Blackhawks Chicago Ice Hockey Stanley Cup

Scaling up in Chicago means finding talent. Our return to Chicago saw us watch the Chicago Blackhawks, and following 60 minutes of play the Hawks and Nashville were even stevens. What should have been a quiet work night out instead saw extended play, and we returned back to the hotel at 1am. Thankfully the Blackhawks had won, and for those of you who have never been to an ice hockey match I would thoroughly recommend watching a Stanley Cup game.

Back in England, Harry Kane of Tottenham Hotspurs is an up and coming talent. His namesake Kane of the Blackhawks is one of the stars of the Chicago ice hockey team. So where do you find talent? And specifically where do you find tech talent in Chicago.

Entrepreneurial hub 1871 was opened in the Merchant Mart in the city in 2012. We attended an Innovation event one evening with a panel discussion. The audience included tech entrepreneurs, investors and city heavy weights. Speakers included Chicago Ventures, a professor from The Kellogg School and others. Whilst the discussion was very interesting, one of panel started dishing the British as being risk averse. Upon hearing this my natural reaction was to rebuke this as I said ‘I beg your pardon’. Now this sort of rebuke would have been laughed off in Britain but not in America where they don’t understand irony in the same way we do. Of course the lady in question was right – the Brits are risk averse, as I was the only Brit in a hall of hundreds. I apologised after the panel had finished and explained how on reflection I agreed with her statement.

1871 Innovation Debate

Visiting marketing agencies later in the week, I learnt that in the UK you have hit to connect with people’s heads whereas in America it’s through the head.

I guess the Hawks had touched my heart with their comeback victory, and I must now go and buy a Blackhawks shirt. As for finding talent, connecting with 1871 and with the Department of Commerce should help that. We hired two more members of staff so our talent pool is growing across cultures. And we certainly need Americans who understand the local culture to serve local customers. We are after all two countries separated by a common language!

The fragility of business and the need for change

Phones4u stores close after losing key customers

Before I set up Webanywhere in 2003 I spent 5 years in the world of work following my graduation from the University of York. My first interview involved an elevator pitch. I arrived on Mark Lane just off the Headrow in Leeds for an interview with Ian Holding, the Sports Director of TEAMtalk.com, one of the top 10 websites in the UK at the time. Ian had just bought a sandwich and we got chatting in the lift. Thankfully my first impressions must have been favourable and my name dropping of Andrew Gilligan (my cousin – a famous journalist) must have added some credibility – I had landed a temporary job.

TEAMtalk football news site failed to monetise it’s readership

The role started out with me working just a few days a week, which soon led to full-time employment. For six months I had no contract and worked for £5 an hour until just after Christmas, when I landed a full time contract. Whilst TEAMtalk had millions of readers, it was unable to monetise its content and after three years of service I was made redundant. I was the second person to leave the business after the HR manager. Whilst TEAMtalk had grown its staff from 50 to 500 and moved to new flashy offices in Wellington Street, it had failed to generate sufficient revenues. It was acquired firstly by UK Betting plc and then lately Sky. Just this week the TEAMtalk office in Leeds has now been shut down making it the end of an era. I still have a lot of friends from the TEAMtalk days and lots of web based skills were learnt on TEAMtalk’s watch.

My next role was with the Caudwell Group in Stoke-on-Trent. Entrepreneur John Caudwell had built up his telecoms empire to include Phones4u and Singlepoint. I was employed as a developer in a start up within Singlepoint called Wizcom which specialised in mobile commerce. John Caudwell wisely sold his business to a Private Equity group a few years ago for £1.5 billion. If you’ve read the news in the last couple of month you will have seen about the closure of Phones4u. The large telecoms players were no longer prepared to do business with them which ultimately led to Phones4u’s demise and the job losses which followed.

Egg Bank was split and sold to BarclayCard and The Yorkshire Building Society

Egg Bank was my last tenure as an employee. I was hired as a contractor for the Prudential-owned internet bank based in Derby. The lucrative contract allowed me to save the cash to start my business Webanywhere and to follow my dream. Again, not too many years ago, Egg was split and sold off. Once a darling of the internet age, Egg had failed to adapt and its credit card business was sold to BarclayCard while the Yorkshire Building Society acquired Egg’s savings arm.

So what does this mean? It means that all three of the businesses which I used to work for as a young professional have since folded. TEAMtalk had failed to monetise it’s readership. Phones4u had been too reliant on a small number of large mobile phone operators and Egg had failed to adapt and change to a heavily competitive credit card market.

Businesses are indeed fragile, and the job of the leader is to challenge your staff to change and adapt. If a business does not serve its customers and their needs then you have no business. Morrison’s (and their lack of reaction to online shopping until recently) is a good recent example of how losing touch with customers can negatively impact a business. Getting back to basics and listening to your customers is what’s important.

Webanywhere’s core value is flexibility and we co-create our software with our customers to ensure we don’t fall foul of these mistakes. Businesses which get complacent, greedy, arrogant or lack energy will fail. We must be flexible to navigate head winds and avoid some of the dangerous paths ahead.

Debt and leverage make a business fragile. Webanywhere does not have any debt and is not geared up. Optionality leads to anti-fragility and with Webanywhere operating in three locations this helps us take risk out of our business. Top-down management-planning leads to fragility, which is why we prefer bottom-up management. Finally, Webanywhere has a large customer base of 4,000 customers, so rather than relying on a few large ones we can spread our risk around.

If you find this subject interesting, have a read of the following book:
Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the bestselling author of The Black Swan and one of the foremost thinkers of our time, reveals how to thrive in an uncertain world.

Wealth Dynamics the Secrets to Success

Personality Types

Roger Hamilton a Cambridge graduate who now lives in Bali has devised a system call Wealth Dynamics. I have been learning about Wealth Dynamics and applying this to my business and my teams.

Roger starts with the fact that we are all geniuses but we must stop doing things which we find hard or make us unhappy. Whilst in principle this seems pretty obvious the reality of adult life is this does not happen. Often in careers people focus on weaknesses rather than playing to strengths. Roger says we should hire our weaknesses and play to our strengths. Of course what is our weakness is someone else’s genius.

In order to work effectively in teams we must first understand ourselves. There are four types of genius. Each type of genius has different passions and strengths. Not only do these types apply to success in business but they can also steer you to happiness in your personal lives. We must focus on the things we are great at so that we go from ordinary to extraordinary.

Dynamo genius likes to create, blaze genius loves to connect, tempo genius love to serve and steel genius loves the details. Your winning formula is someone else’s losing formula. In effect you can take yourself and your team and place them on a square. The top line of the square represents people with intuition and their head in the clouds. These people are good at creating products with new ideas. The bottom line of the square is for people with their ears to the ground and they like to serve. On the far right of the square are extrovert people interested in connecting, and on the left hand side there are people who like the devil in the detail.

One of the major problems in business is people playing out of position and not using their talents to the best of their abilities. By mapping out your team onto a square you can then form a picture of the imbalances in your team and where you need to hire next i.e. your team’s weakness. Do you need more blaze, dynamo, tempo or steel people.

Relating this back to your business role models is an interesting exercise. Are you a creator like Richard Branson or Bill Gates, with your head in the clouds? Are you a supporter, such as Jack Welch, the famous former CEO of GE, blazing and leading the business? Are you a Donald Trump who likes to do deals where it’s all about timing? Or are you a Warren Buffet who likes to accumulate?

Whatever you are are and whoever you are, there is nothing wrong in how you have been wired. What is important is to realise your habits, your communication style and your personality so you can leverage these for business success. When you and your colleagues understand and do this, you will be part of a winning team!

You can learn more about yourself on the GenuisU site.

Start with Curiosity

It was back in 2010 when Professor Jeff Gold explained to me the importance of values. During a similar time I had watched a Harvard Business Review Ideacast on the importance of having a company purpose. Once I understood these theories, setting the company values and our cause was straightforward. Our purpose was to create jobs and I measure my success by this. Our company values are to be flexible, fun, contribute, go the extra mile and to keep learning. Furthermore we want superstars who are curious, proactive and helpful.

We have 8 core values at Webanywhere but one of the values if mastered can make living the other values much easier. You can often tell how curious a person is by the number and quality of the questions they ask. The best paid consultants in the world are paid the big dollars for the quality of the questions they ask. A curious person having a taxi ride will be so curious they will know where the taxi driver was born, his interests, his family, his challenges, his upbringing and probably his life history.

I was taught from a young age that it was rude to ask too many questions. Certainly asking 20 questions would be too much! However, my thinking has changed as I have matured. I learnt from UK Entrepreneur James Caan that anything you want to know is in somebody else’s head. Therefore all you need to do is ask the right questions.

In an interview situation a curious candidate will have done their homework on the company in question and will have many questions to ask. A curious co-worker will always ask questions to further understand the truth. When troubleshooters enter businesses to turn them around they often use the “5 Whys” technique to get to the root cause. Remember, in business the key is to find the business problem, so seeking the opinions of workers is important, especially those closest to the coal face.

All in all, curious people have more active minds, they are open to a world of opportunities and have ideas. Curiosity limits waste, drives sales, helps innovation and creativity. Of course, curiosity by itself is no use, and adds no value. You need to combine your curiosity with the energy of proactivity and helpfulness, which makes every member of staff and every customer feel like they are walking on the red carpet.

If you are reading this blog and have watched our video, you too have a curious mind! To be curious implies you are eager to learn and to change.

Chicago’s 5th Biggest Snow Fall

Sean in Chicago following one of the worst snowfall in years

Having just returned from Chicago I can draw comparisons with Webanywhere’s journey in America to my very own personal journey which started early last Sunday morning.

I left the house in darkness early on Sunday morning, the first day of a new month. Thankfully the snow was melting in the UK as I made my way across the Pennines. At Manchester Airport I met up with a colleague and we journeyed together across the Atlantic. Our flight was indirect so a short layover would be needed before our onward journey to Chicago. I thought this would be good as we could stretch our legs and perhaps grab something to eat.

Little did we know what was about to hit us! Winter Storm Linus arrived on the Sunday creating misery for hundreds of thousands of passengers and the cancellation of thousands of flights. Apparently naming snowstorms is a new thing in the US, and Linus was unforgiving.

With our flight cancelled we booked ourselves in the Doubletree by Hilton near the airport. The only bonus was the ability to watch the Super Bowl, and I must say the Americans certainly know how to put on a show. The game ended in controversy with Boston’s New England Patriots narrowly beating the Seattle Seahawks due to some mishandling of the ball. Our journey onwards to Chicago was about to get more controversial as we started to worry about the handling of our luggage.

Having had our original flights rescheduled we decided to switch airline from American to JetBlue. The high passenger demand meant we needed to fly via Boston to Chicago, adding to further delays, and now the cancellation of some business meetings too. Remaining upbeat, we boarded the plane and took off from a rainy and drizzly Philadelphia.

Just as we entered Boston airspace the pilot came on the tanoy, saying “I’m sorry to announce ladies and gentleman but I’m instructed snow storm Linus is making it unsafe to land. We have been asked to turn around and head to JFK.”

Legacy Christian Academy

We landed in New York thinking perhaps a short delay would prevail and we could set off again to Boston. This wasn’t to be the case. We then switched to another JetBlue aircraft with our bags still on the other plane. Again waiting on the tarmac, the snow continued to fall and once again the plane was cancelled.

A night in the Big Apple was inevitable so we rang around 10 hotels until luckily managing to find 2 rooms at the Best Western near the airport. The plastic plates for breakfast were not the best but on the upside we managed to get a direct flight to Chicago the following evening. Luckily we were reunited with our bags at JFK and arrived in Chicago under 19 inches of snow – the fifth largest recording of snowfall in it’s history. The greatest irony of all was that my brother had set off to San Francisco 2 days earlier had now beaten us to Chicago!

“Failing big” in America is embraced, whilst in the UK this is not widely accepted. Indeed, Webanywhere started it’s USA journey back in 2010, experiencing a similar stop-start scenario. Our USA expansion certainly hasn’t been a crash landing but nor has it been an easy passageway. As they say in business, it’s not the destination but the journey that matters.

Stop-Start Journey to Chicago

Equally, in online learning it’s easy to measure the outcomes of learning via the grade book, but what is more interesting is the journey and the learner journey. Measuring the progress and learning pathways of students online with big data is exciting. Mapping this big data to their final destinations will create a new industry for the acquisition of talent, and that’s a journey I find fascinating. Webanywhere might build great systems and radar for these student learner journeys, but organisations will always need great pilots – and that’s you, the educators.

Webanywhere is now taking off and is hitting new altitudes, spreading its wings across many States and corporations in America. We will continue to learn from our onward journeys as we meet new people and prepare for obstacles along the way.

Find out more about Webanywhere’s US division at www.webanywhere.us

BETT Show Excel London 2015 Moodle with Microsoft

Sean and the Webanywhere team at BETT 2015 Excel London

Webanywhere’s 5th BETT Show in London saw us launch a number of new products and services. Our two main product lines now have OneDrive integration which allows schools to quickly use their Office365 files in both our School Jotter and Moodle platforms. The Moodle functionality has been released to the open source community making it free for anyone to use. The key advantage of storing files on OneDrive is the ability to access your files at anytime and on any device. Office365 makes version control of your documents a breeze and avoids the pain of duplicate files causing confusion. You could start a word document on your mobile phone and then see it in your Moodle LMS with no extra work involved.

During the Moodle with Microsoft Better Together Seminar including Jason Cole, CEO of Remote Learner and Doug Mahugh, Senior Technical Evangelist of Microsoft Open Technologies a walk through of how Moodle can play with Office365, Azure, Active Directory, OneDrive and OneNote was demonstrated. This code has been released to the open source Moodle community and I was particularly impressed by how OneNote assignments could be submitted and then marked.

Webanywhere BETT 2015 Stand

Once the presentation had finished I asked what the plans for the future would be and whether Office Mix (PowerPoint with narration functionality, quizzes and analytics) and Yammer (a social network) would be on the development roadmap. Doug replies this was being investigated and future developments could also include Skype integration. Skype of course would be great for starting an online meeting straight from Moodle.

The lecture theatre was certainly packed for the Moodle with Microsoft talk and the new integrations look like they will improve productivity and easy of use for a great many teachers. After all teachers want to be teaching and coaching not conducting unnecessary administration which can be solved by new technologies! It makes sense to link Moodle the most popular open source learning management system in the world with Microsoft who have a strong reputation for their office productivity software.

No pain no gain