Failures and Learnings: #2

Finally! Another failure. Why am I so excited? Read on, ladies and gents...

Failure #2: No plan B

In transitioning from our summer 2012 market research projects into fall (school time) operations, I set very clear goals for the organization leading up to and including summer 2013. Stage 1 would be prototyping operations at Queen's with one team to see how that would play out over a semester. Check. Stage 2 would be expanding operations at Queen's (to a total of 3 teams) and starting at team at Ivey. Check.

All of this was suppose to lead into Stage 3: profitability in summer 2013 via paid projects. umm...not even close to "Check."

Like the first failure, Failure #deuce was another under-estimation. I sorely underestimated how long the sales cycle would take. As we approached May 2013, and it was becoming increasingly clear that we wouldn't secure a paid client in time (to allow for a full project cycle from May to August), I realized I didn't have a backup plan.

My MBA butt got into gear and did create a high level backup plan which took less than a day, but such last minute planning shouldn't be happening. The lack of quick decision making can make or break an organization especially as its growing.

Although the summer is far from over, we need to secure a paid client "yesterday" to ensure the project cycle completes its course before the students return to school in fall.

Learning and Changes #2: Plan for failures

While 'not becoming profitable' was a failure in terms of the outcome, I think the bigger failure here is not creating a backup plan in the event we don't secure a paid client(s) for the summer.

When setting big, mission-critical, goals for SFC as we move forward, I will be sure to plan for failure. Even if it's a high level treatment, knowing my options whenever we hit a crossroads is surely better than standing idle where days or weeks of indecision can mean everything in the land of fast-paced business.

Update on Changes #1: Facilitating a "fun" company culture and increasing engagement

While I don't have time to create a spreadsheet and crunch actual numbers, I assure you that engagement is increasing. How do I know? Well, one measure of engagement is tracking how many team members leave an organization (or churn rate). From summer 2012 to fall 2012, the vast majority of team members didn't return. From winter 2013 to fall 2013, it's expected our team will consist of approximately 80-85% of past team members.

Social Focus Founder is a finalist for Top 60 Under 60 award!

In just over a year, Social Focus has had many great small "wins" especially with respect to brand building. From being featured on TrendHunter.com list of socially-conscious consultancies, to running a workshop on innovation at DECA Queen's, to moderating the social innovation panel at the Queen's School of Business Innovation Summit, to being featured in a GetInvolved.ca video that aired on TV across Ontario, things are coming along nicely.

Things are about to get even nicer. I'm proud to announce that I'm a finalist for the "Top 60 Under 60" award in Canada. The judges, comprised of Canada's corporate elite, will be making final decisions on April 8th. 

Keep your fingers crossed and "like" Social Focus Consulting on Facebook for, hopefully, really good news soon! Thanks to everyone, especially the Social Focus Consulting team, for your continued support and general awesomeness.

Happy 1st birthday!, Social Focus Consulting

What better way to celebrate than with a tasty SFC cheesecake and an awkwardly long, grandiose letter…

One twentieth score and seven minutes ago, my inability to find a job and ever present desire to help others brought forth in the marketplace, a new company, conceived in social inequality, and dedicated to the proposition that business strategies could be used to improve nonprofit organizational effectiveness and efficiency.

With a business plan in one hand and uncertainty in the other, I started to build the SFC brand and extol my dreams to anyone who would listen. What started as monologues became conversations. 

Then summer came, and “I” became “we”. Just four months prior, everything was on paper. To see it come to life by having over 20 amazingly talented business students, the “SocialFolks”, join SFC was just as inspiring as it was overwhelming. Although we struggled in creating what I would call an “ideal culture”, we managed to get things done. By the end of the summer, we learned more about the market (and potential markets) which set clear direction for September onwards. We also managed to further build our brand, culminating in SFC’s first annual networking event.

Recognizing the benefits of managed growth, we began to prototype services with a small team at Queen’s. Within a month, we brought on our first client (pro bono), Youth Diversion, and are on track to deliver the project on time January 2013.

Although we have yet to make a single penny, we’ve managed to build a growing community of team members, partners, clients, and general supporters. Within this community, our brand building over the last year has paid off. Clients are starting to approach us for projects. 

Established organizations are sending us proposals for partnerships. Intelligent and ambitious students are continuously inquiring on how they can become involved. Competitors are talking about us in their meetings. We’ve made noise!

And in 2013, we’ll make even more noise. Multiple clients, projects, and strategic partnerships are in the pipeline and we aim to be profitable by the summer. With prototyping complete, we’re increasing the number of consulting teams at Queen’s and expanding into other markets – especially London, Ontario.

As in its first year, SFC’s journey for the coming year will be strife with turbulence. We’ll continue to experience hardships and failures mixed with celebrations and successes. Regardless of what happens, we’re going to have an epically fun time doing it.

YOU are the reason why we’ve made it this far. Thank you thank you thank you to everyone for all your continued love, well wishes, support, and most of all…for walking with me through the fire.

Failures and Learnings: #1

This post is long overdue. As I approach a weekend where I'll be holding a workshop on the importance of failure and its path to innovation, I'm reminded to practice what I preach. Therefore, say hello to the first post in a series of Social Focus Consulting's Failures and Learnings:

Failure #1: Not paying enough attention to building an effective organizational culture

I sorely underestimated the time required to oversee multiple projects (and manage its people) during the summer. This was in addition to time spent on other activities such as the daily marketing and business development required to build SFC's brand and secure future clients.

As a result, our "culture" (if you can call it that) became very project focused and lacked the cohesiveness and camaraderie of a truly effective culture. In turn, engagement in the organization (e.g. dedication to projects and other SFC initiatives) started to decline.

The lack of engagement was exacerbated by other factors such as a fairly large team (25+) for a startup and a geographically-dispersed team with no centralized office.

Learning #1: We need to take a cue from our company name and socialize more

Upon further analysis, the lack of engagement had little to do with there being multiple projects, or the fact that we had a large team or the fact that we were spread out geographically, or even the fact that this was unpaid work. The lack of engagement had to do with people who had no strong ties to the organization it was working for. And how could they? It took us about three months for us all to come together as an organization and socialize. Prior to that, people only knew one another by name or a picture from a website.

Although we could employ initiatives that make "virtual" organizations effective, I realized that this is not something I wanted for SFC. For us to succeed going forward, we'll need to place a greater emphasis on the workplace happiness of our people. And much of that will be nurtured by in-person socializing and more frequent face time.

Changes #1: Incorporating socializing into every facet of SFC

Some of these changes have already been executed, but there are still lots to learn as we prototype services at Queen's.

a) Include "Fun" as a corporate value. Previously, we had four corporate values (excellence, progression, innovation, community) which strongly mirror my own personal values. One thing was missing: "fun"! I'm very much a "work hard, play hard" type of person so I felt for us to build a culture that socializes, we need to explicitly include "fun" in our list of values.

b) Hire a Chief Happiness Officer. After doing some quick research on effective cultures (and later more in-depth study by reading Tony Hseih's "Delivering Happiness"), I realized that we needed to have someone help facilitate the building and monitoring of a healthy company culture.

c) Replace O'Day (Orientation Day) with a fun social outing. This has yet to be initiated, but I foresee future O'Days being far removed from the lecture-style format it has been in the past. For efficiency and convenience purposes, we'll be delivering information about SFC to new hires via YouTube. Their real introduction to the team and organization, however, will be more about socializing with their new teammates at a restaurant or coffee shop, for example.

There are many more initiatives we have planned to facilitate a "happier" workplace culture as we continue to listen to our Social Folks and understand their needs. There are also many more mistakes we've made over the past several months, but not building an effective culture is the one that needs the most attention.

We're forever eager to "fail forward", learn from our mistakes, and become bigger and better as we grow. See you after the next failure (and learning).

As the project wraps up, I would like to thank my team for all the hard work and all the presentations on P'Day was awesome :) Thanks JP for connecting me through the phone.