Of course, there isn’t one single correct way. But managerial activity creates a simple sequence of actions that all participants understand. It serves as a canvas on which each manager can build a unique business.
The problem is that owners cannot always explain how to practically realize what they want. By doing so, they jeopardize the implementation of projects. Although they spend their money and make their own mistakes, it’s possible to find an acceptable way to get results.
Mistakes are an inherent part of learning. No one can be successful all the time. It’s not even possible to always win at the mobile casino PlayAmo Canada, what to say about business, even if it’s small. Falls and failures are part of life.
Your attitude forms a picture of you as a person: are you leading or are you a follower. Do you entrust your life and business to circumstances and chance, or do you take responsibility for yourself. Here are 5 common mistakes of an executive.
Finding the “Silver Bullet” as a Miracle Cure
The expression “silver bullet,” known as the only remedy against the evil one, is used in business to refer to an effective solution.
Some entrepreneurs constantly fell into the captivity of fascination. They thought that all they had to do was to think of something, to implement what they heard at a training session, read in a book or seen on YouTube, or to hire an expensive specialist and the result would come right away.
After failing with one thing they tried another, over and over again. All these mistakes made by novice managers were presented under the sauce of development, but to me they remind me more of a treasure hunt.
With this attitude, the owner or manager demonstrates to everyone in his environment a disregard for their role in the team. He brings chaos to work processes, because any attempt to implement something requires preparation and coordination with all participants.
Time and effort are wasted: after announcing the next idea, the owner anxiously runs around and interferes in everything, trying to discover positive changes. Completely ignoring the fact that any change takes time to implement and get results. Without seeing the expected effect, the owner gathers everyone together to announce the implementation of the new idea.
Gradually the team degrades, and from the outside watching this one-actor theater. And only loyalists work in it, because the actor constantly needs to feel the approval of his skills.
The “Everybody’s Got to Do” Approach
When people often hear the word “must” or “should,” they get very tense. They get defensive and start looking around.
In an environment where such verbs are in use, the struggle for discipline and control is often at the forefront. It boils down to keeping track of when they come and go from work, piling up work reports that no one reads because there isn’t enough time to read them. Other traditions include endless meetings, where everyone is silent, so as not to get caught up.
The role of the manager in business management is just to organize the process of achieving goals, not to be a supervisor. To do this, you need to know your area of responsibility well, the nature of the tasks to be solved, and be aware of what your subordinates are doing every day.
Then there are no problems with controlling the result, the content of the work, and it’s clear who you can talk about discipline. The key thing is that everyone works to achieve the result, not to avoid problems.
Lack of Strategy
Perhaps someone thinks that the strategy is something very complicated, acceptable only for large businesses, requiring a lot of time. So you can do without it.
Meanwhile, the strategy is a plan and a way to achieve the goal. Defenders of the spontaneous approach argue that everything is changing very quickly, the market is in chaos, and there is no point in wasting time on something that won’t be used. This is one of the major mistakes executives make.
The time spent on creating a strategy is spent on learning the business in depth. And the more employees involved in that study, the more engagement you can expect from the staff during the implementation phase.
With strategy, it’s simple. The owner must set a goal, and then together with the team figure out how and when to achieve it.
Provide an answer to the question, why customers will choose our product out of dozens of offers on the market:
- Who is its customer?
- What is it about this product that makes it valuable to a certain group of people?
- Finally, how are we all going to deliver that value to the market?
- What are the business strengths that will help bring this to fruition?
Creating a strategy is an attempt to look into the future. Not to predict it, but to try to prepare in order to see the opportunities and anticipate the possible risks.
In the morning, when we get ready for work, we look out the window to anticipate what the weather will be like. After thousands of such attempts, we develop a skill that we don’t pay attention to: how to dress, whether to bring an umbrella. Should we go out of town with friends for a picnic this weekend – the weather looks like it’s going to be nice?
We don’t always guess, but we don’t consider such behavior a waste of time and a vain attempt to predict the future. Then why are you willing to put your business at risk? How many crises do we have to go through to understand that they will happen again?
Strategy is a conscious setting of tasks which the business is capable of realizing. The best strategy is clear to everyone. Understanding facilitates execution, because it leaves no room for ambiguity, no reason to manipulate the results of work.
Goal Incoherence as a Disruptor of Performance
Goal congruence implies that you, as the manager, are clear about the way to achieve the main goal. And all the performers involved in its achievement are in their places and know what to do, how to interact with colleagues and supervisors. At the same time, the performers’ positional goals are subordinate to the general goal and depend on its fulfillment.
The implementation of this interaction pattern can be seen in a business process. In fact, a business process is a model of an organization in which people with different functions are subordinated to one goal. This model can be implemented within a business with any structure, even in an organization with a multi-level hierarchy.
Organization in a process will allow you to streamline the activities of individual links. Because, conventionally, if a salesperson can not handle more than 3 leads per day, and marketing gives 5, then the money to get 2 leads is spent senselessly. You can reduce the number of leads, improve a salesperson’s skills to 5 leads per day, hire more salespeople, or revise the process.
Consistency of goals is needed so that each participant can think about their own interests, while not violating the interests of others and contributing to the overall goal. In this case, specific decisions are delegated to the performer, which gains time, responsibility, quality of execution and interaction.
Cost-cutting as a Means of Reducing the Price
Talking about a price that is higher than the competition is a popular topic for almost any sales department. One might even say that it is a permanent one. It is almost always raised for the psychological defense of those who sell against those who demand higher sales.
The issue of price can be approached in different ways. Price formation in most companies comes from the cost of production, but taking into account known data on the prices of competitors or the purchasing prices of major buyers.
There is such an approach as management of pricing with the help of break-even points. It is flexible enough, but it requires operative managerial accounting followed by quick decisions.
Complaints from sellers that there is “not enough” price, pushes the head of the organization to search for cost reduction. As a rule, they find a slight reduction in price, which does not even pay back the time spent by economists or accountants.
And replacing materials with cheaper ones or changing the technological process can lead to a worsening of the quality of the end product. The consumer will not take such a product for granted: he will demand a price reduction or refuse to cooperate.
An alternative to successfully solve this problem would be to find the value of the product, which the consumer will accept with a willingness to pay a favorable price for you. Look for your customer. Create his portrait, formulate the values he will receive with your product.