According to
the US Bureau of Labour Statistics’ data on small business survival, only 44%
of small businesses are still going after 4 years – and it’s continually those
with the most effective management teams (almost irrespective of how good the
product is) that last the distance.
So what’s
the big secret? Truth is, none of this stuff is rocket science… Having said
that, a young, headstrong ‘entrepreneur’ manager with a vision from which he
refuses to budge might relegate these ideas to the bottom of the priority list
in favour of becoming a big name on the block, and fast.
The fact of
the matter is that there is a clear-cut difference between entrepreneurship and
small business management. As this eHow article on the subject explains,
managing a small business is an inherently more administrative role (everything
from growing the business to ensuring legal compliance), while entrepreneurship
has much more to do with the conceptualization stages of a product or service,
with the much more glamorous end goal of innovating and turning a profit
through the development of an idea.
For the
wide-eyed entrepreneur to make the leap towards becoming a successful manager,
a combination of the following approaches cannot be overestimated:
Employee training - it’s a well-established
fact that employee satisfaction and know-how is what drives a business forward.
Employees coming into the business for the first time (especially from
backgrounds in other industry spaces) will be ‘stabbing around in the dark’ for
a while – how long that ‘while’ lasts is in the hands of the manager and the
resources they’re willing to set aside to get their employees on track and in
the right mindset.
