Having turned 5, One Custom is becoming more start-up!
We’ve been planning to build out, scale, and even export our start-up mentality.
Here are the 5 things we’re taking into our next 20+ years.
1. Be the best+
When we started, we thought we needed to be a little bit of everything to anyone who needed us. Now, after a few years of validation, stable clients we love, and a bit of money in the bank, we’re able to be more single-minded with our core offering and focused on what makes us great.
So, our learning: focus the mission, set a big goal, and define ways to measure our progress along the way. Without sharing the exact wording, for our clients and partners, the summary of our mission is that we’re aiming to be better than anyone else in our space!
2. We can’t do it by ourselves
For a business that sells thinking, it’s easier when you’re small and you get to do all of it yourself. But this becomes challenging as you need to scale because thinking generally isn’t an operational task. We haven’t been able to develop a set of playbooks for what we do and quite honestly, we don’t really want to…
So, either we needed to accept our fate and become more focused on execution or – to stay true to what we want to build – we need to figure out how to build a team of smart consultants. That means we’re learning how to share in co-creating our mission. It also means we work hard to align the career goals of our team with our own growth objectives.
Naturally, this requires a team of smart individuals, and we’ve got one!
3. Test and learn, iterate and move
This part is easiest for us; technology and innovation have been a big part of our experience forever. And we love it! Most of us at One Custom get a bit bored when we’re not doing new things: it’s a big part of our interview and hiring criteria.
Our challenge however sometimes comes in when we want to move faster than we’re allowed to (for various reasons, some better than others). But we believe this uncomfortable space is where growth comes from, and we’re determined to stay true to our mission. Where we know there’s growth in change, we’ll pull those hesitant ones along with us until they see it too. 😊
4. Get social (again)
COVID cramped our style a bit, and since then the defaulting to a Teams meeting got us down a bit too. We’ve always been big proponents of office culture and face-to-face meetings are just better. So, we’re planning on doing a whole lot more human again.
If you’re reading this and you’re stuck working from home in your PJs, give us a shout – we’d love to meet for a coffee.
5. Remember what drives business
It’s customers.
There is nothing more important than our clients. We really believe in all the ones we already work with, and we’ve been building capacity to take this to more. Summary: we’re not shy to sell the One Custom offering! We’re good at what we do, but more importantly, we know that it’s good for growing business.
What does any of this mean to you, dear reader?
What we’ve realised is that this start-up mentality is relevant to more than just us. We think this is relevant to start-ups, scale-ups and even well-established existing businesses. It focuses on what all of us should be focussing on. Start-ups are mission-driven, innovative, nimble and adaptable; and these are the traits that will determine success for many modern businesses, especially those that will be affected by technology (read: most of them). The more you can build more start-up into your operations and culture, the better you will do.
Plus, at One Custom we focus on Customer Experience and systems that can deliver scale. Incidentally, this is also what well-established businesses need to focus on to recalibrate and stay relevant. If this is you and you need some of this recalibrated focus, give us a shout. We’d love to chat, preferably face-to-face.
