Ever wondered ‘Where’s the money gone”?

‘Where’s the Money Gone?’ traces the learning of a typical business person named Mike. Mike believed that to be successful he just needed to make a profit.

You are here: Home

Discover better ways of using budgeting worksheets

By on May 17, 2011 in Budgeting Worksheets

Small business owners are some of the most resourceful people I know because they have a knack of making something out of nothing. If they are unable to master this technique they often fail and go back to work for someone else.

As a result they are reasonably spontaneous and take each day as it comes, knowing that within the next month or so they’ll need to make changes to their business just to keep up.

So when I first talk to them about a budget I get comments like:-

“Why waste my time on something that’s going to change anyway”

“My accountant told me to do one of those once but I never understood why”

“I don’t really use my current numbers so why spend time trying to predict the future”

So the real problem with budgeting worksheets is that the business owner can’t see the point in them and therefore doesn’t want to waste their time.

So to get off base one we have to find a reason to even do budgeting worksheets!

So let’s take an example.

You want to go on holiday.  Now how would you go about getting ready to go on holiday?

Would you wake up in the morning, put a few clothes in a bag, put the bag in the car and start driving?

This might really excite you but for many people this would be the best journey to a nightmare holiday because

    a. you would never know if you had the right clothes
    b. you would never know if you had the right bag and
    c. you would never know where you might end up

Going on holiday for most people requires SOME planning. Now different people go about organising a holiday in different ways.

For instance, there are people who plan every last little detail of every day and then there are others who plan very little so they can have maximum flexibility but everyone at a minimum plans the time off for a holiday. Otherwise on the appointed day they would get up and continue going to work. At a minimum they plan what they going to do even if this is NOTHING.

Now let’s assume that you’re going on holiday with 2 other families. Do you think that it would increase or decrease the amount of planning required in order to have a good time?

Obviously with more people comes more options to be considered and the more planning that’s required to make things successful.

Now think about your business.  How many people are involved? Not just the employees, but customers and suppliers as well. How much planning do you think is required to make things successful?

The obvious answer is that you will need some planning.

Budgeting is only another word for planning the future. So budgeting doesn’t need to always be a twelve month period although many accountants would suggest this given they work to a tax year and most of their work revolves around a successful twelve months.

Budgeting could be for the next day, the next week, the next month or even the next year.  The whole purpose of budgeting is doing some planning for the future which helps the business owner be more successful by making best use of their resources

Using budgeting worksheets is only planning the numbers for the future activities in your business and the best part about it is that you can then show other people and get them to help you achieve the results.  If you never show the worksheets to others then they’ll be shooting in the dark trying to help you!

How do you go about your budgeting?

How you can address difficult employees

By on May 5, 2011 in Difficult Employees

The greatest resource you can have in your business is employees who bring energy, vitality and strength into your business.

Many small and medium businesses in western economies are service business or they rely heavily on customer service for their success.

In these businesses the quality of employees can be the difference between a highly profitable business and one that just scrapes by!

When dealing with people, often more is thought than said, so situations can go unnoticed for quite some time until everything ‘boils over’ and you have a real problem in your business.

Have you ever been in the situation where your best employee did something that shocked and disappointed you?

The problem is that they are your best employee and without them your business would suffer significantly!

The reality is that difficult employees can affect the whole atmosphere of your business so you need to find a way to address their behaviour before it affects other people.

A difficult employee can often get the job done but leave a trail of disappointed people behind them shaking their heads and wondering when that person will consider their interests at all! Another form of difficult employee is the one who is highly reserved and you can find what they think or feel on anything at all!

So how is the best way to address a difficult employee?

You will find there are many courses and books regarding conflict and the best way to deal with it ‘head on’.

I personally believe that if some time was taken to understand the employee behaviourally then confronting the difficult employee would be much easier because you would have a better context from which to deal with the situation.

The best behavioural tool we have found is called Business DNA and it work with three basic parts of a person.

1. Strengths of the person.
These are the traits which everyone admires about a person.

These are the traits which a person can build their career around and it is highly unlikely that you are having a problem with the difficult employee around their strengths.

These will be the parts you admire and rely on to get your business going well.

2. Struggles of a person
These are the traits where difficulties arise. More often than not this is where relational difficulties are experienced and where problems emerge.

When someone is struggling they never give of their best and if you’re not aware that a person is struggling because they are different to you, then you’ll normally judge the person rather than ‘cutting them some slack’.

The most difficult thing is to realise that a person is struggling because no one wants to own up to their struggles in the work place. No one wants to admit that something is difficult for them because it might affect their future job opportunities. So they struggle in silence hoping that no one is going to notice.

You may have heard people suggest that you can turn your weaknesses into strengths. We have found that this is simply not true because for every strength, there is a corresponding struggle.

They come together as a package like two sides of the same coin. Take away the struggle and the strength goes with it so we are left with working to our strengths and managing our struggles effectively.

3. Unique relationship keys
Finding out how a person struggles is actually the key for relating to that person and without this you can inadvertently press someone’s button without realising it.

Once you do this the difficult employee will likely have a confrontation or quickly disengage from the situation leaving you with a relational mess.

Every person has keys that unlock the best in them and it is important to know this for everyone but most importantly for difficult employees.

If you have never done any behaviour work with yourself or the employees in your business then it might be time to start today. If you would like more information then click on this link

3 benefits of Small Business Coaching

By on May 3, 2011 in Small Business Coaching

Running a business is a not as simple as it seems when you’re an employee of some one else’s business.

Think about starting your business and what you thought compared to now when you’re a little more battle weary!

When I first started my business I had very little idea about how tough it was going to be. I was very like the character in my book ‘Where’s the money Gone?’

Who thought that if he could make only half of what he thought then he’d be so far ahead it was worth the risk. But it hasn’t turned out like that. My business hasn’t gone quite the way it was supposed to when I first started out.

So what has been the biggest problem?

ME.. The biggest problem in my business has been me, the business owner and how I reacted to situations and dealt with problems.

If I was starting out again I would spend as much time understanding me as I put into understanding the business I was running

The difficulty I found with understanding me is that it is difficult to do without some outside help. I am grateful to my own coach who has been with me for the last eight years and has often brought the right advice in the three areas I’m suggesting are at the heart of small business coaching.

1. Accountability
Running a business takes up at least 24 hours a day in thinking time and often 10 – 12 hours in working time. This means that you can get lost in the rhythm of doing the day-to-day and forget important future initiatives. I found that having a day in the month when I met my coach brought accountability to the things I needed to get done. Often in the week before we met I would quickly get on to tasks that needed to be completed and without the deadline of a meeting I would have probably never finished what I knew needed to be done.

2.  Objectivity
When I’m buried in the day-to-day of my business it’s so easy to ‘miss the wood for the trees!’ Having someone with a fresh pairs of eyes who sees the business from a different perspective has been really valuable for me. They can look in and make suggestions which I would not have thought of. Not because they know more about the business than me but simply because they can see things without the clutter of the day-to-day problems that can dominate my thoughts.

3. Impartiality
I don’t know about you but in my business it’s really easy to get emotionally attached to certain services, products or customers.

When you know all of these things intimately then you can be blinded by your emotions and make some really bad decisions.

When small business coaching is delivered correctly it can bring a needed sense of balance to the business and bring back some much needed logic in difficult areas.

I mean, how easy is it for you to stop dealing with a customer on which you’ve made losses?

How easy is it to write off a load of old inventory and exit a product which is never going to be highly successful?

How well can you simply stop delivering services to geographic locations that don’t make sense but bring in a few dollars?

All of these situations are difficult and often need the encouragement of an impartial person to make the tough decisions which are right for the business.

What are your thoughts on these three points?

How you can get a business bonanza by managing your Organisational Performance

By on April 19, 2011 in Organisational Performance

As a business owner do you think of your business as an organisation or simply somewhere where you go to work each day?

Is your business simply a means to an end to provide your family with the resources to live and have fun or are you really trying to build something that is bigger than yourself?

If you have never thought about building something then you probably are a little confused by the term organisational performance because you may not be able to get your head around that thought.

Is it possible to think about your business as a complete entity rather than lots of people, processes and head aches!

So let’s stand apart from your business for a moment and try and look at it from the outside.

What do you see?

If you’ve worked in your business for a significant time then it may be difficult to get outside it and look in from that new context.

Can you imagine the business as an organism?

An complete entity that does things rather than a bunch of people and machines trying to make product or deliver services.

If your business was an organism made up of many parts what would you do to make it go better?

What would you feed this organism so that it was better sustained?

Maybe you need to make some changes to that organism. Perhaps it’s been on the wrong diet and it needs to lose some weight and get fit?

How are you going to do that?

Is this organism able to get rid of the waste material it produces from operating?

Is there so much waste caught up in this business that it has no hope of being efficient while trying to get through the mess created from the past.

While some if this might sound a little airy fairy to you it is critical to think like this if you’re every going to manage the organisational performance of your business. As the business owner you are responsible for the business as a whole not just all the aspects of it but also how they all work together.

Think about it for a minute. If you don’t think about the organisation as a whole who is going to do that?

The employees won’t because they only have their job to do.

The suppliers won’t because they only think about getting you the purchases your require.

The customers won’t because they only think about the goods or services they buy off you.

The government won’t and the tax department only cares about how much tax you should be paying.

So in the end it is up to you as the business owner to think about the WHOLE business and how it ALL fits together.

The coordination of all the parts of your business is up to you… The business owner … and only you have the context and perspective to do this and ensure that the whole business is heading in the right direction.

The business bonanza is where you can make the whole greater than the sum of the parts by ensuring that all things are working together.

Getting the most out of your business is about this coordination of employees, suppliers and customers in a single organism that works incredibly well as a single unit.

What are your thoughts on this?

If you’re overwhelmed and want to chat about it send me an email – andee@onesherpa.com

How you can avoid substandard workplace performance

By on April 14, 2011 in Workplace Performance

As a business owner I have often been frustrated with how my business is going and I’m amazed at how often this is more to do with people than the tasks that are being performed.

So below I’ve given you 5 easy tips to help you get better workplace performance in your business.

1. Seek to understand
In business we are often taught to be decisive and assertive which has the tendency to encourage quick decision making. In doing this we often fail to apprise ourselves of all the facts before coming to a conclusion.

Understanding another person’s point of view is often the first step in truly understanding the context of a conversation. Feeling judged is an emotional killer and a significant reason for a lack of workplace performance from employees.

2. Don’t rush your decision
How many times have you made a decision and then found out later there were more facts that had not been fully investigated or taken into account.

Certain personality types are far slower at coming to a conclusion and are sometimes seen as withholding information. My experience has been that their input is often devalued and given little weight because they have not kept up with the pace of the decision.

One of the best methods I have used is to ‘wait twenty fours hours’ on any major decision. Sleep on it and come back the next day and see what the decision looks like.

This has often meant slight changes which have made a significant difference in how the people around the decision have related to it. When people react badly to a decision it can take a long time to recover from that fallout and I’ve always been happy about waiting the additional time.

3. Create a safe environment
How many times have you thought, ‘Best to say nothing because if I say something it will only get shot down in flames!’

Great workplace performance is always supported by a safe environment where people are free to make the occasional mistake. It is not commonly acknowledged that our best learning comes from making mistakes.

We have been brought up with the stigma of making a mistake and are too frightened to try things that might really take our business forward because it might not work. What would people think if I tried something and it didn’t work?

How many experiments did it take for Albert Einstein to invent the light bulb? Imagine if he had become discouraged and given up along the way.

A safe environment will also bring out the unique differences in different personalities and allow all of them to make a contribution without being ‘run over.’

Sometimes the people who can’t express their thoughts well verbally get overridden so often they never try and put their views forward.

This is a tragedy because they are often very creative people and could add their intellect to many business issues.

4. Encourage self development
Many business owners get trapped in their business and so busy that they don’t take any time for self development. If this happens then the employees around them feel they can not or ought not seek out self development opportunities.

The best way for any business owner to encourage behaviour in their business is to model it themselves.

The people in a business is where all the creativity will come from and if there is no self development then you’re falling into the old trap of insanity. ‘Doing the same thing and expecting different results!

Workplace performance will always be enhanced when the people in that workplace are continually upgrading their own performance.

5. Reward behaviour as well as outcomes
How do the reward systems work in your business? Are they focused on the completed tasks only or do they have an element of HOW the task was completed.

Often we can become so focused on getting the job done that we trample all over people to get there and wonder why that performance is not sustainable in the future.

As a business owner, do you find that jobs go really well when you personally are focused on them and then when you turn your eye to something else they never go as well and you have to keep going back to get the required performance?

Consistent behaviour of people is a large part of dependable workplace performance and yet often we never reward it in business. To get the best workplace performance we need to reward outcomes AND behaviour as together they will provide sustainable performance for your business.

What are your thoughts on this?

Do you have any tips you would like to add?