Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in business development but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Bent Myllerup, Co-Founder of Better Change Consulting ApS, located in Hasselager, Denmark.
What's your business, and who are your customers?
Better Change is an international organisation of master-level agile coaches. We provide trainings, coaching, and mentorship for organisations and individuals who wants to become innovative and competitive through agile approaches. Our customers range from start-ups over scale-ups to well-established companies and multinational enterprises with thousands of employees.
Tell us about yourself
I onboarded my Agile journey after tremendously failing with a large healthcare IT project. We were trying to manage through traditional waterfall approaches. The starting point for this new journey was an education as a Systemic coach, and during this, a colleague introduced me to Scrum. I found Scrum interesting but impossible to implement in my current context. Half a year later, I was implementing it anyway – and it worked! Next was implementing Scrum in a company where I just became Software Development Manager. We were developing products for the music industry and succeeded in expanding Scrum beyond IT. We also succeeded in saving the company from bankruptcy, and more than 100 people kept their job.
My approach to implementing Agile is practical and pragmatic. You will not see me or my fellow coaches dogmatically implementing large-scaling frameworks. In my experience, it must start with the leadership and culture in an organisation, and when succeeding with that, it is extremely satisfying to see how employees excel and thrives every single day. That is why I, for the last more than ten years, have done this full-time.
What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?
My biggest achievement as a business owner is co-founding Better Change as an organisation built on Humanocracy. Our hierarchy is totally flat, and our operating model is based on trust and transparency because every single fellow in it is living up to common agreed values and principles. The fellows like this, and the customers love the results this brings them.
What's one of the hardest things that comes with being a business owner?
One of the hardest things about being a business owner is all the bureaucracy that one faces on a daily basis. We are often required to provide information or fill in forms that have absolutely no value. This can be requested from the authorities, but also from procurement or HR at our customers. The bigger they are, the worse it gets. Ironically a customer often approaches us with the hope of getting a Leaner organisation with much less operational waste, but before we can be allowed to help them, they drag us through the very same bureaucracy.
What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?
- Start by verifying that there is a market for your idea. With the lowest possible investment, verify that users will use our product and customers will buy it.
- Partner up with people you can trust and think of win-win solutions.
- Believe in your vision and your ability to reach our goals.
Where can people find you and your business?
Website: https://www.betterchange-consulting.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bentmyllerup/
If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.
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