Problem solving strategies: Using a Board of Personalities

When soloists need advice, what problem solving strategies do they use? It is often tempting to seek the advice of fellow soloists. But are they necessarily the best people to ask? Perhaps a 'board of personalities' will give us a more holistic view.

You can argue other soloists are in the best position to empathise with us and possibly offer us problem solving strategies that worked for them.

While this can be effective to a large extent, we may not be getting the best advice possible in all situations.

Enter the concept of a Board of Personalities. The best way to think of this Board is like a mini Board of Directors with each member having their own unique talents to contribute to your business.

As a guide, you need people on your Board who are:

in different shoes (i.e. not soloists);
believers in you and your business;
extremely good at the role they will be playing and;
open-minded.

Here are some of the personality types and roles you could benefit from on your Board to get started:

Action Hero

This person is biased towards getting things done. He/she is always on your case, ensuring that you’re following through on your priorities. This person will have an in-depth understanding of logistics behind getting something done and will help you keep an eye on scope and timelines.

Sales Superstar

The sales superstar basically informs you of ways you can go about evangelising your offerings. He/she knows your target market very well and knows how to best present your offerings to this market.

Finance Figure

Unlike your accountant who simply “does the books”, the finance figure is intimately involved in the construction of money-making techniques for your offerings and believes in your business. He/she tells you how to best shape things in order to glean prime profits.

Perception Pro

The perception pro understands what people think of you and your offering, and advises how you should go about maintaining or improving your public image. This person should not always be around you in order to keep your senses of reality separate.

Outsider

The outsider should be someone who is completely removed from your business. This person brings external opinions, suggestions and sometimes clarity that might take existing team members a long time to see. Best to alternate this person every 6 or 12 months to keep things fresh.

Obviously there are many options available on how to best make this work. You could either pay all or some of your Board members or alternatively work out some type of mutual value exchange arrangement. Frequency of contribution from the entire Board (or certain members) will also need to be considered.

A Board of Personalities could prove invaluable to the problem solving strategies of your business if you can make it work. The good news is that you can still solicit the great advice from your fellow solopreneur friends while having a panoramic view of professional opinions!

Paul J. Morris is an information systems strategist. This incredible title means that he helps businesses become more efficient at what they do while keeping them on track with their goals.

4 comments | Add your own

Go, Paul.
For some reason when we go solo, and we dump the corporate model, we dump the good things as well - such as the multi faceted collection of people and advice that surround us in corporate.
I've been solo for five years (now with three staff), and am installing a new set of software. It came with a change control sheet - I've never seen one of those in smallsville, and it never occured to ask why not, since it kept me out of serious hot water in the big places, and would have saved me bother on previous jobs in smallsville.
Denise from Kumeu
Can you please explain what a 'change Control Sheet' is?
Very interested
Thank you Sally Hollis from Sydney
Thanks for your comments folks! Sally, I'm not sure what you're referring to in this article but I'll have a stab at trying to answer your question anyway. Considering that change control "...is a formal process used to ensure a product, service or process is only modified in line with the identified necessary change" (thanks Wikipedia for the definition), I'm thinking that a change control sheet would document the process as outlined here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_Control. Paul J. Morris from Sydney, Australia | Read my articles
also paul there is a change control sheet template example here http://system.vccs.edu/AIS/documents/VCCS_Change_Control_Sheet.doc ruth williams from sydney

4 comments | Add your own

Add Your comments

Preview comment

Name

Website *

Town / city and country

Email (never sold, displayed or given away)

* This will link your name to your site. So please avoid self promotion elsewhere! We delete spam, disrespectful or off-topic comments.