SBSC and Management Fundamentals - Part II
This is the fourth article in the Small Business Survival Course, or SBSC, which is designed to help you operate your business better this year, and the second article about helping you become a better manager.
Let's talk first about how you're executing your written business plan.
What's that? Your business plan isn't actually on paper? Right; it's in your head.
Well, there's one big problem with that strategy: you're the only one who has access to it. Business plans need to be available to managers, advisors and bankers, which requires words and numbers on paper.
There's an old adage that we should all post on our office walls: "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there." Your small business must focus on the road that you've built with a written business plan.
You'll pardon the mixed metaphors, but a business plan is the best medicine to prevent the toxic practice called crisis management. By regularly comparing your plan to actual performance, a problem that might have become organizational double pneumonia turns into a management sneeze.
In the beginning you'll have to show the discipline and courage to deal with the crisis-of-the-hour while you're executing your plan. But soon you'll see that both the size and frequency of crises will diminish. And every day you execute your plan is a day closer to the opposite of crisis management -- outrageous success.
Next SBSC topic: Characteristics of a successful manager.
Day after day, regardless of the challenge, the two predominant traits of a successful manager are: leadership and the ability to develop leaders.
Here are five things we know about leaders:
- Leaders are consistent.
- Leaders do what they say and deliver on promises.
- Leaders develop other leaders and mentor them.
- Leaders are courageous.
- Leaders can find people who will follow them.
Some people seem to be natural leaders. But remember: nothing they do is anything the rest of us can?t learn.
The final SBSC management topic concerns intellectual property, or IP.
In the 20th century, IP supported tangible assets. In the 21st century, hard assets support IP. Here's the proof:
As late as the 1970s, a typical business's assets were 80% tangible (equipment, rolling stock, inventory, etc.), while the rest was IP (systems, software, patents, etc.). But according to recent surveys, that ratio in the 21st century has essentially inverted, with 73% of corporate assets being in IP, and the remainder in hard assets.
Compare your own tangible/intangible asset ratio to this global trend. Then identify the steps you're taking in your business plan to leverage IP more and hard assets less.
Write this on a rock... You don't have to be Super Manager to be successful, but you do have to focus on the fundamentals.
Jim Blasingame
Small Business Expert and host of The Small Business Advocate Show
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