Did you see the current economic storm coming? Were you listening to what the reputable commentators were saying and reviewing the likely impact on your business?

If not, its time to raise your eyes from working in your business and look at what is happening around you.

Upheavals in world financial markets caused by the US sub-prime mortgage problems has made many business owners very nervous.  Every day the news seems more gloomy as world stock markets tumble and yet another banking icon declares losses that are incomprehensible to mere mortals who occupy the small business world.

When economic sentiment turns from optimism to caution cutomers tend to close their wallets and wait for the air to clear. As a result, business owners are forced to review sales forecasts, marketing strategies, production plans and cash flow projections to ascertain the best course to survive the storm and identify new opportunities.

What should you do when the world seems to be closing down?

• Review your customer and product profiles - Is you business concentrated on a range of customers who are able to survive economic storms and do you provide the products and services to help them survive?
• Review your marketing strategies - Do your customers, and others like them understand understand the total solutions your business provides? How are you making this information available to them and what mesages are you delivering? Are your current marketing strategies still appropriate? What new opprtunities present themselves in difficult times?
• Review your production plans and processes - What is the balance between production and inventories? How does production align with current market conditions? Are your production processes producing the best output for the least appropriate cost and minimum waste? Are you producing what your customers actually want and at a price they are willing to pay?
• Review your cash flow projections - When times are tough, cash is king. Are your credit and cash collection policies current, appropriate and complied with? Are your inventory holdings in line with current customer requirements (inventories can be one of the hidden stores of cash in your business)? Do you have other assets which are surplus to requirements and could be sold for cash? Will projected cash flows allow you to ride out the storm?

Any good sea captain uses all the resources available to him when storms arrive. He not only relies on his own knowledge and information provided by his instruments, but also on his navigator, engineer, and the rest of the crew , as well as advice from outside his vessel to help steer a safe passage through the storm.

By all means use the institutional knowledge within your business to plan your way through the current economic turmoil. Remember though, there is advice available from outside of your business also, and often the perspective from outside is clearer than from within. Your banker, lawyer, accountant, trade association and business coach can help you steer a course to new opprtunities and/or safe havens.

Everything done by you or your business has an outcome, a result. The very purpose of a business is to produce results in the form of value for anyone with an interest in the business, especially customers.

The mistake many business people make is to focus on the work, not the results. The purpose of work is to produce a result. If you focus on the work, you get what you get. If you focus on the result, it will direct the work toward the outcome you want, and you'll get what you want to get. It's actually a chain of purpose:

Goal leads to Work leads to Results leads to Success

It's a simple principle: set goals to achieve the results you want and keep your eye on those results as you work toward them.

It's only after the fact, after you've accomplished something, that you can call it a success. Before the fact it's a hope, or if you do it right, a goal. Setting goals is actually defining success before it happens. Goals give you something to aim for, something to direct your efforts, something to motivate you, and something to keep you on course.

The first point about defining success is the simple act of doing it. The mere fact that you define success before leaping into an activity goes a long way toward insuring that you will, in fact, be successful. So look ahead and consciously decide what success means to you and to your business.

Stripped to the essentials, success is nothing more than setting a goal and achieving it.

There's a deeper experience of success. Each of us has an inner drive that motivates us. It's something that was shaped in our earliest days, that's so basic to us it seems inborn, part of our characters that operates mostly at an unconscious level. It needs to become a part of our conscious awareness so we can factor it into our decision making, and use it to tap into our passion and motivation.

We call it "Core Purpose" because it is core to your personality and it shapes your sense of purpose in your life.

Core Purpose 

The main point about Core Purpose is that the goals you set for yourself and your business can't conflict with your Core Purpose or you're setting yourself up for failure or an unfulfilling life and career.

What is success for your business? Again, success is what you say it is. And again, it's not quite that simple. Defining success for your business should be done in a way that actually launches you toward that success.

Goal-setting is an important part of that, so are setting a vision and mission for the future of the business and deciding on how it will operate and how the people in the business should behave. In our Full Spectrum program, we ask you to define something called "Strategic Intent."

Strategic Intent 

Strategic Intent is a clear statement of what the business will become in the future when it is successful. Strategic Intent sets the stage for success and puts your business on the right path to succeed.

So, success is what you define it to be - both for yourself and your business. If you don't define success, how will you know whether you have achieved it, or not?  Part of the business development work you do on your business is setting goals.  Don't limit those goals to just financial goals - look at your business as a whole and set goals in non-financial terms also.

The summer holiday season has finally come to an end for Australian and New Zealand businesses. The "silly season" from mid December till the end of January brings everyone back to work with suntans and refreshed minds.

Holidays provide an opportunity to get away from the business to spend time pursuing other activities.  The business however, is never far away.  Unless you are totally out of range of telephones and the internet, the business goes on holiday with you.  You do get time to reflect though, away from the bustle of working every day in the business:

• How have we done in the last year?
• What mistakes did we make that we can avoid in the future?
• Where is the business headed?
• When do I plan to retire?
• What new opportunities are out there that we need to look into?
• Is there a better way of doing what we do?
• and so on...

Why not start the new year by writing down your goals for yourself and your business for the next year, and the three or four years beyond that? What is the strategic intent for your business, and what is the gap between the current reality and this strategic intent?

Writing your thoughts down gives you something tangible to think about and gives you the opportunity to develop strategies for change and prioritise them.  This means that the actions that you take in the new year are taken intentionally, and therefore have a greater chance of success.

And, don't forget to ask for help if you need it - you probably don't have all of the answers yourself.

Have you ever wondered how people make decisions about what they do and how to do it? Maybe you've noticed that some people seem to be very intuitive in what they do, but others are very analytical.  What kind of person are you, and how do you make decisions about your life and your business?

Human beings come fully equipped with both logical and intuitive thinking abilities, and somehow, over the years, most of us learn to rely on one more than the other. Neither is better than the other and neither is more reliable.

People who intuitively "trust my gut" are just as likely to be right or wrong as people who "figure it out" logically. The people who learn to use both logical and intuitive thinking get the best results. It's as if they had two brains, and everyone knows "two heads are better than one." 

If you tend to be a logical thinker, wouldn't it be better if you could double-check your logic with your intuition?

If you tend to be intuitive, wouldn't it be better if you could build a logical case for what your intuition tells you? Of course, the answer to both questions is yes.

This principle of using your whole-mind will make your decision making and business management far more effective than relying primarily on one thinking mode or the other.

An understanding of the importance of conscious and unconscious thinking and logical and intuitive decision making will dramatically increase your effectiveness as a business person and leader. It's a theme that should run throughout your business development process.

We have all heard "rules of thumb" about how to improve the way we do business. In some circumstances these seem to work quite well, but not always.  A rule of thumb is really a formula someone has worked out for their business that seems to deliver results for them, most of the time.  We hear them from acquaintances, from golfing partners, and sometimes from business consultants who offer them as a panacea or cure for business ills.

When we say "formula" we include rules, templates, best practices, and other "cookie cutter" methods, which are simply attempts to transplant methods that worked in one business into other businesses. 

Formulas make sense, don't they? Only if your business is exactly the same as the one where the formula was developed. The problem with formulas is not that they don't work. The problem arises because your business isn't the same as any other business, not even other businesses offering the same products and services to the same markets. 

You're not like other leaders. You have your own strengths and weaknesses, and they're not like anyone else's strengths and weaknesses. And your specific situation isn't exactly like the situation for any other business. 

A business principle is an underlying business reality. Principles are fundamental laws.  You cannot change them.  However by knowing and understanding them you can build these principles into the design of your business.  You get to have them powerfully working for you rather than against you. 

A business principle is deeper, more fundamental than a formula. A formula is a generalized attempt to solve a general business problem. But your problems - and opportunities - aren't general. They're specific. What you need are specific solutions to your specific problems and opportunities. 

You don't want "approximately" or "good enough." You want "exactly right" for your business, and "outstanding" for your customers, investors, employees, and others.

The previous four posts to this blog highlight a number of key principles that you can use in your business. In case you missed them they are:

1. The customer must be paramount

2. Systems are the solution to business frustrations

3. Deliver Full Spectrum value

4. The 80/20 Rule

The next few posts will bring some additional principles for you to consider. Using them as a basis for you business development thinking, you will begin to develop some ideas about how your business might become different.  Now that's a thought!

Leverage yourself and your resources

Effective people know to focus their attention and their resources on the small number of tasks that get the greatest results. It's called the eighty-twenty rule - eighty percent of the results produced by a person or a business are produced by twenty percent of the work. 

There's nothing magic about the "eighty percent" number. Just remember that smart people know to leverage themselves and their impact by putting their attention and their resources where they'll get the greatest results. 

The trick is in knowing which work and resources will get the results they want.

What are the driving forces in the business? That's where you put your attention.

What elements of value drive the customer's purchase decision? That's where you put your attention.

What business systems are the ones that get the most important results? That's where you put your attention.

What are the highest priorities for work to be done? That's where... well, you know.

This basic principle of business development asks you to figure out what "drives" your business, your customers, your employees, and to focus your attention on those drivers.

Value is one of those words that means what you think it means, depending on your point of view. In business, value is anything you provide that someone wants. If you provide it and they don't want it, it's valueless. If they want it and don't get it, it's valueless. If they want it and get all of it, that's full spectrum value.

What might this mean to the people your business touches?

To the owner, value is wealth, profits, satisfaction, making a contribution, status ... and much more.

To customers, value is a good price for the products and services they buy, a good experience of the product and the provider they get it from, status, emotional satisfaction ... and much more.

To an employee, value is a paycheque, job satisfaction, a good working environment, respectful treatment... and much more.

To the community, value is a business that pays its taxes, provides jobs for its citizens, contributes to the positive energy and the economics of the community ... and much more.

The bottom line is this: 

Value is whatever satisfies the needs of anyone having anything to do with the business.

Unless your business can deliver full spectrum value that can be recognised by everyone that it touches then there is nothing that will differentiate it from all the other businesses in the community that are its competitors.  The less it is undifferentiated, the less reason there will be for prospective customers to visit and existing customers to stay, employees to remain loyal, suppliers to offer special deals, lenders to lend, and investors to continue their investment.  The choice is yours.

If ever there was a part of management that that has the potential to cause frustration, it is delegation.  So often the manager who delgates tasks to others complains of disappointment about results produces by delegatees that one wonders about what went wrong.

For some managers, delegation is an opportunity to pass work off to others that dont want to do themselves, in other words, to pass the buck to someone else and walk away from the problem.  This can be called abdication, and it inevitably leads to problems sooner or later.

This is not true delegation in any sense of the word.

The fundemental problem here is lack of responsibility on the part of the manager, and abdication from accountability for ensuring that the task is completed properly, within time, with the correct resources, and with a proper feedback mechanism in place.

A recent posting on the Slow Leadership Blog is headed "Delegation is Art and Science" defines delegation as:

"the act of assigning responsibility and resources for a task, holding or process to a subordinate".

This is followed by the statement "In effect, you sublet your work. Because they remain your subordinate, the task ultimately remains your responsibility. Since you chose to delegate this to them, you proactively decided they could handle the situation".

Now that's a whole different situation from the abdication example given above and it requires a whole lot more work on the part of the manager. This work can be summarised in three brief steps:

1. Communicate the task or responsibility.
2. Give the resources needed to accomplish the task.
3. Compare results to expectations then adjust.

Those three steps involve a lot of skills from the manager, both in terms of supervision and also in personal relationship between the manager and the delegatee.  The dynamics change over time as the delegatee grows their own level of skill and gains increased confidence in completing the tasks.

So, delegation is one of the key tools in the kit that forms the art and scince of management. If it is used badly, the results will be poor.  When used properly and with skill, the business gains and the parties to the delegation gain also.

I recomend that you read the full article on the Slow Leadership Blog as it expands on the comments above and provides some further context to the art and science of delegation.

Hi everyone, we have a new website and blog!

Enterprise Leadership New Zealand Limited is finally "on the air" with a new website and blog.

The journey to this stage has involved a lot of reorganisation.  Enterprise Leadership New Zealand Limited previously traded as Business Development Academy Limited.  In those days we represented Michael Gerber's E-Myth Worldwide organisation in New Zealand as Certified E-Myth Coaches.  However, as a result of changes at E-Myth Worldwide we had to find a new content provider so we could continue to offer quality business coaching service to the New Zealand small business community.

We have been fortunate to become members of the Alliance for Enterprise Leadership Inc.(AEL), a growing worldwide group of former E-Myth coaches who are determined to continue to offer a world class coaching system to small business owners wherever they be.  As foundation members of AEL we are closely connected to the production of the programs we use with clients and are able to contibute to the development of our own Full Spectrum Business Development program, lead by Alex Alexander who was lead author of the highly regarded E-Myth Mastery Program.

In our website we bring the essense of the Full Spectrum Business Development Program to your attention so that you can decide whether or not to take the next steps to finding out whether it can work for you.

This blog will be used to bring items of interest to you in a less formal way.  It will include observations on everyday business practices, comments on useful business books we have read, and links to useful tips and resources found in other blogs and on the net. It will also contain announcements that we think may be of interest to small business owners in New Zealand and Australia in particular, and the wider small business community in general.  All in the spirit of sharing tips and topics to make all of our businesses better.

We are looking forward to leading the way.