The idea behind this blog is to engage business owners in a conversation about techniques, methods, tricks, systems and other tools that help with the challenging task of managing a small to medium sized business.
During my past and present consulting assignments I come across interesting adaptations of known good management practices. After all … smaller businesses are NOT LITTLE BIG BUSINESSES and often require innovative management tools to make the managing task easier.
Generally smaller businesses are resource poor. You have to be smart to not only survive in a constantly changing environment, but you have to use clever management techniques to keep your business on track.
I like to think of all the tasks that the poor owner manager does as a challenge in getting organised. I often say “Get a robot to do that task!” I call computers – robots you see. Try dividing tasks into those that are routine and those that require serendipity input. Ask if the routine task can be done by a robot. If not, how can the task be delegated? Maybe you need to break the task down into a series of separate smaller tasks.
The smaller business needs space to be creative and agile. By getting rid of the mundane, repetitive tasks you free up time to work “on” your business not “in” your business. (A now commonly used phase coined by Michael Gerber in his 1995 book “The E Myth”.)