Mind Your Own Business

“Mind your own business"

It’s something we’ve probably all been told at some point, usually because we’ve asked a question that somebody else has decided we probably shouldn’t have asked. As a child, I never found it particularly effective. Being told to mind my own business generally made me more interested in finding out what the business actually was, although I suspect that was probably the opposite of the intended effect. There are boundaries in life, though, and perhaps we’d all be better off remembering that a little more often. We spend an awful lot of time looking at what other people have, what they're doing and whether they're doing better than us, and that applies just as much to businesses as it does to individuals.

In business we give this behaviour rather more respectable names. Competitive analysis, benchmarking, market intelligence, positioning and competitive advantage all sound considerably better than admitting that we're looking over the fence to see what the neighbours have got. There’s nothing wrong with knowing what other businesses are doing. In fact, I'd be worried about a business that paid no attention to its market at all. Customers change, prices change and new ways of doing things appear all the time. If you spend twenty years doing exactly what you did on the first day you opened the doors, there’s a good chance that eventually somebody will come along and do it better. Paying attention is sensible. The problem comes when paying attention turns into following, because knowing what somebody else is doing doesn't mean that you need to do the same thing.

knowing what somebody else is doing doesn't mean that you need to do the same thing.

That seems particularly obvious when you look at how people behave outside business. Keeping up with the Joneses is an old expression, but it survives because most of us recognise the behaviour even if we don't use the phrase. Someone gets a new car and the one on our drive suddenly looks a little old. A neighbour has an extension built and our perfectly adequate kitchen starts looking smaller. Friends go on an expensive holiday and the holiday we'd been looking forward to doesn't seem quite as exciting any more. Nothing has actually happened to our own situation. The only thing that has changed is our knowledge of somebody else's. We were quite happy until we found out that somebody else had something we didn't have.

Businesses can do exactly the same thing, although the language makes it sound much more rational. A new service appears and somebody asks whether we should have one. A new technology arrives and suddenly there’s concern that we're falling behind. Prices change, offices open, people are recruited and new markets appear, and each one can produce the same question: should we be doing that too? Sometimes the answer will be yes. The difficulty is that we often don't know why the decision was made in the first place.

Their customers aren't ours. Their costs aren't ours. Their staff aren't ours. Their problems aren't ours. Their ambitions may be completely different. We see the decision because that's the bit that is visible from the outside, but we don't see everything that produced it. An organisation opens another office and we see the office. We don't see the conversations about why they needed it, what it cost, whether the business case depended on assumptions that might turn out to be wrong or whether the people making the decision are now wondering if they got it right. A new product appears on a website and all we know is that it has been launched. We don't know whether customers are buying it, whether it's profitable or whether it will still exist in twelve months. That doesn't mean we should stop looking. It means we need to be careful about what we do with what we see.

The same confusion appears when we talk about competitive advantage. Being better than someone else can certainly be an advantage, but competitive advantage doesn't necessarily mean having more of everything than everyone else. A smaller business may have fewer customers and provide a better service to the ones it has. A company with fewer products may be more profitable because it has concentrated on the things it does well. An organisation that hasn't expanded into every possible market may be in a stronger position precisely because it hasn't taken on work that doesn't suit it.

Being better than someone else can certainly be an advantage, but competitive advantage doesn't necessarily mean having more of everything than everyone else.

We have a tendency to assume that if something is sophisticated, the thing that produces it must also be sophisticated. I've never been particularly convinced by that. During the Covid pandemic, I was instrumental in developing systems in Gibraltar that linked information from hospitals and other parts of the health service with testing, contact tracing and the wider response to the pandemic. We built the back end around Power BI and the tools that were already available rather than deciding that a national emergency required some huge, expensive piece of technology before anything could be done. The system was built and implemented in about ten weeks, cost only a few thousand pounds and worked. It wasn't a prototype that looked good in a presentation but fell over when people actually needed it. It was being used. The Gibraltar Government's own material describes internally developed systems being put together for the pandemic in a short period, including information systems and dashboards supporting contact tracing and near real time information. The work was subsequently recognised by the Gibraltar Government, including a commendation from the Minister, which was probably more satisfying than any amount of talk about digital transformation.

I remember that experience because it demonstrated something that gets lost when we become too impressed by technology. We already had much of what we needed. The challenge was working out how to use it, how to join the information together and how to make the resulting system useful to the people who actually had to respond to Covid. There was no need to spend millions on a sophisticated platform simply because the problem was important. A relatively ordinary tool, used properly, could produce something that was anything but ordinary in its usefulness. The clever bit wasn't the software. It was understanding the problem, understanding the data and getting the different pieces to work together quickly enough to make a difference.

That makes me think about the contrast with the response in England. It would be wrong to say that the NHS Covid app itself cost £37 billion, because it didn't. The app was only a small part of the much larger Test and Trace programme, and the National Audit Office records approximately £35 million being spent on the app in 2020/21. The wider NHS Test and Trace programme, however, had a budget of £37 billion over its first two years, with £22 billion allocated for 2020/21 and £15 billion for 2021/22. The Public Accounts Committee subsequently questioned whether the programme's outcomes justified the scale of expenditure.

There were obviously huge differences in scale between England and Gibraltar, and I'm not suggesting that a system designed for a population of a few tens of thousands could simply be dropped into a country of millions. That isn't the point. The comparison is about how we approach the problem. One approach starts with what is needed and asks what can be built quickly from what is already available. Another can become dominated by the assumption that a problem of sufficient importance requires a correspondingly large technological solution.

The comparison is about how we approach the problem. One approach starts with what is needed and asks what can be built quickly from what is already available. Another can become dominated by the assumption that a problem of sufficient importance requires a correspondingly large technological solution.

That's why I'm sceptical when someone tells me that a particular organisation needs a sophisticated tool because the problem they're dealing with is sophisticated. The two aren't automatically connected. A complicated problem can sometimes be solved quite simply if somebody understands it properly. Conversely, a relatively straightforward problem can become almost impossible when we surround it with layers of technology, procurement, governance, interfaces and consultants. I've seen enough data systems over the years to know that adding another expensive piece of software doesn't necessarily make the underlying process any better. Quite often it just gives us a more expensive way of doing something that was already possible.

We have a tendency to measure success by size because size is easy to see. Turnover can be put on a graph. Number of employees can be compared. Market share can be ranked. Offices can be counted. Awards can be listed. The more difficult questions are usually the ones that don't fit quite so neatly into a table. Are the customers happy? Is the service actually good? Are the people who work there happy with what they're doing? Is the business making sensible decisions for the long term? Does it still have a clear idea what it is trying to be?

Being seen to be successful can become a substitute for being successful. That's when things can start to go wrong. The pressure to look successful can affect the decisions being made. A claim gets made because it sounds impressive. A figure is presented in the most favourable way. Something that might raise questions is pushed into the small print. A process is shortened because proper checking takes too long. The desire to appear successful can become more important than doing the work properly, particularly when everyone seems to be presenting themselves in the best possible light.

The desire to appear successful can become more important than doing the work properly, particularly when everyone seems to be presenting themselves in the best possible light.

The phrase “everyone else is doing it” is particularly dangerous in this respect. It can be used to turn somebody else's behaviour into a justification for our own. Someone cuts a corner, so perhaps we need to cut the same corner. A claim stretches the evidence, so perhaps our marketing needs to be equally ambitious. Another organisation takes advantage of a loophole and suddenly we're discussing whether we can do it too. The question of whether something is right becomes mixed up with the question of whether doing the right thing will put us at a disadvantage. That can be a very short road to somewhere we didn't intend to go.

Ethical decisions aren't always difficult because we don't know what is right. Sometimes they're difficult because we know exactly what is right and don't like the commercial consequences of doing it. If somebody else is prepared to compromise, it can make our own standards look expensive. Yet the fact that somebody else is prepared to do something doesn't make it a good idea for us, and it certainly doesn't remove the consequences when it goes wrong.

A decision might produce better figures this quarter and create a much larger problem two years later. By then the people who made the decision may have moved on, the organisation may have changed and nobody remembers exactly why it was done. What remains is the consequence. We've seen enough examples of organisations having to deal with the consequences of poor data, weak governance, misleading claims and badly designed systems to know that the bill doesn't necessarily arrive when the decision is made.

We've seen enough examples of organisations having to deal with the consequences of poor data, weak governance, misleading claims and badly designed systems to know that the bill doesn't necessarily arrive when the decision is made.

There’s a personal version of this too. We can spend years pursuing somebody else's idea of what a successful life looks like without asking whether we actually want it. A bigger house may be perfect for one family and a financial burden for another. A senior job might be exactly what someone wants while somebody else would hate it. More money is useful, obviously, but the point at which the additional income stops compensating for the extra hours, stress or responsibility will be different for everyone.

You can become very successful at achieving somebody else's definition of success. And social media makes that particularly easy because we're constantly being shown the finished product. We see the holiday but not the credit card bill. We see the house but not the mortgage. We see the promotion but not the hours. We see the successful business but not the years when it nearly failed. Businesses do something similar through websites, annual reports, awards, press releases and corporate social media. None of that is necessarily dishonest. Businesses are entitled to present themselves positively. We just need to remember that we're looking at the shop window rather than walking around the stockroom.

The decision somebody else makes is information. It isn't an instruction. And that distinction is easy to lose when we're worried about falling behind. Someone else's success can be useful because it forces us to question our assumptions. Perhaps they've found something we haven't. Perhaps customers really do want what they're offering. Perhaps we've become complacent. Those are good reasons to look at what they're doing. Simply copying them isn't.

The decision somebody else makes is information. It isn't an instruction. And that distinction is easy to lose when we're worried about falling behind.

I've always found that “why?” is one of the most useful questions in analysis. Why are we collecting this information? Why are we measuring this? Why does this number matter? What decision is it going to change? The same questions work perfectly well in business. Why are we launching this service? Why are we buying this system? Why are we entering this market? Why are we changing the way we work?

If the answer is that customers need it, that's a reason. If it solves a genuine problem, that's a reason. If it makes the business better, that's a reason. If it is simply because somebody else is doing it, I'd want to keep asking questions.

It might turn out that somebody else has made a very good decision and that we should follow their lead. That's fine. The important thing is that we've made our own decision rather than allowing somebody else's decision to make it for us.

That is probably the bit that gets lost when businesses become obsessed with being ahead. The objective becomes beating someone else rather than being good at what we actually do. We start measuring ourselves against external expectations because measurement feels objective, even when the thing being measured isn't particularly relevant. Eventually we can find ourselves running a business designed around what the market appears to expect rather than the needs of our customers or the reasons we started the business in the first place.

we can find ourselves running a business designed around what the market appears to expect rather than the needs of our customers or the reasons we started the business in the first place.

The Joneses don't necessarily want us to keep up with them. They probably aren't thinking about us at all. They're getting on with their own lives, making their own decisions and worrying about their own problems. We are the ones who decide that what they've got is the standard we should be trying to reach.

Businesses can make exactly the same mistake.

Look at what is happening around you. Understand it. Learn from it. Question your own assumptions when there's a good reason to do so. Use better technology when it actually gives you something better. Spend money when spending it solves a problem. Don't be frightened of simple tools simply because somebody else has bought something more expensive. The Gibraltar Covid systems taught me that quite clearly. What mattered wasn't how impressive the technology looked. What mattered was whether it worked, whether it could be built quickly enough and cheaply enough to be useful when people needed it.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to be better. There is nothing wrong with wanting to win. There is nothing wrong with seeing something another organisation has done and thinking that there's something worth learning from.

The mistake is allowing other people's choices to define what winning means.

Sometimes the best business decision isn't to copy the organisation next door. It is to work out what your own customers need, what your own people can deliver and what kind of business you actually want to build.

And if the answer happens to be different from everybody else, that isn't necessarily a problem. Maybe the best advice is the simplest: mind your own business.