Frank’s Final Word
In my last two posts, I shared the thoughts of Frank Gavrilos of AC Labels on why he has been successful with his business. This post concludes a most interesting and useful insight.
“Face the facts – just do the math!” I read an interesting article recently that suggested many managers manager like ostriches – with their head in the sand. In business, the figures are the “canary in the mine”. Don’t ignore them, Look for trends, good or bad, that will help identify problems and opportunities.
“Work ON the business, not IN it” I regularly hear from my clients that they are too busy “working” to worry about planning. I believe that in small business you need to be spending at least 2 hours a week working ON your business – ie planning for the future, identifying areas for improvement, developing staff etc. Frank made an interesting comment on this that I think defines his principal really well for medium sized businesses “Management need to work on what’s important, staff on what’s urgent”
“Don’t change the goal, change the process!” Now this is an interesting concept. If you have been working on your business and monitoring you figures, it is likely the goals in you plan will remain reasonably consistent. If there are problems reaching these goals (and they are SMART), perhaps the way of reaching them is the problem.
“Don’t reduce headcount, re-engineer their work!” as tempting as it may be to reduce headcount in times of economic downturn, if you have good staff now is the time to try and protect and retain them. Find productive and useful work for them and it will be a win/win situation, especially as business picks up.
“Match skills and tools with your plan” The best plan in the world, be it a football team’s game plan or a business plan needs to be supported by resources. If your plan calls for a strong export push and you lack experience and skills in this area, you need to gear up.
I was really impressed with Frank’s pragmatic approach to business management and hope you find his thoughts useful. While I have taken the liberty to expand on his thoughts a little, the basic concepts remain true and I think are well worth consideration by any business owner or manager.
Cheers
Wayne