3 tips for working with people who are making the new rules for work

“I like working with people who are making the ‘new rules’ in their chosen field,” said one person. “Certainly I can help those who are trying to be creative inside the ‘old rules’, but sometimes institutions can squash people’s enthusiasm. It’s great encouraging individuals and teams who are pioneering the way.”

Let’s imagine you want to work with people who are making the new rules. Here are three steps you can take towards helping them to succeed.

1) You can identify the people who are making the ‘new rules’.

Start by identifying the people who are either pioneers or working in pioneering fields. The first group will probably be people who believe in following certain principles to achieve the ‘prize’. They won’t be into ‘painting by numbers’. At the same time, however, they know it is vital for them to produce the goods. This will be especially so if they are aiming to do pioneering work in an established organisation. They recognise that: “If you are going to be a deviant, you have to over-deliver.” The second group will probably be in the ‘newer industries’. These may include new media, social networking organisations, marketing, high tech and even parts of retail. Both groups of people believe it is vital to ‘show a better way’.

Looking around your network – and elsewhere – who are the people who fall into these two categories? Try completing the following sentence.

The people who are making the new rules are:

*

*

*

2) You can clarify what you can offer to the people who are making the ‘new rules’.

You can tackle this part by doing three things. First, clarify the specific products or services that you can offer to the people who are making the new rules. Second, clarify the specific challenges that these people may be facing. Third, clarify how what you can offer can help these people to succeed. “I found this part difficult,” said one person. “It called for getting inside the customers’ heads and clarifying the benefits of what I offer. Certainly I should be doing this anyway, but it was a good discipline.” Try completing the following sentences.

The specific things – the products or services – I can
offer to people who are making the new rules are:

*

*

*

The specific challenges facing the people
who are making the new rules may be:

*

*

*

The specific benefits these people
can get from the things I offer are:

*

*

*

3) You can work with these people and help them to succeed by making the new rules.

“Five years ago I started this recruitment business which specialises in working with new media companies,” said one 35-year-old MD. “Now I have 30 employees, a turnover of £10 million and a profit of £500k. We built this company by offering something new in our field. Certainly we could make shed-loads of money by operating like a ‘traditional’ recruitment agency. But we really aim to put the right people in the right places in the right companies. This calls for making sure there is a ‘values-fit’. Once I spent my time getting out to customers, building relationships and satisfying their demands. But now I spend my time supervising our people and fire-fighting. My senior colleagues and I need to get into the market and stay close to our customers, but it is proving difficult to do that and run the business. Have you any suggestions?”

How would you work with this MD? The person who did so helped the MD and their leadership team:

* To communicate the vision throughout the business;

* To hire an operations director – a ‘co-ordinator’ – who took care of the day-to-day operations;

* To get the senior partners to do what they did best – building relationships with key decision-makers in client companies;

* To practice what they preached to other companies – clarifying their own company values, then recruiting and rewarding people who lived these values.

* To stay strategic – continually asking themselves: “What are the 3 key things we can do to give ourselves the greatest chance of success?”

Putting these principles into practice, the company increased its profit to 10% of turnover. It also improved its ratings on customer satisfaction and internal morale. (The latter called for starting again with a blank piece of paper and asking: “If we were to start this business again tomorrow, which of our people would we rehire?” Then acting on this information.) The company went from strength to strength.

Let’s return to your potential clients. How can you help them to succeed by following the new rules? Try completing the following sentence.

The specific things I can do to work with these people
and help them to succeed by following the new rules are:

*

*

*

Everybody knows the rules of work have changed, but many organisations still operate as if they are in the 1970s. Certainly it is possible to help people to get more oxygen in these organisations. But you may prefer to work with those that are making the new rules for work.