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Your business will only achieve its true potential when you begin to
"think business." By adopting the right entrepreneurial
mindset, you can improve your chances for success and avoid suffering a
similar fate as that of 550,000 small firms that closed operations last
year, as reported by the U.S. Small Business Administration.
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Small and home-based businesses fall by the wayside for a variety of
reasons. Caused by factors such as, under-capitalization, miscalculated
market potential, ineffective marketing to poor management and
operation. For whatever reason, owners of these businesses have failed
to think creatively and strategically to allow their businesses to
overcome the challenges that came along the way.
Dr. Paul Nutt, a professor at Ohio State University's Fischer College
of Business, conducted a 19-year study that tracked the success rate of
decisions made by executives and managers at 356 different companies.
His study showed that more than 50 percent of all decisions failed; they
were quickly abandoned, only partially implemented, or never adopted at
all. Executives never considered alternatives once they made up their
mind, while many decisions reflected an egotistical take-charge
approach. Hence, it is no wonder that many business decisions failed,
and initiatives collapsed.
 A
new book by Dave Marcum, Steve Smith and Mahan Khalsa entitled "businessThink"
could help improve your chances for success by providing you with simple
and easy steps to adopt a winning entrepreneurial mindset. Unlike other
business books that are either too theoretical or technical,
"businessThink"
gives you ideas on what to do day-to-day. According to the authors, businessThink
will "give you the business tools to transform what you think
about, and how you ultimately decide what you should be doing, and
eliminate the distraction of what you could be doing."
Once you start a business, you will constantly be bombarded by the
pressure to get it right - make the right decisions, get the right
funding, create the best marketing strategy, or hire the right persons.
You will discover that the written rules and language of business that
learned in business school are dramatically different from the
real-world way of doing business. It is therefore essential that you
develop a business instinct that would allow you to immediately sense
what works and what doesn't before you spend the time, money and effort
to really find out.
The core of the book is the 8 rules the authors propose to help
cultivate in you a fundamentally new way of thinking, communicating and
business decision-making. The authors present these rules to create a
framework for cultivating this different thought process, giving you
skills for thinking through decisions and day-to-day issues that your
business faces.
Rule One: Check
Your Ego at the Door
Have you ever heard yourself say, "This is my business; I'll do
whatever I want with it!" According to the authors, getting rid of
this attitude is the first step to changing your business for the
better.
You do not need arrogance, defensiveness, or a desperate need for
approval in your quest for entrepreneurial success, as these behaviors
can only shut down dialogue, opportunities and decisions. The authors
point out that "humility clears the path to solutions." You
may be brilliant, but you need to realize that you do not know
everything; in fact, no one does. Hence, you may need collaboration and
inputs from other people, which you can only maximize if you set your
ego aside.
In
businessThink
mode, you also have to stop thinking in black or white. The business
world is not either-this-or-that; or a go-or-no-go world. Instead, you
need to learn how to explore every option in between, including every
imaginable exception.
Rule Two:
Create Curiosity
According to the authors, "curiosity is the driving force behind
business thinking." Curiosity provides you the motivation to seek
out new options, opens your minds and creates an atmosphere of asking
"what if" questions that get to the heart of the matter.
What you currently know sometimes gets in the way of what you need to
know, but don't know. Hence, you need to develop the kind of curiosity
that goes beyond asking about facts and data gathering. Instead, you
need to ask questions that dig into possibilities, outcomes and options.
For your creativity to produce outstanding results, you need to first
learn as much as possible outside your own knowledge and expertise. Be a
sponge for information and use it to refresh your experience and
knowledge rather than allowing yourself to feel as if new information
puts you at risk.
Rule Three:
Move Off the Solution
Don't prematurely focus on the solution itself and find "quick
fixes" to your problems. Focus and clarify the issues first. You
need to get to the underlying business issues, evidence and financial
impact on the company, and work from there. Remember, a solution is
worthless unless and until it creates business value, prevents a problem
or invents a new result the business needs. Otherwise, a solution is
merely an event.
Rule Four: Get
Evidence
To clarify the problem, you need to ask the following questions: What
proves you have a problem? What? How? When? Where? Who? Then start
searching, digging and looking for evidence.
Some of the best businesspeople ask the obvious questions, the
answers to, which are almost never obvious. In fact, it's the obvious
questions or the politically sensitive questions that many are afraid to
ask. Collect soft evidence and then turn it into hard evidence that the
business can measure.
Rule Five:
Calculate the Impact
One cardinal rule you need to abide by is to weigh every investment
against its return. What is the impact, financially or strategically, of
this decision on your business?
You must never let cash out the door that doesn't strictly ultimately
bring more cash back. Any expense - whether technology, training,
equipment, advertising - should be eliminated if it will not contribute
either to increasing revenue or decreasing costs. You also need to
identify benchmarks to help you determine and measure your success.
Rule Six:
Explore the Ripple Effect
More than calculating the financial impact of a business decision,
you must always ask yourself, "Who else will be affected by my
decision?" You may want to know how the current problem or the
opportunity under consideration could affect your life, your family, or
your employees. Never lose sight of the big picture of the business as a
whole.
Rule Seven:
Slow Down For Yellow Lights
If the problem or opportunity is so big, ask what has stopped you in
the past from doing something about it, and what could stop you in the
future. Watch out for possible obstacles. If you get a yellow light
early, take your best shot at resolving it. Even if you fail and get to
a red light, you'll have saved time and money at the very least.
Rule Eight:
Find the Cause
Simply asking why will give you the tools to dig for the underlying
reason for the problems, and to make sure you're treating the source,
rather than the effects. Having proof you need a solution (the effects),
and knowing what solution you need are two different things. You need to
understand the underlying truths. Ask yourself the questions: Why is
this happening? Are these symptoms or causes?
Once you have internalized these eight rules, you have equipped the
most important asset of your business - your mind - to think business.
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