Business Coaching Acronym W.A.V.E.S – a structured approach to supercharge your business

Starting and growing a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) can be challenging in today’s fast-paced business environment. The critical difference between failure and success may be in your chosen approach and methodology.

To remain relevant and competitive, SMEs must be flexible, innovative and resilient. SMEs can achieve this outcome and thrive in many ways, but the coaching model WAVES certainly stands out because of its simplicity and broad application to entrepreneurial thinking.

What does the acronym WAVES stand for?

In order, the acronym WAVES stands for:

W – Winner’s mindset

A – Ambition and aspiration

V – Value (capture, creation and transfer)

E – Execution to Expansion

S – Simplicity for Speed.

In this blog post, we will explore how SMEs can use WAVES as a framework for entrepreneurial thinking and how it can help them succeed in their industry.

Winner’s mindset

A winner believes in success, no matter the obstacles or challenges.

Cultivating a winner’s mindset is the first step in achieving success as an SME. This means confidence and determination to give your best, even in adversity. A positive attitude characterises a winner’s philosophy, unshakeable faith to face challenges head-on,  willingness to take calculated risks, and a belief in one’s abilities to deliver on their promises and expectations. If you look at famous sportspeople, they win first in their mind and the dressing room even before the game starts. That is unshakeable confidence in their abilities to find the way when the game is close and the margins for errors are smaller than ever. 

Ambition and Aspiration

SMEs need to have healthy, ambitious and aspirational goals to achieve success. Ambition is the drive to succeed and to reach for the stars, while aspiration is the desire to achieve something more significant. Ambitious and aspirational SMEs are more likely to be goal-driven and willing to compete and achieve challenging goals. Similarly to the winner’s mindset, ambition drives aspiration and is a mental game of focusing on what is relevant and essential in a particular situation and environment. There could be no healthy ambition if thinking is unsupportive and vice versa. One feeds another, and they are inseparable.

Healthy ambition builds willpower, cultivates a goal-driven mentality and enforces structured planning around priorities. As with everything else in the entrepreneurial world, it all comes from “between the ears.”

To aspire, one needs to envision it first.

Added value – capture, creation and transfer

New or added value is the essence of entrepreneurship. When scarce resources are combined, and in the creation process, new value emerges – an enterprise fulfils its purpose.

The faster SMEs capture, create and transfer the value, the more successful they will become.

The process of capturing value is the initial recognition of new unmet needs, desires and wants still unsatisfied in the market. Value creation is about developing a product or service that meets customers’ expectations and serves them unselfishly. Value transfer is communicating and providing that value to the customer in an easily explainable and appreciated form. SMEs that can capture, create and transfer value to their customers fast, simplistically and memorably are more likely to attract and retain customers, make loyal and repetitive clients and establish a strong market presence in years to come.

The key to success in any business is creating value for customers, and added value is the essence and a vital sign of a healthy and proactive enterprise.

Business Coaching acronym WAVES

Execution and Expansion (development)

Execution in this context is all about process completion. From planning and envisioning through the creation and manifestation phase to the final delivery and fulfilment, a product or service grows, expands and changes through various stages and multi-touch points with the customer. The execution is where we draw the line and evaluate where and how success is measured.

Please remember, in business, interaction and collaboration is a two-way streets simply because there could be no execution without feedback; there would be no expansion without satisfaction.

Execution involves the customer, and completion is achieved through satisfactory results. That is why taking action and implementing plans effectively. Consequent business development and strategy implementation occur in multi-point customer interaction and constant realignment to their needs, wants and expectations.

To execute effectively, one should focus on developing a clear plan and breaking it down into manageable steps. Delegate tasks and assign responsibilities to others to ensure they are not overwhelmed and can focus on delivery.

New and added value is paramount, and the customer constantly measures and validates the ultimate goal.

Speed and Simplicity

Where value creation is paramount, speed is the new currency.

To move faster, all the things that could be slowing it down, the baggage of the past,  should stay behind. When the business model is lean and trimmed, things move quicker, can be actioned quickly, and tested, implemented and adjusted where necessary.

Speed is the ability to move quickly and take advantage of trends, movement and opportunities. It doesn’t necessarily mean faster actioning and processing powers; it usually involves quicker and more precise decision-making.

Einstein said, “things should be simple but not simpler than that, ” perfectly summarising the need for simplicity in business. In other words, it eliminates unnecessary tasks and activities that drag the company indefinitely and drain its energy, project vampires, and waste across the organisation. It focuses on the core model that makes the difference, produces the highest margins, or can potentially elevate the whole structure to a higher level.

There could be no speed without simplicity and no competitive advantage without a well-integrated simple business model that adds value quickly and predictably.

Conclusion

By adopting the WAVES coaching model, SMEs can use entrepreneurial thinking to succeed in their preferred industry. Entrepreneurial thinking assumes a willingness to take risks and a strategic focus on innovation to capture, create and transfer value to its final consumer. A model is ideally structured to develop a winner’s mentality, set ambitious and aspirational goals, and improve execution around critical success factors. A WAVES framework is a perfect ally for navigating through the fast-paced business environment. Level the competitive playing field, and don’t get left behind.