Small businesses don’t work
by Kelly Schwedland
Small businesses don’t work, the owners do, and they are working entirely too hard for the return they are receiving.
A while back when we first succumbed to the trend of adding a website to help support small business owners. The results have been fascinating. Many of the people that visit the site take time to tell us their business frustrations. If you are a typical business owner some of these may sound familiar.
Top Key Frustrations of business owners
- Owner doesn’t have enough time.
- Can’t find good people.
- Business depends too much on owner.
- Not enough sales/customers.
- Not enough profit.
- Inconsistent operational performance.
If you find yourself somewhere on that list you may be interested in what is keeping you there. We also get an opportunity to do an in depth needs analysis with business owners. We help them determine where they are today and where it is they want to be, and what is keeping them from obtaining their goals. After literally thousands of needs analysis we have a list of the top ten reasons businesses don’t work.
- Lack of vision and purpose by principles.
- Lack of management systems.
- Lack of financial planning and review.
- Over dependence on specific individuals in the business.
- Poor market strategy.
- Failure to establish and communicate company goals.
- Lack of knowledge of the market and the competition.
- Absence of a standardized quality program.
- Lack of money.
- Owners concentrating on technical aspects of business instead of the strategic work required.
There is a very striking thing that I have had an opportunity to observe. After talking with hundreds of business owners, there is a lack of understanding on the part of many business owners as to what they should be doing in their business. What needs to happen to build a business that works, rather than building a business that relies on them to work.
It’s not that most business owners don’t know what needs to be done to create a company strategy, a marketing strategy, a financial strategy or an operational strategy, they don’t. The bigger problem is that most business owners don’t even know that they should work on building these strategies, let alone know how to do it.
Until you as a business owner come to grips with the reality that just because you know how to provide a product or service better than anyone else, does not mean that you will be successful at creating a company that does. As long as you, the owner, act only as an employee, you will be faced with the same business frustrations.
Your role as owner is to begin working on your business to develop effective systems for getting the work done the way you know how to do it. You should develop effective systems for your employees to make informed decisions without you. You should develop effective systems for your managers to manage. So spend a minute to look back over the list of reasons businesses don’t work and identify those things that you aren’t doing. Then, set aside time each day to work on them.
Kelly Schwedland is president of American Business Dynamics, a small business consulting firm focused on issues related to growing companies.