Although we tend to think of business management in terms of the organization of a company, and some may regard management as equivalent to business administration and therefore exclude management in places outside the commercial sector, in reality management structures are evident throughout society, from government bodies through military forces, right down to personal home environments.
Once we spend enough time studying business problems in different Business Functions (sales, marketing, finance, accounting, operations, supply chain, vendor management, human resources, recruitment, etc) across different Industries (Automotive, Manufacturing, Banking, Financial Services, Pharma/Biotech, Software, Internet, Media, Farming, etc)…we find similar patterns in how business problems arise, and how they can get very complicated if not identified and addressed rapidly.
The GSBX Online Business Course draws from a wide range of Management Functions and Industry Sectors.
Here are some key insights from our analysis, at a summary level:
- About 50% business initiatives start with “wrong timing” – making success difficult right from the start. Timing is very critical aspect of business decisions, and deserves maximum attention.The timing can be wrong by a few hours, days, weeks, months, depending on the nature of the project.
- The least profitable 20% of your clients often take up 34% of overall effort, leaving your out of bandwidth all the time.
- A similar finding applies in investments, where if you could just avoid the 20% of trades/deals/investments giving maximum loss, the overall performance could increase by 30-40%.
- 1 out 5 projects fails directly because of its project manager. The choice of a project manager is very critical, and it needs significant experience.
- 3 out 5 CEOs/Managing Directors admit they need to do better “What-If ” scenarios in their decision making to avoid blunders.
- 3 out 5 M&A (Mergers & Acquisition) deals fail to deliver the initial business case, which was the base of the deal. Still, a good acquisition is among the surest paths for business growth, which is why the craving to do such acquisition deals.
- Failure to consider alternatives fully is the most common cause of bad business decisions that produce losses, lawsuits, pain.
You can’t learn swimming standing on dry ground at the poolside. Similarly, you need to prepare for real-life business problems, challenges that you will face as a business owner/director/executive, because your clients and investors would be paying you to solve these problems. By preparing for such situations with prior analysis and examples, you will have a much higher chance of making better business decisions.
You can break down difficult decisions in two parts:
(a) arriving at the decision/solution, which needs facts and creativity, and (b) communicating and executing the decision to various stakeholders in a way that can get action, rather than alienation.
It’s rare to have both (a) and (b) difficult simultaneously, i.e, when the solution is easy, the execution will you put in front of a wall, and at other times, you will struggle to make the right decision, even if all parties are ready to support your decision. Think about it. Its an important learning.
This happens in a dilemma like: “should we increase our sales force or sign-up more channel partners?” or “when should we go for higher margins vs higher sales volume?” In any business, you will face such difficult decisions.
Does the quality of your decisions improve with experience? Yes, very much! But that also means making mistakes as you go along. With our GSBX Online Business course, you can shave off some mistakes and add them to your list of successful decisions.
Throughout the GSBX online business course, we will aim to study various common business problems and solutions that have worked, and not worked. It is financially dangerous to build plans that have little chance for success – but yet is common – especially in cases where the people doing the planning are out of touch with those stakeholders who sponsored the venture or initiative.
Here are a few examples of Decision Making mistakes:
A separate “business strategy team” working on business plans, while having less relevant business/industry experience. For example, in one company, the strategy team was spending effort on a product line which was not technically possible, maybe even incompatible, with the current operating setup. About 3 months of business strategy effort was wasted when a core assumption of the new strategy was proven wrong by the company’s Chief Operating Officer.
Or sometime executives will say: “we will get all our 200+ customers to move to our new enterprise technology platform in the next 2 quarters”. This is what we must understand; it took over 3 quarters for Yahoo Mail to just make us all try out their significantly improved email beta in 2007. So, is such a large plan realistic?
Many business options can quickly get tested by speaking in confidence with key customers, affiliates, distributors, bankers, investors, lawyers associated with the business. Such people often add value with their views. They can also raise red flags early on.
The GSBX Online Business Course has many Case Studies to help you prepare for real life business situations and real life business decisions. These Case Studies will use a wide range of lessons from the Course, which can improve the quality of your business decisions. Thanks.