Being an SME: Regrets, I’ve had a few
Thanks everyone who gave such generous feedback on the column a couple of weeks ago on 10 things learnt from running a small business. It reinforced a belief that most of those business books at the airport are saying the same thing, albeit in slightly different ways. Just read one good one and then enrich your perspective with fiction or an obsessive study of, say, ancient Peruvian cultures.
Reading business ‘‘how to’’ books is as likely to leave you with a melange of annoying cliches as make you successful in business.
One example: a chief executive of my acquaintance who swore by Jim Collins’ iconic tome Good to Great, and who underlined the passages extolling the power of the egoless leader whose humility is the source of their power.
The concept was great, but the leader in question had no idea. The idea of powerful, humble leadership amounted to a cry for help for this troubled bully, who no doubt continues to succeed in his own way to this day. Business can be like that. Both bad and good people can win.
Your mission, should you accept it, is to try to be one of the good people while avoiding working for the bad.
So, anyway, when the Stuff business editor asked for a list of ‘‘your business disasters’’, it was natural to recoil. Disasters?! We’re still here, so nothing can have been that bad.
But it was all too easy to think of things that, in the spirit of spin, might at least be described as ‘‘learnings’’. For example:
Have a shareholders’ agreement. In your first year, when it’s all a glorious, accidental experiment, discord and relationship breakdowns seem impossible to imagine but a business partnership can be like a marriage. A pre-nup can make things easier later.
Don’t expect others to do your thinking for you. Your business is your business. It has all these wrinkles to it: idiosyncratic relationships based on who you and they are, niches that sort of make sense or that nobody else saw, arrangements based on ancient loyalties and so on. If you’re lucky, someone very talented can wander into your small business, understand all that, and work with it. But unless they’re a shareholder too, don’t expect them to care, love and work for your business the way you do.
Respect the power of a good brief. You know how having a website is supposed to be easy and improve productivity, sales, and every other damn thing? You try giving a crappy brief to a busy agency and see how you fare. There’s a colleague of sorts out there today complaining about being ‘‘let down’’ by what was meant to be a top online agency. Been there, done that, and spent the same budget again to get it right. Second time round, we thought much harder about what we wanted, so there was a half chance that’s what they’d build. See above about doing your own thinking.
Don’t hire just because you got a new contract. Instead, do your sums. If the new hire is more expensive than the new contract, ask yourself: ‘‘What do I have to believe to think this is worth it?’’ If new business depresses your bottom line with no clear route to upside, at least think twice.
Be patient. Above all, don’t bet on a quick result. Your ‘‘let’s make it happen’’ is generally your prospect’s ‘‘let me think about it’’. Operate on a ratio of your one month = six months of theirs and you may occasionally be pleasantly surprised. Don’t overcommit in the meantime.
When you own the business, you determine its culture. If it’s driving you nuts, look to yourself rather than your staff, customers or suppliers for an explanation.
Of course, there have been myriad other mistakes and missteps. These are just the ones I’ll admit to. – BusinessDesk