Author: Martin Port

As an entrepreneur, you work tirelessly to create a business that wows your customers, boosts your colleagues and supports your partners.

I’m a perfectionist, and I’m always dreaming up new ways to improve our offering, and make life even better for the team.

But sometimes, there are things outside your control that interfere with your ability to be at your best.

Here at BigChange, I’ve done all I can to create a wonderful place to work. We have state-of-the-art coffee machines, an illustrator has created the artwork for our walls, we sit on Herman Miller chairs, and we have a chill-out space that everyone loves. We have introduced a 4.5-day work week for the whole team. We run motivational Mondays every month, bringing in top inspirational speakers, and put on loads of events each year to keep morale high.

But there is one thing that undermines all my efforts to have the perfect workplace: the loos.

We rent our offices and, under the terms of our contract, the landlord is responsible for maintaining certain common areas used by multiple tenants. The toilets fall under the landlord’s jurisdiction.

They are a disgrace.

These toilets haven’t been updated in 20 years. The tiling is old and worn. The sink leaks all over the floor, creating a major hazard. The cubicles are flimsy. The toilets themselves are cheap and nasty. The loo seats are always breaking, leaving a loo out of order – not a good thing when there are only two, plus a disabled toilet, and hundreds of people need to share the facility.

We have been in our new premises for a year and a half. I’ve lost count of the complaints lodged and tickets raised. All our pleas have gone unheard. This is despite the fact we pay a hefty service charge, which is supposed to go towards maintenance.

I believe that your toilets are as important – if not more important – than your office. They contribute to the overall impression of your company. Do you have a bright clean office? Great. Do you have clean and inviting loos? Even better. There is nothing worse than being subjected to a miserable WC.

I feel ashamed when visitors come and ask to use the facilities. They leave our clean and inviting office and have to step into a wet, dank nightmare.

The irony is that our landlord is a company called The Canal & River Trust. You would think that water and sewage would be a priority. This is the same company that owns the Toddbrook Reservoir in Whaley Bridge, Derbyshire. The dam nearly collapsed last year and nearby residents were all evacuated. I guess we should count ourselves lucky we only have a leaky sink to contend with.

This week I was at a roundtable event where I met a man who is as passionate about toilets as I am. Chris Brown is the managing director of Aaztec Cubicles, which creates the most beautiful bathrooms on behalf of organisations across the UK – from swimming baths to government buildings. He kindly listened while I vented my frustrations about our toilet problem.

The worst thing about all this is: I shouldn’t be obsessing about the state of the office loos. I should be spending my time on more worthwhile issues. Fighting with my landlord is a waste of my time, and distracts me from my real job: growing and improving my business. So I’m going to try and put it out of my mind, for now. Or perhaps I’ll grab a sledgehammer and smash the toilette up.

Just kidding…

I find it hard to hear customers talk about using workarounds on our platform. The definition of workaround is “a method for overcoming a problem or limitation in a program or system”.

It suggests there is some kind of flaw or glitch within JobWatch that needs managing, and there isn’t.

What people really mean when they talk about using workarounds is that they are used to doing something a certain way, and they don’t want to change. Even when the change is really small.

Or maybe they have been using a different system that takes care of a small part of a process, and they like using that system (even if JobWatch could do it better, faster, with 10 fewer steps).

I understand that – it’s hard to change a habit of a lifetime.

However, we have 40,000 users on our system right now and I would say that 99% of the people using JobWatch are doing so without any so-called workarounds. Businesses tell me that JobWatch is directly responsible for increasing efficiency and profitability. It has been designed to eliminate paperwork and bureaucracy from the life of a mobile worker, and streamline processes, while creating more opportunities for growth – and that’s exactly what it does.

JobWatch has glowing reviews from across the whole spectrum of industries. This is why I am banning the word ‘workaround’ from the BigChange lexicon. I don’t want to hear it any more. There are no limitations, no problems to overcome. The system has been honed and tweaked to be as close to perfection as possible. Instead, I want customers to talk about making a ‘small change’.

By making very minor changes to the way they operate, updating their approach or process very slightly, they can benefit from the wealth of efficiency that we have to offer. The small change doesn’t affect the business at all – the output and results are exactly the same. It’s the just the method – the path to getting to the goal – that alters a tiny bit.

It’s amazing the impact that words have. By moving away from the negative connotations behind ‘workaround’ towards the positive and progressive meaning behind ‘small change’, I feel that we can help customers to embrace the new, and encourage them to evolve with the technology.

All of us could benefit from making small changes. By trying to do things a little differently – or taking someone’s advice over a new approach – we can all evolve and become more successful.

As an entrepreneur, you are always fielding questions about your plans for the business and growth strategy.

One question that comes up again and again is: who are your competition and what are they doing better than you?

I hate this question. In all my years as an entrepreneur, I have never once tried to copy a rival product, or pretended to be a customer to get access to a sales deck. I have always felt it unethical to obtain this kind of information – especially through underhand means. More than that, it damages your own brand to be too focused on what other companies are doing.

For me, the competition is a distraction that I don’t need. Their plans, their goals, their products, are nothing to do with us. If we start trying to look at all the rival platforms out there, and try and shoehorn things we like into our own system, we risk destroying the beautiful technology we have created.

I don’t wilfully ignore rivals. I talk to our customers about what they want and systems they have used. This means that I’m hearing about competing brands anecdotally, and constantly trying to ensure that our system is the best on the market. But my focus remains zeroed in on BigChange and making small improvements to what we have built.

Obsessing about the competition is the worst thing an entrepreneur can do. While you are trying to copy someone else, they are forging ahead. You never know what the next release will look like – what they’ll add and take away, and why.

Entrepreneurs who try and gain intel on competitors don’t get the full picture. So often, a huge part of what makes a brand exciting and popular is its customer service: how the company supports the product and the way the customer relationship is managed. You can’t accurately assess that from a slide deck or quick demo.

If you knew every detail about all your rivals in the market, maybe you wouldn’t bother to try at all. You can be blinded by information, and overwhelmed by all the spin out there.

As BigChange grows, we will have to be more open with our own systems and expect that the competition will know a lot about us. Companies like Salesforce let you download a trial version of their software for free. It has nothing to hide. We want to be that big someday. If we are afraid of what people will see, then we will be in a pretty bad position.

I’m in the US again – Seattle, this time. As I scan the shelves in Whole Foods, I see hundreds of versions of the same product. If you want eggs, they come in 50 breeds, colours and qualities. The drinks fridges are packed with soft drinks, all just slightly different. Ultimately, the customer benefits from more choice and variety, and all these drinks companies are successful.

As an entrepreneur, you have to believe in your own vision, and back your own offer. That’s not possible if you’re always watching other people, terrified that they are doing things better or faster.

Luckily, I’ve never been afraid of a little healthy competition. I barely remember it’s there. There’s no point looking in your rear-view mirror when you’re miles ahead of everyone.