The three essential steps to business success
Most businesses aren’t failing to scale from lack of effort, but from lack of structure and strategy. Here’s why getting the foundations right is what actually drives growth.
Our family farm, just 20 minutes outside of the nearest small town, doesn’t have any internet connection. Actually it doesn’t even have much phone reception, it’s patchy at best.
For the last decade or so, this pocket of land has been a place of peace and quiet for all of us; somewhere we can think uninterrupted, roll up our sleeves to feel the satisfaction of getting a physical job done, and have a full belly laugh at a joke that isn’t attached to a meme or post.
I’m writing this article sitting out the front of one of the rustic cabins my parents built from recycled scraps, looking out over green hills, at a soft grey sky. For the first time in what feels like a long time, while working, I can’t call on AI if I’m failing to think of a word, if I need some quick (albeit sometimes questionable) research, or if I want an instant proofreader. This article is completely up to me.
That digital silence is… beautiful.
Over the last few months, maybe even longer, every meeting we have had with new clients has started with some sort of chat about AI.
It used to be that we would head into a meeting room or sign into Zoom and talk about our weekends or the weather to cover off on those initial pleasantries, or break the ice. But one way or another now, we always end up reaching the topic of AI, and what it’s going to mean or how we can all prepare for the change it’s bringing with it.
For some of our clients, there’s this air of excitement for the possibility — the opportunities it will enable that we could never have dreamed up before. (Yes, I am a genuine human who still bloody loves em dashes).
For a lot of them, though — and these are mainly medium-sized businesses without dedicated tech teams and CTOs, or time to stay up to date — there’s a sense of foreboding.
Most of the leaders we meet are founders, and they’re often people that have an intense loyalty to their initial founding team, if not, their whole team.
That founding team is made up of the people who got them to where they are; established and looking to grow. They usually pulled late nights, bled for the business and their boss, and whole-heartedly bought into whatever vision had been shared with them.
These leaders aren’t just thinking about themselves, they’re thinking about how their business can survive this rapid evolution and how they ensure their team, especially those core members they feel so loyal to, isn’t hung out to dry.
We have regular conversations about the job cuts in big businesses like Atlassian, and the medium businesses too, that our clients work alongside. We talk about what AI can mean for efficiency, the new possibilities it offers, and we unpack their uncertainty and trepidation at their lack of control of its unsanctioned use within their business, and what they should do about it.
And while, yes, these are often off-track conversations that organically roll out at the start of a session, to us, and to our clients, they’re important. The answers to those questions and the many more that spring from them and relate to them, are fundamental to the structural foundation and strategic direction of every business right now. And those are two areas, we at Write Way Up, specialise in.
The fact they’re thinking about these big changes and already strategising about how to manage them, even if only in their heads, is a positive.
While we don’t wish this sort of anxiety or concern on anyone, it makes us feel hopeful when people in good businesses are thinking and planning for the immediate and long-term future. Why? Because we know so many others are simply hoping they can get to exit or retirement unscathed, without needing to navigate this ground-breaking change.
But humans have experienced change like this before — the Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial Revolution — just not as quickly. Those shifts didn’t happen essentially overnight, they took many decades, even centuries or longer, and on one side of them, humans could still clearly see a place for ourselves and a purpose, on the other side.
AI is different in that significant shifts — earth-shattering shifts — are happening in what feels like a moment, largely within one generation. The retirement I, and many others have been looking forward to in 25 years, likely doesn’t exist anymore in the same way it always has in my vision.
Of course that’s scary.
But the other side of the coin is also a little bit exciting, I think.
Yes, we have technologists, futurists, CEOs and influencers predicting absolute disaster and decimation of humanity as we know it, but we also have the positive mob, the technologists, futurists, CEOs and influencers predicting a utopia in which we can all start working less to live more, rather than living to work as many do now.
Our lives have suddenly entered a sci-fi movie era, and though some of those movies do end in the destruction a lot of people are fearing, if we steer right, they don’t have to — we can possibly end up with a cheeky Robin Williams robot and a much better life, rather than a vengeful and murderous T1 Arnie robot.
So how can you prepare yourself and your business?
We might be the first business that has written one of these blogs to say this, but… we can’t give you a definitive answer to that question: ‘how can we prepare’?
What we can say is, in theory, this change should be approached the same way every change is: with research, analysis and careful planning.
Businesses that bring their leadership teams together with the right experts to put fear and guesswork aside, to try to map out one year, five years, ten years from today, are the ones who will know what to do when those challenges inevitably knock at the door.
Will you be 100% accurate? No more than you could have been ten years ago about external forces effecting change, but there are predictable factors you can work with that help solidify your plan and strengthen your approach to capitalising on this change rather than being crushed by it.
Where horizon planning today is usually around that three-to-five-year mark for medium-sized businesses — and that should remain the case for most for hard planning — soft directional planning should be done for 10 or more years because some of the shifts you’ll need to make to survive then, need to start now.
Yes, there is a notable level of uncertainty because the tech itself is still evolving, as is the law, the human response to it, the broader economic influence it has, but there are also some potentially quite clear outcomes and considerations that can and should be factored in now.
At Write Way Up, our framework is all about ‘structure – strategy – scale’, and our vision is about businesses we can bet all of our futures on. Perhaps most important in this context, our philosophy, our driving force, is underpinned by triple bottom line thinking.
After extensive research, and practice in multinationals as well as boutiques, we know businesses that understand the incredible impact of people and place levers on profit, create more sustainable success — they last longer and do better.
When looking at AI, it’s important to look at those same levers; to not only consider the impact AI will have on your human workforce, suppliers, customers, and the community and environments they live in, but on how it will also significantly affect their needs and how those are framed.
There are so many terrified conversations about human beings becoming redundant in the workforce, but while other humans are customers, can that really ever be the case in its entirety?
When communities can gather and build up, or effectively bring down a business due to their values, beliefs, sense of connection or lack of, can that really be the case in any sort of sustainable, long-term sense (save for the Matrix scenario where the world is for the robots and we are just the batteries)?
Right now, we live in a world that has changed at its absolute foundation as a result of the internet and maybe even moreso, social media. We have become isolated, disconnected, lonely, and we have seen increases in mental illness and suicide. We are learning about the destruction that a lack of real interaction brings with it.
We can see that we need each other, we need to be connected, we need genuine, human relationships.
So, it stands to reason, as long as humans are customers, and communities are made of those humans, there will always be a need for other humans to be present in businesses. Maybe not always consistently, perhaps that need will drop before we realise its importance, but we’ll always come back to it.
As humans, we have a tendency to get carried away with our own ideas, our own greatness, and let’s be honest, our own greed. We let our innovations run away with us and often just a little too late, we realise it and we start critical pivots. Our environmental destruction is an example, as is our over-reliance on social media, and our mismanagement of personal data.
We may not get to the pivot straight away, but we do eventually see the light and start that turn. If it gets to that with AI, I have faith we’ll figure that out too.
For a long time, our team has supported businesses that are struggling at the hands of uncertainty, and factors like change and the related fatigue. We now live in a whole world plagued by the same issues.
The fundamentals of managing change and uncertainty, whether a merger or a massive technology shift, ironically remain the same — consider your people and what they need and what they feel, plan carefully, and with consideration of every element, and draw on every expert around you who can make that planning better. Communicate openly and honestly, lead from the front and stick unwaveringly, every day, in every decision, to the values that guide you as a person and to those that guide your business.
Do that, and really, you can’t go wrong.
Need help strengthening the structural foundation of your business to better manage change or create growth? Need experienced experts at the planning table? Reach out to our team for a chat.
Whether your business is just starting or it’s ten years in, our ‘structure – strategy – scale’ framework enables smoother operation, faster growth, and more sustainable success.
If you’re ready to set your business up to last, let’s connect.
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