Get motivated for change

Motivation. It’s a powerful force that can determine success or failure in almost anything.

Going to the gym, giving up booze (Dryathlon anyone?), or embarking on a spot of DIY, we know from experience that a good dose of personal motivation is required for most of us to make changes happen.

It strikes me this is true for our businesses too. A sense of purpose creates a kind of energy that we could just as easily call motivation.

As businesses we need to understand the motivations of our customers, if we’re going to create products or services that they’ll want to buy. Trying to get them to change their behaviours (swap brand, buy a house, change PR agency…) without tapping into their motivations is pretty futile.

The same is true of our teams too, if we are to drive our businesses forward and pull ourselves out of the muddy quagmire of recession followed by phew-we-made-it-survival, into a smooth and steady period of sustainable growth.

The New Year brings a surge of resolutions as we take the opportunity to ‘draw a line’ under what’s passed, and aim to ‘be better’ this year. Anything is possible. Everything is possible! Our motivations and sense of purpose are high.

January brings a great opportunity to try and capture the ‘air of possibility’ that hangs around us, and challenge our teams to think differently; to set themselves new goals for what they’d like to achieve and consider how they can use their talents to help us reach our business goals.

Momentum. The other big ‘M’. After one huge sugar rush of motivation in the first week of the year, the energy can quickly dissipate and we’re left with the Blue Monday scenario – dashed hopes and disappointment.

So what can we do to keep the momentum of motivation, change and possibility alive? Take action. Make plans, enact plans, set small and regular goals or milestones so you can measure your progress. Experiment, test new ideas, and, most importantly, involve those whose motivation you’re seeking to harness.

The good news is that windows of opportunity to reignite our motivation appear throughout the year. Attending a course (in my view, there’s none better for development and motivation than LEAD), meeting someone new, winning a new contract, moving office, starting a new project, change within a team, confidence in the economy lifting… any day can be a good day to start a new page.

We need to recognise and seize upon the windows of opportunity for making changes, open the window, and let the fresh air in.

Sarah Bryars

Chief Executive

Time for a new perspective

The last couple of weeks have presented two blinding examples of the benefits to be gained by making time to attain new perspectives about our businesses.

Working with clients that are innovating and growing at a pace is very exciting. One such Target client is defying the challenging market trends experienced by so many parts of the UK’s heating industry to consolidate its market leading position, and achieve growth year on year.

Making a hugely ambitious marketing plan work in an orchestrated, coherent and effective manner requires a strong team – and a marketing director who understands the value of bringing the full strength of that team together to pause, share and create together.

We’re great collaborators at Target, so getting together with in-house departments, multi-disciplinary teams and partner agencies is second nature to us. Taking a day out to reflect on recent activity, market position, business objectives and to power up our imaginations to conceive of new solutions is invariably time well spent.

But it’s not just when developing award winning PR strategies for clients that we feel the benefit of making time to stop, stand back and view challenges from a different vantage point. It’s true of our own business development too.

I’m proud to be among a group of MDs and business owners to be taking our first steps towards a new type of Masters Degree, through a partnership between leadership development experts QuoLux and the renowned Lancaster University Management School (LUMS).

Having participated in an exceptional ten-month leadership and business development programme, called LEAD, the experience we’ve gained within our own businesses can now be formally assessed and awarded a Post Graduate Certificate in Professional Practice (Leadership Learning) – which we can build on subsequently to gain a Masters. To be honest, while writing for business is second nature to me, it’s been a long while since I faced the rigour of academic assessment.

Masters level learning is about being open, challenging, critical and reflective.  It’s about trying out new perspectives. That requires a bit of time, but the beauty of this unique programme is that it’s time spent on my business, not on abstractions or distractions.

In our busy lives, time, deadlines and demands seem to wield power over us. Far from ‘making time’ (which suggests at least some element of us calling the shots in this process of time creation), we are instead buffeted from pillar to post trying to keep up with time and its megalomaniac tendencies.

Making time to view your own business practice through new perspectives is a revelation, and a process that I can recommend.

Sarah Bryars
Chief Executive