What Is My Business Future?

The Future Requires A Strong Character

Some owners ask, what is my business future?  What does my future look like in this world of business?  My answer, I don't know.

I do not get up each morning worrying about the future landscape of my business life.  I know I will always be faced with challenges that determine what I need to change and modify in how I do what I do.  I know these kinds of things will always find a serious way to appear.  They have become one of the more consistent things that work their way onto the paths I travel in my business world.  Challenges eventually surface that require my deeper attention in order for me to preserve my success work I plan to do.  That is why business ownership, an entrepreneurship effort, is so considered such a great risk.  Owning your own business is a great risk.  It absorbs all errors and all mysteries into part of its changing world.  The owner wears the goggles that cannot see the clarity of the future path they must navigate.  Owners work much of their future planning on blind hunches that rarely pan out exactly the way it was drawn out.  The future is often made up with a combination of surprises.  What is my business future?  Who knows?

If you are the type of soul that depends upon more security in knowing how your future will pan out, you will not likely be strong enough to own your own business.  Employees like to know what security they have for the future work they decided to do.  They need to successfully assume that where they work is going to continue to operate in the same fashion it already has been doing.  Employees tend to place this part of their work security near the top of their list of desires.  Employees like knowing that their future work environment is not carrying the constant threat of going away.  Owners will never truly get to enjoy that feeling.  Owners may actually work hard to provide it for their employees, but they will never really get to experience it for themselves.  Owners are given the task to face the realities of survival on a much higher plane.  Owners must pay closer attention to the kinds of decisions that influence survival activities.  Owners work on making sure they 'guess' right when they make courageous business decisions.  Sometimes clarity on those tougher decisions is absent.  Good guess work is required for success.  Employees get to escape that whole scenario.  If your tendencies lean toward the security side of this equation, you might skip trying to become an owner.  You may become too disappointed when the reality of this truth finds its way to your doorstep.  The future carries too many mysteries.

We live in interesting times.  Things are not always as they seem.  Rules are becoming more difficult to manage profitably.  Fundamentals are becoming more and more lost inside the menagerie of increased leadership confusion.  Emotions have become a stronger consideration in the decision making models that determine what a business should and should not do.  Competition has grown more fierce.  The intensity of the increase to competitive challenges has become the by-product stemming from the onslaught of one of the most ugly economies owners have ever had to face.  Weakening business models are selling low from desperation and injecting chaos into the patterns of healthy bottom lines.  Creativity is on fire and a lot of it is too wild to be consumer absorbed.  The marketing 'one-ups-man-ship' game is running out of control.  It is getting too expensive to produce a profitable marketing plan.  The 'bigs' are getting bigger and the 'little' are fighting to survive.  The future is looking a lot like a small forest fire.  The winds are picking up and the fire fighters look terribly small.  Owners face this kind of business landscape in their quiet minds.  Employees miss out on all of this fun.

What is my business future?  I work with a very good group of employees.  They are productive and supportive of the team concept.  However, they do not carry the depth of future fears in the same way an owner carries them.  The owner has a deeper, more painful level of fears to manage about how the future will pan out for the business they own.  Employees escape this pain.  Owners quietly own it day in and day out.  There is a difference.  One must recognize this difference if they accept any position of leadership that has anything to do with facing the future of these deeper unknowns.  Any part of leadership that represents ownership is instantly thrown into the unsecured world of future decision making activities.  Security is compromised for these types of leaders.  Security becomes a regular thing that works hard on becoming a fleeting commodity.  Employees hate what this feeling produces.  This truth is usually the number one reason why employees remain employees.  They want to work in what they consider to be a more secure environment.  Owners and business leaders do not get to enjoy the same effect.  Owners and their business leaders must face higher levels of business unknowns.  It is always a more risky territory to navigate.

What is my business future?

What Makes Business So Hard To Do?

We Keep Poor Performers Too Long

I heard a great story yesterday.  It came from a co-worker who described one of their family discussions during Christmas dinner this past weekend.  Unfortunately, it is not a story that should be repeated.  We all live through some of these very same things in our own personal lives.  We have a story or two buried deep in our own personal family tree that grows up becoming a maize of interesting twists and turns about humanity.  I once had a good business mentor that often described human beings in a particular way.  He could be heard often describing how systems were king and that when you add the people to those systems they get 'screwed up' enough to fail.  It is rarely the system that fails.  It more often than not failed because the people failed.  People cannot follow the system well enough to permit the system to work well.  What makes business so hard?  People do.  People make business hard to do.  People 'screw up' the chance for business to be easy to do.  It is us.  It is our fault.  We make business hard to do.  We be it.

I could stop writing this post right here and many would not get it.  Most readers read 'self-help' material as if the suggestions and messages being penned are being sent about how others fail doing those things.  Rarely do we read to find out what we are doing wrong.  I know I like reading about how others need to improve their perspectives.  I share roads and freeways with a lot of people who need to improve their perspectives.  I see the stupid things they do with their attitudes and vehicles.  When we were traveling back from our Christmas vacation a young lady in a short sports car was tailgating me fiercely on a two lane road for about ten minutes.  Finally she had had enough of my speed limit driving and bolted around me while the double lines were in both lanes.  Double lines means "Do Not Pass."  As she passed us, she was holding a cell phone to her ear with one hand.  My wife noticed the hair on my back raise.  She said, "Let her go.  Thank God she does not work for you."

The problem we have in our business world is that we have people inserted into key positions that often times do not follow the system the way we planned for it to work.  That is one of the reasons why business is so hard to do.  We fail to give this kind of lady a pink slip the minute we see her do this kind of thing at work.  We lack the courage to 'get' her to recognize what she needs corrected in order for us to operate more profitably.  We have become soft.  We do not want to become hard-lined in our operational ways.  We bend the system to match the people.  As a result, certain non-productive people take over the bad functions allowed in our system design.  We convince ourselves we have done the right thing and as a result, we make business harder to do.  We mismanage the little things often enough that they eventually grow up to become serious obstacles that constantly rub against the system for success we originally designed.  We become part of the people problem that failed the system.  We lack courage.  That is the sole reason why business is so hard to do.  We are hard to do.  We fail the systems we designed.

What's more, we deny it.  If by chance some police official happened to witness this young lady's driving habits and pulled her over for the infractions, I suspect she would try to talk her way out of those actions.  I rarely hear someone respond in this way, "Oh well, you caught me!  Darn.  What's my fine?"  We do not easily admit when we error.  We love denial.  We worship denial.  We get very creative when denial is needed.  Some of us do our best personal work when denial is being paged.  The best of our good traits decide to surface when we are faced with the task of 'getting out of trouble' for doing something very wrong.  That is why business is so hard to do.  We scurry well when scurry is required.  Leaders recognize this move and permit far more than they should ever tolerate.  We lack the courage to do the things we know we should be doing.  What makes business so hard to do?  We make business hard to do.  Our systems for success are not very well protected.  We design them but fail to honor them.  We give second, third, fourth and fifth chances for someone to violate the way we want our system to work.  Then we ask the silly question, why is this so hard to do?  What makes business so hard to do?

What's worse, when we develop a working system that has proven itself to work well we cannot actually support that system in the way we need to protect it.  We lack the power to fax a traffic violation ticket into the dashboard of that girl's car.  We cannot make her pay for the violations she committed.  We are not authorized to protect our-self from co-worker violations of the system design.  We need to rely on the 'chance' that an official can 'catch' her bad driving habits and begin to fine her until she 'gets' it.  Even then, she may never modify the way she puts others at risk from the methods she uses to drive her vehicle.  She may be one of those who constantly makes sure we have senseless accidents that will once in awhile turn very wrong and as a result, change many lives forever.  She may be so self consumed that she has accepted how she has become a permanent high risk for others to manage.  If anyone shares her space and time they must assume her risky ways.  She certainly was not thinking about my wife and I when she took that chance to pass us in a dangerously unsafe area on that two lane road, using less than her complete attention to manage that high risk.  I slowed down to allow her back in, to manage my risk better.  I cannot get the attention of many others that I exist in this space as well.  My future welfare is often times placed into the hand of someone else.  That fact makes business hard to do.  People are in the system of good design.  People fail.

Are You Wrestling With Too Many Tough Business Decisions?

Decisions Can Become Much Like Balancing Plates On Sticks

Wrestling with yourself, again?  I try not to do that little step in my business life.  If you catch yourself worrying about the decisions you made recently, you might be wrestling with yourself just a little bit.  Once you make a decision, regardless of how hard that decision is, make sure you wipe it clean from your daily thoughts and get on with it.  Some of the best leaders this country has ever seen in the history of the business world made it a habit to make decisions and move on.  The greatest ones could rarely be found changing the tough decisions they decided to make.  They worked long and hard gathering all of the pertinent information related to the tough decisions, but once they found all the information they needed to gather they decided what to do and did it.  They never looked back.  It was done.  That is how they lived a tough decision life.

If you make tough decisions, which in the business world you will undoubtedly do, make sure you do not place yourself in the position of questioning your decisions.  Once you make them, card is played.  It's a done deal.  Learn how to be good for the word you set down.  Become known for your steadfast ways on the decisions you deliver.  Be known for the leadership trust others can expect from someone who does what he says he will do.  When you decide that one is one...then one better remain one.

When leaders make bad decisions on tough issues it is because they did not gather all of the right material and proper information to use for them to develop a more accurate decision choice.  Bad decisions come in a variety of ways.  The short list of ways that a leader makes bad decisions may include favoritism, poor data collection, inaccuracy in material gathered, prejudice, impatience, insensitivity, intolerance, stubbornness and stupidity.  These are some of the basic traits that help a leader find more ways to wrestle with the decisions they make.  These conditions allow the leader a wide range of future chances to discover how badly their previous decisions were made.  They will discover many opportunities to wrestle with the some of the wrongs a badly made decision eventually delivers.  I have worked with some leaders that find themselves wrestling with some very difficult decisions.  Those decisions are worth wrestling with because the previous ones were not made with good decision policies and practices.  Holes and inaccuracies littered some of the decisions that led up to the one that is being wrestled.  Previous decisions were not accurate enough to protect the results from going sour.  If you find yourself wrestling with tough decisions often, maybe you need to examine more closely the method you are using to make the difficult decisions you face.  Are you wrestling with too many tough business decisions?

As I have mentioned in some of my previous posts, I have been employed four times to repair a broken business model I did not own.  It is truly some very ugly work.  One thing I have discovered in that career process, there are not very many allies on those paths of recovery.  Those business models were a mess for a reason.  They did not find economic troubles of this magnitude by mistake.  The troubled business models are always lead by poor decision makers.  They are littered with examples of wrestling matches with a long line of terrible decisions.  Troubled business models are traveling the business world driving a model that is trying to navigate the consumer world with a well over-weighted cargo load stemming from poor decision-making practices.  The model is usually loaded down with too many wrong decisions.  The results have finally caught up with the poor policies practiced on the decision table.  When a broken business model decides to insert a new person to come in and 'fix' the problems of poor profitability, it will discover how 'pointed' that new leader will become.  The method for making decisions will need to change.  The new leader hired to 'fix' the problems will need to make a serious effort to change the way decision are being made.  The current leaders of that failing business model will find that new effort very offensive.  Not one reader cruising through this particular post today actually believes they are a poor decision maker.  Unfortunately, some of you are.  That is also the case for every single broken business model.  The decision makers have failed.

I can assure you that many decision makers will not agree with me on this perspective.  In every single case where I was hired to repair the broken business model, this perspective was true.  The decision makers did not believe they made bad decisions.  Everyone of them believed they had some bad things happen to their business model that was out of their control so they have hired someone to come in and 'fix' those bad circumstances.  That is exactly how every owner behaved when I was hired to help them repair.  Not one of them truly believed they practiced poor decision making practices.  In every case, that was the true source for their near demise.  Picture this if you can.  The poor decision makers have come to the conclusion they need to hire a repair leader to help them fix what they have not done well.  Yet, they do not believe they have made bad decisions to get what they are experiencing.  Nice.  Only a seriously deranged leader would take on a project of that nature, right?  Welcome, me, the seriously deranged leader.  I have walked into that kind of business room four times in my career.  Not one of them was fun.

Leaders that fail often are leaders that fail at the decision making table.  They are leaders that wrestle often with their past decisions.  They are leaders that practice wrong decision making techniques with the true expectation that some good results should arrive anyway.  They also do not admit that they are the reasons for the failures they experience.  This truth is always one hundred percent true.  They bring aboard a 'fixer' person to help them correct what is wrong but they do not expect that 'fixer' person to change how they operate what they do.  It is comical to witness.  It is also one hundred percent accurate.  I have no reason to make this stuff up.  I do not benefit from telling the reader this truth.  If you are wrestling with past decisions, you may need to clean up how you make decisions in the first place.  It is always worth examination.  Always.

Are you wrestling with too many tough business decisions?

Business Leadership Is At Question, Is It Not?

Geese Actually Rotate Leaders To Go Long Distances Successfully

Who is actually leading whom?  There is no leader.  There is no leader because their is no leadership.  Our business world is suffering from a serious lack of leadership.  The problem with our economy is leadership.  We are trying to blame the economy, but we lack leadership.  The lack for quality leadership is the root of the source for such a long disturbing level of wrong economics.  We are not being lead in the proper ways on the proper path doing proper things.  How tough can this vision be?  Pretty tough, I guess.  It ain't happening.

We live in a world that is not short on intelligence.  Unfortunately, none of that great resource has the courage to do the right things.  The world has become so consumed with the 'what about me' syndrome that our levels of intelligence have become nullified.  Leadership has all but disappeared.  Sacrifice and courage is absent.  In fact, it cannot be found in any corporate hallway.  The associate atmosphere of pure leadership is not manifested in the current hallways of the best companies with the most opportunity to lead our business world out of this terrible spiral it is slowly failing to manage.  Gang, we are growing deeper in trouble with trying to find some patterns of pure leadership.  The longer it stays away the more we become familiar with not having it.  When this kind of pattern takes over long enough, the more we begin to work on making sure we protect our own self.  The lack of leadership will continue to feed the selfish ways our business world is gradually heading.  Leadership is and has been in trouble.  So has our world economy.  It is following the levels of poor leadership quite nicely.  Gee, I wonder if there is a connection here?

Let's see.  Occupy patterns growing out of nowhere.  Cops in our own streets trying to figure out what to do with our own people who are growing stronger at become like a small country of enemies.  The enemy is beginning to surface from within.  That cannot be a good thing, people.  Do our leaders understand what this kind of pattern means?  Heck no!  They are blind to these patterns.  Business world!  These are your customers out there!  They are expressing how unhappy they are becoming.  Get a grip on why they are dissatisfied.  Wake up.  Get closer to why the consumer is beginning to build a disgruntled army of objectionable behavior.  Wake up.  Quit rolling this pattern off the backs of your weak leadership ways.  Our economy is on fire if you evaluate its core principles for profitable recovery.  That is not one of the great secrets we are facing.  It only happens to be one of the great secrets we are ignoring.  Leaders of the business world, where the Hell are you?  Get up out of your chairs and start doing what you are not doing.  Lead this country out of this horrible pattern of wrong doings.  Let's get going.  Let's start using good principles and begin drawing some clear lines on what needs to be done.  Where is your courage?

When movements of disgust begin at the bottom of the pile, we usually ignore the noise.  The best sound usually works from the top of the pile.  Leadership does not usually work well when it comes from the bottom ranks.  Leadership works best when it is driven from the top of the pile.  However, if that leadership at the top becomes too familiar with pure selfish ways and continues to arrange its own protection with terrible favoritism patterns that are obviously offensive...the bottom of the pile will begin to build a small head of steam and eventually a leader from that group will surface.  Once that revolutionary leader becomes identified, all Hell will break loose.  If that new leader has the proper skills enough to manage bringing everyone who feels dissatisfied together that new leader from the basement will easily gather a good head of steam for support.  A simple occupy movement will easily transform into something larger and more effective, a revolution, that nobody wants to see happen.  All energy will be devoted to trying to avoid this pain that a revolution brings.  Unfortunately, if the leadership at the top does not clean up its act during this kind of pressure, the bottom will quit listening in and begin to examine what the leader at the bottom is doing and as that leader builds a stronger set of skillful leadership success, the winds of the public will shift out of control.  The big's will sit back to watch how the little's will grow together.  Little's become big when they learn how to organize their effort.  This is when occupy becomes a serious concern.  We better thank our lucky stars they are not organized, yet.

The consumer is not happy.  The consumer is trying to find a better way to live.  The consumer has a lot of communication power.  The consumer has a lot of irresponsible selfishness developing within that communication ability.  The leaders of business models that truly understand this pattern of life are the ones who are winning at the cash register.  Those leaders get it.  They are absent in the political world but present in the consumer world.  The occupy movement does not seem to have a clear objective except that they do not enjoy being on the wrong end of the economy experienced by the "have not's."  If enough business leaders do not 'get it' on this one, eventually the consumer will become the largest voting block that is completely dissatisfied.  It will no longer be about party lines, political support will solely be determined about money and money alone.  The business leader will eventually be the one who determines the level of satisfaction the consumer experiences.  They will also be the ones the consumer attacks!  Is this beginning to sound familiar?  Wake up business leaders.  Occupy is not sitting at city hall.  They are sitting on the doorsteps of businesses and the place where the money goes, banks and Wall Street.  Unfortunately, you business leaders need to start heading towards the political tables and get better organized.  Right now you are getting your butt's kicked and the consumer has your future placed smack dab in their cross hairs of sight.  The lawyers and politicians are busy deciding your fate.  Where the heck are you?  Wake up before it becomes too late.  Your consumer is on fire and they are beginning the movement to yell at your doorsteps.  Do not ignore them.  Better yet, do not permit your politicians to decide how you will deal with their dissatisfaction.  Get out of your chairs and get to their tables of discussion.

Business leadership is at question, is it not?

Do You Employ Someone You Dislike?

Group Dynamics Can Infect Productivity

A long time ago my wife once asked me what I wanted for dinner when I got off work that night?  She asked me that question when I was just getting ready to leave for work that day.  I usually respond with an 'I don't care' kind of answer.  This time, however, I said meatloaf.  I told her she had made a really good cheese-type meatloaf one time and I liked it.  That would be good, she can make that for dinner tonight.  We said our good-byes and off to work I went.

That evening I came home a little later than normal but we gathered around the table with the kids to sit down and eat.  As we were eating I noticed it was chicken.  I was quiet for a short bit but after a while, I asked her this question, "Did I guess wrong?"  She said, "What?"  I repeated it, "Did I guess wrong?"  She said, "Guess what, I don't understand what you mean?"  I said, "Before I went to work this morning you asked me what I wanted for dinner and I said meatloaf.  This is chicken.  Did I guess the wrong answer?"  She was shocked and said, "Oh my gosh.  You did.  I am so sorry, I forgot."  It was quite fine with me, the food was good.  It did not need to be meatloaf.  I just thought it was kind of cute how she asked me for my opinion and my choice was not the one on the table that night.  We were raising three little girls at that time and I am sure her days were filled with enough activities to help her mind drift away from a planned dinner menu.  It was no big deal to me.  I was glad to have a good, warm home cooked meal.  I was satisfied.

For many years that story became one of our repeated funny stories about how a marriage can drift around.  It provided good fodder for making some minor marriage points to people we would visited in our travels.  I even used it on stage when I was speaking.  It was funny stuff.

We all do these kinds of things in our business career.  We have employees and once in awhile we come across the opportunity to ask them for a serious opinion about something we are doing in our business.  Sometimes those questions come out of nowhere and are not a planned discussion.  They just drift into a more serious conversation about likes and dislikes.  This is an opportunity for the owner to learn more about what is truly going on with the rank and file of the business model.  I have learned a lot about stuff I could not see in my business group dynamics when these opportunities surface.  I become more aware of some of the things I did not know.  I recognize some new things about how the employees view their job environment.  Even if I do not agree with their view or understand it, at least I get an opportunity to see what it truly is.  They will tell me about how they like meatloaf if I am listening closely enough.  The only way I do not learn about how much they like meatloaf is if I do not really care what they like or dislike.  I will not hear meatloaf and bring to their daily table, chicken.  I will just be doing my job and in the end, I will be just expecting them to be doing their job.  Who cares much about chicken or meatloaf?  They have work to do!

Getting to know your employees more deeply is not such a bad thing if you practice some good leadership rules.  Your employees are going to work at a place they take very serious.  It is where they go every day of their life, they think.  It is what they do.  It is where they live how they live.  It becomes who they are and how they project their lives to others around them.  Your employees become the workplace and protect the things they like to do at that job.  They take possession of the work they do.  They take possession of where they do the work they perform.  It becomes a lot about how they define who they are.  Trust me, their workplace is important to them.  They become very attached to where they go to work.  They use their work as a place for defining who they are.  It is very important stuff.  Do not minimize these truths.  Your employees want to be respected for the work they do where they have learned how to define who they are.  Pay very close attention to this perspective.  It will offer some very nice opportunities for you to develop some great teamwork models in your operation.  You can easily learn how to serve meatloaf when they mention how much they really like it.  It will reflect how much you respect what they do.

That brings up a good subject.  Do you employ someone you dislike?

Leaders Do Stupid Things To Kill Their Business

All About Me

I once watched a franchise owner purchase a brand new set of vehicles for he and his wife.  Hers was a small premium model sports car and his was a bright yellow Hummer.  They took delivery of those two new vehicles six months apart from each other.  That was not the bad news.  The worst news that hit their business model came because they also took delivery of the second vehicle two weeks after they had sent a series of business 'change' notices to all of their franchisees about some cost increases they were placing on the franchise fee's.  It appeared almost too obvious.  It appeared as though the owners get two new costly rigs landed in their garage while the workers get dinged for the rent.  It was a stupid series of moves.  Within one year, six franchise managers opted out of their contract with that owner and three others ended up in court to litigate against the owner on several other business issues.  Today, a once thriving franchise model is all but destroyed.  Leaders do stupid things to kill their business.

I know that the purchase of the new rigs was not the prime reason why so many franchisees were disgruntled enough to make such rash decisions about leaving or challenging the place where they work.  I know much more was behind the motivation to jump ship.  However, the timing of the two premium automobile purchases just added gasoline to a small fire.  An explosion occurred that may easily have been avoided if the new automobile purchases were delayed until after everything else was settled or modified to franchisee satisfaction. The timing was way off target.  It was a stupid move with stupid results.  In my business career, it rates as one of the more stupid moves I have witnessed in a business model.  That once thriving business model is all but gone and the two owners of that franchise business model are now divorced.  One drives a used car and the other one drives a three year old pick-up truck.  Both of those owners have fallen off the face of the visible business world.  Leaders do stupid things to kill their business.

I am not here to rub up against the wrong things my associates of the past have performed.  I do not benefit from that kind of writing.  However, if you benefit from seeing how some things may negatively affect your success efforts, then by all means let's chat about those things in a realistic way.  If we pull out 'real' examples of how things may turn out when stupid thinking becomes too persistent to avoid, by all means, let's get a real understanding about how wrong things can really go.  I know how much I fight against myself to parade my victories around the sphere of influence I draw.  I work on that problem every single day.  It is a "war within" that I continue to fight in the management efforts to control the ego portions of what I do.  I fight this war.  I am a guy who thrives on making victories happen in the life of a business model.  That is what I do.  I also am filled with the male ego enough to make sure I get noticed for the victories I placed on that trail.  That egotistical urge has come to the table and has also destroyed some of the good work I have been able to produce.  Leaders have these urges to do stupid things that kill their business efforts.  I am no exception.

I can sit at my desk, day after day, and quietly convince myself that my decisions were always warranted and just.  Even when they were not.  I can easily convince myself they were totally justified.  Every one of them.  Even if only one of them was destined to destroy what I have worked so hard to build.  I can easily convince myself it was justifiably good to make that destructive decision anyway.  I have made many decisions just like that in my business past.  I will also fight against myself in the near future with similar decision making patterns.  I will face the "war within" on my stupid decisions to support my rotten ego.  After all, it is my ego that helps me to muster up the courage to drive my business models to the success they enjoy.  As a natural result, I will trust the doings my ego performs.  Many of those ego driven decisions work well.  Unfortunately once in awhile, one of them comes to the surface and does some major business model damage.  Leaders do stupid things to kill their business.

I have participated in that role enough times to know how badly it can turn out.  It can make your money growth completely disappear.  Once discovered, I have learned from experience that changing back the wrong decision is not as easy as one might expect.  To the disgruntled business fire that was going on to the franchisees, it would not have helped that franchise owner very much if he immediately returned the two rigs back to the auto dealerships.  The damage had already been done.  Going back on a bad decision does not always work well.  That is precisely why it is so important to refrain from making stupid decisions in the first place.  There may be no 'make-ups' or no gainful possibility for 'overs.'  Leaders do stupid things to kill their business models.  I can provide a long list of evidence for the things I have personally witnessed.  Some of them have been my own.

Are You A Banker, An Accountant Or A Merchant?

True Merchants Somehow Get To The Other Side

Style is so important in the world of business success.  Great success has some interesting rules.  The rules of the road for performing successfully include how much style an owner applies to the canvas of operations.  If the business owner is operating a bank, the style of play is a bit different than if that same owner is operating a mechanic shop.  Did you know that?  Not only will the clothing look different, but the language will not be the same.  I doubt the auto mechanic would do very well if someone hired him to manage a local community bank.  On a similar note, I doubt the bank manager would make a very successful auto mechanic shop owner.  The required style for each operation would be violated enough to interrupt most of the needed components for producing successful results.  If you are a banker, do what bankers do.  If you are an accountant, do what accountants do.  If you are a merchant, do what merchants do.  If you are an auto mechanic, do what mechanics do.

I see a few business owners try to function outside of the style they need to perform.  Some retail owners try to become bankers in their operations.  Do you want a good tip?  Don't try that.  It will not work well.  Some retail owners try to become accountants in their operations.  Do you want another good tip?  Don't try that.  It will not work well.  Some retail owners are merchants at heart and those are the ones who perform the best in that model.  If you are an owner who is trying to manage a merchant into becoming an accountant or banker as your retail manager, you are leading that merchant into the halls of failure.  Your numbers will not produce the desired results you imagined to eventually appear with that kind of leadership.  Quit dreaming.  Making this kind of move is like trying to mix oil and water together in a bucket expecting the two to blend into a foamy substance.  Not going to happen.

The banker who tries his hand at managing an auto mechanic shop may clean out the filthy place and toss away all of the unused, discarded engine parts littered all over the shelves and floors of the corner places.  That banker might believe a cleaner shop will appear better to the customers this shop attracts.  The banker may gather up all of those discarded pieces and take them to a scrap shop and convert them into cash to improve his financial reports.  The banker might get excited about converting dead inventory into working capital.  What a great move, right?  Wrong.  It might look good on the financials to move dead inventory from the liability side of cash flow and turn it into a smaller asset, because it was discounted to discard it, that now has the ability to become part of some new working capital that can be immediately cash liquid.  What a great banking move.  What a stupid mechanics shop move.  A good portion of the 'gear-head' trade just became shocked at this move to eliminate having those retired parts disappear from their library of future access.  The discarded inventory of old parts were not dead assets.  They were active marketing tools.  The real mechanic understood this reality.  The banker did not.  The two styles will not mix well.

If you are a banker trying to operate a retail business, this kind of description will piss you off.  As it should.  However, the truth needs to be understood if you truly want your retail operations to produce better financial results.  Get rid of the banking mentality.  Those types of operational styles will not work well in a retail model.  Know the difference and teach yourself how to accept these differences.  If you fail to recognize this truth, you will never produce great retail results.  Never.  You might as well quit trying.  You will be wasting your time as well as everyone else who is waiting for success to appear.  It ain't coming.  Period.

By the way, banker, the failure will be your own fault.  How does that one feel?  It does not feel bad because you will never accept that truth.  That is why you are a banker and they are the merchants.  Neither one of you agree to the rules of the road that each of you believes should be traveled.  I have found great bankers in my retail life.  I have found great accountants in my retail life.  The best ones have never tried to advise my merchant heart how to or how not to do what I do for a living.  We think differently.  The good ones recognize this difference and respect it well.  Both my bankers and my accountants have often described to me how they do not understand what I do to make retail work well.  Both like the results that show up in our business models but do not fully understand how those results eventually appear.  I have actually listened to an extremely great accountant ask me how does that place do what it does?  She was totally mystified by the continued good results.  My answer was this, "I don't know.  It's a mystery to me."

Retail is a very different beast.  If your business model is selling stuff to the public, it is involved with retail rules.  If your heart does not match what a merchant heart does, you are likely having trouble making your business model produce continued success.  You are likely fighting against the wind.  A lot of the tiny little decisions you are passing over as unimportant are not and the ones you are likely considering of great importance don't matter much.  You are likely doing some banker moves and cleaning out the old discarded engine parts while at the same time losing the customers who are interested in hanging out where those parts are resting.  You believe the immediate working cash is far more valuable on your balance sheet than the future trade you gain from the 'gear-heads' who walk the outside world recommending your shop to non-gear heads needing mechanic work.  The dead inventory was quietly managing your word of mouth advertising.  As a banker, your immediate benefit from the new cash conversion will be short lived.  You now have a new problem developing.  Your negative word of mouth is destroying your future foot traffic creations.  Your future volume will be compromised.  Good luck spending more advertising dollars to gain back what you quietly lost.  I hope that cash conversion you did can pay for the future advertising you will need to spend.  Otherwise, banker, you lost.  Your future balance sheet will be destroyed.  At least you will own a clean shop!  If that was your goal?

Are you a banker, an accountant or a merchant?

How Do We Clip The Office Politics?

Office Politics Lurk Quietly Inside

We have a tendency to judge the wrong things when we hire people.  We judge how they look, how they treat us and how they respond to the pressure of the moment with us.  Actually, we do not even do that stuff very well.  We have a strong tendency to hire people we like.  We surround ourselves with people who know we like them.  'Like' is the criteria.  We use how we like them as our main criteria for hiring the people we employ to do the work we need to get done.  Usually if we do not like them, we do not hire them.  Therefore, in the end 'like' is the reason we hire the people we hire.  We 'like' them.  We therefore begin the process to permit office politics to arrive.

One of the things owners do well is support the decisions about who they hired.  If the owner hired Andy, Andy gets stronger chances to stay employed than anyone else.  If the owner hired Billy, Billy gets stronger chances to stay employed than anyone else.  If the owner hired Karen, Karen gets stronger chances to stay employed than anyone else.  If Cindy did not get hired by the owner and the owner does not like Cindy, she will be judged by the owner tougher than Andy, Billy or Karen.  That is how most business organizations are built.  We call this process, politics.  Politicking plays a huge role in how the performance of a business behaves.  Whistle-blowers are not accepted very well when they see and hear how the politicking hurts the performance of a particular business model.  The owner will actually gloss over the accused if they are one of those he hired.  Andy, Billy and Karen can get away with more unproductive stuff than anyone else.  It is a very natural phenomenon.  The only thing that can hurt Andy, Billy or Karen is if they somehow do something that offends the boss very deeply.  Guess what?  Andy, Billy and Karen recognize this truth.  They know it well enough and actually 'play' the boss very well.  It is an interesting game.  Every boss has this affliction.  Office politics has opened fire and the war is on.

Let the games begin.  When the politics of the business model grow up they transform into a strongly unproductive series of games people play.  Pockets of employees gradually form into small groups of power manipulators that work the boss in ways that do not have anything to do with business performance.  Long periods of this kind of activity tend to grow into unproductive pieces of business management.  Company goals and objectives become skewed as they get mixed up into the process of the business politics within the human dynamics that are forming.  Andy, Billy and Karen are the best ones to benefit from this process.  They are protected the most from the actions the boss uses to distract his company from becoming a non-productive human political machine.  The politics of 'boss' and the preferences of the 'boss' are played quietly to lean in the favor of the ones the boss 'liked.'  Andy, Billy and Karen will win most of the dynamic battles within the office politics.  The 'boss' likes them.  How do we clip the office politics?

During all of these interesting developments within each organization is the process of operating a healthy business model.  The desire to compromise company performance gives way to the desire to remain 'liked.'  The boss liked them so the boss wants them to like the boss.  It begins to work in the opposite direction.  Andy, Billy and Karen recognize this truth.  They benefit well when they work this pattern of who likes who into their daily job duties.  If they 'pull it off' well they can help to insulate how badly they can perform and continue to get away with it.  If they play it well enough, the boss will never see how poorly they are performing.  We protect what we like.  We gloss over the work they are not doing.  We judge the ones we like a lot more forgiving than how we judge the ones we do not like.  It is natural to the working human being.  Every single business model lives in its productive life through these kinds of business politics.  It is part and parcel to every organization who has groups of people employed.

So if this is true, how does an owner defend against his own will to like the people he liked?  How does an owner manage the ones he likes as fairly and squarely as the ones he does not like?  How does an owner pull this kind of difficult thing off?  Every single boss I have ever met does not actually believe he plays favorites at his business model.  Yet when I am invited into the model to examine some things, I always see it.  The boss is blind to this fact, ever single time.  I am here to tell all of you, if you are a boss...you are guilty of playing favorites.  Quit denying it.  It is hurting your business performance.  I am guilty of the same stuff, too.  We all do it.  It is as natural as sleeping once each day.  We all do it without giving it much fanfare.  We play favorites.  Fess up and move on.

I once had a business mentor from Vancouver, Washington who was a retired doctor ask me if I remember the little chairs and the little tables in my young girls' kindergarten classes?  He asked if I remember those little chairs?  I said I did.  I remember sitting in those little chairs with one of my girls when we would go to the teacher conferences.  That mentor asked me if I knew why those little chairs were there?  I said, "Well of course, the girls were little back then."  He said, "No, your wrong.  Those little chairs were there to remind the adults that you need to move on."  Fess up and move on.  We play favorites.  End of discussion.

Now, how do we manage this weakness?  How do we learn how to treat our employees with more objectivity?  How do we become completely fair on our judgement trail?  How do we improve how we manage the people we do not like as well as we treat the ones we do like?  When you put it that way, it sounds different...doesn't it?  We play favorites and they know it.  They know it well enough to push the right buttons on our skin that will produce the best arrangements for them to manage.  The staff will play us well.  Owners may not recognize when they are being played.  Trust me...Andy, Billy and Karen know full well what they are doing to maintain the favor of their boss who likes them...and Cindy is pissed off about it.  Remember, Cindy will produce some damage to your organization somewhere.  She will get even.  She will disguise that damage very well.  What's more, even the political work Andy, Billy and Karen perform will grow up to damage the organizational ship somewhere.  I have watched many 'teachers pets' actually get away with stealing over and over again from the company assets.  In many cases, the 'teachers pets' do the most damage.

Build It Better, Not Bigger

I cannot believe how many business owners have placed the idea that 'bigger is better' near the top of their master plan for success.  More stuff does not guarantee more success.  In fact, more stuff can actually bog down success.  Building it bigger can actually kill the potential that permits success to develop.  'Too big' may eventually deliver an increase in costs that will outrun the needed revenues to support the bigger effort.  Build it better, not bigger.  Bigger does not always work well.  Better is always better.

Some of the best songs in history had the fewest words written.  Some of the best tunes came from the fewest notes.  Some of the best athletes the world has ever seen produced only one special trait that carried them to those victories.  Some of the best gold mines for profitable cash return success came from the smallest business model designs.  Big is not always better.  Better is always better.  There is a difference.

If you carry inventory, make sure it is adequate but not heavy.  If you market advertising, make sure it is effective not mass produced.  If you create architecture, quality will always surpass quantity.  Bigger is not always better.  Know the difference.

People sting themselves when they try to build a business model on the premise that 'bigger is better.'  I see many business models try this 'magical' move.  Rarely does it work.  The 'magic' of being big is not always the best 'magic' to apply.  However, the 'magic' of becoming better always works.  I prefer the one that always works.  I like to win more than I prefer to lose.  I like the odds that favor making my business model 'better' much more than I desire the increased risk to fail by becoming 'bigger.'  One of the best ways to satisfy the desire to become bigger is to make sure your model is getting better.  Better models are the ones getting bigger.  Don't get big for the sake of getting bigger.  Get big for the sake of getting better.  Get better first, and the rest will follow.  Eventually you will discover how big you have become.  Better is always better.

If your work design systems are not doing what they should be doing, make them better.  Find new ways to make better things happen.  If your business process is not producing what you believe it should be producing, make that process work better.  Go to work on improving how you do what you do.  Get better at it.

If you have a home and you do not like how your landscape designs look, make them better.  Improve the designs.  If you have an exercise routine you do for your health and it is not producing the desired results, make that routine work better.  Get a better routine.  Better is always better.  More is not always better.  Bigger is less desirable if it produces less victories.  In other words, focus on the results rather than the methods.  We sometimes get caught up with 'cool' methods and forget to do the things that produce better results.  We want to be 'big' and 'bad.'  We want to be popular, in the know, recognized, visible, successful, wealthy, secure and admired.  We want to be the things that we believe 'big' will deliver.  Bigger houses, bigger investments, bigger business models and bigger recognition becomes our desire to attract and own.  We want to parade around in bigger style.  We believe that bigger is better.  Not always is that true.

If You Had A Magic Eraser, What Would You Erase?

Erasers, Remember The "Pink Pearl?"

Every business model has some things going on that are not working right.  Maybe some inventory categories are total losers?  Maybe some employee groups are never going to be productive?  Maybe one of the leaders has reached the Peter Principle ?  Maybe the demographics in the region have changed below the level of good support?  Maybe the location is not the best one to use?  Maybe the previous owners ruined the respect for good customer service?  Maybe the huge amount of debt is dragging the model down?  Something big needs to be erased.  If you could determine one thing that a magic eraser could remove, what would that be?  If you had a magic eraser, what would you erase?

I will sometimes sit in my office and think about stuff like this.  I try to imagine what my business model would look like if it were a better machine.  What would I change if I could?  What would I change first, if given the opportunity?  Who would I re-assign?  Who would I terminate?  Where would I like to see my profits work best?  I sit in my office and think about what kinds of stuff needs to be erased that my business model is currently doing?  I try to picture how I would use a magic eraser.

Have any of you tried this exercise?  If not, give it a whirl.  You will discover how you can think more freely about doing some more radical stuff to help improve your business performance.  You might discover a new way to look at complicated issues.  I once had an interior design instructor give a simple piece of advice.  He said in order to see a room in a more objective way was to take a small mirror and look backwards into that room.  See the room from a mirror.  Move the mirror around the room before you begin your evaluations.  You will see the room from a different perspective.  I appreciate seeing things from a different perspective.  It helps me widen my options.  More options allow me more choices.  More choices reach more diversity.  More diversity increases wider sales opportunities.  Wider sales opportunities offers more revenue chances.  Increasing revenue chances spells good growth potential.  I am a business owner, I like the sound of these kinds of things.  Increasing my perspective can open up some interesting options.

The problem with this process is that we often develop some very limiting obstacles that get in the way of this kind of thinking.  One of those obstacles is fear.  We are afraid to do some creative management because if it fails, the finger points in our direction.  We were the one who initiated the creative move.  Therefore, we must be the reason why the failed effort arrived.  Now we must face some criticism.  We hate that kind of stuff.  We hate it enough to keep us away from trying to risk having it happen.  Therefore we kill creative ideas and refuse to try them out.  We allow fear to win.  I once had a good business operator tell me what fear really was.  He said F.E.A.R. is False Evidence Appearing Real.  It is often true, however.  Sometimes the thought of fear is bigger then the reality of what fear truly brings.  We are humans and we allow fear to dominate how we move.  Everyone hits the brakes when they see a cop.  They hit the brakes event though they were not speeding.  That is exactly how fear works.  Business owners are no exception.  We fear stuff that should never be an issue on our plate of operations.

Fear dominates all of us.  It drives us to remain more safe than maybe we should be operating.  Life is already a great risk.  Do you drive an automobile?  I rest my case.  There are thousands of ways and opportunities for us to meet tragedy in one of those things.  I drive a lot, I know.  There are a lot of people out there who drive dangerously.  I saw a person on a motorcycle just yesterday, text-ing!  That is not a lie.  He was sharing that road he was on with my vehicle and my space!  Think about this stuff.  We take enormous risks in our lives and think nothing of it.  Why do we stop that process when we go into our business office?  Maybe we need to force ourselves to develop some interesting habits of operations?  Maybe we need to build in our mind an imaginary eraser.  Maybe we can use that eraser to perform some wonderful tricks.  Maybe we can learn how to erase a serious part of our business model that is not working very well.  Maybe during December, we can pick one of those rotten things we would like to erase and begin to imagine what it would be like to have it all gone.  Here, take this eraser out and start using it.

What would you erase if you could erase one thing without retribution?  What would it be?