Many owners and managers of businesses, all the way up to huge multi-nationals, do think in terms of the health of their businesses. They think in terms of life and death of the business. During my years in IBM I became used to hearing one top-level vice president talk about the “near-death experience” IBM faced, when challenged by the PC revolution, and all that came with it.
A healthy business does not happen automatically, or by chance. It happens by working effectively ON the business. We have all heard the idea of working ON your business rather than simply IN your business (the origin of this idea seems to be Michael Gerber’s E-myth). At a minimum this requires you, the leader of the business, to develop a CEO mindset – to become the true leader of the business, not merely the star performer. This is not to say that you, as the leader, must abandon the passion for what got you into the business. This is not an either/or, but a balance (as we see below).
Other balance points include the need for strategic marketing and effective selling, leading the realization of a vision and the management of people, creating a simple, understandable plan and executing against that plan. We will discuss how to balance a system you can trust with development of people you can trust. We will think about how to replace trial and error management with a kind of real businesscraft that combines tried and true methods with lessons being learned from 21st century technology and culture. We will examine a range of tools and techniques that help you lift the burden of the day-to-day off your shoulders so that you can accomplish this balancing act.
The bottom line, as we will stress over and over, is a system of new habits of thought and action, designed to achieve and maintain the balance needed for a healthy business.
The heart of the matter comes down to the factors that MUST be attended to, in order to maintain the business in a healthy state. This list may grow over, but the focus of my message to the business leaders, and the B2B service providers, is summarized here, with spokes that fan out in all directions to each of the subjects listed here. If you really want to think of this as a book, the subjects linked here are somewhat like chapters.
So, here's a list of health factors that each links to another section where you will find more details. Each of those sections should have a convenient link to bring you back here:
Habits of thought and action
All services, all the time
The right people in the right roles
Enthusiastic energy
Quality time
Many cultures
Many languages
Production values = quality [in progress]
The many roles of technology
Value transmission and storage
One thing to always keep in mind is the need for balance, in several key areas:
- expert mindset and CEO mindset
- marketing and sales
- leading and managing [in progress]
- planning and execution [in progress]
- adaptiveness and efficiency [in progress]
- process and structure [in progress]
To return to the discussion of businesses as living systems, click here.
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