What Are Friends For – Not Free Services and Products?
As our organizations get started and grow, our circle of friends grows. As business relationships evolve to include personal friendships, the line between what is business and what is personal can blur. This seems to be particularly true for professional service firms...
Walls and Bridges
More walls than bridges are built in the world. It seems that it is much easier to build walls. Buildings, after all, are made of walls, so we are used to making structures that consist of walls. Walls are used to contain things; walls are used as boundaries, to show...
Visionary Capability: Get Practical Pursuing the Dream
The Chaos of Unbounded Vision Disregarding Boundaries Over the years, there have been several instances in which people have been doing business with a cheerful and/or blatant disregard for boundaries. These individuals cheerfully and often recklessly bound forward...
Validating Your Business Concept
To know whether or not you have a viable business concept, you have to comprehensively define (on paper) your thoughts, ideas, and vision. You also need to gather information related to those ideas: market size, competitors, pricing, and so on. With that information...
Vision, Strategy, Structure, and Results
The successful organization – one that is both productive currently and viable long term – has integrated the vision, strategy, and structure of the organization to enable financial success. The ability of an organization to achieve every iota of success it is capable of delivering depends first upon the organization’s clarity of vision, second on its to select the appropriate strategy (or strategies) to accomplish the vision, and ultimately on the structure the organization puts in place to deliver the “goods” to the customer.
Tough Lessons: Failed Business Relationships
One of the hardest lessons a business owner can experience is the failure of a business relationship - whether with a vendor, a business partner, or a client. Regardless of how carefully you screen any of these people or how formal your agreements with them, when the...
Tools Required – Capability Imperative
Every task requires the right tools. Building a successful business is a task like no other. It requires a comprehensive set of tools which fit the task. Using one tool when another is required often leads to unanticipated consequences. Having the right tool isn't...
Too Big, Too Soon – Too Far, Too Fast
Enthusiasm. Confidence. Passion. Belief. All of these are important to the success of any new venture. They can also be the biggest pitfalls for the new venture. The momentum and the drive to do everything at once can lead an entrepreneurial team to expand before the...
Jobs! Today’s Unemployed May Be Tomorrow’s Entrepreneurs
Every day we read the news about higher unemployment rates, lack of job creation, and projections that the outlook is unlikely to change in the near term. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recognizes that the majority of new jobs come from small businesses, and the...
To Compete You Must Be In the Race
It does not matter a race is being run. You cannot win that race if you do not enter it. Making the commitment to compete is more than filling out a few forms and showing up at the starting line. It requires the ability to persevere when the first obstacle is...