Keeping One Step Ahead

The business world can be cutthroat, and in order to keep your edge in your particular industry, you have to do many things. And you have to do them all well. Some ideas for staying ahead include:

1. Always learn from your mistakes. Never make the same mistake twice. If necessary, write down the mistake and the lesson you learnt form it. Share it with your managers and employees if appropriate.

2. Always question new business ideas that are not directly in line with your vision. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Ideas and suggestions to expand into other business areas always look appealing, but they are always more difficult to execute when one actually gets involved. Avoid them, and remain focused on the core profit areas within your business.

3. Become a great builder of clocks instead of a great time teller. Telling time is not scalable. However, if you can make clocks, everyone can tell the time. The point here is to make your processes repeatable and document the knowledge that you have so that everyone can use it. Processes and knowledge are the two most valuable assets of a company after the employees. Make them repeatable and shareable. That should be the key focus of management and the CEO.

4. Listen to your employees. They know and understand a lot more about the problems and opportunities than you do.

5. Avoid company politics like the plague. Establish a company culture that is open , so that employees do not have secret agendas and are all doing what is best for the company and the customer. Do not tolerate employees who are political.

6. Skim through one or two industry publications on a weekly basis. Read all the headlines, but only read those articles that are of interest. Many professionals think they have to stay abreast of all the minutiae of the business world, but this way, you can save time and focus on actively growing your business.