If you are very good technically, you know your job very well and your clients are very satisfied with your work, but nevertheless, you have not trained in management skills, finances and much less marketing and sales, then it is very likely that you belong to this class of entrepreneurs/self-employed.
If you are in this group, it is likely that you do not know how to properly interpret a profit and loss account, nor do you know the indicators that you have to measure. I n life, it has crossed your mind to read a balance sheet or a cash flow. You leave that to your manager (who, guess what, does it less than you).
You have the technical knowledge, you have the drive, the power, but you lack something that is essential: control.
And this lack of control is very likely to be generating problems in your company, which you, due to your ignorance, attribute to other causes.
I’m talking about problems with:
- your sales
- your costs
- your customers
- your employees
- your internal processes
- your margins
- your profitability
- your goals
- your goals
- You because
Table of Contents
Key 1 to have a successful business: manage the four functions of business management
If we talk about managing a business, the first thing you have to be clear about are the areas in which business management is broken down:
1. Plan
Planning consists of preparing or establishing a plan according to which something has to be developed , especially an activity.
Do you have a plan? Do you know where you want to be in 3 years? Have you broken down that plan on an annual basis? Have you cut that plan down to months?
If your answer to any of these questions is no, then you are not planning.
2. Organize
To organize is to arrange a group of people and means for a determined purpose . That is, it consists of preparing something carefully thinking about all the necessary details for its proper development.
If you are an entrepreneur, you are continually organizing your means of production: you organize your people, your machines, your suppliers, your customers. Or, put another way, you have your means for a certain end.
Do you have a specific purpose? A because? Do you organize or respond day by day to what comes up, reactively? Are your people properly coordinated by you? Are they well organized? Are your teams overwhelmed? Are your teams idle?
If these questions bother you, it is very likely that you have an organizational problem in your company.
3. Execute
To execute is to carry out an action , especially a project, an assignment or an order.
I know what you are going to tell me, in this, you are a specialist. You are the perfect running machine. And that, precisely, is your problem.
I think you are beginning to understand why, but let me define the last area of management, before explaining the reason.
4. Control
To control is to exercise control over someone or something . It involves carrying out the following actions:
- Check: confirm the accuracy of something.
- Inspect: review individual actions a posteriori.
- Audit: observe the data to find faults.
- Intervention: authorize expenses and payments individually.
Do you carry out verification or intervention tasks? Do you supervise or inspect your team, its actions, its processes? Dont do it?
So, you’re not controlling.
Do you see where I’m going?
If you spend 100% of your time executing, then you don’t spend any time planning or organizing (let alone controlling). If you do not plan, organize or control, you are not managing your company. You are working for your company.
Key 2 to have a successful business: exercise control
You already know the four areas of business management. As you can see, each of them takes care of a part. However, there is one of the four that supervises all the previous ones. There is one of them whose main objective is that the results of the other three are adequate. That phase is control.
Thanks to the control, you can supervise the fulfillment of the other three phases. And if you dedicate efforts to each of the four phases, then yes, you can say that you are managing your company.
There are three steps that are the foundation of any management control process .
These steps are:
1. Review the actual results against the planned ones
Once you have a plan, you need to establish mechanisms that allow you to monitor that you are getting closer to fulfilling it.
2. Reorient actions
The previous check allows you to identify when you are moving away from the objectives that you outlined in the plan. This identification allows you to make yourself available to take action and solve the problem that is keeping you from your plan.
3. Give feedback
The information from the two previous steps allows you to learn and therefore provide feedback on your processes, your activities, your team , so that, in the future, the situations that have caused problems in achieving your objectives do not occur again.
Key 3 to have a successful business: annihilate your zone of control
You have to learn to handle situations of uncertainty, like the current one.
I know it’s not easy. I know that it is easier to write this than to implement it in your company. I know that it is easier to read these paragraphs at your table, in your chair, in your bed, than to apply it. I know that it is difficult because I help people like you every day to apply it in their companies, in their businesses.
Also Read: How To Grow Your Business?