Business Model You – Part 4
A few years ago I spent some time learning about business modeling after reading Business Model Generation. When I spotted Business Model You by the same author on the shelves, I immediately grabbed it, it promised to be the answer to my career planning problem. Business Model You takes the exact same approach used in Business Model Generation but with a very key twist, all of the exercises involve discovering yourself, your abilities and your passions. You can read about the why and see the results of the first part of the book in Part One and the second in Part Two and the third in Part Three.
This was by far the most challenging section of the book, the exercises were easy and the content was pretty slim, in comparison to the other sections, but the concepts were difficult for me to translate into something useful for my career or maybe I should say – where I am in my career right now.
Starting the first section, Act, was a little uncomfortable for me because I did assume that it only applied to entrepreneurs but I did find some areas that were very helpful and could be to anyone, even if you aren’t looking to strike out on your own….
Calculating Your Business Value
You mean you want to tell you why I’m awesome?! I don’t know why that is so difficult for me, likely a shadow of some lesson I learned as a kid. The result though is that I’m not at all comfortable with singing my own praises. I want to get to know people and show them, not tell them flat out. Once I got into it though, I was hooked by the numbers. When managing a development team, I provide a service that has metrics built in that are easy to reference. My projects have an on time delivery average of 98%, a full 60% higher than normal, we meet the scope 100% of the time, 29% better than normal, we haven’t had a bug released in over a year, 32% better than average – those last two speak to rework which doesn’t cost us anything – and when it comes to sup-portability are rating is almost 40% better than average. If you take all of those and apply them to the average cost of a software development project, there is a definite financial benefit to having me on your project.
Does Your Model Match Customer Reality?
I took my model to my customers and asked them for feedback on it. I was pleasantly surprised by how open and honest they all were – good and bad. Many of them have been around for long time and remember how working with my team was in the beginning stages. When I talked to them about how I’d want to teach other teams how to do the same, they were all very positive about it and most agreed that it would be worth paying me for it, knowing what they’d gain in the long term. I did stop there, feeling like the feedback I gained was enough to make me want to refine it more before sharing it with an external party – that’ll be my next steps.
Overall, I felt that this book did help me clarify what I passionate about doing, how I can position myself best for a positive contribution and what value I can bring to any organization. What I’ll do with all of this knowledge, I’m not really sure of at this point. But when I figure that out the lion’s share of the work is ready for me.
If you’re looking to make a career change, struggling with what comes next, thinking about striking out on your own, I think this is an excellent place to start.
Taarradhin 