Clever Business, Are You Practicing It?

Have The Courage To Make The Right Decisions.

Small business decisions are already very difficult to perform.  Until someone has actually done the ownership deal, nobody can fully grasp the magnitude, the levels of complications, the importance and the sheer volume of critical decisions that must be made in order to do well.  Only a small business owner can fully appreciate that last statement.

The sheer volume of right details needed to be managed to help permit a small business a better chance for winning profitably is overwhelming.  Again, only a small business owner can truly appreciate that last statement.  What's more, try doing those necessary right decisions in a rotten economy and you have a near perfect picture of what lies ahead for small business owners.  It is a daunting task.

Even so, once a small business owner begins the trek to operate their business, the attention to small but important decisions begins to build.  Every decision in the beginning is a critical decision.  Eventually, every decision begins to matter a great deal.  For example, a simple decision to open for business one half hour later may have a significant impact on traffic flow.  That decision may save the small business an "X" number of dollars per day but can actually cost more in revenues that cut deeper in the year than the savings could ever justify.  Pre-planning the 'cost-saving' math to make the decision does not always work.  The owner who made the decision may not discover this truth until many months later.  What seemed like good 'cost-cutting' math and a simple decision in the beginning, turned out quite serious and costly down the road in too much lost revenues.  Small business owners live this kind of life.  Their little decisions can become big monsters.  Eventually, the small business owner begins to learn how to "street fight" their way through the challenges they discover.  As they begin to learn how to "street fight" they also learn how to become very clever.  These techniques in decision making help to produce a better chance for winning.  But there are some dark sides to being too clever.  Let's take a look at what that means.

Sometimes The Load Is Too Large, The Methods Are Too Clever!

As time goes by, a good deal of small business owners discover how over loaded they can become with many small decisions that carry a lot of weight in how those decisions turn out.  Small business owners can easily get overwhelmed with many little but necessary decisions.  A lifetime of those kinds of pressures and activities can create a real problem for the owner.  The owner who wants to survive begins to discover how to "street fight" and begins to learn how to make "clever" decisions.  In most cases, this process is a good process.  But as time moves along, pressures mount larger to force the small business owner to become more inclined to get "clever" with the techniques of street fighting.  This process can be very damaging to the health and welfare of profitable opportunities.

The owner can become more "clever" in the process of decision making.  This newly discovered technique helps the owners to discover a new "art" for making decisions.  As business pressures mount larger and more often, the need to make quicker decisions increases.  As a result owners become better at making quicker decisions with new boundaries as more pressures to win mounts larger.  Quick decisions carry more risks.  More risks carry more failures.  Business owners become more frustrated with how things are turning out as they make more decisions that turn out more unfavorably.  This kind of spin causes the business owner to think about more ways to become better equipped in controlling the outcomes of their decisions.  The outcomes have become sour enough to cause the owner to think about more "clever" ways to protect their negative results as they decide what should and should not be done.  This is a dangerous spot for the small business owner to be managing.  "Clever" decisions look very attractive at this point.

When an owner recognizes that they are beginning the effort to get "clever" with their decision making, that owner is beginning the work to manipulate the results.  When the decisions involve the use of manipulation to get from start to finish, the owner has crossed a value line that will perpetuate poor results in their long term results.  The reasons why small business owners trap themselves inside this process are varied, but usually caused by too much pressure to survive.  The result of practicing "clever decisions" is always the same.  The short term results are usually favorable at the expensive of something going terribly wrong much later.  Many owners practice this process and have a very difficult time refusing to participate.  Owners become inoculated to the possibilities of more favorable short term outcomes and truly believe they will either get either very lucky long term or be able to make appropriate adjustments later that will prevent them from the possibility of living through the increased potential for terrible long term results.  Whatever the case, they make short term decisions today that are "clever" and hope all else will turn out fine in the long run.  Tragic mistake.  Usually the short term gains will never out run the long term costs.

Who Enjoys Proper Orientation?  Nobody...But It Still Is Necessary!

The list of examples  owners use as part of their "clever" decision models can be longer than a trip around the moon, but I will try to site some common uses of "clever" business acts that will hurt an owner long term, yet solve a short term challenge.  Every owner will be able to discover where they are practicing different levels of "clever" business.  Every owner has had to live with some very negative outcomes from the long term effects of "clever" decision making efforts.  Every business owner practices some form of "clever" business techniques that are very wrong.  Including me.  Even though some short term results were realized on the positive side of the ledger, some very negative results appeared much later.

Here is one prime example used in the "clever" decision category.

When small businesses need to hire extra help to fill an increase in volume or to fill a flash of increased activity demands business owners worry about taking too much time and money away from their short term need and hire temporary workers in a flash.  To cut costs and due to the short term nature of the project, owners decide to skip the customary new employee orientation and safety prevention rituals.  For the most part, this "clever" way to save money yet meet a flash demand is excusable.  It becomes very easy for an owner to justify these kinds of decisions.  As a result, no necessary company orientation is covered with the quick, newly hired part time workers.  No proper training is offered and no safety concerns are described and shared.  The owner gets "clever" and skips the time and cost of this necessary step.  In fact, likely the small business owner has offered to employ the temporary worker with cash and no other forms of required reporting involved.  This is justifiable to the owner since the need is immediate and very short term.  This type of decision is one of those "clever" decisions that many small business owners perform.  For most of the time, this kind of "clever" business works well.  The owner makes the move and is rewarded with a fair result in profits.  As each type of "clever" business decision lives, the short term results become encouraging.  "Clever" becomes a favorable result maker and eventually this practice leads to continued acts of routine and practice.

Wrong Ways Come Disguised, Usually!

Then one day...when the temporary worker who is filling in for three hours of demand gets hurt doing something very stupid and did not think anyone cared when the stupidity was finding its way into the work place.  Now the owner faces some serious workers compensation claims, with a non-recorded employee and dealing with an employee who has a right and desire to make sure they get what is justifiably due compensation for them to have medical and recovery repair.  Every cent that was saved, every dollar that was previously realized from the good that a "clever" decision revealed, is lost and multiplied into something well beyond what ever could have been gained.  Every owner is guilty of this process.  Every small business owner practices these things in their "clever" activities somewhere.  It may not be exactly this particular one, but one just like it in a separate set of other circumstances.  Every small business owner is guilty of making "clever" decisions.

"Clever" decisions are everywhere.  They will win short term but cost greatly long term.  Quit making "clever" decisions to pad your results short term.  I have seen "clever" decisions in all levels of business activities.  I have seen where a store has offered a one day 10% off special to attract more customers to come in on one particular day and when they are at the register to ring up the sale, if the customer knew nothing about the advertised offer...the clerk rang it up full priced.  This is "clever" decision making.   It is wrong.  Stop it.  You will pay for it later...you just do not know where, how and by how much.  You will eventually pay.  The customer who received the full price charge at the register will likely go to another place and chat with someone who experienced the 10% off discount.  They will talk about how one got charged full price while the other was given a 10% discount.  That business may lose the future patronage from both of those customers.  Those lost customers may have potentially spent many times more in the future than what that skipped 10% offer could have saved and generated.  The owner may never discover what that wrong "clever" decision truly costs.  Every owner is guilty of performing "clever" decisions.  They do not work long term.  Stop it.  "Clever" is not always good.  Soul search the ways in which "clever" decisions have wandered into the culture of your business model.  Begin to eliminate them right now.  The law of compensation will take care of your efforts in a very good way.  Trust this law and go back to doing the right things again.  Be a good business owner, not a "clever" one.

Until next time...