This blog post is a bit different to the content we normally post. This month is Safehand’s eighth birthday and this led me to think about the things that we’ve got right and wrong over the years. So, for what it’s worth, here’s eight things we’ve learned as clinical safety consultants in the last eight years:
The customer isn’t always right
The old adage that the customer is always right only goes so far. At Safehand developing a strong relationship with our customers is pivotal. And sometimes that extends to us having to challenge or, just occasionally, outright disagree with them. But we’ve learnt that that’s what our customers pay us to do. It’s when we identify those little safety-related idiosyncrasies of a product or implementation that our services come into their own. It’s the nature of safety consultancy that an approach of tough love is sometimes needed – our customers respect that, value our honesty and see that it’s in their interests at heart. It’s an odd feeling the first time a customer thanks you for telling them that they might want to revisit their plans.
Outsource where you can
As a business owner, a lesson I learnt early on is to identify a) what you are good at and b) what you enjoy. If your time can be better spent elsewhere then a task should be outsourced to someone who does have the time and will frankly do a much better job of it. Ultimately, it’s the same message we give to our customers so it’s important that we practice what we preach.
Insource the really important stuff
Whilst outsourcing is perfect for fringe services like website design, accounting and IT support, some things need to be kept in house. We made a decision early in our journey not to rely on contractors for our Clinical Safety Officer services – and it was the right call. Living our values demands consistency, repeatability and guaranteed availability of staff. We recognised that having a solid team working in complete harmony was needed to provide the level of service we aspired to. Putting that in the hands of disparate sub-contractors was too great a risk.
Be responsive
I hate chasing people for things – especially when I’m paying the people whom I’m chasing! Right from the outset I wanted to build a company that was easy to do business with and at the heart of that is all the simple stuff like answering emails, keeping customers up to date and charging what you said you would charge. And we found that once you set a culture of being responsive, the team around you will quickly adopt those same behaviours. Do we get it right every time? No, not quite. But the fact that it makes us feel really bad if we do get it wrong tells us how important it is to our business and culture.
Write down how you do stuff
Holding everything in your head is great when there’s just a couple of you. But as you start to scale, inconsistencies creep in. Soon people have ‘their way of doing things’ which, whilst well-meaning, can get exponentially difficult to manage as a coherent company. We’ve learnt to listen to our team, agree a method, write it down and all stick to it. And if those processes turn out not to be quite right, we can update them and make things better. Our internal Safehand Wiki holds the blueprint of everything we do – it’s a labour of love but it’s transformed our ability to scale.
Empower your people to tell you that you are wrong
It’s a significant weakness in a leader for them to believe that they are always right. Or even often right. I like to work with people who will challenge my ideas, poke holes in my assumptions and get me to think in different ways. And if my idea stands that test, I can have comfort that it’s probably a good one.
Your team is everything
When I worked in a corporate environment I would look up to my seniors and admire their power, wisdom and influence. Now I’m the boss, I look to my team and realise that it is they who hold the power, wisdom and influence. Without them, the company is nothing but a set of policies and procedures – it’s the people who bring it to life. And developing a corporate culture of feeling safe at work, of being supported and achieving fulfilment is pivotal to everyone’s wellbeing.
Cheap stuff gets cheap results
When we first started, money was tight. We spent time looking for free resources, budget tools and low-cost hardware. And these things work for a while, but you need to recognise that point where investment is needed so you can scale. Whether it’s business software, insurance, advice or communication tools, cheap rarely does the job well. My COO will never forgive me for the brick of a laptop I bought her in our first year – sorry @JuliaCawthorne.
So there it is, eight things we’ve learned to date. Here’s to the next eight years.