practices circularity in its rebuild solutions for the mining industry. Traditionally, an exhausted piece of mining equipment would be discarded, but Sandvik offers a more sustainable alternative through its machine refurbishment service. Sandvik’s rebuild solutions have been estimated to extend the life of machines by as much as seven years, while at a fraction of the materials and cost required for a new
machine.

However, Sandvik not only considers circularity in its products and services but in its packaging too. Its Package Selector Application (PSA), which is planned to go live in the second half of 2021, uses an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm that can analyze the product to select optimized packaging. By using the smallest packaging possible, material waste is reduced, and energy can be saved during transportation.

Recycling is Key

As well as designing out waste, manufacturers should consider what will happen to the product at the end of its use. Recycling can be encouraged through buy-back schemes, where the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) buys back the product from the consumer and recycles it. For example, Sandvik and its strategic business partner Stamicarbon offer a buy-back program for recycling high-alloy steel.

When customers in the urea fertilizer industry need to replace old equipment at their plants, Stamicarbon decommissions the heat exchangers with the precious alloys. Sandvik uses the recycled material in the production of new stainless steels. The equipment is replaced quickly and easily to avoid disruption to production. Every part of the value chain benefits from this model.

Sandvik deploys another buy-back scheme at its Wolfram site, where used cemented-carbide tools are converted back into basic raw materials. Making new tools from recycled solid carbide requires 70 percent less energy than producing with virgin raw materials. The process retrieves a high amount of tungsten, a scarce and finite material with reserves of only around 100 years of consumption left.

Sandvik is committed to using engineering and innovation to drive sustainable business by keeping products and materials in use. Today, 18 of Sandvik’s production units report 100 percent waste recovery, and Sandvik is ranked among the top ten percent of environmental performers in its industry globally by the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI).

It’s undeniable that the current rate of waste generation in the world is unsustainable, and more needs to be done to prevent materials from going to landfills. Manufacturers have the power to create real change by making the circular economy a key consideration in product design, therefore helping to keep valuable materials in use and preserve resources.

As the vaccination rollout is gathering pace and restrictions are easing, many business leaders are considering if and when to return to the office. While saving on office costs and commuting time is attractive for any business leader, there are some key factors to reflect on that may not be immediately apparent and could affect the success of the business in the longer-term. 

For many, working from home has been a godsend. The absence of stressful commutes, spending more time with loved ones, and the quiet solitude of a home office are just some of the benefits of not leaving home to go to work. From a business perspective, many companies lucky enough to continue working through the pandemic have saved on infrastructure and physical rental costs, so they have seen an uptick in profitability.

So why are businesses thinking about returning to bricks and mortar? What is driving this decision, and what are the long-term implications of this decision from a business perspective? Here I’ve examined five reasons why I think leaders should be considering a move back to working in a physical office environment.

Culture and New People

Building all-important company culture and solid engagement in this remote environment is incredibly difficult with existing staff, let alone new joiners. Data supports the hypothesis that employees who are more connected to their co-workers and employers are more productive and loyal. According to studies by the Smith School of Business and Gallup Organization, reported in Harvard Business Review, disengagement in work can be costly. The research revealed that disengaged staff had 37% higher absenteeism — much more difficult to measure with remote teams — and made 60% more errors.

Therefore, businesses must consider how important it is to their business strategy to foster long-term, committed teams who are all pulling in the same direction. They must then ask themselves honestly whether their teams are as engaged and connected working remotely as they were when meeting face to face.  

Physical and Mental Health

There is no doubt that working from home can be intense. You must intentionally create thinking time and separation between home and office life. There is no commute to prepare for or decompress from the workday, which is taking a toll on people’s productivity and overall health. A survey commissioned by the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH), saw 59% of respondents reveal that they felt more isolated from colleagues, 46% claiming they took less exercise, and 56% finding it harder to switch off as a result of working from home. 

These trends are not sustainable and can damage health and productivity if not carefully managed.

Serendipity

Working from home can easily encourage pre-existing silos to be exacerbated as people will increasingly collaborate with the people they currently work with to complete tasks. Bumping into other people or creating moments to talk to people outside of day-to-day teams is much harder to organize and is often one of the first things to go.

There are myriad disadvantages of siloed working, including duplication of efforts, a breakdown of communication, and lower creativity as teams lose the opportunity to casually cross-reference projects and ideas.

Even with a phased return to work, silos can easily continue as social distancing guidelines will limit the number of staff within an office, meaning managers might be limited to only having the same team in at a time.

Productivity

The early productivity gains originating from people working longer hours because of time freed from commuting have proved, in many cases, to be temporary. This increased work time was only sustainable for a short while, as evidenced by JPMorgan, among others, who have shown a drop in employee productivity as the pandemic has kept workers remote.

According to an April 2020 report by Wundamail, an over-reliance on video chat can lead to a plummet in productivity. Of the 20,000 remote workers surveyed in 2020 across the UK and US, 56% wished they spent less time on video calls altogether, calling for virtual meetings to be reduced. Interestingly though, 73% of respondents regarded video conferencing as getting “work-done”, which suggests that video calls, for some, give a dangerous illusion of productivity, when in reality, very little work is completed or produced.

Hybrid Working

Some employers may well be considering a hybrid route, where people are offered the flexibility to come in on some days and not others. Or, in some cases, a percentage working from home exclusively. This means that there will be a constant mix of people at home and work.

Realistically, it isn’t easy to balance half a team working at home and half opting to come into the office in the medium or longer term. How do you make sure that even with the best of intention, people that are out of sight are not out of mind when quickfire opportunities come in? How can you keep promotions fair and ensure inclination does not sway towards the people sitting in front of you who you can connect with more readily?

So much of what we do in this distributed work environment, others don’t see. They may see the result, but not the other little things that go into making a project happen. For employees, being at the office will make their contributions more visible to managers and senior leadership.

Business and work teams have been living off knowledge and relationships built over time in the physical office during the last year of remote working. This has enabled teams to continue to function and perform. This knowledge erodes over time, and the ease of communication built up through physical presence simply cannot be easily substituted by Zoom. Business leaders at this juncture need to think carefully about the secret sauce that drives their business and whether a dispersed team can deliver the innovation and drive necessary to take them to the next level.

Do you have what it takes to own a business? Your first answer might be that it depends on the market, but that’s only part of the story. So is thinking it depends on your product. The bottom line is it depends on you.

We tend to hear more about business successes than failures. Although this year, given the pandemic and its economic impacts, we’ve seen plenty of failures, most people still believe that if they want to be a successful business owner, they can. But if you don’t focus on your own drive, abilities, and tolerance for stress and uncertainty, you’re missing a key part of the equation. And if you start a business without really finding out if you should, you’re making a grave mistake.

Say you’ve got a great idea. You’ve got a niche service. You’ve done the research, and there’s space for you to grow a company. Before you start looking for a storefront, look in the mirror by asking yourself these eight simple but vital questions.

1. Can I listen?

Business owners must process a vast amount of verbal communication. They need to be good at listening, adept at assimilating and filtering, and doing it fast — so all communication, from employees to customers to your advisers, needs to result in a positive outcome for your business.

2. Can I lead?

Unless you’re planning on opening a shoeshine stand or a one-person consultancy, you need to be able to lead and motivate people. You’ll get the most value from your employees if they know you value them — and you may need to occasionally swap hopes and aspirations over coffee with your employees to really understand their needs. Once you understand their needs, you can better motivate them, which will in turn help you achieve your own dream. It’s an excellent trade-off.

3. Can I sell?

This question often hits a nerve. Very few products sell themselves. Generally, a business must convince a customer that have a need, and more importantly, that this product meets their need — and delivers the best possible value. If that’s actually true, it’s simply a matter of being interesting enough that the customer is willing to continue a conversation long enough for you to establish these three truths. That’s about being persuasive. If you have any doubt about your ability to persuade, ask your partner what they think. It’s likely you did some sort of sales job on him or her at some very critical juncture. Were you successful?

4. Am I competitive?

To be a good business owner, you must enjoy doing whatever it takes to overcome all your business supremacy challenges. You must be motivated by a burning desire to do these things better than your competition — and realize that few products or services are so unique that your customer can’t get something comparable elsewhere. You must have the need to not only please your customer, but to do it so well you’re beating your competition senseless. How do you know? Check your financial statements — they’re your scoreboard in this game. If you see profits, be ready to reinvest them right back into the business, or you won’t continue winning. That’s what most successful entrepreneurs I’ve dealt with do. They don’t necessarily make money so they can spend it.

5. Am I a hard worker?

Owning your own business is entering into a highly consumptive relationship, so be honest with yourself. Don’t start a business to support your golf habit. You can do that a lot easier with a high-paying job. Business ownership is the wrong avenue if your quest is simply more personal resources. Your own business must be more than just a means to an end. It’s everything — and must be a passion.

6. Am I a risk-taker?

This isn’t a matter of leaving your umbrella at home when there’s rain in the forecast. All growth comes from taking risks and executing at the highest possible level. You’ve also got to be willing to wildcat; dry holes are necessary to find the gusher. If the thought of zero return on your time and money over what could be protracted intervals is too daunting, stay put.

7. Do I have a skill that adds significant value to this market?

Successful business owners are either the best player at a critical position or the second-best player at several positions. You need to have outstanding technical skills if you’re considering a technical business; impeccable sales skills — and the desire to use them consistently and frequently — if you’re considering a sales-driven business. It’s very difficult to drive a business with only strong administrative skills. The only exception may be a franchise, which has an extremely process-driven approach. In my experience, “right-sized” former executives of process-driven public companies are often successful franchisees. In essence, a franchisor turns the operation of a business into a job with clearly defined dos and don’ts included in its recipe for success.

8. Do I have a clear goal for my business?

This last question may be the most critical: the point of your business must be much more than to escape from your current job. To create a business with real value, you need to set out to create and operate a real value business. For a business to be a true asset, it must consistently turn a significant profit after paying you a fair salary. Otherwise, it’s little more than what I call “an incorporated job.” And moving a business from the status of an incorporated job to an asset requires a series of very purposeful, difficult, and risky acts. An uncommitted owner will inevitably fail to execute these acts if they don’t make asset creation a business goal from the start.

I’ve had tough conversations with clients who were dead set on starting their own businesses, just because they had an affinity for a certain product or service. However, if they know deep down they don’t want to engage in the complicated process of value creation, then starting a business means they will endure significant pain, take on outsized risks, and work harder than any employee without achieving a commensurate reward. But if you are willing to work harder and smarter than ever before towards that goal of value creation, that is certainly laudable.

We were a young breakaway agency, packed with talent and hungry for all the opportunities we could get. Our overhead included a ridiculously large budget for salaries that had to be covered every month. We brought in all the clients we could and always asked for their feedback on our work and our agency — how did we do? What could we have done better? Like many start-up businesses, we thought asking for feedback would prove useful and demonstrate that we valued the client relationship above all else. We asked for feedback on almost everything.

Unquestionably, their feedback was filled with good intentions. But our clients tended to be untrained in how to deliver useful feedback. It was often filled with a mix of minute details and opinions, focusing on what was wrong rather than a balanced, useful perspective. The process created tension — our clients were uncomfortable giving feedback and tensed up when they had to. The very act of providing feedback seemed to put them into a negative mindset — the higher the tension, the more negative their feedback.

We’d respond to client feedback as best we could. But it ate up time, eroded our already thin margin, often failed to improve the work, and occasionally increased friction with clients rather than decreased it. We knew there had to be a better way. It was a client-sponsored program that showed a better way, and I have used it ever since: forget about feedback and just focus on feedforward.

We found feedforward could be easily used by even the youngest and most naive clients to give clear future direction. We grabbed the idea and ran with it, using it with every client and internally on candidates, appraisals, office designs, pitch work, and each other. Doing so saved us work, time and money, and helped improve pretty much everything.

While it’s especially useful for agencies and clients, feedforward can work for any enterprise. It can result in meaningful information from any stakeholder, from leadership to consumers. As businesses get back on their feet, we’re facing a climate that’s more competitive than ever, and feedforward can help gain a tremendous advantage.

Here’s how it works:

Get your eyes out of the rear-view mirror. 

Feedback looks at where you were, not where you need to go. It tends to highlight what was wrong, taking energy and focus away from steps for improvement. Meanwhile, time marches on, and you get closer to deadlines every day. Putting yourself in your client’s shoes, consider what it’s like to ride in a car when the driver is constantly checking behind rather than focusing on the road. Doesn’t inspire too much confidence, does it. Without necessarily knowing why, clients get uncomfortable. The friction comes from being asked to provide critique and being concerned that the process of responding could derail momentum and cause delays. 

Focus on what’s in front of you. 

The feedforward structure enables a response from even the most inexperienced clients in a stress-free, organized way. The result is an accurate map of what needs to happen next and a sense of collaboration and shared direction without tension. Couched in the positive, it also tends to build trust. The key is to begin by asking clients to note their instant gut reaction to a proposal, idea, or experience. Sometimes new ideas provoke uncomfortable feelings; we encourage clients to use these feelings as a signal that a new, different, or strong idea might be emerging. In other words, it’s not necessarily a bad thing that they are uneasy about a potential strategy or idea. In fact, it may be a sign of something good.

Ask four essential questions. 

Whoever is providing the feedforward, what’s needed is a response that covers all the bases and allows for everything from initial reactions to tapping into what seems like gut instincts to fuller guidance.

1. What inspires, excites, or moves you? It could be anything, however small or relevant to the brief or work at hand.
2. What works? Or what’s just okay? This is an opportunity to acknowledge which aspects are good but not amazing.
3. What’s missing? This is the chance to give useful guidance. It could be that what’s missing is something that inspires or excites. Or it could be something more ordinary, such as the compulsory requests in a brief.
4. What would make the idea bigger and better? This provides the opportunity to build on what has been done. It also allows clients and others to articulate ideas for the agency to consider.

Feedforward delivers on its full potential when those providing it are totally honest and open. We found that when questions are framed positively, it’s easier to be thorough. I recommend clients write down their feedforward before sharing it — since in conversations, we are often influenced by others. Writing feedforward in advance also gives a client team the chance to align their thoughts and keep the messaging consistent and on point.

What feedforward does is open up a sense of possibility.

Feedforward gives agency teams a way to feel great about what they’re already done and then build on it. It’s certainly worked that way in our firm and likely will in yours.