Ellens 50 paragraf Business Manifesto.

1. Everything starts with a why.
2. Know who you are as a company. What is your purpose?
3. Your company identity and values will be your foundation and function as your flexible strategy and compass for strategy and decisions when the world around you change rapidly.
4. Make sure to define, address and solve a human problem better than anyone else. Dare to do it exploring new paths. It takes courage.
5. Deeply understand your customer/user. Do research such as observations and interviews to learn about their lives, dreams, pains, gains and desires, they might not even be aware of themselves.
6. Collaborate and involve people with different skills and experiences to be able to adress complex challenges.
7. Involve the users or the customers you design for and be prepared to change your mind and direction when new insights change the picture.
8. Be able to tell which value you deliver and to who in a short value proposition. Your value proposition is the essence of your business and the very reason for you to exist.
9. The value proposition, the value and your customer segment is also where you find your product market fit. If you do not solve a real problem, do not do it. If you do not deliver value, do not do it.
10. Craft a short mission statement that can be used as an elevator pitch. People need to understand you and they need to do it fast. Storytell.
11. Meet customer and user needs at the same time as achieving your business goals. Be able to balance.
12. Create a business plan with the Lean Business Model canvas. Identify how to make revenue and decode your competitors and find your sweet spot.
13. Visualize your business plan and strategy for the whole team and keep on updating, refining it, together. Involvement create commitment and engagement.
14. Simply, simplify, simplify. Develop your MVP, minimum viable product with core functionality. Do only one thing, but do it great.
15. Prototype to learn. Do it instead of discussing how or if it could work. Test and challenge your assumptions.
16. Test your business idea with a classic SWOT analysis and identify your riskiest assumptions that might turn your company around.
17. Work in a way so you build a strong, open, trusted team that support each other rather than choke the energy with micro management and control.
18. Believe people are investments and not costs. Talk to them like flowers and they will prosper. Create a group with energy and ability to lean in, forward.
19. Live your values, especially in difficult times. People buy what you believe in and what you stand up for.
20. Hire smart people to tell you what to do and how rather then tell them what to do and how.
21. Work smart and not hard. Allow ability to fail, learn and redo. Coaching instead of management. Choose your team and leadership. A great team can iterate, refine and pivot business to success while supporting each other.
22. Celebrate. Do not forget to reward each other and make sure you all walk home to spend the weekend with a positiv spirit. Help each other to grow personal och professional. How will work bring people closer to their personal goal?
23. Dare to have conflicts to be able to take things to the next step, but learn how to solve them. With a reflective feedback culture you will develop and grow the teams ability over time.
24. Make sure to be able to work autonomous from the big corporation och company group to achieve flexibility, speed and independence for entrepreneurs.
25. Trust. Trust people with freedom and they will run towards the goal. Foster a culture of openness and transparency to do so.
26. Have a vision and a goal of where you like to be in the future — even if you are not yet, set a direction and a vision you can all be led to not run in the wrong direction.
27. You will need to take risks. You will need to explore what you do not yet know. You will need to be able to jump, not knowing where to land.
28. You need to be able to change with new information. You need a team strong and fit enough built on relationships.
29. You need a team that dare to take risks, able to communicate and collaborate.
30. You need to be clear with expectations, how and what you measure. Your KPI sets your strategy and direction.
31. You need to be honest. Be what you say you are.
32. Consider how you measure peoples work and how it will set a strategy and opportunities to grow your future company.
33. New times require new businesses that work in different ways and people that are different.
34. Work with Agile, Lean, Design Thinking tools and processed rather than long detailed planned managed projects.
35. Educate people around you in new working tools and emerging technologies.
36. Customer centricity instead of product focus. Change is a constant that needs to be incorporated into the company.
37. Bread and butter work will not do for long. You need something more. People do not only buy in what you do, they buy what you believe in.
38. (Examples).
39. As a company you need to be clear and understandable. You need to set expectations right and live up to them and overtrump them.
40. Look at the holistic image and the ecosystem? We need to close the circle and set how your company belong in the ecosystem. How will we create a circular flow where customers enter, stay and come back?
41. How do you make money fast on anything not getting lost in direction, working on the wrong missions taking you away from your core goal and mission?
42. How do you make people feel as investment and not as cost and build engagement and commitment?
43. How might you excel techniques such as growth hacking, use established networks instead of setting a new one up all by yourself from scratch.
44. Build authority in your area of expertise. Become the one sharing information, experience and support people to succeed.
45. Network. Build relationships with people. Do the physical experiences and share them as content and inbound marketing in your digital channels.
46. Choose the language, method and channels based on your tribe.
47. Allow yourself to take time off, restore and save up new energy. Rest and explore. Priorities to keep fit and healthy to be able to handle stress and work.
48. Do not forget your family and friends. They are important to support you in difficult times.
49. Become the best version of yourself and accept your flaws and acknowledge your strengths. Push yourself out of your comfort zone.
50. Be kind to yourself. Allow yourself to make mistakes, learn from them and proceed forward. After all, its just work. What really matters in life is not bought with money. In order to feel good about yourself take care of your meaningful relationships. Make sure to spend time with friends and family, relax in the nature to restore and recharge your batteries. It may be a cliche, but you will only live once.

Some thoughts about how to take steps forward. The only thing you know, is that you do not. Be humble to learn as you go. This is written from my head coloured from my different experiences and learnings. Please share your insights!