A good decision is a decision that yields beneficial results. In a small to medium sized business (SMB) beneficial results are profits. The policy-making group of an SMB making consistently good decisions is likely to experience business success in the form of making a better profit. If you agree with this statement, then the question becomes: How does a SMB make consistently good business decisions? There is a discipline to assure that the SMB will make consistently good decisions.

Business Concern

Consistently Good Business Decisions

“If it is not written down, it is not a plan.” I would like to attribute that quote to someone, but after a reasonable Google search, I cannot. Nonetheless, I have heard the phrase and repeated it many times. The phrase makes sense for two basic reasons. First, writing something down is a fundamental way to rethink and confirm a thought process and decision. Second, it is difficult to communicate using only an oral means of communication. I rarely have anyone contest these observations.   Documenting a business plan in writing can be a formidable task. As with many formidable tasks, it can be a point for procrastination to occur. This tends to happen when the production of the plan documentation takes priority over the initiation of the plan. Most of us are familiar with spectacular plan documentation which has not escaped from a three-ring notebook or a PowerPoint presentation. On the other hand, if the plan format is dynamic, this does not occur.

Documenting the Plan – Essential, But a Form of Procrastination

Live your dreams. That sounds very good. But does that concept sustain a life? Dreams rarely come true, and there is frustration about not realizing a dream. Thinking about values, even values derived from dreams, can deal with the frustration of not realizing a dream. Think about dreams and contrast that with the concept of values. This thinking can lead to understanding how goals based on values is a discipline for thinking leading to decisions about goals enabling you to do all you can do toward realizing your dreams.

Getting Real – Dreams, Values, and Goals

Generally speaking there is a type of employee that many business owners do not want in their business. This type of employee, whom I shall call a tiger, is one that may be described as aggressive, overreaching, obnoxious, opinionated, difficult, and narcissistic. I am going to argue that while business owners often find reasons to part ways with this type of employee over time, there are very good reasons for a business to find a way to keep the tigers.

Keep the Tigers

Change is tough enough. No one likes it. The tendency is to deny the reasons for change exist and then procrastinate taking action. Sometimes, in a crisis, we have to change immediately. In a crisis, things are not just different, they have to turn around. Businesses from time to time have to deal with this type of required, rapid change. What has to be executed is called the “pivot.”

Executing the Pivot

Recent events of cybersecurity breaches and losses have led to the development of cybersecurity insurance - an insurance product designed to protect against losses related to computer or network incidents. For a small to middle sized business (“SMB”) with less than 100 employees, does a cybersecurity insurance policy make sense?

Cybersecurity Insurance

Businesses with less than 1,000 employees (sometimes referred to as small or medium businesses or “SMBs”) are becoming concerned about cybersecurity. Not only is there an increasing amount of cybersecurity threats, but government regulations requ

Planning for Cybersecurity Issues

It is human nature to like those who agree with us; it is also human nature to dislike those who do not agree with us. Call it arrogance or pride, we all know the emotional reaction. Those business owners who can get past this emotional reaction and evaluate the differing opinions they encounter, often find their perception of reality altered and the decisions they make becoming better. This trait of humility is one of the most important leadership qualities.

Be Careful Whom You Like?

How optimistic should a business plan be? When a business starts, the thinking is about success and the plan will be optimistic. This is appropriate, but there is an issue of credibility linked to the degree of optimism. For the realistic long-term (3-5 years) and the realistic short-term (6 months to 1 year), the plan goals should be reasonably achievable for the plan to be credible. As a business matures, the setting of plan goals can have a significant effect on business growth.

Optimism - Its Role in Business Planning

One way to represent the difference between traditional planning and dynamic planning is through a Venn diagram. The Venn diagram for dynamic planning with concentric circles shows the communication of all of the items of the planning set to all business groups.

Concentric Circles

A reliable way to accomplish business success is to implement and operate a planning process. Many business owners do implement a planning process and begin to use it, but fail to realize the benefits because the process is intermittent. Then, once the process is perceived as ineffectual, it is abandoned. It is not enough to implement a planning process, that process must be a constant process.

To Be Effective, the Planning Process Must Be Constant

Questions initiate, form, and shape conversations. Conversations are the means by which owners articulate values to one another. Without these conversations, without an accurate perception of the other owners values, we have less information to understand the future actions of those who will influence the future conduct of our life.

Questions Owners Should Ask One Another

While successful businesses usually have a decision-making process that produces quality decisions, that process can falter, and often it is because too much time has been taken to make a decision. The process of decision-making should be a structure of business procedure, but the time spent in the process for any given decision should be based on the specific decision to be made. This determination is very much part of the art of decision-making. When decisions take too long, the principal culprit is usually the fear of making a bad decision.

Making a Decision - How Long is Too Long?

What makes planning a consistent part of the business operation is timing. If creating a plan takes a retreat, facilitation, enough writing to fill a three-ring notebook, and space on the shelf for the notebook, then planning typically remains a separate activity not involved in the essential conduct of the business. Planning is most effective when it is dynamic – where changes made to the plan are immediately communicated to all affected by the plan.

Dynamic Planning Allows Timing of Quality Decisions

Let’s be honest – no one is really in control. Life is a series of unexpected events that leave all of us disoriented at one time or another. While some events are foreseeable, the timing of those events or the probability of those events and the occurrence of unforeseen events is difficult if not impossible to forecast. Epictetus, the Greek philosopher, taught that events of life are beyond our control, but that the way we react to those events is what matters. You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your reactions to those events.

Out of Control

Owners of a private business interest have concerns about maximizing the value received from that interest, preventing and resolving owner disputes, and implementing an owner agreement with buy-sell provisions. This podcast deals with these issues.

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Business Concern

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