Small business owner’s have to have a ‘split’ personality, both manager and owner.

February 26th, 2009

The best way for me to describe this is with an example.  You and your buddy have bought an auto service repair shop.  The both of you do all the work and you are both excellent mechanics.  You both have a passion for your work and it’s nothing for you two to work 10 to 12 hour days under the hood of a car, truck, or SUV.  Business is good and you can make the bills.  The issue is that both you and your partner are working over 90% of the time as managers and less than 10% of the time as owners.  The last thing to do at the end of the day, after working 10 to 12 hours, is to do the books, or think about advertising, or review the financials from two months ago.  Does this sound familiar?  I hope not, because its’ a recipe for disaster.

 If left to ourselves, we will most often choose to do the things that we like to do.  We are good at them because we like them and we feel we have accomplished something when we’re done.  To a lot of business owners, setting marketing strategies, analyzing financial statements, reviewing the budget (that is if you have a budget) and other things such a collecting account receivables or balancing the checkbook is something that happens when time permits. 

To have a successful, sustainable business model you will have to divide your time between you as “manager” and you as “owner”.  You will have to schedule time doing each job much like you may schedule time for lunch.  Mark it on your calendar and between you and your partner you have to hold each other accountable to do the “owner” jobs. The other manager jobs are the FUN jobs and we always find time to do them, but the “owner” jobs, that’s different.  You and your partner will have to be the ones that decide what’s best, maybe 70% as manager and 30% as owner?, and you both will know what is right because both the manager and owner jobs will be done on time.  And you may even sleep better at night as a result.

It may seem silly, but if it helps you to accomplish this you may want to leave the shop area and put on a clean white shirt while you’re doing the “owner” jobs and when you’re done, put on that ‘dirty’ shop shirt again and get greasy.  Whatever it is, find what works for you and stick with it. Your business will thank you, your banker will thank you, and you will be building a sustainable business that you and your partner will be able to enjoy well into the future.     

Let me know what you think,

Take Care

Posted in General Business, Management | No Comments »

From Personal Mission Statement to Company Mission Statement.

February 20th, 2009

Why should you write a personal mission statement and why is it important for your business? 

As a business owner your personal values , attitudes, and beliefs are reflected in your business, whether you know it or not.  Someone from outside of your organization can walk through your location and have a feeling for what is important and what is not important to the organization.  Most times this is a direct reflection on the owner.

Knowing your personal mission statement and writing it out will help you to understand what you want the culture within your company to reflect.  Who do you begin?  Answer these simple questions with simples words or phrases, writing down your responses in one and two words….

 

·        What are my values, attitudes, and beliefs I want my spouse and children to use when describing me to their friends?

·        What are my values, attitudes, and beliefs I want to exhibit within my friends and with my church community?

·        What are my values, attitudes, and beliefs I want my colleagues, employees, and vendors to use when describing me as a person?

·        What are my values, attitudes, and beliefs I want to exhibit when dealing with strangers and the underprivileged population that I may meet?

 

Now, using the values, attitudes, and beliefs you have noted - begin writing using a blank piece of paper and do not stop until you have used most of your values, attitudes, and beliefs within your statement.

A personal mission statement can be shared or private.  It can be long, short or a single sentence.  They can be bullet points or a short story format.  Whatever it becomes, the most important thing is that it is yours and you have written it out for future reference.

Now use your Personal Mission Statement to model your Company’s Mission Statement.

Your company’s mission statement should reflect your organization’s values, attitudes, and beliefs, which should parallel your personal values, attitudes, and beliefs you have reflected in your own personal mission statement.  If your company does not a have a mission statement, I believe each of your employees will operate by their own personal mission statements.  We all have a personal mission whether we realize it or not and if your business doesn’t have a mission statement then your employees will revert to their own personal mission statement, good or bad. 

The reason you need to establish a company mission statement is to help guide your employees as to how to perform their work, how to act with your customers, and how to represent you when they are on the clock.  If you don’t set these parameters, how will your employees know how to act?

I think the best mission statements are no longer than two to three sentences in length.  This way every employee, customer and vendor can remember your mission statement.  It is short enough for your employees to memorize and you can reward them when you ask them and they recite their company’s mission of the top of their heads.  

Remember, your employees are representing you to your customers and vendors, give them a mission statement to guide their behavior. 

 

Check out our mission statement on this website and let me know what you think.

Take Care

 

 

Posted in Company Culture, General Business | No Comments »

Eight Steps for Preparing a New Code of Ethics

February 16th, 2009

In today’s challenging economy business owners of all sizes must be aware of business ethics.  Simply ‘making good business decisions for the right reasons’ is a good start but it is more complicated than that.  How do business owners assure themselves that their company is operating in an ethical manner?  It has to do with establishing an ethical culture within your organization.  Here is information from the Institute for Business Ethics, www.ibe.org.uk/developing.html that will help you in reviewing or developing your organization’s Code of Ethics.

Eight Steps for Preparing a New Code of Ethics

  1. Get endorsement from the Board
    Corporate values and ethics are matters of governance. The board must understand the business case for an ethics policy and code, recognise their role in its success, their relevance to what they do and how, and be committed to monitoring the policies effectiveness, though a board committee.
  2. Find a champion
    It is good practice to set up a board level (ethics or corporate responsibility) committee, preferably chaired by a non-executive director, or to assign responsibility to an existing committee (such as Audit or Risk). A senior manager will need to be responsible for the development of the policy and code and the implementation of the ethics programme.
  3. Understand the purpose
    It is important to clarify the relationship between and understand your organisation’s approach to corporate responsibility, ethics, compliance and corporate social responsibility strategies.
  4. Find out what bothers people
    Merely endorsing an external standard or copying a code from another organisation will not suffice.
    It is important to find out on what topics employees require guidance, to be clear what issues are of concern to stakeholders and what issues are material to your business activities, locations and sector.
  5. Be familiar with external standards and good practice
    Find out how other companies in your sector approach ethics and corporate responsibility. Understand what makes an effective policy, code and programme from the point of view of your particular business, staff and other stakeholders.
  6. Monitoring and assurance
    Consider how you will embed your code into business practice. Consider how the success of the policy will be monitored and to whom the business will be accountable regarding its ethical commitments. How will you know its working? What are the key indicators/measures of an ethical culture for your organisation?
  7. Try it out first
    The draft code needs piloting - perhaps with a sample of employees drawn from all levels and different locations, to find out if it is user-friendly. The Institute of Business Ethics welcomes requests to comment on drafts.
  8. Review
    Plan a process of regular reviews that will take account of changing business environments, strategy, stakeholder concerns and social expectations, new standards, and strengths and weakness in your ethical performance.

Let me know what you think,

Take Care

Posted in Ethics, Human Resources | No Comments »

What is your ‘Competitive Advantage’?

February 13th, 2009

First off, we must understand what a “competitive advantage’ is.  Here is a simple example.  Every morning I stop at a local coffee drive-thru, let’s call this location “X”.  The person always greets me with a smile, which is not always easy as I may not be that pleasant before having my morning coffee.  The coffee is good, the prices are affordable, the location has easy access in and out of traffic, and I’ve been stopping there so often that I can truly say it has become a habit and part of my morning ritual.

Now YOU open a coffee drive-thru across the street from location “X” and call it location “Y”.  As a business owner you will have to find a way to get me, a long time customer of location “X” who has an established shopping habit at location “X” to spend my money at your location “Y”.

Whatever the reason is that convinces me to begin patronizing you at your location “Y”, that is your competitive advantage!  Every buisness must have a competitive advantage or they will not survive.  Now that you have identified your competitive advantage you must find creative ways to communicate that advantage to your current and future customers at the point where they get their information. 

Let me know what you think,

Take Care

 

Tags: ,
Posted in General Marketing | No Comments »

Ten Good Old Rules

February 12th, 2009

I got these ‘Ten Good Old Rules’ from the fall issue of a magazine called ‘Business Edge’ back in 2001 and found them to be relevant and timeless. 

1.  Control expenses

2.  Emphasize cash flow over growth

3.  Conserve cash reserves

4.  Eliminate or reduce unprofitable product or service lines

5.  Maximize effiecencies in usage of energy, materials and labor

6.  Reduce inventories

7.  Reduce or eliminate the number of free services

8.  take advantage of lower prices for essential goods and services

9.  Watch for opportunities to acuire a competitior’ business if offered at a bargain rate

10.  Don’t get emotional; it’s just business

 

Let me know what you think,

Take Care

Posted in General Business | No Comments »

Ten Commandments of Computer Ethics

February 11th, 2009

Here are the ‘Ten Commandments of Computer Ethics’ created by the Computer Ethics Institute.  Let me know what you think and if you feel these are relevant for today’s economic conditions considering what we have just gone through with Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco.

1.  Thou Shalt Not Use A Computer To Harm Other People.

2.  Thou Shalt Not Interfere With Other People’s Computer Work

3.  Thou Shalt Not Snoop Around In Other People’s Computer Files

4.  Thou Shalt Not Use A Computer To Steal

5.  Thou Shalt Not Use A Computer To Bear False Witness

6.  Thou Shalt Not Copy Or Use Proprietary Software For Which You Have Not Paid

7.  Thou Shalt Not Use Other People’s Computer Resources Without Authorization Or Proper Compensation

8.  Thou Shalt Not Appropriate Other People’s Intellectual Output

9.  Thou Shalt Think About The Social Consequences Of The Program You Are Writing Or The System You Are Designing

10.  Thou Shalt Always Use A Computer In Ways That Ensure Consideration And Respect For Your Fellow Humans.

I am looking forward to your comments.

Take Care

Posted in Computer Ethics, Ethics, Human Resources | No Comments »

Newer Entries »