Taking Your Business Forward: The Best Practices To Follow

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Once you have established the management processes and settled into your daily tasks, running your business should be relatively straightforward. While there are often unexpected issues that need tackling, the longer that your business is running for, the easier it should be to manage.

Being established and settling into a routine is the goal, but the next step should always be to prioritise growth. Taking your business to the next level will ensure that your business has a future – but, failing to embrace growth will only mean that your competitors will step in to pick up your inattention. If your business is running smoothly, it’s time to start moving forward.

Set Goals

You will be better able to push your boundaries if you have some clearly identifiable and measurable goals to aim for. Having goals is a proven way to encourage productivity and motivation, and can help you with your focus. Setting goals will also make it far easier to measure your business’ progress and track the achievements that you make.

If you want your business to start moving forward, then you need to get out of your comfort zone; goal setting is the ideal way to challenge yourself. Create a growth plan with clear goals and your business will be better able to move forward successfully. Remember to have both short-term and long-term goals, too.

Your Online Presence

The majority of business owners in the digital age are aware of how important their online presence is. Once your business is established, you need to ensure that not just your brick and mortar premises are running smoothly; getting more from your website will involve putting more priority on it, and this can be a challenge.

Websites alone have many components to take into consideration and it can be difficult to keep up with everything that it needs, as well as the emerging trends that might be of benefit. You could keep up to date with industry updates by following the mega publications like Search Engine Land, Search Engine Watch or the smaller, more actionable update blogs, such as local SEO specialist Jon Monk’s Max Your Web.

Or, if teaching yourself SEO is not something you have the time or effort for – you can simply outsource your website management to a professional company, who you can then trust the management and development of your SEO strategies to. Either of these methods would help you get a lot more benefit from your online platform and the efforts you are making.

Online Security

Making sure that your website, your business, and your customers are safe from a cyber attack is crucial. When everyone is a potential target for cybercriminals, the onus will be on you to ensure that the security of your website, as well as your stored data, are protected as much as possible.

Moving your business forward will mean that you need to place a priority on online security, and these tips can act as a checklist of basics that you will need to adopt into your online strategy:

  • Employee Awareness: It’s unfortunate, but the vast majority of business-related cyber crimes are caused by employee negligence. If you want to protect your business, then you will need to instill a strong culture of cybersecurity. Have regular staff meetings to highlight the latest phishing scams, and make certain that every employee has basic online security training.
  • Password Safety: While everyone is aware of the need for strong password management, most people tend to stick to the same two or three rotated passwords. This can be very dangerous, but there are simple ways to make your business more secure through better password habits. Learn (and teach) positive password habits and your business will be much more secure when it comes to moving forward.
  • Hardware/Software Protection: There are many different tools that you can use to help keep your business safe online. The most basic of these is a firewall, and you should definitely have at least one version installed on your system. Your business will not be able to move forward if you are under constant attack by hackers, so make sure that you not only install a good firewall but that you also keep it updated as often as possible.
  • Additional Steps: As well as these basics, you might also want to consider adopting two-factor verification on all of your most important online accounts. This adds an extra level of security that can be difficult for hackers to get through. You should also look at encryption as well, as this can be used to keep your stored data private and confidential.

In the digital age, protecting your online presence is as important as keeping a warehouse locked. Protecting your business online will make it far easier to move forward in both the digital space and the real world.

Customer Service

Your customers are clearly the most important aspect of your business that you will have to consider when it comes to moving forward. Attracting and then keeping customers needs to be the goal, and that means creating a work culture that is customer-focused. The better quality of service you provide, the more likely that your business will be rewarded with repeat custom and positive word of mouth. Make sure that you are constantly looking for feedback, addressing any issues that may arise, and act quickly and proactively when you get a complaint. Look for ways to make your business 100% accessible.

Competitor Surveillance

You don’t need to set up a tent and spy on them with binoculars, but keeping a constant watch on your competitors is one of the more traditional ways to move your own business forward. There are two ways that your business can make use of a competition watch, and both can be used to make your business stronger:

  • Keeping ahead – The more that you know what your competitors are up to, the easier it will be to keep ahead of what they are doing. If you see that your competition is promoting a new website design, take notes and assess your own. Keeping up with competitors is essential, and if you don’t know what they’re going to do next, then you will quickly fall behind.
  • Pick up the slack – By being more aware of your competitors, you will have a better understanding of what they are doing wrong. This gives you a major opportunity to adopt the products and methods that they are neglecting, making your business seem far more professional than even the most established rivals.

Final Considerations

As well as these essential steps to take there are a number of optional elements to consider. These will largely be dependant on the culture of your business, but it’s worth looking at:

  • Continuous education: Always make sure that you know all that there is to know about your products and your sector. Learn marketing through online resources, or the language of your biggest customers via DuoLingo.
  • Learn delegation: Your business will never be able to move forward if you try to micromanage everything yourself. Use your workforce, and your business will only grow stronger.
  • Open communication: The more that your staff are able to communicate with you, the more your business will benefit. Create as open a culture as you can, and you will be rewarded with a more creative and impactful business model.

No business can be expected to move forward without some changes. Staying static is the fastest way to grow stale, and that can leave you exposed to competitors and changing needs of your customers.

Improve The Quality Of Entrepreneurial Negotiations With Teamwork and Brainstorming

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | Entrepreneurial Negotiation | Improve The Quality Of Entrepreneurial Negotiations With Teamwork and BrainstormingAccording to our research, the single biggest threat to entrepreneurial success is an inability to handle the negotiations that arise at key interactions in the evolution of a start-up. Founders must be able to prevent, detect, and respond to potential negotiation mistakes in each part of their galaxy.

But often the very qualities that help entrepreneurs launch businesses – willingness to take risks, high levels of self-confidence, a desire for rapid results – can, in themselves, become stumbling blocks. Based on interviews and research we’ve done for our book, Entrepreneurial Negotiation, we have pinpointed the most common negotiation mistakes that founders make. One of the most insidious occurs when entrepreneurs are too self-centered or maintain a limited perspective. Failing to recognize the needs and priorities of those with whom they are negotiating, can mean that no deal will be reached.

Here’s a simple solution: entrepreneurs should not prepare alone or negotiate alone. Research proves that team negotiations create about 25% more value on average than solo negotiations. That’s because a team is better able to take in more about the other side’s interests, achieving an increased level of information exchange, and finding more mutually beneficial trades.

Therefore, you should bring at least one trusted colleague with you during any negotiation. Plan to talk with your colleague during breaks and between sessions to help you confirm your understandings. Based on that person’s expertise, you may also empower him or her to pass you notes, call for a break, or join the conversation if he or she sees something of significance that you are missing. Just like the aviation industry has learned to improve air safety significantly by giving copilots permission to speak up, you may significantly improve your ability to detect and prevent mistakes by employing other “cockpit resource management” capabilities within your negotiation team.

Here’s another reason you should not negotiate alone. Options, timetables, costs, BATNA’s (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement) and so on, generally do not remain stable during negotiations, especially between sessions. Some of the information or ideas that the other side presents may mean something different to you when seen from a new vantage point. Discussing this with your colleague is important. Also, if there is a move that you suspect may provoke the other side, or may put you in a position that would be close to making a mistake – step away from the table. Initiate a consultation with your colleague, or contact another expert for advice.

Brainstorming To Get Unstuck

We’ve also learned that when entrepreneurs have a narrow perspective, they generally miss out on opportunities to create value. Entrepreneurs who make the mistake of haggling suffer from exactly this narrow mindset. When detecting that you are focused on one primary item, or that you have started a tug of war on a single issue – try to switch into a problem-solving mode and look for possible trades that will create value.

To this end, we suggest using brainstorming to come up with more options. We recommend using two simple ground rules: offer no judgments on the quality of what is being proposed (during brainstorming) and don’t worry about attribution. No judgment means that when one person proposes an idea, no one should judge it as good or bad at that moment. (In the world of theater improvisations this is known as the “Yes, and …” response.) Remember that a partial idea, a bad idea, or an absurd idea might serve as a bridge to a better idea if someone doesn’t shoot it down immediately. “No attribution” means that an idea should not be immediately attributed to the person who suggested it. Better that no one feels “ownership” at the outset. This way, the actual originator doesn’t have to defend their proposal (which could cause them to stop listening to other ideas).

After generating as many options as possible, consider each one as part of an overall package. To reach agreement, you will need to find a package that is acceptable to both sides. Each party may not like every- thing in the package, but the deal as a whole needs to be better for each than doing nothing.

Teamwork and brainstorming are two important methods that entrepreneurs can use to improve the outcomes of their negotiations. Applying these practices will help insure the long-term viability of your organization.

About the Authors

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | Samuel Dinnar | Entrepreneurial NegotiationSamuel Dinnar, co-author of Entrepreneurial Negotiation, is an instructor at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As founder and President of Meedance, he provides global consulting services and serves as a mediator specializing in business conflicts that involve founders, executives, investors, and board members. To learn more, visit: www.EntrepreneurialNegotiation.com or www.meedance.com.

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | Lawrence Susskind | Entrepreneurial NegotiationLawrence Susskind, co-author of Entrepreneurial Negotiation, is a professor of urban and environmental planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, co-founder of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, and the founder of the Consensus Building Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. To learn more, visit www.EntrepreneurialNegotiation.com

How to deal with cyber-attacks: publicly or privately?

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StrategyDriven Risk Management Article | How to deal with cyber-attacks: publicly or privately?Cyber attacks spiked 164% in the first half of 2017, compared to the same period in 2016, entailing 918 disclosed breaches-according reports on broadcaster CNBC. Threats vary from sector to sector. Healthcare, for example, is more susceptible to crypto-locker ransomware like the infamous WannaCry.

Internet-connected consumer devices often fall prey to malware that shackles them to remotely controlled botnets such as Mirai. Varied though the threat may be, and staggering though these numbers are, the word disclosed highlights a central paradox: While transparency contributes to the overall fortification of cyber-security protocols and procedures, battening down the hatches presumably mitigates further financial risk.

Sure, a disclosure is immensely beneficial in terms of buttressing industrial safeguards, national and global security, and customer protection – not to mention mitigating the longer-term repercussions of an attack – but so too can disclosure exact lasting damage on a bottom line.

Fighting back

The nature, intent, and consequences of an attack notwithstanding, the way companies have responded to breaches is closely related to their designation: public or private. CFOs at public and private companies face different risks and pressures when it comes to cyber-security and disclosure, and exhibit divergent perspectives when it comes to preparation.

Broadly speaking, public company CFOs are more likely to outsource cyber-security to third-party firms, while private CFOs tend to invest in in-house IT teams. Regardless of who secures a company’s network, breaches are often known by CFOs before they are made public. By disclosing a breach, CFOs of publicly traded companies might trigger investor panic and sell-off, whereas private company CFOs risk irreparable harm to consumer and employee confidence.

On one hand, foreknowledge of pending disclosures can put unique pressure on public company executives, who often own considerable amounts of company stock. The ongoing federal investigation of three Equifax C-suite managers for insider trading arose due to alleged stock dumping prior to the revelation of the company’s catastrophic cyber-attack.
Equifax underscores the tension between a public corporation’s responsibility to its board, shareholders, and customers, and the financial implications of both the breach itself and legal requirements governing its reporting and remediation.

On the other, while private companies aren’t under the same legal obligations in terms of disclosure, and while the short-term consequences may be less impactful, these companies still face long-term pitfalls, such as lost trust and tarnished brands. Moreover, a medium-sized business may not have the capital or reserves to recover reputationally or financially after a major data breach the way a multinational corporation can.

Additionally, the moderate scale of many private companies sometimes instills a false sense of security. Middle-market businesses often assume they’ll be overlooked by attackers, whether due to a large number of similar companies, or a lack of enticing assets. After all, isn’t it the bigger fish that stockpile the type of data and info that hackers tend to target?

Be prepared

A lack of proper preparation only exacerbates the panic once an attack does occur. Attempting to deal with an attack on the down low can earn private enterprises a reputation as easy marks, and provoke subsequent attacks. Further, if the rearguard strategy backfires, or is exposed by the press, this can amplify the damage to a company’s brand and leadership, not to mention potential legal consequences if a court can prove negligence.

In terms of the bigger picture, the lack of reliable data pertaining to attacks on private companies leads to lopsided analysis regarding the multifaceted aims and motives driving these attacks, resulting in a sort of half-finished portrait of the threat landscape.

While cybersecurity prevention could be vastly improved by greater information sharing, some surveys of CSOs indicate that only one in seven attacks are reported to authorities. Alas, as it stands, adequate event modeling, and risk and security assessments, are being stymied by a lack of shared intel on private company breaches, effectively hampering the development of comprehensive prevention and management strategies.

This lack has precipitated the introduction of numerous cyber-security regulations around the world, and though the regulatory ecosystem is in a state of flux, the global trend is invariably toward greater transparency. CNBC notes that “governments around the world are introducing legislation which will force more companies to disclose data breaches,” a reach that already extends to private enterprises.

Regulatory environment

Both private and public companies are compelled to comply with local, national and global disclosure regulations, including Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA), and the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The GDPR, which regulates the collection and storage of customer information and data, and can levy fines of up to €20 million, requires that private companies disclose if they have a footprint in Europe, or otherwise handle the information of European citizens.

In the US, Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) indexes the responsibilities of both public and private companies, including rules pertaining to compliance with federal prosecutors, and criminal penalties. Further, HIPAA governs how any company, public or private, handles personal health information.

Though public companies, traditionally, may have shouldered an inordinate amount of the fallout from disclosure, this has left them better readied for the implementation of legislation designed to enforce transparency. Even more advantageous, public companies now have hard-won practice mitigating the financial risks and ramifications resulting from disclosure.

Private companies, by contrast, are less aware and agile in terms of prevention and response; protecting their brand, for example, or proactively communicating with clients. Simply put, having been in battle, public CFOs are stepping up and getting more involved with cyber-security, while private CFOs, hovering on the sidelines, appear far more circumspect.

Make no mistake: this problem is only getting worse. The situation could improve rapidly if execs from companies of all stripes and sizes shared details of attacks with the larger corporate community.

Whether you are a CFO of an international, publicly-traded conglomerate, or a mid-sized regional business, it is well within your portfolio to do everything possible to properly prepare for the threat. Engage with the board, secure funding for proper security controls, and encourage leadership to be forthcoming when not if, your company’s cyber attack occurs.

About the Author

Andrew Douthwaite has over 17 years of technology experience joining VirtualArmour in 2007 as a senior engineer. Now as Chief Technology Officer, Andrew focuses on leading growth in the managed security services business and ensuring VirtualArmour is a thought leader in the security industry.

6 Characteristics of Successful Law Firms

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | Successful Business | 6 Characteristics of Successful Law FirmsWhat does it take for a law firm to be successful? Unfortunately, there is no single best way to answer this question. Success can be relative, and it can be pursued in several ways. That said, keep on reading the rest of this post and we’ll quickly list down some of the characteristics that are common in successful law firms.

1. They Provide Timely Services

The timeliness of the delivery of legal services is one of the most important things that will have an impact on the satisfaction of clients. This makes it important for firms to make sure that they can deliver the required outcomes as scheduled. To add, it will also help to use legal billing software to make sure that the invoices will be sent on time.

2. They Embrace Technology

Successful law firms do not hesitate to use technology for their benefit. They consider it as a necessity and not as a luxury. They train their people to embrace innovation instead of resisting them and sticking to conventional methods. A good example of using technology in a firm would be through using software like Rocket Matter, which can improve efficiency and productivity, such as for scheduling and billing.

3. They Put an Emphasis on Diversity

In one article published on the website of Thomson Reuters, it has been noted that diversity will be one of the key differentiators that can affect the success of law firms in the next five decades. This calls for the need to value gender equality in the workplace. Discrimination based on race will also have no place in the firm. In fact, a firm with women and minorities in their roster of lawyers will have a huge advantage in positioning their company.

4. They are Recognized in the Community

One of the easiest ways to measure the success of a law firm would be through how much it is recognized in the community. With this, it is also important for firms to do something that is meaningful for the community, such as having pro bono cases to help those who are unable to access high-quality legal services.

5. They Manage Talent Exceptionally

Like in other businesses, the people are the most important assets of a law firm, making it necessary to have robust talent management practices in place. Every client expects to be working with only top-notch people, so the firm should have the talent to meet these expectations. To add, the law firm must have an effective strategy in attracting and retaining top talent to be competitive.

6. They are the Best Place to Work

At the end of the day, the most important characteristic of successful law firms is that they gain a reputation as the best place to work. This way, they attract the best people to provide exceptional legal service. This is related to what has been mentioned above since this is critical in talent retention.

The success of a law firm is not an easy feat, especially considering how tough the competition is. However, with the things that have been mentioned above, it will be easier for providers of legal services to stand out and improve their bottom line.

Advice For Becoming A Better Entrepreneur

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | Entrepreneur | Advice For Becoming A Better EntrepreneurWhile it’s nice to be able to say that you’re an entrepreneur, it’s an even better feeling to be able to prove to others that you’re a successful business owner. Luckily, you can use the following advice to help you become a better leader and boss so that you can experience a bright and prosperous future.

It’s ultimately up to you and your responsibility to overcome any obstacles you’re facing and improve in areas where you’re falling short. Remain patient with yourself because you’re more likely to develop as time goes on and you gain more experience and expert knowledge of your field and business. Most importantly, follow your passion and try to have a little fun while you’re at it!

Admit to Your Weaknesses

Become a better entrepreneur by admitting to your weaknesses and what you don’t know. For example, you may realize you need a digital marketing plan in place but don’t know the best way to implement one. In this case, work with a company such as Webpresence.Digital that can help your business thrive online by increasing leads, boosting sales and building more brand awareness. It’s not always about being able to perform each task yourself, but knowing who to turn to that can help you achieve your goals.

Learn from Others

Be observant and willing to learn from and listen to others if you want to improve your abilities as an entrepreneur. Be thirsty to take in new information and open to hearing different approaches to solving problems. Find a mentor who you can turn to for input and will keep you on track when you’re unsure of how to proceed in the future. Commit to nurturing long-term business relationships with other professionals and customers as well.

Proactively Manage Your Finances

The financial health of your company is one area you aren’t going to want to ignore as an entrepreneur. You need to know that you’re running a stable company and don’t want to be continuously encountering surprises when it comes to your money. Be proactive about managing your finances by setting budgets and holding regular meetings to discuss the status of your business and your profits. If your schedule is full or you need assistance, hire an accountant or financial director who can help you keep your books in order.

Take Care of Yourself

Another piece of advice if you want to become a better entrepreneur is to take better care of yourself. Running a company is hard work and will require a lot of time and energy on your part. Put your health and well-being first, and you’ll likely find you’re more productive during the day and don’t feel as tired. A few tips include:

  • Following a schedule
  • Eating healthy meals
  • Exercising regularly
  • Managing your stress
  • Getting plenty of sleep

Be diligent about putting your needs first above all else, and you’ll find you’re a lot more pleasant to be around and can reach your goals quicker. While your business is important, so is making sure you have a lot of natural energy and aren’t always getting sick.