2.2. Find Out What’s Going On

As we’ve already seen from Diagram 2.1, TINA (the management steering wheel, just a reminder) is made up of four management activities, i.e., Thinking, Implementing, Numbering and Analysing. Now, each of these four activities has an input (something that it uses or acts upon) and each activity produces one of four outputs (the results of each management activity). TINA’s respective inputs are Information, Plans, Achievements and Data, and the respective outputs are Plans, Achievements, Data and Information.

 

You will have noticed that the inputs and outputs are the same, just in a different order. This is to be expected as TINA is a wheel. Each management activity produces an output that becomes the input of the next activity. So, the output from Thinking is a plan, which becomes the input to Implementing. The output of Implementing is an achievement, which become the input to Numbering. The output of Numbering is data, which become the input to Analysing. The output of Analysing is information, which becomes the input to Thinking and so on as the wheel keeps turning. Now, we’ll look at the SMSW, as illustrated in Diagram 2.2, which consists of just two activities and two outputs.

 

 

You can see that SMSW requires you and your other managers to:

 

 

• Find out what’s going on, allowing you to…
• Decide what you what to do, which is what you…
• Tell your team you want done, which you can then…
• Check to make sure it’s happening, which means that you are…
• Finding out what’s going on, allowing you to…and so on

 

In order to build and run a business, you’ve got to start somewhere. Most importantly, you’ve got to know where the somewhere is from which you are starting! Know where you are before you try and get somewhere else, is the message. As with much within this course, you should be thinking that what you’ve just read is a statement of the blindingly obvious. Good, that’s how it should be. If you knew absolutely nothing about running a business, then you probably wouldn’t have decided to give it a try. So, if what we’re doing here is hanging labels on stuff that you already know and do, then you’re already well placed to manage your business through its survival phase.

 

If you don’t know where you are starting from, then how are you going to get where you want to be?

 

On any business journey, one of your critical management disciplines is cultivating the patience required to find out what’s going on before taking the next step; not ‘leaping into the darkness’, as I like to call it. If you can embed this behaviour into your working day and those of your team, then you’ll greatly increase the chance that your business will survive the early years. Finding out what’s going on is part of your management planning process, which is covered in more detail in Chapter 3, but for now let just focus in on one thing that you absolutely must know about.

 

So, what do you need to find out? Well, a business is made of many different components, e.g., people, processes, equipment, supplies, etc., and the greater the number of components that you can keep an eye on, the greater the chances are that your business will survive its birth and early development. As the one in charge of the business, you’ll be responsible for keeping your eye on everything in the business, maybe not directly, but the responsibility for making sure that everything is working will rest with you.

 

It takes effort and resources to find out what’s going on and these are limited in every business, so with lots of components to monitor, how do you decide which are the most important? Well, in the first instance, you won’t go far wrong if you ‘find out what’s going on’ with your potential or actual customers. Why? Well, your customers are the ones that pay all your bills. If they don’t buy, you don’t get paid and neither do your bills.

 

You might have a really great idea for a business, but as a business involves selling something to someone, you’d better know who it is that is likely to be buying your ‘something’. You can do a great deal of research on your potential customers, but let’s start by asking a short series of who—what—why questions:

 

• Who are your potential customers?
• What do you want your business to do for them?
• Why are your customers going to buy goods and services from you?
• Where are your customers located?
• When are your opening hours?
• How do you intend to produce your goods and deliver your services?

 

Now, when we’re talking about ‘customers’ here, it means anyone who wants your goods and services, whether you intend to charge them or not. Launching a new product or service can be done by offering free samples, but the recipients of these freebies are no less customers for our purposes than the people that you hope will eventually pay you. Write yourself out a list or create a short form that you can use to capture the answers to the questions above, and any other questions that strike you. By writing it down, you’ll be won’t forget the answers and you can make copies for others to look at. In business, if it’s not written down, it’s a rumour.

 

To get a better idea of the kind of information that you’re looking to find out about your customers, let’s give some example answers to the questions listed above. Imagine that we’re planning to start a business, in this case, a small, town centre butchers. What answers can we give to the questions listed above?

 

QUESTION	ANSWER
Who are your potential customers?	Members of the general public who like to eat meat.
What do you want your business to do for them?	Supply them with meat—based food.
Why are your customers going to buy goods and services from you?	As well as the usual meats, we’re planning to offer a good range of hand—made pies and sausages, so there’s no requirement for the customer’s to do any preparation.
Where are your customers located?	Mostly, in and around the town.
When are your opening hours?	We plan to open from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm all days except Wednesday and Sunday.
How do you intend to produce your goods and deliver your services?	In the shop and using a local delivery van.

Table 2.1: Planning for a butcher

 

A butcher is primarily a ‘product—based’ business that provides goods that are well—understood by the customer and are available at fixed times in a fixed location. If your business (or the one you are planning to establish) is similar, then you should be able to answer the questions above relatively easily.  However, how do the answers change if we’re planning to start a ‘service—based’ business, like an accountancy, an estate agency, for example?

 

Your plan is the map for your business journey.

QUESTION	ANSWER
Who are your potential customers?	Business owners and self—employed tradesmen.
What do you want your business to do for them?	Provide payroll, cashbook and end—of—year accounts services.
Why are your customers going to buy goods and services from you?	We’re planning to offer each customer a named account manager who’ll help with their financial needs.
Where are your customers located?	Mostly in our own country, but there may be potential for some international work.
When are your opening hours?	We plan to open between 9:00 am and 6:00 pm Monday through Friday.
How do you intend to produce your goods and deliver your services?	We’re planning to rent an office in the town centre, but most of our work will be done remotely using email and post.

Table 2.2: Planning for an accountant

 

As you can see from comparing the tables above for the butcher and the accountant, the answers are not wildly different. The questions are applicable to almost any business and there are only a limited number of possible answers, but the point is that we have done the thinking and can now get on with working out where to go next.

 

Obviously, the list of questions above isn’t exhaustive, and neither are the answers. There are limitless potential questions that you’ll need to answer; questions about your potential customers, your goods and services, your sales plans, your training programme, etc., about which you will have to think. Completing a list similar to the one above for your business will at least start you thinking in the right way and a good deal of this course is about encouraging you to think and understand the critical value of thinking to the survival of your business.

 

So, whatever it is that you are keeping an eye on in your business, once you’ve worked out where you are starting from, you can begin to plan where you are going. Helping you to ask the right questions regarding your business, your customers, your processes, etc., and encouraging you to think about the answers in the appropriate detail will be one of the aims of the rest of this course.