The place most people learn business management is in colleges and universities. They take courses in everything from business operations, business, strategy, marketing, sales, accounting and customer service. These multi-year programs can prepare the student for what will hypothetically come when they are on the job.
If you speak with those like successful business manager Larry Polhill, they will tell you that the real world was quite different that how things looked in school and their real education came while they were working at a company.
This is primarily true because there are some things involved in business management that you must learn on the job. One is the speed with which things occur. Different issues happen at a business in timeframes that are completely irregular and sometimes with each demanding a different skill set and set of tools to solve the issue. A second is the randomness of so many business related issues. You can do something perfectly every time, yet one time it simply does not work and there was no indication that there was even a chance for failure. This occurs because most businesses have constantly moving parts that need to be watched but also given room for their eventual failure.
So until you are on the job and at the business, everything is guesswork to a certain degree and this is why you need to be prepared with a set of skills and approaches that can assist you in any situation. Here are some of those skills and approaches:
Create a company culture that includes responsibility, transparency and consistency.
Employees agree to work at an organization for various reasons but the ones that are always included involve their ability to count on the organization to be transparent, consistent and responsible. These three qualities give employees a sense that the company has their best interest in mind and that if things take a turn for the worse they will know it and understand why. Companies that do not make these qualities a core component of their operating strategy either lose employees consistently or have to go to extraordinary lengths to hold on to their employees. This additional time spent can be sued to focus on other things important to growing the business, so their absence is usually very costly.
These qualities must start at the top down and permeate every level of the organization and everyone must be accountable to them. Sometimes business managers think they can exempt someone because that person has a special title or brings lots of revenue into the company, but this is a recipe for chaos and unhappiness and it creates behaviors that run counter to the success of the business. Additionally they must dictate how you interact with your customers and key partners. This approach sets a great tone for your business and creates an environment where your company and its stakeholders can depend on the relationships with those who cause your business to be successful.
Make a Realistic Plan with Execution Steps
For any business planning is essential. You need to lay out where the company is, where you are going and how you intend to get there. This gives everyone in the organization a clear idea of the company goals and their roles in the success of those goals. As a further step, you need to lay out an action plan for achieving those goals. This plan can be placed against the actual happenings at the business as a barometer for how things are actually going. Too often there is miscommunication about objectives at a company and having things committed to paper alleviates and stress about who said what to whom. Get into this practice and demand that others in the company do as well and it will pay off for everyone.
Business Management is a tough and demanding job but if you have tools and strategies to assist you the job becomes much easier.