Leadership has a Price

Multiple resources confirm that you need to keep everything intact, and make success possible. For the successfulness of this, it is important to take the lead. You could find out your skills on “Leadership test”, to know your strength and weaknesses for free. The test might be simple, but sometimes we have to stop being advance and seek answers at basic level. As a leader, it is your job to build the professional team that you can depends on. The responsibilities include people whom are consistently dependable, reliable, and always follow through on assignments with high performance.

A leader creates an environment that allows the team to express their thoughts and ideas honestly, directly and with respects for others’ and the team’s objectives. They will be able to tell bad news in a positive and confidence manner, which gives room to take action before it is too late. Active listening is useful, so they could first seek to understand, before having a meaningful dialogue. Active teams are crucial – nobody wants to lead a dull team – for they will be able to share information, and keep everyone informed.

They share their expertise to help a team-member to succeed, and prevent surprises. Changes are inevitable, which makes it important to create a flexible environment – the people you lead could make the changes themselves – that allows multiple perspectives and compromise when necessary. Regardless of changes, they still succeed with the job/project. They will be firm in their thoughts, and still open-minded for what others are contributing to the current project/job. This is flexibilities at its best.

There would be caring and commitments in the team(s) you lead, which means they need to be willing to make effort, and everyone in the team has to be willing to do the same. No commitment or honor comes in any specific style and personalities, but in mostly grey areas. Problems are part of our daily lives, and the people you’d lead must be problem-solvers. The team members do not hold grudges. This is the genesis of the team creation. They should have a solution-oriented manner to respective job. Respecting and supporting one another are two important things that matters to everyone in the world.

We should accept it. The team needs to have some fun, – just to relax and synergize – because nothing works without strength. The people you’d needs are professionals whom are competent in getting the job done, and they have their own needs to be successful. They handle others with professionalism, respect, dignity and honor. The human resources in your company could find people whom could bring these things to the company. But, it is your responsibility to maintain and sustain it.

The prices of leading this kind of people is to put them above yourself, and provide an environment that enhance them. Before being an authority, be co-operative – before deciding, listen – for what the teams tell their bosses is nothing, compared to what they actually think. Without the right environment and relationship, the ones whom are being open-minded and respectful might retrieve and be close-minded to the leader. This is where conspiracy begins – it always start as an opinion – and potentially split the teams.

The price is to let go of personal grudges, goals, problems, and focus on the team. You’d have to be straight forward with your team – don’t play tricks! You’d put your business and teams above yourself, not just for what they bring to the company, but also for whom they are. Enhance the team performance with additional resources, and subtract unproductive resources that they no longer need. It is about keeping them intact, and loving them the same way you’d love yourself (you are your business). The teams must know the goal, so they’d know how to achieve them.

People around such a leader (outside business) might feel quite neglected, and calls you name – self-centered, selfish, and so on. The price might varies, but always remember it is collective over specific. In conclusion, leadership needs to know how to interact with people in other to make sure that they can be their professional selves in the office’ environment. Are you willing to pay the price and did the price miss anything?

Paperwork: The Principal of Success

Your people skills is the most important part of business. However, paperwork is also extremely crucial. Most people finds it boring for different reasons. They finds it a lot easier to deal with other areas of business. That is why administrative position is not for everyone. As an entrepreneur, you must comprehend this, as what directs the business. When paperwork is boring, then business might not be in your nature. If you consider how you get to planning your business, then you’d see how paperwork plays a principle role in the overall process.

When you actually start the business, it still plays a huge role in your business. All details are in paperwork, and that is the principal that simplifies how you’d direct your business. Even if you’d hire other people to handle paperwork, you’d still need to verify and detects potential problems. The golden rule is: “trust, but verify!” Don’t see it as an obstacle, but as a skill you need to master. It is the principal of success because everything you’ve been doing is coming from papers – layout plans, strategies, sales, marketing and so on – that direct.

Let’s go through an imagination. In your plans, you indicates that you should sell 100 products every week. There is an infrastructure that determines how this will work out – five teams (5 members each) selling 4 per member. Each sales has been input on papers, and on Wednesday morning, you notice something: sales are currently 45 total. This means for the rest of the week: the teams need to sell 55 products. But, because it is Wednesday morning, you would not bother until evening.

Paperwork is the glue that connects internal and external processes, infrastructure, establishments and all other parts of business. This has consistently been principle, and we needs to master them to know what we are doing, and where are going. Some are about external assessments and strategies, which means evaluating how people responded to them. This often have high-impact on internal infrastructure, assessment, plans and strategies. For simplification of comprehension, External à Paperwork ß Internal. In form of triangle, Paperwork is on top, and internal and external are on the other parts.

Your paperwork is your data that makes it possible to see your business’ performance. This also gives room to compare it with the competitors. It allows you to also check to see the efficiency and effectiveness of plans and strategies. Just consider how frequently you go through different documents to answer different questions. They allow us to know what is working, so we can focus on them, and choose: improve or drop unproductive strategies. It is impossible to improve when we don’t see what we are doing wrong.

Bottom line is paperwork allows you to know how business is going in financial and non-financial parts of business. It refers to making it possible to know your business’ performance in the competitive market. It also make getting result possible, and taking action when necessary. If we want to achieve success, we must sit back and consider how to live with paperwork.

Success Need Mistakes

Plans and strategies exists because “everything was figured out. They are based on findings. You have useful and strong facts that establish them. Most of them are structured in a manner that minimize mistakes. However, this does not necessarily eliminate all errors. The best thing that could happen to your business is not mastering plans and strategies. But also mistakes you make. You all know everything is in executions. This is also the place where the best thing that could happen to your business lies.

An example was the Case of a real estate Company that was sued in the US, because of too much debts. The company’s CEO argued that the situation has never happened before. “It was not like people lose their jobs, or fell ill – they simply just left their residences“. These kind of mistakes are huge, but they symbolize how unforeseen problems can jeopardize business’ structures. Even though the real-estate branch causes so much inflation in the world, the problem started earlier than 2008. This was when accommodations became too expensive, and nobody could notice that the “balloon” could burst at any time.

Everyone at the top knows how to lead. But, it does not mean they’d know how to manage. There are consistencies in business – and it is impossible to improve without finding flaws. For example we paid 110 dollars for something we could have gotten for free. We only notice it after auditing and investigating. It is a small amount of money, but if we keep thinking like that, it could become a habit that lead to making a bad decision about larger amount of money.

This mistake reminds us about a previous blog titled “Decision-Making: Critical Key Concept to Success”, where we clearly states that we have to be very careful when purchasing anything. We also say there should be a KPI for it. Unfortunately, the person who paid that amount of money missed the memo. Mistakes help business to learn and improve. It could be noticeable before or after they were made. Without that mistake, we would not have remembered the previous topic, and its usefulness to business. The mistake put more pressure on our abilities to improve our internal infrastructure in making better decisions in the future.

If we cannot be skeptical and handle mistakes – we might not have the abilities to take our business to greatness. It is crucial to be vigilant. Being vigilant allows us to notice potential problems a lot sooner. Mistakes do not condemn us, nor do they prevent us – they strengthen and improve us in ways we might have never thought before. Try to minimize mistakes by learning from it. Don’t let today’s mistakes interrupt your tomorrow’s productivity – use it to improve it.

Nail Down Success

Most people will think, if they know what they know now five years ago, business’ life will be a lot better. Because, they probably focus on the idea, which was then surrounded with a plan. It mostly lacked scientific facts about market, demography, and other necessary research for nailing down success. They blame themselves for seeing wasted resources, while working on insufficient plans. Mistakes are inevitable in business – accept that.

You might have heard it before, but I will say it again – “specialization and consistency are keys to success.” They are consistently proofing their specialization. They use what they specialize on to introduce themselves and capitalize on the market. Let’s realize that successful and innovative businesses around us have two things that matters to them: specialization and consistency. This is surrounded by the product/services and customers. Some businesses have a specific guide for how to make each and every product.

They’d discuss how long it should take for some products to be prepared. There are qualities’ KPI for everything. They nailed down every aspect of their business – from simple product preparation to complex things like ensuring that every customer’s experience is the same – is consistent. They are aware of things. They’d have an infrastructure for everything. It simplifies how they operate. When I say nail down success, I mean specializing on who you are. It is about specializing on your corporate identity.

Legally speaking, your business is a juridical person, who could do all the things a person do. It needs its own identity that we call specialization, which we must proof on a consistent basis. Look at it this way: always be you, and how you do your things will correspond with you being you! The nail down makes it easier to know exactly what to specialize on. There is no broad focus on business – there is a specific information that narrows down their path.

This direct where to put your focus. Focus gives you the strongest driving power for your business’ needs. Narrowing down the path is about building focus for yourself, because when you go broadly – you get nothing. It simplifies how to achieve business’ objectives. Let’s improve the chances of success by nailing down every part of business.

Success Formula

Everything – small task or big projects – has a success formula. This is simultaneously simple and complex. The most important thing is preparation. It is the genesis of a plan. It is effective and contestable to achieve success.

 

Planning

Planning is theoretically solid, if properly prepared. It is very important to the smallest part of a business. It is the key that directs success. When you’d know what you want, and how to get it, you have focus, objectives and how to achieve them.

 

Work Smarter

It doesn’t matter how many people say, “It is important to work hardest to achieve success”. Working 24 hours a day do not guarantee success. Why? Because your body is an engine that needs to relax, take breaks, and working hard does not mean productivity – unless you work smarter. The longer you work, the more likely you will make mistakes.

In other to differentiate, if given 24 hours to accomplish a task and 96 hours to accomplish the same task – you will work differently (harder with 24 hours and smarter with 96 hours). Nobody can use 24 hours to accomplish a task that takes longer than that. For you to work smarter, think of how to be most productive in what you do.

 

Experiments

The greatest mistake is going directly to execution. However, you need to do experiment. Try different methods with a connection to the plan. You should use different methods simultaneously.

 

Be Dynamic

I always say, you have to change when things change, to stabilize anything. For you to be dynamic, focus on the result of experiments. Do not try to force your experiment to work, just scale the result, and find the most productive ones. If they don’t works, do more experiments. If nothing work, then re-evaluate your plan. Rather change the plans than force them to work, and redo the process. Continue until you find a working process. For example, if you know that six methods could work, then experiment with two at first, if they do not work, use another two, and continue until you’d find what works.

 

Narrow Result

Separate unproductive from productive results. You know what works through scaling, which you choose.

 

Execute

This can be called rollout method (going as big as you can as fast as you can). You know what works and what method to use in executing your plan! When a method works, use it and you’d see the result. Congratulations – you have achieved results.

 

Repeat Consistently

You need to repeat the formula to maintain success. Repeat the processes listed above – Planning to Execution.

This work with everything with a plan. If we do not follow a process, and just execute a plan, we might miss valuable information, which might lead to failure.

Tackle Virtual Threats with PESCARA

Your business has a website and apps. Many things could threaten virtual part of business. Virus, malware, Trojan horse and so on are additional threats. IT industry indicates that malware, virus, Trojan horse and so on are part of competitive tools. As you know, malware gathers sensitive information from your computer, and pass it on. The phrase “know what your competitor knows” makes malware a perfect virus for competing over the market.

If a business can use Trojan horse to monitor a competitor, it will use it. The best solution is to provide a strategy. PESCARA (Preparation, Extraction, Search, Change, Analyze, Research and Act) might help:

Preparation

The greatest threat with this strategy is time loop. Find out how long it takes Google Play to publish an application update. It includes knowing virus, Trojan horse, malware, and so on. You don’t have to be an expert at them. But the phrase “know your enemy” makes it necessary to familiarize yourself with them.

Extraction

It doesn’t matter if it is a website or application, we must know how to extract the files and folders from the source. Optionally, an antivirus program could scan all the extracted files and folders.

 

Search

First off, this is under the assumption that you already have the same uploaded files/folders on your computer. It is critical that you go through each file (in all folders). The search can be done in different ways. But, knowing what you inputted on website/application, it is scary to analyze and compare them to find threats. The best way to search is to copy the codes, paste them in a new Microsoft Words document, safe it (do the same to the ones on your computer), and compare the two. Any changes (additional or subtracted) will be lightened up, bringing them to your attention.

 

Change

This one assume you detect threats. You have two options. First, you could delete everything uploaded on website/application, and upload the one you currently have on your computer (this is safest). Secondly, you could change the “errors”, until all of them look exactly as the one on your computer (time consuming).

Analyze

Find out how often the website/application gets “corrupted” within a period of time. Develop questions that could help stop it from happening.

 

Research

It is about making research to find answers to questions you developed when analyzing.

Action

With all the information in your possession – what is the best thing to do? It could be best to determine how often you will follow the PESCARA process within a day/week.

In conclusion, this could help you with virus and similar threats on your website and application. However, the price is a risk of those viruses in the website/application affecting your computer. It is free, safe, and prominent.

Decision-making: Critical Key Concepts to Success

I’m not a millionaire or billionaire, but I know that making decision is key that could be mistaken in different ways. These ways are mostly a grey area. These mistakes turn on our doubt behaviors. Have you ever look back and wonder, “What was I thinking?” If yes, you really need to boast your confidence when making decision – again. Doubting your decisions could kill your dreams. Because, the same second guessing behavior have effect on our personal and business life.

I think of 5 different concepts when thinking of decision-making. It is because we are mostly influenced by other things that possibly have nothing to do with the business itself. One decision is “close friend in need”, which means there’s a new business, and suddenly a friend is in desperate need of a job. It is possible to think that the company gets an extra hand, while helping a friend in need. This is not true! This way of thinking was dominated with “I want to help my friend”, followed by rationalization of how the company will benefit from that decision.

Another key concept is, “cautious when making a purchase”, because the purchased product could benefit you personally – instead of the company. We need to be cautious when making some purchases, because we are only financially draining the company. Someone once said, “It is close to impossible to make money without spending, but it is worse to spend your way to bankruptcy.” There is nothing wrong with deciding to buy something.

However, it is a decision that we really needs to watch out for, because it affect our company’s finances. I will recommend that you create your KPI, and use it before making every purchase. This KPI will measures what the product/service do for the company and you. Focus on the indicators, and honestly decide if the product/service is for you, or the company. The third key concept is, “service generalization in business”, because we are mostly so focused on following our business plan that we forget making decisions about how we would generally service our customers.

It is like we don’t even know how to deal with people. An example is customers calling, and customer service is being rude. It is especially if they call at a time that you are having issues dealing with the paperwork. Guess what, it’s not their problems or fault – it’s yours! Deal with it, and do it with a smile on your face. It is about being happy when servicing people, because unhappy people make other people unhappy.The fourth key concept is “execution initiation without exit strategy”, because how you start determines how to improve while the business grows.

With exit strategy, it is easier to lose faith within the first year! An exit strategy turns your business into a project – and a project is time limited. Without exit strategy, we develop a commitment, determination, and become one with the business. The fifth concept is “how to make 100 different things working as one at the same time”, because business has a lot of things working together. These things are important, and sometimes they could work in form of algorithm.

For example, a customer service could forward a customer’s message to technical support’s department, when it is needed. This decision is based on knowing what is needed, and use it to know whom are needed to be successful. It comes down to the wonderful people working to put them together. These five concepts are critical, and unfortunately people sometimes fall for not thinking of them. They are mostly easier to miss, or not followed, which makes them the ultimate booty trap.

It is easier to miss out how to make sure that business is business, and personal is personal. I confess for falling for some of them. I think it is best to learn how to separate the two from one another. I’d know everybody knows that, but it is a highly grey area that leaves room for a life-time discussion.

Non-Financial Have Impact on Financial Performance

It is irrelevant if KPI focus on financial or non-financial measurements. The success of a business depends on both of them, and should be considered priceless by the businesses. The financial Key Performance Indicators focus on measuring business efficiency. It is good to look at profit and loss statements to know the largest of them, and therefore most critical to focus on. Every business has to prepare for financial overview – income statements and balance sheets – using the tool that calculate all financial business performances.

A corporation can use many financial measurements. Every small business will impulsively want to monitor profit, cash flow and market share. Market share is knowing business’ sales in comparison to other business in the same branch. A business that does not measure profit will lack the ability to know if company has made profit or not. If the business is in retail sector, then the business owner needs to monitor capital expenditure, expected return, customer satisfaction, and sales per square meter and profit per square meter.

It is important to do cash flow measurements. It is knowing how much money passes through the business. How these are used, depends on the analytical research. Another is the business performance in non-monetary areas. It is important to socially and responsibly satisfy public demands. The non-financial KPIs is about ethical, social and environmental performance. However, it can still effect business’ financial performance. A business’ ethical performance is measurable by employees’ morale turnover.

There are different ways to measure employees’ satisfaction. It is easier to measure employees’ morale in a small company than in a larger organization. However, it is possible. Smaller businesses measure employees’ satisfaction by asking staffs to complete regular surveys that focus on their satisfaction, motivations and give room for improvements. This simplify the monitor and measurements of the non-financial areas.  Larger organizations find it easier to measure the satisfaction by noticing quantity of employees’ absence.

It is also measurable by using the number of employees’ replacements (staff turnover). Unhappy employees’ motivation is usually low, which affect productivity, and may lead to poor customer service or badly made products. This will effectively reduce customer satisfaction and revenue.

The impact measurement is possible in different ways, and each method will be up to the company. The non-financial performance have great impact on financial performance of a company. This makes them equally important.

What They Mean By Scale Consistently

If you have ever heard of the sentence “scale like crazy” or “scale consistently”, this is one of the things it mean. This kind of scale is business effectiveness and business efficiency. Both are importantly different – not synonym to one another. These two complement the business, and simplifies the comprehension of business’ effectiveness, so the owner can find company=s weaknesses and know when and where to take action. They both help in understanding company’s performance.

Business effectiveness describe how well the business is doing with its strategy, tactical and operational goals. These are measurable in relation to two things – financial and non-financial objectives. The business owner will know how the company achieved its goals within the proposed time period set by him- or herself. Judging effectiveness force the business owner to evaluate how well his or her business has achieved their goals within a very specific timeframe.

Whenever he/she knows that the business is not achieving its goals or it takes too long to achieve the goals, then improve it. Business efficiency describes a leader’s performance in managing company=s resources to produce maximum output, while minimizing expenses. A business owner, especially small business owners, must ensure that their companies can operate as efficient as possible, while minimizing expenses. It is measurable as a ratio, and makes it possible to know profitability of every manufactured product or offered service.

It is standard for all businesses to make use of various resources to produce the goods or services it supply. It works out how much the company spends to make a dollar. When a business has fully established all objectives, then it automatically plans how to achieve those objectives. The Key Performance Indicators measure a business= effectiveness and efficiency. It is important to follow all strategies, and use key performance indicators that go from financial aspect to what the staffs consistently need.

These KPI are quantifiable measurements of performance over time that correspond with business goals. It is recommended to create a KPI to measure development and success in achieving all objectives within a specified timeframe. It is a tool that can be used for comparison. It is extremely useful. It can be comparing performance of a business against a general standard. This standard could be of industrial or performance result of business or a competitor.

 

It is essential for every small business owner to invest time in developing suitable KPIs for their companies. Knowing the business effectiveness and efficiency will complete the business owner=s understanding of the whole company. Performance is the key to successfulness of a company. These knowledge boost company’s productivity.

Small Companies Should Improve their Survival Rate

A business plan has many windows to the business world, but it should not be blindly followed. When looking at a business failure (while doing research) from a financial perspective, then you should also try to find out if the company financially failed because of either bankruptcy or insolvency. Bankruptcy is forcing a company to close down, due to its lack of ability to pay all its debts. It can be achieved in two different ways. One is businesses being forced to declare themselves bankrupt. The second is, the owner make the choice to declare bankruptcy.

Insolvency is companies that choose to close itself down because they lack the ability to pay off their debts or lack the ability to make profit. In both bankruptcy and insolvency, the assets of the company are sold to pay off creditors. Insolvency includes the ability of company owner to keep the sale processes. A company can fail for many reasons, but it is most likely for the failure to be a result of poor management. There are some problems related to small businesses being set up in wrong location, employs wrong staff or do not train their staff well enough.

This is especially, if they do not regularly monitor their performance and take action on the results. This can be lack of experience, unable to effectively manage people and resources. There are owners whom start businesses for wrong reasons. It is not good enough to start a business to spend more time with family, to make a lot of money and to be self-employed. All these reasons are not good enough to successfully run a business.

Small businesses should not only consider the skills they bring to the business, when the business was being setup. The owners should know how their skills can possibly grow and adapt as the business grows and potentially expands. Small businesses have the power to succeed the first five years. It needs sufficient capital to survive, anything less than that is planning to fail. This is the reason many business owners make sure they have enough capital before they start their businesses.

Even, a business that have enough capital can still have problems, if the owner cannot efficiently manage the cash flow. However, many of these owners neglect to source capital for when the business is operating. It is acceptable if the acquisitions= revenue are very high, but reality verifies that, it can take some time for the business to become profitable. This period require an ongoing capital to keep the business operational. It is important to keep track of the company=s performance.

It is possible to use the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) to see how well the company is performing. They should not just assess the business= performance, but also the performance of its owners on a regular basis. Following-up on the plans help knowing if the plans are working or not. Knowledge about the worth of small business helps acknowledge how effective the teams are in the company. However, it needs many things for it to be successful, along with high performance in the executives and staffs.

It is highly important to consistently monitor the business, due to all the endless plans. It is sometimes essential for companies to use the Key Performance Indicator to know the weaknesses of their companies along with their staffs. Sometimes, the company can use its own assessments and build something that it can use to evaluate itself. For small businesses to avoid failing, they need the awareness of potential failure and ensure that all plan processes are fully verified as outlined in the business plans. There is a website that specializes on valuing the business’ sales and acquisitions. This website is www.bizex.net/business-valuation-tool and offers free valuation on firms.