Today I spent 4 or 5 hours in the British Museum.  It was wonderful.  There’s something there for everyone.  I have to admit to behaving today a bit like an accountant & a person who without fail always counts their lengths when swimming.  I grabbed the brochure entitled “A History of the World in 100 Objects”, picked out the 20 that interested me the most & then mapped out a route to view them.  I did my “objet” viewing on either side of the main reason for my trip – Grayson Perry’s exhibition “The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman”.  All I can say is it’s on until 26 Feb (extension by popular demand) & if you haven’t seen it yet, you need to get down there, pay your tenner and consume this visual feast.

I know there’s been a lot already written about this exhibition, and photos were not permitted, so I’m going to keep this short.  It’s a mix of artefacts from the British museum which the artist has selected & then sometimes juxtaposed next to his own work (10 or so of his famous ceramic pots including one featuring Mark E Smith of The Fall entitled “Grumpy Old God pot”, iron sculptures of people, a coffin containing his ponytail from 25 years ago, needlework and huge tapestries, a tower he built out of stones he found on the road outside his squat in 1983, outrageous costumes he’s created & then worn, and of course his famous motorcycle – there in my photo, complete with Alan Measles riding at the back in his box).

What I liked most of all was some of the stuff Grayson had written here & there.  These are my favourites:

·         Reality can be new as well as old, poetic as well as factual and funny as well as grim;

·         Next to a selection of exquisite tiny portable lacquered Japanese shrines from the 1700s he tells us that the modern day equivalent of a portable shrine is the photo album we all carry about on our smartphones – I love that

·         The suggestion that CCTV is the modern version of carvings over cathedral doors depicting the Last Judgement & the damned going to hell - hahaha

Beautiful, just beautiful.  Don’t miss out.  Post up your comments if you’ve been along & enjoyed it as much as I did.  I look forward to reading them.

As I’m sure the whole world is by now aware, I’m coming to the end of my first week living back in London.  Everyone I’ve met this past week or asked for help has been extremely welcoming and I’ve been fortunate enough to have been invited to a few really useful networking events.  Best of all, however, from the perspective of a newly arrived Irish entrepreneur in London has been the Irish International Business Network or IIBN as it’s known.  The link is here for anyone that would like to know more or find out how to join http://www.iibn.com/london/

I’m lucky enough to have been introduced to the original Wild Irish Guy himself, Damon Oldcorn, and it seems that once you know Damon, you don’t really need to know anyone else.  I’ve always found this to be a good strategy.  Bryan Keating was the first business person I met in Northern Ireland, he’s the exact same and it’s never done me any harm.

Thursday night’s IIBN event started with drinks & chat and it was very easy to circulate and get talking to a few people as everyone’s very friendly and open.  Everyone has an Irish connection even though many, like me, don’t have an Irish accent.  Don’t let that fool you! – they all know their Leitrims from their Letterkennys and their Dungloes from their Dingles.  Our diaspora is a beautiful thing.  There were bankers, recruiters, reps from private equity houses, lawyers, entrepreneurs, investors and no doubt many more besides.  If you’re Irish, in business and in London you need to join IIBN.

As part of the evening, our speaker was the charming and self-effacing Rosaleen Blair (pictured).  Rosaleen is one of those women who have achieved a helluva lot but doesn’t go around shouting that from the rooftops.  She just gets on with things.  Most of all, I liked the way she described the values her company operates by and I liked her statement of the 3 things she demands from people in her team and recruits against.  I’ve used these a few times already in conversation with others I’ve met this week but having chatted with Rosaleen on the evening, I don’t think she’ll mind.  They are as follows:

·         Trust – the members of a team have to really trust one another; of course this takes a bit of time

·         Collaboration – people need to be able & willing to work on projects with each other and to work hard to make that collaboration work

·         Sharing – Rosaleen hates it when people hold back knowledge & refuse to share it with other members of the team

I also loved what she said about encouraging a culture of “intrapreneurship” within your own organisation as a way of motivating and retaining the people in your team.  If anyone’s unsure what that means, it’s about encouraging positive aspects of entrepreneurial behaviour but within a large organisation.  It’s something we’ve always tried to do at Learning Pool.

Rosaleen told us her story about how she arrived in London from Dublin in the 1990s, not knowing a soul but with a background in recruitment and having run a few small businesses in Ireland, believing herself to be fairly unemployable.  She went to work at Alexander Mann and over the course of time, persuaded her employer to allow her to try something new to fill a gap in the market and co-create adjacent services with clients (the first one being ICL/Fujitsu).  As it happened, she, working along with James Caan, became one of the early pioneers of what these days is known as RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) and the rest is history.  In 2007, Rosaleen led her team through a £100m management buyout with the backing of private equity house Graphite Capital.  These days her company Alexander Mann Solutions employs 2,000 people working in 70 geographies and 42 languages.

Rosaleen also gave us some priceless bits of advice which I hope she won’t mind me passing on here to others:

·         When looking at which private equity house to go with, do some research and talk to some of the companies your main players have divested themselves of

·         As CEO, always keep your bank manager close & don’t give them any surprises; don’t pass that bank relationship off to someone else in your team

·         If your company is going to be working in some way with a private equity house, get yourself a CFO that has previously worked with a PE house, a CFO coming from a big corporate background won’t have the right sort of experience

·         Trust your own instincts and that of your team every day of the week over the advice given to you by external “experts”

Thanks Rosaleen, thanks IIBN and hello London!

 

Today’s my last day in Northern Ireland for 6 months.  For the past 5 years I’ve managed a highly motivated part of the Learning Pool team who are absent from our Derry mothership & who work from home in England and Scotland.  Tomorrow I become one of them.  This past couple of weeks I’ve been really mulling this over & wondering what it will mean for me.  I’m also slightly worried that I may not be the exemplary virtual team member that I imagine I will, a carbon copy of the perfect remote worker in the image I have in my mind’s eye.

In my view, these are the qualities & behaviours of a great virtual team member:

·         superb communicator – in both directions – giving & receiving information; this applies equally to customers & colleagues

·         highly organised in terms of managing appointments, follow ups, phone calls, CRM updates, keeping your online calendar bang up to date

·         ability to work efficiently on the hoof (on trains, in cafes, at airports, in the car)

·         knack to really bond with people you don’t see face to face much – other virtual colleagues but also the people in the powerhouse or mothership – the people you need to actually do things for you that you can’t do yourself

·         planning your schedule to get the most out of each day by combining appointments & using common sense

·         gift for really knowing what’s going on beneath the surface at HQ, think that comes about by really listening to what your colleagues say

·         makes the best use of the available technology & doesn’t get bogged down in constant technofail

·         books travel well in advance to get the best prices

·         effective collector & disseminator of customer information back to the mothership team

·         self starter with a lot of drive

·         ability to complete & finish things (this one is tricky for me) in a fast paced & constantly moving environment.

From time to time I’ve been critical of how other people do some or all of the above.  I guess I’ll know by this time next week how I’m doing myself.  Any hints and tips from you, my dear readers, will be most welcome as always.

So what am I going to miss most over the next 6 months when I’m London based.  Folks – there’s no competition on that score.  The photo of Paul was snapped yesterday at Stansted airport.  He’d just finished a conference call with our tech team & is posting something up on Twitter.  As usual, we had a few right old laughs yesterday – despite both of us having a 3.30am start, a tricky meeting at the Cabinet Office and the usual mixed bag of rushing around London for meetings, juggling stuff as we go.  Along the way, and starting at 5.30am, we also discussed everything that both of us are working on, we did some long term strategic planning, we both chatted to a number of colleagues, customers and partners, sketched out a couple of new products or markets for existing parts of the Learning Pool portfolio, swapped the usual load of gossip (mainly about other entrepreneurs or businesses), exchanged views on the content of business books we are both reading (cuts down on individual reading time if your business partner reads it & gives you a précis of course), managed to have both breakfast & lunch in the most random of places, went through some sort of time/space portal at Stansted airport, took two plane journeys & two long drives each, but were emailing again when we got to our respective homes last night.  The relationship anyone has (should have) with their business partner is pretty intense and full on.  I’ll refer you to a previous blog of mine if you’re interested in reading more about this – it’s here http://marymckenna.posterous.com/two-heads-are-better-than-one-10-pros-of-havi

We’ve been working together like this for 8 years, we rarely disagree and you couldn’t put a cigarette paper in between us.  I guess that’s what I’m going to miss most.

 

Yesterday Learning Pool hosted a visit from Northern Ireland Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Investment, Arlene Foster.  In case you missed it, at the end of 2011, Learning Pool was announced by Deloitte as the fastest growing technology company in Northern Ireland (as well as 6^th in Ireland, 26^th in the UK & 139^th in EMEA) based on revenue growth over the past 5 years.  They confirmed our growth to be a whopping 1,100% (gasp!).  The Minister expressed an interest in finding out more about the company so we invited her to call in.

We were a little apprehensive about her visit I guess.  As entrepreneurs we don’t have an awful lot to do with politicians (although maybe that needs fixing).  We didn’t really know what to expect from our allotted hour.

We needn’t have worried.  The Minister was friendly, personable, engaged & knowledgeable.  She spent the first half hour circulating around “Pool Heights” (our Derry HQ), chatting to our team and asking plenty of questions, her PA at her elbow jotting down a few notes.  The Learning Pool team are always keen to perform in front of an audience so they were in their element and there was a good bit of laughing and joking going on – especially when the Minister realised that we have two Americans on board (she asked them how come they live in the North West – you can guess the answer yourselves).  As we climbed through the floors of our building we watched members of the team showcase our new online finance training for government, demo some bespoke content and show the Minister a new set of graphics that are still work in progress.

Paul & I spent the last half hour in private conversation with the Minister while we all had a nice cup of tea (see photo).  Some of what we discussed was – the issues SMEs like us have in winning work with government, how we think procurement processes could be improved, some of the work we both do with Young Enterprise and our various digital interests (Paul with Digital Derry, me with Digital Circle), the role start ups play in creating a vibrant Northern Ireland economy and the work we both do with micro businesses, ideas around addressing the skills shortages we as a region are facing (we were glad the Minister brought that up and was well informed about the situation).

Thanks for coming by Minister, your new friends at Learning Pool are all fans!

I flew back from Los Angeles to London last week in economy class.  Whilst the British Airways flight was like hell on earth, it does only last 10 hours and you save a lot of money by flying economy.  However, amongst all the screaming & fidgeting & general bad behaviour that was taking place in front of me and behind me, my neighbour in the window seat (I was in the middle seat of three) was the exemplary travel companion and a joy to sit next to.  Why was this?

I’ll tell you why. 

She got onto the plane, was polite & said hello and then she got into her seat, got her pillow out, switched the tv on, put her headphones in & went to sleep.

We exchanged a few words during the night when the toddler in the seat in front of us was jumping on his seat facing us & screaming (his mother was watching a film – I guess she’d probably gone beyond the end of her tether & was doing her best) but apart from that we had no conversation until 20 minutes before the plane landed in London after we’d both been down to the bathrooms for a wash & a spruce up.

We’d passed trays & got up to let each other in & out but that was the extent of our interaction for 9½ of our 10 hours together.

Once we got chatting, it was nice to talk.  She was very pleasant & I’m sure we had a lot in common.  However, I’d rather be wishing I’d talked to my travel companion more having missed the opportunity than wishing I could move seats from someone I really don’t want to talk to for a 10 hour stretch.

I notice Dutch airline KLM launched their “Meet and Seat” app in December.  This will allow passengers to select seating neighbours having browsed their Facebook profiles.  I know what I’d be looking for.  Interested to hear what everyone else thinks on this topic.  I’ve heard fabulous Sir Ken Robinson mention his views and I know they are similar to mine – but maybe some of you like to find a chatterbox.  Funny long haul flight stories encouraged!

 

It’s a dog eat dog world out there, especially if you’re on the hunt for a job.  I’ve written a number of blogs over the past couple of years offering advice to people looking for new employment opportunities or getting ready to attend interviews and I always encourage people to be as proactive as they can.  This means being alert to opportunities as they come up, using your networks, sending carefully crafted emails or letters & cvs to organisations you want to work for, etc.  As we all know, a large percentage of jobs are never advertised – so it’s important that you get yourself on the radar.

However, you can go too far.  When that happens you can be in danger of either being disqualified for canvassing or you can just annoy someone so much that they put you on the “no thanks” list before you even get a chance to shine.

Recently I’ve started to receive large numbers of Linked In requests from people I don’t know.  Many of them are people that are looking for work.  Guys – this isn’t going to do you any favours.  First of all, I only connect with people on Linked In that I have met in real life & know and like.  I joked when David Cameron joined Linked In that he needn’t bother sending me a request as I wouldn’t accept it.  It’s the truth.  In my mind, it’s pointless being professionally “connected” with hundreds of people that I don’t know.  Twitter’s the place for that.

Sometimes, before I click the “ignore” option, I do take a look at the person’s Linked In profile.  Call that what you like – nosiness, curiosity, even politeness.  I live in Northern Ireland so if it’s a name I half recognise or someone that I think I may have met, I look at the profile to find out more information.  Surely that’s the point of having profiles.

I don’t then expect that person to send me a public tweet thanking me for looking at their Linked In profile & saying they hope Learning Pool will be in touch with them shortly. 

This is so wrong on so many levels:

1.       If we’ve advertised job vacancies, we’re in a process and using social media in this way to promote yourself to people in the company could be construed by some to be canvassing, and that can result in your application being disqualified from the process.  In Northern Ireland we work within very strict recruitment guidelines in order to meet legislation around equal opportunities in employment.

2.       I might sit in on interviews from time to time and I might meet people before we offer them a job, but it will be our team leads that are driving the recruitment process at Learning Pool not me.  If you contact me outside of the process, I am unlikely to know anything about the particular process you are in (we advertised 10 vacancies in the press on 27 December) and even if I was interested in your experience and skillset, I’m unlikely to mention you to one of our team leads – they’ll pick it up themselves as part of their shortlisting activity.

If you’re looking for a job & want to work at Learning Pool, spend time & effort instead improving your cv (most of the ones I see are dire) and writing a decent covering letter.  Or spend time getting onto our radar before we actually go out to recruitment – so that we already know you.  There are many ways you can do this – intelligent commenting on our forums, writing an interesting personal blog & making us aware of that, conducting interactions with us on Twitter or coming along to our events & chatting to us.

I know that many of you will have opinions or questions about this topic and I hope we can have some debate in the comments section.  As always, love to have your input.

On the Hertz car rental website, part of their mission statement reads that they “aim to be the most customer focused car rental company in every market (they) serve”.

That must exclude LA airport as this is what happened to us earlier this week.  Keep in mind we’d been travelling for almost 24 hours of elapsed time by this stage, given that it’s impossible these days to fly from the island of Ireland to the US west coast without changing planes somewhere (we’d elected to drive from Northern Ireland to Dublin, fly to London, change onto an American Airlines flight to LA).

First the customer service person tried to sell us LOADS of extras – and I mean LOADS.  She started with a car upgrade (if we’d wanted that we’d have just booked it online in the first place, bizarrely a smaller car than the one we ended up with but at an extra $10 per day) and progressed through a sat nav ending up with pre-paying for petrol.  We kept saying No Thanks but she kept to her script.  I was embarrassed for her & for us as it was excruciating.

Next she claimed that our online car hire (booked via Expedia – she was completely dismissive of them as well!) did not include any insurance.  None at all.  I knew this was not the case so I asked her to print out the contract so as I could read it.  She said she could not do that as our contract was with Expedia and not with Hertz.  This farce continued for about 10 minutes where I kept insisting that the booking I had made included insurance – I wouldn’t have booked it otherwise given it was for the US!  Eventually, she told us she had “found” the insurance clause and she had made a mistake.  She did ask us if we wanted to upgrade the insurance we’d booked however as it was “inadequate”.

The final straw was telling us we’d have to pay for an extra day’s car hire because the time we are due to return the car is an hour later than the time we collected it.  That was because US immigration was unbelievably quick on Wednesday.  You win some you lose some I guess.  She did offer that we could go & hang around in their grotty cafe for an hour if we wanted to collect the car at the time we’d booked it for.  An hour. 

Come on Hertz.  Is this the best you can do.  The last time I used Hertz was September 2001.  I was in the US working at the time & because of 9/11 couldn’t get a flight home & had to stay on for another 2 weeks.  Hertz charged me an extortionate amount of money for the extension & I remember standing in the same office at LAX arguing with another customer service person about whether or not it was their company’s objective to benefit from a national disaster in such an opportunistic manner.

There are plenty of car hire companies about so my advice would be don’t use Hertz.  I certainly won’t be using them again.  I don’t have the strength for the arguments!  On the plus side, the way that experience made me feel also gave me a warm feeling about how we never nickel and dime anyone at Learning Pool – it's a horrible thing to do to customers and it just isn’t worth it in the overall scheme of things.

I know that car hire is something a lot of you will have horror stories about so come on – name & shame.  Send us your experiences in the comments below.  You know we love to read them.

Folks – I’m on holiday so my blogs will be holiday related (probably film reviews – went to see J Edgar last night) for the next few weeks. 

 

On Thursday evening, I was privileged to join a group of people at the House of Lords to celebrate a significant milestone reached by the Rix Centre.  The Rix Centre, hosted within the University of East London, is a charitable organisation that uses technology to improve the lives of people with learning disabilities.  Last week’s event was to celebrate the Centre achieving 5 years of innovation with its “Living Lab”.  It was both wonderful and humbling to speak with some of the Centre’s Champions who were present on the evening showcasing various video and other multimedia projects they have created.  You can find out more about the work of the Rix Centre here http://www.rixcentre.org/about-us/

I attended the event with Maureen Piggot, Trustee of the Rix Centre and Director of Mencap in Northern Ireland and Ian Graham, Chief Executive of Momentum, the trade association for Northern Ireland’s ICT industry.  All of us have a career long interest in helping people learn so it made for a useful and fascinating evening.

Lord Brian Rix is by far the most sprightly 87 year old I’ve met in a long time.  He and his wife Elspet Gray (I’m ashamed to admit I know her best from the first series of Blackadder, she played the Queen) were delightful hosts and hearing about the various charities they are involved in made me really want to do more both personally and with Learning Pool.  On that note I’ll be contacting Rix Centre Director Andy Minnion next week to see if there’s anything we at Learning Pool can co-produce or help out with at the Centre.  You should too.

I’m getting ready to move to London in the New Year.  There, I’ve said it.  Learning Pool started life in London in a rented loft in Crawford’s Passage in Farringdon before shifting our HQ back to Derry.  We used to call our London base Crawford’s Pass amongst ourselves because it made it sound more Irish.  In our early days we were paranoid about customers knowing we were a Northern Ireland company in case it was a barrier to us doing business.  As the last 5 years have progressed, we became less coy about our origins as we cemented our customer relationships although we hung onto our London phone number.  These days, our customers love the fact that we’re an Irish company and some of them have even been to visit us at our office in Derry.  Others have even been brave enough to join our team.

Our fabulous Head of Content, Deborah Limb, joined us from another more famous e-learning company.  Deborah had never been to Northern Ireland before her first day at Learning Pool.  She arrived at our office on a cold, wet, Monday morning in November 2007, clutching the remnants of a sopping wet map in her hand.  She still claims she never saw daylight during that first winter.

Now it’s my turn to go back the other way and it’s a bittersweet feeling that I have.  I lived in London for 17 years before moving home to County Tyrone at the start of the new millennium.  I left the pushiness of the city behind & moved right into the middle of rural Ulster.  I’ll never forget waking up that first morning & hearing no sounds.  Nothing at all.  I remember the relief I felt & ever since that day, I’ve half felt as though I’m on holiday – a sort of working holiday where you work harder than you’ve ever worked before but your colleagues & neighbours are so friendly that it somehow compensates you.

I quickly learned to be less brusque & more chatty in my interactions.  More talk about the weather & people you know & less focus on the agenda is the Northern Irish way.  Gradually the sharp edges from all those years spent living in the city were worn down a little.  Of course I’ve been back in London pretty much every week since 2000 – sometimes twice a week – but always as a visitor, staying in a hotel room, running for a plane home as soon as the meetings are finished.  I’m wondering how I’ll slot back into the hurly-burly of London life after the deep, deep peace of country living (quoted with a nod to Mrs Patrick Campbell).

So why am I as a person and why are we as a business doing this?  I guess we’re fed up with fighting for what’s right (that it should be just as easy to do business from Northern Ireland as it is from any part of the UK or indeed Europe) & accepting what’s reality.  Like it or not, London is indeed where UK government’s beating heart lies.  It’s also where a large number of our customers, a huge number of potential customers and some of the people we’d like to work more closely with are based.  On top of that, our Northern Ireland location is stifling Learning Pool’s growth as there just aren’t the skills here that we need to recruit in to grow our business.  We’ve raised this point many times with Invest Northern Ireland.  We’re further hampered by having an ornament of an airport 5 miles from us in Derry that we never use as the flight times aren’t conducive to being anywhere on time to do business – and the government agencies and politicians seem more interested in in-fighting & scoring points off each other than looking outwards & making Northern Ireland an easier place from which to operate internationally.  In summary, we’ve concluded we’re missing out on opportunities and holding ourselves back by not having a London presence.  And I think that’s a very sad state of affairs.  Learning Pool was recently confirmed by Deloitte to be Northern Ireland’s fastest growing tech company & the 6^th fastest growing on the island of Ireland, but we have to look to London in order to continue our expansion.

Of course there’s plenty of upside.  I’m looking forward to being back in the heart of the capital for a six month period and I’m intending throwing myself into the whole London work/social scene and spending plenty of time with friends & colleagues, old & new.  I’m looking for somewhere to base Learning Pool London right now so watch this space & all will be revealed.

I know this is an emotive topic, especially for other Northern Ireland businesses – so I’m looking forward to your views & a lively discussion in the comments below.  Keep ‘em coming!

 

A few of my contemporaries were surprised to hear that I was at the CBI Conference this past week and given the demographic amongst the conference attendees I’m honestly not surprised.  We had a laugh on Twitter about how only 5 of 1,000 or so delegates were tweeting – but that’s a subject for another blog.  From my perspective, it was worth the time & effort just to hear Fiat & Chrysler Group CEO, Sergio Marchionne, speak about how he’s wrestled Fiat back from the brink of oblivion, kicking & screaming – again a subject for another blog.

My real interest was in hearing what the CBI, the Prime Minister & the Foreign Secretary had to say about helping SMEs with potential high value overseas opportunities get started with and be more successful at export.  Just to give you some background, we at Learning Pool have had what could be described as quite a frustrating experience of export as a UK based SME.  Our online learning content has been created exclusively for the UK public sector, and as such is of value & immediate interest to any of the former British colonies, especially those that have adopted the UK local government model.  Here in the UK, we have 500,000 public sector employees & stakeholders (primarily school governors, elected members and government “partners” such as community & voluntary sector groups & charities) making use of our learning environments & sharing great content.  However, despite displays of strong interest from overseas governments in our products, we have spectacularly failed to convert any of that interest to tangible sales – and I promise you we’ve tried really hard.

Learning Pool completely gets that the economic future of some UK based SMEs will be dependent on their ability to sell to the emergent BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China) who together are forecast to import goods & services valued at $4 trillion over the next 10 years (source, Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs, CBI conference 21 Nov 2011 – he also coined the BRIC acronym a decade ago).  Our issue has been that it is incredibly difficult for overseas governments to buy from a “foreign” SME – no matter how fabulous & suitable their product is.  Our experience of this is that the type of export assistance our own regional development agency here in Northern Ireland, Invest Northern Ireland, has been able to give us (up to 40% financial assistance for trade missions overseas, paid after you’ve spent the money) is not what we need.  We’ve repeatedly explained to our contacts at Invest NI that what we actually need is some assistance from their people based overseas – but unfortunately those people are tasked with bringing Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into Northern Ireland & are therefore unable to help us.

I was therefore very heartened to hear from first the Prime Minister, then the Minister of State for Trade & Investment Stephen Green, then from William Hague that the current government has helping UK SMEs export firmly in its sights.  They each described how training of UKTI employees is taking place to make that team more commercial (I was a bit dismayed when someone said this consisted of forcing their people to read the FT every day – but hopefully that’s just a start!), how 30 and 50 new business-focused employees have been brought into the UKTI offices in India & China respectively, and how the new UKTI Chief Exec Nick Baird (appointed September this year) has a remit to encourage more UK SMEs to move into the international domain.  William Hague specifically described how the role of the Foreign Office has been reshaped to place more emphasis on commercial diplomacy and David Cameron reminded us that our overseas embassies are there to help UK businesses host launches and win orders.

I am pleased to have seen David Cameron lead trade missions to India, China & Turkey since he became Prime Minister and as a co-owner of a small SME fail to understand why he has been so publicly criticised for this.  Governments of the BRIC nations understand how important it is to build relationships with other countries and take a long term view of commerce.  The UK has been swamped with visits from teams from the emergent nations and the lack of reciprocal behaviour is leaving the UK behind the curve.  At the moment, the value of UK exports to the Republic of Ireland is greater than total export value from the UK to the BRIC nations...surely everyone can see how that path isn’t sustainable?

We are serious about growing Learning Pool and seizing our opportunities so what does that look like for us?  We’ve accepted that it’s nigh on impossible to achieve from a Northern Ireland backwater so we’re grasping the nettle and opening a London office in January that I’m going to be heading up.  We’ve also asked our contacts at the Cabinet Office, on the back of Learning Pool’s success in the Innovation Launchpad competition this summer, to request a meeting for us with Nick Baird so as we can talk directly to him about how UKTI can help Learning Pool get started in India, selling to their local and central government.  I’ll keep you posted on how we get on.  Interested in your comments or advice as always.

We all know the first rule of Fight Club – (shhh – don’t mention it) – but what are the rules of Start-Up Club?  These are the 10 Rules I’d suggest to someone starting out with a new business:

 

Rule 1 – Just Do It – the time will never be right & there’s no point in procrastinating, obsessing over the fine detail (you’ll find out soon enough you can’t control things anyway) or delaying.  Grasp the nettle & get going.  Entrepreneurs have many sayings but one that I like a lot is “Leap and a net will form”.  Well – it either does or it doesn’t but there’s only one way to find out.

Rule 2 – seek out a great name and then get a great strapline.  It might not be the one you start out with but keep looking.  All our companies (so far) have had great names including my very first company which was called Kicking Assets.  Keep thinking – it doesn’t cost you anything to think but this is stuff that makes a high impact.

Rule 3 – network like mad both online & in real life.  Not to the exclusion of all else of course but do work at it.  I’ve written a previous blog about networking which you can read here http://marymckenna.posterous.com/so-you-want-to-network

Rule 4 – be well informed, there’s no excuse these days not to be – we have the internet!  Join the appropriate groups (online & real life, like Northern Ireland’s Digital Circle) & talk/listen to other entrepreneurs.  You have to work at this too.

Rule 5 – ask for help if you need it.  Most people are generous with their time & advice and everyone wants you to be a success.  When people help you out, be gracious & don’t abuse their good nature.

Rule 6 – look for innovation in your product or service, your product delivery channel and also your business model.  Innovation in your business model can be a real differentiator.  Again – this doesn’t cost you anything, you just need to think about it.

Rule 7 – don’t go it alone.  Find a business partner or a couple of non execs or perhaps seek out a mentor or join a collaborative network.  Starting a business is too hard for a person to do by themselves and a problem shared is a problem halved.  I have another blog about this specifically which you can read here if you want to know more http://marymckenna.posterous.com/two-heads-are-better-than-one-10-pros-of-havi

Rule 8 – get good advice.  Shop around for an understanding bank (we quickly moved away from our first bank when they wouldn’t support our growth strategy & these days bank with the fabulous Northern Bank) and once you find them, have an open and honest relationship with your bank manager.  Talk to other entrepreneurs and start-ups about the accountants and legal firms they use.  Look for modern professional advisers that understand online businesses and who use technology and social networking themselves.  Cut a good deal by promising them they’ll get a decent payback when you exit.  Agree all your fees up front.  Never get any of these guys out of the Yellow Pages or equivalent.

Rule 9 – work hard and always be open and alert to opportunity.  Usually it doesn’t come up & slap you in the face – you need to be watching out for it.  I’m afraid working hard has to be a given.  Without doing it you will fail and anyone that tells you anything different than that is a liar.

Rule 10 – have some fun.  Running your own business or working in a start-up is the most fun you will ever have at work.  Sure it’s hard work & the lows can be pretty awful – but the highs are AMAZING & you get to hang out with some great people in your own team.

Send me your own tips in the comments below – I can’t wait to read them.

I’ve been a fan of Billy Bragg all my adult life – which is pretty much all his adult life.  The photo above was taken today & features my rather tatty but much prized Billy Bragg t-shirt bought in 1985 & survivor of so many wardrobe clear-outs.  I almost threw it away when we moved from London to Northern Ireland but I couldn’t bear to.  It reminds me too much of the miner’s strike & the stuff that went on back then.

Yesterday, the Learning Pool crew was breakfasting in the Gibson in Dublin following the Deloitte Fast 50 Awards ceremony on Friday night.  I don’t have to tell you how late we went to bed.  Suffice to say it was a similar time to when I often get up.  At breakfast, Billy Bragg was at the next table.  I couldn’t let the opportunity pass.  I did, however, have the decency to wait until he’d finished his breakfast & read the newspaper before I approached him for a chat.

He was exactly as I imagined he would be & I was delighted to hear he was heading over yesterday afternoon to the Dame St protests in Dublin to show a bit of support & play an impromptu gig on a makeshift stage assembled by the protesters & activists.  Good on yer Billy & good luck with your Irish tour.  Might see you Friday night at the Empire in Belfast.  Details are here if anyone else fancies it too http://www.billybragg.co.uk/gigs/gigs.php

Billy Bragg stories welcome via the comments as always.

In my job I do a lot of interviewing, both for Learning Pool & for other organisations that ask me to help them out with this from time to time.  It’s taken a lot of effort to find and assemble the 50 or so perfect (ish) people that form Learning Pool’s current #teamlovely.  There’s more info about that at a blog on the Learning Pool website here http://www.learningpool.com/so-you-want-to-work-at-learning-pool/

There are no doubt thousands of books written on this topic but having been involved in two sets of interviews this week alone, these are my top tips for interview success.  You will no doubt have loads more tips of your own & I hope you’ll share them with us in the comments section below.

·         Do take a few deep breaths before you go into your interview & try to remain calm; we know you’re nervous but you have to be able to manage your interview nerves

·         Don’t bring in a load of files & papers & copies of cvs to your interview – it’s distracting & makes you appear disorganised/forgetful/dishonest (as in you can’t remember stuff about your own career!)

·         Don’t take notes or write stuff down – again – it’s distracting

·         Instead, do really focus on what the panel are telling you or asking you; 30% of the people I interviewed this week (yep – you heard that right) asked for the question to be repeated when they were already half way through answering it.

·         Do manage your time well.  You will know in advance how long your interview is likely to be.  Don’t ramble on for ages when answering what are clearly icebreaker questions designed to make you relax a bit or you’ll have no time left to get onto the stuff you want to tell them about yourself.

·         Do really do your homework about the organisation & think about the job so that you can pre-empt the questions you might be asked – not to stalker level obviously, although if you have carried out research that’s that thorough, don’t tell the interview panel – it will scare them.

·         Do be friendly & chatty but don’t be too over familiar or go too overboard in your enthusiasm for the organisation

·         Do pre-prepare enough questions so that if some of them get covered off in the course of the interview you still have one or two left

·         Don’t ask about money in the first interview stage unless either the panel brings it up or you’re there for a sales job

·         Do think carefully about why you want the job & why you want to join that organisation as they will probably ask you – saying it’s because it’s close to the train station isn’t a good response.

I’ll leave you today with some of the weirdest interview behaviours we’ve witnessed lately:

·         The guy that drank about 3 pints of water

·         The girl that told us she would do ANYTHING to get the job – Paul’s face was a picture on that occasion

·         The guy that turned up dressed head to toe in white, including a hat

·         The girl that couldn’t stop crying – that was difficult to cope with

·         The girl that didn’t appear to have read the job description at all – despite having submitted a detailed application form

·         The guy who was so argumentative that we had to stop the interview & start over again

Looking forward to your stories, as always.

Words are important & when you work in sales, you should think carefully about the language you use. 

Everyone will remember the damage caused to his family business when Gerald Ratner referred to the products sold by Ratner's jewellers as "total crap" & rather famously announced at an Institute of Directors gathering that their "earrings were cheaper than an M & S prawn sandwich but probably wouldn't last as long".  What was the outcome of this foolish outburst?  £500m was wiped off the value of the firm, Ratner eventually resigned as CEO & the company rebranded itself in an attempt to sweep this incident under the carpet & away from the minds of British jewellery buyers.

Selling is a complex activity & there have been countless books written about the psychology of selling.  This blog couldn't be long enough to cover them all but I do want to draw your attention to the sales book we like and use at Learning Pool.  It's by a very practical man called Geoff King and it's called "The Secrets of Selling; how to win in any sales situation".  We like it because it's easy to read, it makes a lot of sense to us and it's straightforward to act upon Geoff's advice.

The book covers some cool stuff like how to deliver the ideal handshake (I know - in a book), how to tell if someone is lying (useful in all sorts of situations that one) and how to spot a false smile.  It also deals with the 3 Twelves (I love this) - first impressions when you meet someone.  Some of you have probably heard this before but they are:

• the first 12 words you say (always give these some advance thought - don't just blurt out the first thing that comes into your head when you meet someone for the first time - make sure you say something about them & not about you)
• the first 12 footsteps you take (give the other person enough space, don't crowd them)
• the top 12 inches (your appearance from the shoulders up - the rest doesn't really matter except for your shoes - they need to count.  I think this is why some women wear those bright scarves around their necks - I can't think of any other sane reason why).

My favourite chapter is the first one and it covers what to actually say in sales meetings.  It contains the following table of words not to use & what to say instead:

• Don't say 'cost' say 'amount'
• Don't say 'contract' say 'agreement'
• Don't say 'pitch' say 'presentation'
• Don't say 'buy' say 'authorise'
• Don't say 'cheap' say 'value for money'
• Don't say 'change' say 'improve'

An additional hint from me.  Remember that your prospect is usually considering buying something from you to either remove some sort of business pain or to gain competitive advantage over someone else.  They may be in this situation because of something they themselves have done or failed to do & the psychology around this may be delicate.  For this reason don't ever mention "problem" to them about the place they are in.  It has very negative connotations.  Instead call it a "situation".

Bags of advice in Geoff's book.  I recommend you read it if you want to improve how you interact with people in sales situations - either buying or selling.  Look forward to your comments/experiences/stories/any howlers that you’ve witnessed as always.

On Thursday this week, Paul & I were lucky enough to be invited to an event in Derry where the great Dan Rooney was talking about leadership.  Dan Rooney is Chairman of the Pittsburgh Steelers (his father Art Rooney founded the team in 1933) and current US Ambassador to Ireland.  Last time I ran into him was in the White House in March – he was standing next to me.  Anyway – this is what he had to say.

He started by remarking on how much he likes the Hewlett Packard story – which endeared him to me straight away.  One of my favourite bits of the Jim Collins book, Good to Great, is the description of Level 5 leadership as demonstrated by Dave Packard & I just love the fact that his eulogy pamphlet described the great man as “Rancher, etc”. 

As you would expect from someone with a lifelong immersion in competitive sports, Dan uses sports analogy to make all his points.  He talked about the 3 levels of leadership in his own sports world as being:

1.       The President as leader – the president’s role is similar to that of any business CEO.  They are responsible for setting the scene, making sure everyone’s doing their job, actually getting the players...I can relate to that.  I see recruitment as one of the most important things I do as a small business MD.  Dan himself was President of the Steelers from 1975 until 2002 & it’s clear from the way he talks about the role that it was something he enjoyed very much.

2.       The Head Coach as leader – the coach is responsible for all player related issues and for making sure the team is ready & able to play at their best on a Sunday.  The coach deals with any people issues and keeps everyone focused on winning.  The Steelers had only 3 coaches in 30 years.  Their legendary head coach, Chuck Noll, was there for 23 years (1969 to 1991)and 4 Superbowl wins, more than any other head coach in NFL history.  Impressive.  Noll is known for his meticulous attention to detail which included going back to basics with new players to the extent that he would re-train them in basic fundamentals that they would already be familiar with.

3.       The Player as leader – this one is interesting as it’s less obvious than the other two.  Dan Rooney cited the example of the intelligent player in the locker room that knows what’s going on & is willing to do what it takes.  He used the example of Steelers stalwart, (Mean) Joe Greene – leader and anchor of the “Steel Curtain” and one of the most dominant defensive players in the NFL during the 1970s.  A player with an intense desire to win, no matter what that would take, and who would rally everyone else on the team.

Dan Rooney left us with a great quote about leadership – “when things are good, always be at the back; when things are bad, always be in the front” – a variation on Jim Collins observation about the window & the mirror I believe.  Eloquent & to the point – rather like Ambassador Rooney himself.

Working in a small business is not for everyone.  The working environment is transparent to a degree that many people find uncomfortable (your colleagues and manager, maybe even your directors are likely to be aware of your every move – which is great if you’re performing).  New business is rarely turned away so the only way quality can be maintained and delivery deadlines met is by team members working longer hours; this happens a lot when your small business is growing.  Your founder directors, although appreciative of everyone’s efforts, are always looking for “more”.  Performance issues are likely to be addressed sooner rather than later and perhaps more bluntly than many people are used to or prepared for.  The runway between joining as a newbie and being deemed to “fit in” may be viewed as too short by most.  Also, the swift exit if your colleagues decide you aren’t going to work out is brutal.

Of course – there’s a lot of upside too.  If there wasn’t, no-one would bother putting themselves through startup discomfort & pain.  But that’s not the topic of today’s blog.  Today is about what I as a founder director expect from team members as a minimum.  Here’s my top 10:

1.       Commitment to our customers, to the business and to our common goals.  This covers everything from being on time for meetings, doing your prep, being reliable and a host of other stuff.  Real life recent commitment examples from our own small business are being in the office on a bank holiday because a project review must take place, giving up a Sunday to travel to a company event – even though family plans had already been made, changing plans and flying to see a customer the next day because they needed you to.

2.       Passion about our company, customers, products and mission – this has to be real, it can’t be fake or people can tell.  See my accompanying blog photo of Eddie Ryce from Learning Pool’s sales team if you don’t believe me (photo credits to Paul Clarke & Ruth Cassidy).

3.       Honesty – about where you are, what you’re doing, why something failed, what you think about something.

4.       Hard work and an eye on the prize – yeah – long hours sometimes but an outcomes focused approach where you can easily prioritise what’s important and make sure that’s done first.  Linked to this I expect you to travel in your own time and to make sure all your follow ups and admin are done without anyone having to check or nag you.

5.       Self-sufficiency.  Not everyone has this on Day 1 but everyone needs to strive towards this.  Spending time managing team members’ performance is an overhead I’d rather do without.  You should make it easy for your line manager to manage you.

6.       Self confidence but with it the ability to know when you need help and the confidence to ask for it.

7.       Self-awareness – required to be a good team player.  It should be obvious to you before it is to anyone else when you’re verging on asshole behaviour.

8.       Enjoyment of the here and now.  Everyone wants to and will move up – but try and enjoy what you’re doing to the full when you’re doing it.

9.       Responsiveness – if I’m trying to get hold of you out of hours it’ll be for a good reason.  If I can’t reach you despite having provided you with every device known to mankind (at your request usually) that’s annoying.  Please note – being available in this way isn’t for everyone.

10.   A desire to improve.  Everyone should have this although in truth, some need it more than others.  That’s life!

They’re my top 10.  I’m sure there are loads more.  Keep your comments coming.  I love to receive and read them and so does everyone else.

We’ve all seen it – the nightmare behaviours of the prima donna MD/CEO.  These are my personal favourites & I can’t wait to hear yours – so please add them in at the comments section below:

1.       Travelling in a different class to everyone else & expecting special treatment everywhere they go.  I used to work for a CEO that travelled business class when our start up could hardly make payroll some months.  Even worse – his PA was sworn to secrecy & if any team members happened to bump into him at the airport or getting on or off a plane, he used to pretend he’d been upgraded.  Pathetic.

2.       Being unable to as much as fart without the involvement of a long suffering PA.  I followed up with a Northern Ireland executive that I’d met in Washington DC about a mutual opportunity we’d discussed when we were in the USA.  He referred me to his PA to book a meeting with him.  I’ve never been back to him since.

3.       Going on & on about how brilliant they are & being the big “I am”.  Linked to this is telling everyone constantly that they are the CEO.  I used to work for a CEO in Belfast (some of you may know him, dear readers...) who at least once a day we would hear shouting from his office “But I am the CEO”...Boy how we used to roll around laughing at that.

4.       Hideous uncalled for temper tantrums.  One CEO I used to work for threw a chair at me one day – and I mean a proper typing chair with a solid metal base.  Had I physically attacked him.  No – I’d caught him in a bad moment & made some comment that he didn’t like & that was the result.  I managed to dodge the chair for anyone who’s wondering.

5.       Spending their investor/shareholder/VC money recklessly – how many times have we seen that?  $50k on a domain name, $150k on a booth used twice a year at conferences, flashy company car, unused apartment in Palo Alto that no-one in the team but the CEO is allowed to use and so on...complete waste of money & no-one dare say anything.

6.       Getting team members to do non job-related stuff for them.  One MD I worked for used to come in late to work & ring in for someone in the office to come out & first of all wait in the car park queue & then park her car.  If I ever get even slightly uppity, Paul says to me – “you’re getting more & more like X” – that puts me straight back into my reality box.  Same MD used to take a taxi from central London to Heathrow airport because she “didn’t like using the tube”.  Other examples of this might be asking members of your team to book personal travel for you or take your cleaning to the dry cleaners.  CEOs – do it yourselves!

7.       Dominating team brainstorming meetings with their own brilliance so that no-one else gets a look-in.

8.       Always hogging the limelight instead of encouraging others to have a go & try taking a lead every now & then.

9.       Leaving meetings when they’ve had their say – their time is clearly so valuable!

10.   Having ridiculous amounts of the latest technology gadgetry – half of which they don’t even know how to use. 

I’m sure there are loads & loads more so let’s get them all out there.  This was an easy blog for me to write as I seem to have worked for more than my fair share of CEO assholes over the years (if you’re reading this John Thornton, you are not included in that pile!).  Having said that, it was one of my main drivers for starting my own business as I thought to myself, this really can’t be too hard if that asshole can do it!