Business Lessons from the Art World

A Recurring Issue

Seven years ago my wife commissioned two paintings. The artist had sketched our daughters when they were very young and I love the drawings. Once more my wife wanted to surprise me on my birthday with artwork.

What followed has a lot in common with small businesses when I start working with them. While there is a clear and rigorous process to create a product, the idea of disciplined commercial processes is alien. This lies behind the failure of many otherwise viable companies.

As an example, one half of UK small businesses does not have a budget. They spend money based on what is in the bank account and overlook that funds should be earmarked for payroll or taxes. Accounting can be outsourced for relatively little, but the owners would rather ignore the problem than bear the cost.

Surprise and Delight

The painting began with a studio sitting in a London hotel. Sketches were drawn, photos taken and questions asked. All went well and my wife was excited to see what developed.

Then the artist fell ill. There was a long period with no communication, before something remarkable occurred. A digital image arrived of how the artist imagined my elder daughter to look, three years after their last meeting. It is both captivating and accurate.

There was also a video of the painting process, which itself is a work of art. It shows the evolution of the picture, the choice of colour and is an insight into the craft. It was both a surprise and a delight.

My wife was told the picture was almost finished. There followed a series of apologies and excuses, before the trail went cold.

The Problem of Perfectionism

There is a good business fighting to get out here. The product is valuable and well crafted. Innovative distribution expands both reach and sales opportunities. In these circumstances, price becomes a secondary consideration for clients.

The issue is discipline. The control of the painting process is not reflected in commercial processes. Client communication is poor. Had the transparency revealed in video been mirrored by a view into how things were progressing, the outcome would have been different.

But the biggest issue is procrastination. Perfectionism is a weakness that I see in industries other than art. In software, it manifests as there always being one more feature before release. The creator seeks a perfection that buyers neither want nor understand.

I hired two forensic accountants while working at DrKW. They helped me dig through dubious accounting and create a picture of operating cash flow at European financial institutions. But they were never quite finished modelling and I had to force them to publish. The research was innovative and valuable as it was.

The artist’s illness was unavoidable and such disruption may cause small businesses to go bust. But larger organisations can and must have backup plans. Who step ups if individuals fall ill or leave is a key question.

How to Scale

Every business has processes. When you start out many are manual and won’t scale, but they are necessary to discover what works. When you find that, be ruthless in your focus and cut what is less productive. Iterate and improve what is working and seek means of automating some or all of the process. This is how businesses scale.

It is important to acquire missing knowledge, such as how to budget and forecast. These skills should be outsourced. It is efficient to focus on what you do best while delegating the rest, and research shows that buying time-saving solutions boosts happiness*.

Questions to Ask and Answer

1. Which parts of the product creation process can be automated?

2. What are the commercial skills that are in short supply?

3. To whom can I delegate those tasks?

*“Buying time promotes happiness” by Whillans, Dunn, Smeets and Norton.
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1706541114 

I’m Simon Maughan and I write The Profit Elevator as a guide for B2B firms seeking faster growth.

I recently recorded videos for 30 processes that help any business to scale. They are in six systems, one each for managing and motivating people, reaching your target audience, seizing the sales opportunity, managing and tracking finances, inspiring through leadership and having teamwork make the vision work. There is an exercise at the end of each video to put the process into practice.

Together these six systems form The Profit Through Process Planner. If you’d like to know more then please visit my website.

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