Around 80% of startups close down within their first year of operation. While some of these go down simply because of part time involvement of the founders, lack of persistence and fizzling out of passion, a large percentage go down during their transition from a Startup(Micro) phase to a Small Business phase. A business can aim for the long term only when the owners have vision and concentrate on building a value system based on THRILL – Trust, Honesty, Respect, Innovation, Loyalty and Love. Since most of these are subjective, many businesses don’t believe in writing them down or have policies to define the role of THRILL in their company. But a closer look at each of these factors tells us how important it is for each one of these to be a part of your day to day business activities if you are seriously looking at building a company that grows consistently.

Trust:
If your customers don’t trust you, they are going to buy from someone else – no matter how good you think you are. If your employees don’t trust you, they are going to treat your customers badly. If your vendors don’t trust you, they are not going to extend any credit to you. So trust is a factor that forms the basic foundation pillar of pretty much everything that is your business. So how does this trust develop?

Honesty:
If you , the owner of the business, think that you are going to get away with treating people with anything that is not totally honest, you will just be fooling yourself. Not being honest is sooner or later going to land you as the owner in the shoes of someone like Dick Fuld of Lehman Brothers, Ken Lay of Enron or Ramalinga Raju of Satyam Computers. If you don’t do what you said you will, you are going to shake up the integrity of the business. Sooner or later, your employees are going to follow suit and it is going to lead to nothing but degradation of the culture within the company. Honesty and fearlessness go hand in hand. A simple example of this is telling your client that you have not clearly understood the exact requirements for the second time in a row instead of feeling embarrassed to ask again and working with half an understanding. Or not letting your customer know that you are not going to be able to deliver in time. Committing fake product features. Sometimes, this may lead to some short term profit, but it is going to cost you heavily in the long term. Dishonest behavior is almost always going to create a communication gap, reduce trust and boost corruption Being diplomatic may seem to be a simpler affair most of the times, but it is honesty and straight forward attitude that’s going to hold the company together in the long run.

Respect:
To a certain extent, honest behavior can be embedded into the business through policies – but respect is one factor that is born within the organization and must seep through from the owners to the management and finally to the employees. You cannot treat your employees rudely and expect them to be sweet and caring to your customers. In your absence, your employees are going to treat customers just the way you treat them. You are going to command respect only if you give respect. And a culture of respect is born only when the owners lead with example. If you come across a company where the employees are frowning all the time, check their immediate bosses or the owners, most often than not, that’s where the root of the problem is going to be. Dedication and passion come from people who feel good about themselves and have a high level of self respect which comes from being treated with respect all the time. This also applies to the quality of the product/service you deliver. If the employees observe that you are sloppy and not worried about the quality of the final delivered product, they are going to nurture the same attitude.

Innovation:
Innovation is basically trying the same thing in a different and more efficient way for better results and a higher level of excellence. Anyone who says that this is the best way to do something and there is no need to look for alternatives, is giving an open invitation to competitors to come and screw their business. Change is essential because companies who don’t adopt change are going to be stagnant and are bound to be hit by competition. If you, as the owner are not prepared to adopt change and do not encourage people to go through some apparently unpleasant changes for the future of the company, you are just going to keep digging into unsuccessful rut for years. The entire American car industry had to learn this lesson of innovation the hard way when Japanese car makers started taking them apart. Businesses that show the willingness to embrace change during difficult times are the ones who are vibrant and show sustained growth. It is companies who are continuously finding better ways to market, manage HR, log in accounts, handle cash flow, and are striving hard to consistently achieve excellence in every aspect, who come through sailing smoothly through thick and thin. And for those who don’t believe in measuring and improving continuously, sooner or later, they are sure to go out of business or just stay a mediocre business that keeps dragging along for years.

Loyalty :
Loyalty is an automatic effect of the points discussed above and is the cause for amazing level of faith, increase in productivity and gain in competitive advantage. Loyalty within the company is going to lead to high levels of morale which naturally results in low absenteeism, higher levels of dedication and smoothening out of day to day operations. A growing business means that the owner has to move out of the day to day operations and concentrate on the business rather than stay in the business. Responsibilities can be easily delegated if the level of loyalty in the organization is high. Any owner caught up in the daily activities is just going to find himself doing a mundane job and not running a business. And unless loyalty is developed within the company, delegation is always going to be a tough task.

Love:
If we have a look at the most influential business leaders like Sam Walton of Walmart, Richard Branson of Virgin, Dhirubhai Ambani of Reliance Industries, Steve Jobs of Apple Inc (after his return to Apple), Narayan Murthy of Infosys etc., one thing that we observe is their ability to lead with love. They command so much love that there are people whom they have inspired to sacrifice their whole life for their mentor’s ideals. A more precise way to look at this is to look at so many smart people who don’t step ahead as influential leaders. You can be exceedingly smart, but unless the smartness is backed with the instinct of doing something good, you are going to be just momentarily impressive to people. Crude smartness starts to stink after a while unless it is backed with the willingness to do some good. And this is good for anyone who is running a company with 5 employees or 5Mn employees.

Anyone approaching employees, customers and vendors with anything that is less than the 6 points of THRILL is not looking forward to a long term relationship with either one of them. Try judging businesses on the scale of THRILL and you will find that the ones who score high are the ones who have the ability to achieve excellence and sustained growth and more importantly, higher levels of overall happiness throughout the business. After all, isn’t happiness what we all are seeking!

Rahul is the managing partner at Ensemble Consultants Inc – a web2.0, CRM and BPM software development company based in Illinois, with their main development center in Pune,India. Interests include Indian politics, world economy , travel & business and mocking on current affairs. Currently based in Melbourne and establishing base for 2 of our products : EC24×7.com – end to end web solutions for SMB’s and Surecents.com – custom CRM for small businesses.
He writes on 2 blogs :rahulrane.wordpress.com – for business and web2.0 &
www.arerelax.blogspot.com – for politics and economy.

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