Do you currently have a thinking partner in your business?
Do you currently have a thinking partner in your business? A Mentor, Non-Executive Director or Chairman to help you grow your business?
At JFP, we call it the Harry Beck factor - and if we had the Intellectual Property on this and charged £100 each time we mentioned this to Business Owners, we would be as rich as Bill Gates!
Not many of you will have heard of Harry Beck but you are all familiar with his work. In fact, if you live in London you then you may experience it on a weekly basis.
Back in the 1930s Harry Beck was an Electrical Engineer, with London Transport. One day he was in the Planning Office - and he said “How’s it going guys, what are you up to?”.
“Updating the London Underground map“ came the reply to which Harry said “If it were me, I would ignore the geographical accuracy and draw the underground line like us Electrical Engineers - all verticals and horizontals”. They did this and came up with a classical design, 260 stations, easy to read - easy to use and which has been copied by many cities around the world.
From complexity, tube map in 1912...
... to simplicity. Harry Beck's tube map, 1933.
And this is exactly what Mentors, Non-Executive Directors and Chairmen / Chairwomen add to company. Valuable outside knowledge that can make the company even more effective and profitable.
P.S. It so happens that my JFP partners and I have developed a scorecard that helps business owners assess where their gaps may be. Here is is: The Business Energiser Scorecard.
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