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Your Rules of Business

Guest post by: Maria Carlton

Article Overview: Do you have a set of rules that you use in your business, that go beyond just operations? These may or may not be something you'd add to your business plan, but do need to be integrated into your operations. They are the standards, and guidelines for how you do things, to what standard, and why. And hiding behind the position of being 'creative' does not excuse you from having these - in fact, creative type managers and entrepreneurs need these the most!

Your Rules of Business

Just because you're'creative'and'interesting'doesn't mean you can take shortcuts in your business operations. Ha! I can hear your mind thinking now'As if I'd do that'.... yes well, I know that many of us do think we can get away with it citing our 'creative differentiation' as a reason to do so.

Wrong!

We all need rules. We need to follow our own rules. We need to set standards for our business.

Think about the last time your business - whether it's speaking, writing, consulting, coaching, or any of these - took a bit of a hit. I bet you can trace it back to not having followed through on your marketing, or taking your eye off the small details that are easily moved to one side as you take care of thefun stuff- you know that part of what you do that fuels you and makes it really interesting to get to work every day. When it's busy, that's exactly what we 'entreprenuers' do. We tend to compromise our management rules. This is a classic (Gerber) 'E-Myth' business challenge; if we're great at beingentrepreneursor technicians, chances are we'll not be equally great at management.

I know I'm guilty of this - and so are all of my clients. With only very rare exceptions, we all find those times when we have to admit to dropping a ball or two. And often I find myself in those momentswishingI had much more 'management' than 'entreprenurial' aptitude.

I know without doubt that if I was more 'management' I'd be not necessarily bebetter,butdifferentin how I run my business. I decided long ago that compromising my ability to have vision and creativity in favour of orderliness and rules was not a good idea for the long term health of my business, and so do what I can to pick up the slack in this area with hiring good people to help with such things as filing, taxes, paperwork, and so forth, so that I can do the work that really juices me, and I've been lucky to have found people for whom details and shuffling papers is what juices them. But - as some wise person once noted - delegate don't abdicate.

We can't hide behind our creativity and entreprenurial tendencies when taxes are not filed properly, or a bank balance is low enough to cause bills to be unpaid, just because we paid someone else to take care of this for us. WE still have theresponsibilityfor these things, and many have paid dearly for overlooking this fact.

So when you have to delegate, or sometimes wear a hat in your business that doesn't sit quite so well on our heads, it helps to have rules that we set for ourselves to ensure we don't drop balls to often or with unmanageable consequences.

These rules might be:

1) I will learn the job requirements of my employees, and understand their roles.

2) I will becompetent- if not brilliant - at any role in my business should I ever have to be, after all it's still MY business.

3) I will devote regular time to the understanding of parts of my business that I find boring or annoying, but that are still important to the smooth operation of my business.

4) I will pay for good quality help from people who will share their knowledge about the parts of my business they are paid to work in, so that I don't end up surprised by unmanageable or illegal challenges.

5) I will take responsibility for what I do.

6) I will seek expert advice from mentors andadviserswhen I need it.

These rules might seem really obvious, but it's so easy to overlook them as we get busy and bogged down with the parts of our business that bring us satisfaction. And it's certainly understandable - after all, having a great work day means working to our strengths and doing what we love to do well, not having to adapt ourselves to compensate for the other parts we don't enjoy but which are necessary. After all, if every one loved accounting, the world would be filled with accountants using an abacus and no one would ever have created a calculator yet. And if everyone was creative, there'd be absolute chaos in the counting at the treasury.

So how often do you review your Rules of Business?

Are they informal, or posted on a wall or in your operations manual?

Have you shared them with anyone or are they just bouncing around in your head?

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Article Tags: creative entrepreneurs, creative type, Rules of Business, the company operations manualbusiness plan, whats in a business plan
Referred by: http://www.ianberry.au.com



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