Article by Dr. Yogesh Pawar, Founder School of Inspirational Leadership
For entrepreneurs, business growth is always a primary focus area. For any kind of business, it is important to get the right triggers at the right time, so that it improves and accelerates business growth.
The question arises on where one should start for business growth and what should be the key areas of focus. Every business is different and thus every strategy has to be different. However, every entrepreneur has to note that some decisions form the base for any kind of business and those base principles are the same for every business. There are five decisions one has to take for building a business and for improving the business. Peter Drucker once said “An entrepreneur or a business takes only two decisions. Decisions of what they know and decisions that they don’t know.” Clarifying those decisions is what an accurate business plan is all about.
Thus, five simple business strategies that entrepreneurs should follow for improving their business:
It is important to work towards one direction: One should be focused on the vision and mission created for the business. It is the mantra that every entrepreneur should repeat at least once a day. Once the vision and values are created, most of the organizations and typically the small organizations fail to stick to the vision. Sometimes an entrepreneur feels that he is the only person who’s intelligent in the company and that only he can create the business plan. The first thing an entrepreneur should do is get all his people together and discuss the business plan for every quarter. This should be a practice and should be done quarter on quarter, such discussion gives better direction to business and the actions can be decided accordingly.
Focus helps in building strategy: Once a direction is created, the strategy can be built around the same direction. The entrepreneur needs to focus on the next steps and actions that need to be taken. Strategy answers to the ‘How’ part of the business- how strategy has to be included with people, machine, method measurement, and of course, some uncertainties that every business has. Once the strategy is built, the entrepreneur needs to work in a focused direction, which brings it to the third part called execution.
Strategy leads to execution: Every entrepreneur has to remember that execution is one of the most important aspects for the success of any business. Even a good strategy cannot work if it is not executed well. Execution should be aligned with timelines, which means every activity, every milestone will have a certain timeline. What is important, is to stick to those timelines so that the business plan building can meet the business goals within the stipulated timelines.
Importance of training people: People in an organization can be an area of gray matter, which means there will be a certain number of skills that people will have and a certain amount of learning that they will have to do to reach where the organization wants to reach. One should plan that because if he or she goes in full swing and full rigor, the employee should be able to execute the same at full pace. If people are not able to perform, consumers can never be happy. Thus, it is important to ensure that people are getting trained regularly on the skills and behavior that is important to make the business go on the roll.
Focus on money matters: All of us know that money is the liquid that runs the entire machine, and the machine needs to be well oiled. Hence, planning cash flow is very important. What if one increases the profit by 1% or reduces the cost of procurement by 1%? An entrepreneur needs to think if that is going to help him or help achieve the business goals and profits by the end of the financial year. Capital expenditure, salaries, business profits, and loss need to be worked out with utmost care for dealing with money matters properly.
After focusing on all the aspects of business, an entrepreneur should not forget to celebrate. Celebration of success and failure are equally important to take the business to the next leap of growth. Celebrate a new customer, a new machine, a new client, a new employee, or even the new business plan. It is very important to feel successful to achieve success in life, this also works like the law of attraction. Hence, every entrepreneur should ensure that he or she is creating an environment in the company that makes everyone feel successful.
The author of this article is Dr. Yogesh Pawar, Founder School of inspirational leadership, Chairman Association of Inspiring Syndicate of Entrepreneurs.
