This is a question that I will explore in my article. Entrepreneurs are the breeds of people who use the power of imagination and realization to monetize their dream. Many started with a selling side hustle. So essentially they start working in their business.
Let’s define what is working on and in business to set the direction.
Working on the business is strategizing to acquire customers, grow and scale the business, improve revenues and increase profits. Working on the business requires strategic thinking to make the business tick. It is looking at the external influencing factors to define the internal responses.
Working in the business is executing plans to deliver the work on the business plans. Working in the business is the strategic action to bring the strategy to fruition. This is looking into the internal mechanism to meet market expectations envisaged in working on the business.
Working on and in the business is like the Siamese twins. They can’t exist individually, they have to co-exist.
Every business comes into being by selling, be it goods or services, without selling, there is no business. So entrepreneurs have to start by selling, a typical norm of starting a business. This selling activity can only happen by working in the business.
However it is not that simple, no one plan to fail yet many fail to plan, noting that working on the business is just as critical at this stage. Having the targeted customer base in mind well before creating the goods or services is a prerequisite for success.
There is this full-time working couple in Perth who dreams of venturing into the F&B business as the hubby cooks well. The couple started by working on the business by researching the market for their hometown food. Their hometown is famous for three cuisines and they found out that two out of three cuisines are readily offered by others, leaving one cuisine unserved. To them, this is a viable option.
The next thing the couple did was set up a weekend pop-up stall for a market tasting of their intended cuisine. The objectives are;
- Gauge the market response.
- Solicit customers’ feedback on the price, portion, taste and service level.
These are inputs for them to work in their intended venture tweaking their product to be a hit with the targeted market after each popup.
Working on the business to create the demand first and then getting to work on building up the supply to meet the demand seems logical yet there are businesses that are successful in working in the business consciously and working on the business subconsciously. Henry Mintzberg’s theory of emergent strategy comes to mind on the subconscious working on the business.
The reality is, business is also very much about returns on investment. Creating and building cost money and every business looks for returns on investment soonest possible, hence there must be a viable chance of success via a demand for your goods or services; this is the domain of working on the business.
There are two possible routes to creating and building the products or services; needs and wants. There are variables and differences in terms of sustainability, demand, price, and dynamism of changes.
Needs are essentials that are less susceptible to disruptive changes plus tend to have a larger market potential with a narrow variety of tastes and variants. Think of male undergarments.
Meanwhile, wants are desires driven that change with time and a wide variety of tastes. Wants are seasonal desirable hyped by trends, women undergarments are both a need and a want with the trendy approach being the want category.
These differences have to be considered although creating values in both is the ultimate outcome.
Entrepreneurs have to decide what constitutes value in their offering. The starting point of working IN the business has to be wearing the shoe of the intended customers to define what precisely is the customer value.
The design philosophy of the late Steve Jobs is apt; start with the customer experience and work backwards, famously referred to as “user experience (UX) and user interface (UI)”. The how of strategic engineering for success by beginning with the end in mind.
Be it working in and on the business, the crux is; the customers have to be central to the endeavour, it starts and ends with the customers. It is about understanding and defining what the customers are willing to pay a price for the value.
Ask yourself this million-dollar question; is there value for money for my customers? When one is unable to put his hand on the handle of value for money then the product/service is not going to gel with the market. It will become a “has been” earlier than expected. A wasted opportunity as well as a loss of opportunity cost.
The purpose of any business is not just to sell although selling is crucial to financial survival, selling is the means to a goal. The purpose as espoused by Peter Drucker is; to win customers. This requires putting the mind together working on and in the business, it is a whole system architecture of engineering value for an identified problem of need and/or want.
Having understood the importance of working on the business is insufficient, it takes two to tango. To win, knowing your why for going into a war and what are the types of battles you are going to face means there is more work needed to launch a business.
Selling a product alone will not work when choices are aplenty, it is about the value. As a baby boomer, the classic coke will always be my go-to coke although the varieties of coke are increasingly forced onto by competition. My value of the classical coke as my thirst quencher hasn’t changed.
Working in business has to handle the ongoing market changes as yesterday’s success is tomorrow’s enemy unless the brand value is an evergreen value. Having created market-driven products/services that will still not sell by themselves, entrepreneurs have to create that demands, and this entails working on the business.
The hard truth is, working in the business can be delegated to others however working on the business is a tough call delegating to others. Working on the business is to dream up a vision of why what and how of going onto this path while working in the business is primarily working out the nitty gritty of a roadmap on how to get there.
Entrepreneurs need to see the bigger picture, to zoom out into the horizon, what the late Steve Jobs termed as knowing the competition as well as the changing landscape. With that big zoomed-out picture, entrepreneurs have to pick the right zoomed-in small picture to work in the business.
Entrepreneurs of today have to live in two realms, the realm of today as well as tomorrow. Due to the adage of changes being the only constant, it is rational and logical to periodically review market assessment whenever changes are sensed. What entrepreneurs must avoid is taking their eyes off the ball by being too engrossed in working IN the business and forgetting to work on the business.
As the Agile management philosophy espoused, changes are part of the business, pre-empt them by working on the senses to sense both disruptive and subtle changes. The early bird catches the early worms, it is the same with market opportunities.
Working on the business entails external collaboration to get a handle on the market changes as sensed by industry peers. Business networking is an important integral asset for businesses as the network is a treasure trove of market insights and information that entrepreneurs can ill afford to ignore.
Both working on and in the business will always be work-in-progress catering to changes occurring in the marketplace. Entrepreneurs must be comfortable working with subjective factors through their sensemaking skills when working on the business unlike working in a business with tangible KPI. The trick is to create tangible value for the market by understanding and comprehending the sensing from the market.
Changes have become part of the business plan, hence it is wise to keep things simple. These changes will and may necessitate reworking the products/ services to respond to the changes, particularly if the offering is want-based.
This reassessing of the working on the business will influence a review of working in the business to assess critically the impact of changes on the business. This is to avoid the endless wild goose chase.
Market changes are swift like the gushing torrential rainwater, to survive, know the risks from working on the business and mitigate these risks when working in the business. This helps to avoid getting caught unprepared by the gushing rainwater.
Aside from peer networking, entrepreneurs must not forget nor ignore their customers when working on their business. Engage the customers to gain their insights on changing expectations. This is a critical yet oft-overlooked aspect of working on the business; tapping into the expertise of the customers.
The customers’ expectations form the base of the value creation for and of the business. Without the customers, there is no market, hence having educated interactions and engagements with the customers’ favours and advantages those entrepreneurs who do so.
There is no right or wrong, a mix of both is necessary to ensure sustainable success. It is the discipline to keep working on and in the business as a work in progress rather than a destination.
Work never ends in a non-binary world for entrepreneurs.
