Blogs

Of course, you do not have any revenue without a transaction being completed. But is your company just after transactions from everyone you can find? Do you believe that every transaction is disconnected from every other one? How many customers do you have to have in order to reach your goals? 10, 100, 1000, more? And, are you providing all of them the products and services that you can matched up with what they need? A pure transaction orientation means that you start over again with every sale.

The oft-quoted Chinese proverb, “May you live interesting times,” was never truer than today. High unemployment, low interest rates, up and down stock market, increasing taxes, bargain basement real estate, oil spills, really hot weather, etc. But we have to resist getting caught up in the global stuff, as interesting, disturbing and infuriating as it may be and focus on what do your immediate circumstances really mean to you. More importantly, what opportunities are being created by all these conflicting signals for your business to grow while others are not?

Remember, that there are two kinds of knowledge you need to accumulate as you grow your company: the things you know you don’t know and the things you don’t know that you know. You can attack the first body of knowledge simply by asking questions. If you come across something you never heard of, ask someone who has. The second kind of knowledge comes to you by putting yourself in the right position. Become part of a peer group where regular discussions provide wisdom that you would not get otherwise.

You and your colleagues are working hard, noses to the grindstone, eyes on recovery and a return to growth. You hear the talk of a continuing bad economy, unemployment, projects on hold, budgets cut. But, is that what is really going on in your business? Have you ever noticed in previous business cycles things had changed-for the good or not-but you hadn’t acted accordingly? That’s the Lag Syndrome. We all fall prey to it. But, what can happen if you fight it-if you start seeing that things have changed before your competitors?

There are millions of businesses in our country. Most of them will never go public or crack even $10 million in annual revenue. But that does not mean that they are not successful. They make it year to year. They pay their employees, satisfy their customers, grow either a little or a lot and sometimes go backwards.

Whenever business owners gather, it does not take long for the conversation to turn to employee motivation-what is it? How do you do it? Why aren’t my employees fired up about the business like I am? There have been studies upon studies about what motivates us. Is it money, stock options, recognition, flat screen TVs in the employees lounge, sports tickets, vacations, what? Many of you have already been told that managers and owners cannot motivate employees. They have to create the right conditions in which employees become self-motivated.

I often quote Brian Razzaque, Founder of VMT,LLC (www.vmtllc.com) who says, “Every dysfunction in an organization is the result of the lack of a system.” You may want dismiss such a phrase from a technology exec just as a justification for more investment in technology. But, that would be an oversimplification of what he means by “a system.” Sure we think of systems as computer applications that perform many functions in our organizations.

Every company needs a vision of its future and a statement of its mission. Employees should know both, resonate with both and be able to express both to others. But what is the difference between them? Simply stated, a Vision is a view of what the company will become. The Mission is what the company does.

Nick Hobar, CEO of Workforce 2000, a Maryland-based educational consulting and software firm, commented on what he tells his clients are the elements of a Vision Statement.

If you really studied your customer base, would you be able to tell who the customers are that you really like doing business with? If so, what are the answers? People who pay on time? (No surprise there.) People who give you regular orders? (Not exactly a shock, either.) In the pursuit of the growth of our business, we can fall into the trap of oversimplifying who we want to acquire and keep as customers. How about people you like? Is that OK? Why wouldn’t it be? What does “people you like” entail?

In his landmark book Good to Great…, author Jim Collins talks about the critical ability great businesses have in facing the brutal facts confronting the business while maintaining a belief that things will work and get better. (Of course, things getting better depend heavily on effort, strategy and tactics, and not just hope.) Facing the brutal facts is hard, very hard. Here are some of those hard things business owners have faced and resolved: