The Decisions We Make Define Us - Section One

IN THIS ISSUE

* The Decisions We Make Define Us (Section One)

* Being As Good As You Think You Are  (Section Two)

* Seminars and Mixers in Houston, June 7 to June 15, 2010 (Sections Two)

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The Decisions We Make Define Us

If you are the owner of a business, at some point in the past you probably worked for someone else. One day, you took a step back and said to yourself, "I could run this company better than the boss does." Then you made up your mind to start your own company. You created a new company of your own. Now you are the owner, the CEO, and the guy who gets to make all the final decisions. And only now do you fully appreciate the admonition, "Be careful what you wish for."

As you have painfully discovered, being the Boss and getting to make the decisions in the company isn't all that much fun. You are learning now that there is another side to that coin. You face a daunting challenge now, because your vendors, your customers/clients and your employees fully expect you to make consistently good business decisions every day. And make no mistake, these same vendors, customers and employees cut the owner no slack whatsoever. A CEO or owner of a company will only be perceived only as good as he or she is doing the job today. When a company stumbles, who takes the heat? The CEO or the owner. Just look at the flack that the CEO of Toyota is taking lately. How many of you would like to be running BP today? Precious few of us.

As the owner of the company, it all comes down to the decisions he or she makes. Are they informed and well-thought out decisions? Are decisions made in a timely manner? Do the decisions move the company in the right direction? Do the decisions help to create a productive environment for the employees who work in the company? Is the new marketing plan a good one? As business owners of companies large and small discover, the list and scope of the decisions they will have to make only becomes longer and bigger as the company grows. There will be an endless stream of   new decisions to be made every day. It will be the quality of the decisions and choices the company owner makes that will distinguish a successful business owner from one who either fails in business or gets replaced.

However, let's assume you know all this even before you set up your company. What strategies and ideas can you utilize to develop the required skills and the perspective and insight you will need to make solid, effective business decisions.

1. Get an understanding of the process of business decision-making, studying both good and poor models 

As you move from one stage of development of your company to the next, make an effort to learn from others in business who have been there and done that. You can glean the wisdom they have picked up along the way at seminars, college courses, in business related books or in the vast amount of  resources to be found on the internet. Better yet take one of these fellows to lunch and pick their brain. Ask every question you can think to ask and listen carefully to what they have to say. You would be amazed how much you can learn over a lunch with the right mentor. You do not have to make the mistakes they made. 


At some point in the development of your company, you may need to bring in a business consultant to mentor you, to enable you to effectively respond to the emerging new realities of running your company. As your company grows, each new stage of development will demand of you ever higher levels of expertise and skill sets which you may not possess. Working with a consultant you can acquire these personal assets with greater speed and efficiency.


Always remember that actual experience, in conjunction with what you learn from others, can be a great teacher, if one makes a point to learn from his or her mistakes..


You are going to make your own set of mistakes, but you can minimize the extent that you will make mistakes by learning what not to do and what strategies work most effectively in a given situation. Use the perspective you gain from others and your own actual experience, to become more aware of the decisions you are considering making and the probable outcomes for each option you are considering. 

2. Recognize that for every decision made, there are going to be costs and consequences. 

When contemplating a course of action, one must play the "what if" game. "If I do this, what is going to be the fallout? Who is going to get impacted? How will the customers or the employees of the vendors... or government... react." If it is an action that is something which needs to be done, like a recall of a product, what are the options to acting, and which carries with it the least costly implications? So any course of action must be carefully weighed with a consideration of what will happen if it is carried out, before a decision is made. If there is fallout, the excuse that "it seemed like a good idea at the time," will just not cut it.

3. Change is the rule, so learn how to be creative in one's thinking and by necessity to think outside of the box

Thirdly, never allow yourself to get too comfortable with the status quo, either internally or in the external business environment. The only constant is change these days. So always be observant of social changes and preferences, government developments, the evolving business environment and new technological changes. These changes are continually transforming the business environment. Any contemplated decisions must take into consideration where the world is at that very moment in time, because the realities that govern our decisions are always changing.

For example, the very notion of marketing one's company and products has been turned on it's head by new computer technologies, the internet and the social medial sites as used in business. Do whatever it takes to constantly be aware of the most recent trends and changes in your niche market. Be flexible and know when it is time to abandon strategies/products that are now outdated and adopt early on new innovative approaches and products ideas.

4. Next, take possession of your administrative and accounting departments. 

• Be able to identify what is critical data you need and know how to access that quickly. Sales data, Inventory Data, Financial Data. Personnel data. Data on the sales performance of salesmen.
• Know where that data is to be found. Nothing is more costly to a company than constantly having to search for a document because the filing system is sloppy. 
• In general, know what tools you can use to extract that data (Databases, spreadsheets, CRM software, project tracking software, accounting software, etc.) 
• At least have a passing understanding of what these specific pieces of software do and what kinds of reports they are capable of producing. Minimally, learn how to use Excel, Word and Access; and learn how to design and create a functional management report in Excel and Access. Constantly evaluate the software being used to determine if it is still adequately serving the record keeping or analysis needs of the company as it continues to grow. 
• Have a general idea of how to package into useful management reports the data that has been extracted from business documents and computer files. Have a clear understanding of what common types of management reports there are, which ones you are going to use most frequently and in general the formats with which you personally are most comfortable.
• Have effective management reports prepared on a regular basis for you to your specifications, so that you will have the critical facts/data available when you are getting ready to make important, strategic business decisions. 

5. Overcome the fear of the internet and learn how to effectively exploit what it has to offer. 

An effective leader must be able to take full advantage of all the tools and resources to be found on the internet. In the 21st century, the internet has emerged as one of the most transforming technologies of the last 25 years. The way companies find information, market themselves, communicate withing the company and the business community, and build new business relationships has been utterly turned on its head. We live in a brave new world, but a really engaging world. Business applications of Social Networking has absolutely transformed the way we build connections in the business community. Email... everything that needs to be said about this has really been said. 

6. Utilize and take full advantage of all the new technologies that have and will continue to emerge

When you have to work through the decision-making process, make sure you have all the tools that are available for you to do that. Start out with a brain that works reasonably well and the hard won business experience that gives you an advantage in being able to understand the situation. But in business, as in life, the more efficiently you can get action tasks done and decisions made, the easier and less stressful your job becomes. So whether is getting a good PDA, smart phone, iPad or video-conferencing technologies, find out what they are and when it is really cost-effective to use them. It will cost you less to get where you need to go, get the facts you need, find out what something costs and the real scoop on a fellow you are considering hiring. Being the boss is mostly about knowing what is going on in your company and making the decisions that will affect the growth and direction of the company. Buy the tools that will make those tasks more efficient and your life a lot easier. 

7. Don't be afraid to make a mistake

There is always going to be an inherent danger that a decision is going to backfire. Just remember that a mistake is an opportunity to learn something. While one should be thorough when making a decision, it is counterproductive to be overly cautions. The danger  in using that approach is that one ceases to make real decisions and begins just to react to a specific situation. The outcome is that nothing gets resolved and one ends up just putting out one fire after the next.

In general, if you have done everything humanly possible to get the facts, study the options, weigh the costs and consequences, and make the decision, the outcome is usually a positive one. However, sometimes things turn out badly and the decision may prove to be costly or disastrous. However, if it was your decision to make, take full possession of your responsibility for the outcome. Do a post-mortem, assess what went wrong, implement corrections and move on. You will make mistakes. But you will learn valuable lessons and insights from decisions that go wrong. You cannot grow in understanding or stature if you never make a mistake.

As business owners, our careers are measured in the quality of the decisions we made along the way. If the quality of those decisions improved over time, then we are deemed to have achieved some level of success. We start out by learning about an organized approach to making a decision. we seek out mentors to help us hone our judgment, and do our best to overcome a paralyzing fear of making a mistake. We learn to weigh the costs and consequences for each option we might consider as a resolution to a problem. We learn to embrace and master the wonderful new tools available to us as businessmen. Finally we gain a working overview of the two departments of the company about which most owners least understand: the administrative office and the accounting office. It is a journey we make which transforms us into effective administrators who actually possess the capacity to guide our companies with a sure hand.

Howard Fireman

Editor and Publisher

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