My next steps.....

At the end of last year I decided it was time to change course in my career and get back to doing what I love.

The past six weeks have given me the time and perspective to reflect on my very unconventional career and discover the common threads that have led to various opportunities and experiences since I launched my first business in 2006. 

Over the years I've developed everything from a car detailing business, a gym, a real estate portal, a marina development, technology consultancy, and e-commerce web sites. Why? I love the process of designing and executing new business ventures. 

For me, the process of developing a business goes back to my childhood obsession with Lego. I would spend hours tinkering away building models of cars and spaceships, which I would proudly display on my bookshelf. Rarely did I use the instructions, I always wanted to build what was in my imagination, I wanted to build the spaceship I dreamt about with the oversized wings and rocket launchers. 

The process of designing and building a business is like Lego. As entrepreneurs we acquire various pieces to build our dream company, so that one day we can sit back and admire what we have built.

The problem is that entrepreneurs and business executives rarely have all the pieces they need to build the company they dream about. Often when they get the right pieces in place, the market comes and destroys their business model like mischievous sibling throwing your new lego spaceship on the ground. 

When I started Clear Business Dynamics in 2012 I felt that we were at the start of a new era in business and wanted to help other business owners leverage my experience. The development of technologies like cloud software, API’s and mobile devices were breaking down the barriers to launching and growing businesses. The past five years have seen these technologies transform the way we live and the way we do business, for better and for worse. In 2012 disruption came in the form of new app or integration that could make your business more efficient and enable some efficiency gains over your competitors. 

Over the past 5 years the rate of technology and business model innovation has exceeded the expectations of many, but more importantly it has exceeded the rate at which most companies can adapt let alone grow. Whilst these advances have presented a huge opportunity, few businesses have been able to harness the capabilities of technologies like cloud or big data, or have been brave enough to make fundamental changes to their business model.

The future of business relies on a companies ability to be agile and collaborate with stakeholders internally and externally, to adapt to constant changes in the market and technology. These pillars of agility and collaboration are built into the DNA of the startup companies who are disrupting industries from health care, transportation, finance and business services. Like a team building a large scale Lego model, they plan, gather resources and set about building the model layer by layer. 

During my time as CTO of Accodex I worked with many businesses who were feeling the pressures of industry and technology changes, many of them believed that upgrading their finance software or point of sale system would fix the problems. Many of my clients wanted these technologies implemented with the minimum amount of change and disruption to the organisation, they were focused on the location of a button instead of the improvement of financial accuracy or customer experience - they were focused on the technical solutions rather than the outcomes. Many of these engagements failed to meet the objectives, because from the outset the client wanted little more than a faster, prettier version of what they already had, they simply wanted to pay me to follow the instructions and make it look like the picture on the box.

There were clients however, who started with an larger business objective and viewed the technology (software) simply as a means of delivering wider value to the organisation. The ability to launch a mobile workforce, to deliver faster employee access to data, to reduce customer frustration purchasing online. My role in these engagements was to guide the client through the process, to understand the objectives and constraints within the organisation and to enable the employees and stakeholders to plan and deliver tangible results. 

When I left Accodex I made a decision that I wanted to continue to do the latter. Work with company's who embrace change, who aren’t scared of creative destruction and who ultimately want to do good things for their stakeholders and society in general.

Going forward my consulting activities will be focused around the development and execution of strategic roadmaps, supported by the implementation of software tools that facilitate team collaboration and the delivery of projects based on agile project management methodologies.  I will be working with early stage companies and their investors to develop data driven operational systems that support scale, as well as larger SME’s with an agenda to drive transformation and innovation throughout the organisation. In short, providing the framework, tools and expertise to help businesses "get stuff done"

The exciting part of this new step is that it opens the door for me to work with many people within my personal and business network, the principle of collaboration relies on people with a range of skills and experiences coming together to deliver results. Ultimately this is the next step in my larger goal of impacting the way businesses are designed and developed, so that companies are able to solve real world problems that have a positive and lasting impact on society. 

I would like to personally thank so many of you who have helped me learn many of these important lessons and who have reached out to offer support and opportunities over the past six weeks.