Seeing your ideas change from ideas in your head, to words on paper to an actual functioning business, supplying satisfied customers who keep coming back for more, is a great feeling. If you don’t think so, then you should find something else to do with your life! Yes, establishing a business and managing it through its early years, so that you have a foundation upon which to build success is hard work, but the rewards are great.
There is a lot on the shoulders, and the minds, of business owners and, by analogy, those who manage teams within larger organisations. You are the one at the top of your particular management pyramid and you’re the one who has to do the bulk of the significant thinking. There are lots of distractions in the day, so getting those ideas written down will help you to marshal your thoughts. It will also make it far easier to communicate your plan to your people, as you won’t have to remember what you have to say and will have to repeat yourself less; it’ll all be there written down for all to see. Yes that takes effort, but once you’ve done the hard thinking and writing, the fun can start.
The ability to communicate efficiently is a crucial management skill, without which your business is far more likely to fail. It doesn’t matter if you are communicating with your customers, your suppliers, your investors or your people, if the message that they receive is not the one that you were trying to send, then you’re just asking for trouble. Poor control of communication results in poor control of your business.
Treat the people within your business as if they were customers for your management and leadership. They won’t ‘buy’ what you are ‘selling’ unless you communicate your ideas, your plan, effectively. Decide who needs to know what and get that message to them using the most appropriate methods. Don’t waste their time telling them all about the wonderful marketing plan that you’ve devised if their main role is keeping the warehouse well—stocked. Tell the people who need to know, the things that they need to know, and then leave them to get on with it.
However, in order for them to ‘get on with it’, they need the necessary resources. You must have trained, competent and motivated people, who have the necessary defined responsibilities and authorities to get the job done. They need the right tools for the job and somewhere that is conducive to doing that job well. Managing all those resources, including the people, is one of your jobs, by the way.
In this chapter, we’ve covered the Implementation sector of TINA. Implementation is about taking your plan, whether that’s for the business, your team, your day or a combination of all of them, and getting stuff done in line with that plan. To avoid running your business using everybody’s opinions, you must set targets, so that you can all agree that what has to be done has indeed been done. The result of the execution of your plan is a series of achievements, each one of which increases your business’s chances of survival, and carries you step—by—step towards business success.
In the next chapter, we’ll cover how you keep an eye on your achievements in a way that gives you the maximum control of your business. Running a business is like driving a car. In the car you have a dashboard that gives you information about, for example, your speed, your engine’s performance, the distance travelled to each destination, etc. In business a dashboard is useful too. It’s more complex than the one in the car, but it performs the same function; it helps you to get to where you need to be efficiently and, hopefully, without crashing!