Business Management for Profit and Peace of Mind

What is the most important aspect of small business management?

Go out and ask a group of small business owners this question. The answers will surprise you, by how little clarity owners, who literally manage people and businesses, really have over what is important about managing their employees.

The most important aspect of management is the type of employee you choose to work for you.

Managers will tell you they want "good employees"

"Good" usually meaning:

• They show up (or at least call when they're faking being sick).
• They don't cause (more than their "fair share") problems.
• They're productive (or at least they "fake it" well enough for you to look the other way).

What's Your raison d'être? Are you a slave to your employees?

Order or disorder depends upon organization

~ Sun Tzu

What does this have to do with business management? Everything.

As someone in charge or at least with some influence on hiring and firing decisions, you must have a very precise profile in mind before you ever start looking for employees.

Then you should find the most profitable employee you can find.

Too many businesses exist without a raison d'être. . . A reason for being. What's more, they manage employees who have no reason for existing (at least in a work capacity either).

This may sound harsh, but to effectively manage a team or business you need to take the kid gloves off. You must identify why your team, you, and your team members exist in the first place.

If you said "businesses exist to employee people," you're fired.

Can You Manage People Locked in a Cage?

You must determine how things are to be done, or else. . .

. . . you'll have the inmates running the cell block.

No vapid boring employee manuals, we're talking nuts and bolts greasy information

If you demand your employees tie their shoes a certain way (you're a little weird) you make that clear, but you show them how you expect their shoes to be tied, then you hold them accountable.

If you're serious about business management for maximum profit, you cannot tolerate unacceptable behavior.

Proof You Better Set the Rules Early or Your Team Will Do It For You

Early in my sales career, I was working for one of the largest providers of lawn care in the country.

I started with this company at the same time as another kid, he was 19 or 20.

Well this kid set the entire sales floor on fire. Within a week he was outselling the best salesman on the floor by nearly 2 to 1. A month after we were hired, he was bringing in more business in a week than I was in over a month.

Everyone, including our sales manager, was really in awe of this sales wonderkid.

His problem was he couldn't make it to work on time or at all. And when he wasn't selling he was always on the phone with his girlfriend. But because he brought in so much business, the boss overlooked his tardiness, rudeness, and absenteeism.

After all he was making our sales manager look like a genius. We were far and away the highest producing sales team in the entire national organization (thanks much in part to this kid). . .

. . . this went on for four months. All the while the lateness and absences continued. As you can guess, the general moral on the team waned.

Never Accept the Unacceptable

Left and right, salespeople were getting "let go" for not meeting their sales quotas. This kid held on because he really only needed to work a couple of hours to hit his quota for the week.

But all around him chaos ensured. People started coming in late; one guy came in wearing shorts; some folks stopped showing up at all.

Needless to say, we were no longer the #1 sales team in the country! By this point, the sales manager had the brass breathing down his neck and a full-blown sales team mutiny on his hands.

Just by looking the other way from one star employee's unacceptable behavior, my sales manager was ultimately reassigned to sell lawn care (somewhere in Siberia I think), and the star employee ended up going to jail for stealing a car.

What was the final outcome? I don't know, I quit long before that forth month was up. I knew I didn't want to be part of that dysfunctional organization.

Business management is a slippery slope.

After all managers are people too. They have the same desire to be liked by the people they work with as well. So often they accept the unacceptable from the people they're in charge of. Don't let the inmate run the prison.

Effective business management is managing first for profit and your own peace of mind.