Every year thousands of businesses get born. Still most go under in a few short years. The business field gets more and more competitive and thus a business manager or owner has to become more skillful in the management process to keep his enterprise afloat.
To attain business success there are cardinal areas that as a manager you should not overlook. In fact the more skilled you are in these areas the more chances your company has of surviving and progressing. They form the core of what every business manager should know. Mastery of these key management skills will go a long way in determining how successful you become in business.
1) The Management of Cash flow; A great percentage of businesses that fail do so because of cash. It is either they do not sell enough products/services and so do not generate enough cash or they do not manage the funds they have wisely. Either way it is easy to see that cash is an integral part of business especially for starters.
What is cash flow? For a layman, cash flow is the movement, availability or otherwise of physical currency in, out and within the company or business enterprise for use in various purposes. The importance of cash flow can be illustrated by an example of a small firm that makes reasonable revenue from the sale of its products. After the statutory salary payments and fixed expenses the company owners decide to invest a greater part of the company profits in purchasing new office equipment and cars for the senior managers.
A situation arises where the company needs a substantial amount of money to deliver a bulk contract for supply of its products to a new buyer and payment was to be at the point of delivery. The company suddenly finds itself short of cash to carry out this new deal which is over five times higher than their average monthly orders and would require far bigger amount of money to fulfill. The bad decision of putting most of the firm profits into unnecessary purchases has resulted in a most unpleasant cash flow problem and the firm may be forced to borrow from its bankers or any other source to carry out the new business deal. Getting this alternate funding may take time and cause the small growing firm to lose the business.
Managing cash flow involves taking the right decisions on spending. What should be spent on? What is to be done with excess cash? This is a vital skill that should be handled without emotions by managers, business owners and CEO s. Many times selfish management has landed firms in deep financial trouble. Instead of new corporate cars, outrageous fat holiday bonuses for themselves managers should learn to create easily liquid money pots for their companies and channel money only where it is needed.
2) Management of Personnel; Getting the workforce under you to perform at its maximum is a most daunting task. As a manager you will come to discover how varied and irregular the moods of your workers are. However one thing is important to know as a manager of persons. Human beings all respond to certain emotions depending on their personalities. Your work will be to determine the personalities of people you work closely with and use the available emotional buttons on them. Emotions that affect people include; fear, greed, love, sex, anger etc
Discover the things that trigger your people the most and act accordingly. Managing persons means you will have to make a lifelong commitment to studying personalities and thus gently prodding people to their strong areas. Dale Carnegie's timeless book ' How To Win Friends and Influence People' will be of immense help in learning how to get the best from your people.
3) Management of Time; So many things have been written and said on this issue. In our modern world of sophistication, technology and fast living it becomes more difficult to manage our time effectively. Many experts in their bid to showcase their superior knowledge proceed with elaborate and complicated solutions to time management problems that end up consuming even the little time we have left.
Implementing some of the time management advice out there leads one deeper into time management difficulties. For an entrepreneur, business manager what is the best approach to time management. Effective time management is only a matter of commonsense. Commonsense time management consists of the following practical advice;
- Daily Planning; One of the basic lessons I learned while setting out as a young, inexperienced entrepreneur was to plan each day the night before or in the early hours of that particular day. It remains for me the most effective way to get the best out of my day. Day planning should involve opening the next page of your daily planner and drawing a line down the middle. On the left list all the tasks for the day and on the right delegate as many of the task as possible. Check through and pick the phone. Start right away to delegate the ones that can be done through the phone. Keep your daily plan flexible and do any important emergencies that emerge during the day. Time management does not require much elaborate advice. It is plain commonsense.
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