If you’re new to business, you will make some mistakes. You may be very productive in your working day, but this may not be translated into the bottom line of your small business because it involves more than hard work. You need to be committed, have leadership skills, and discipline among other virtues.
You will be your own manager and to make your business grow, you will have to work to avoid the following management mistakes:
You don’t need to be involved with everything in your small business. In fact, you are supposed to be the manager who oversees the activities. If you have employees, you don’t need to be involved in everything they are doing. Rather you are supposed to be a good manager. Since you cannot manage all the activities, get involved where needed to have enough time and energy to be involved in other sectors of your business.
For a business to be productive, effective communication is important. In effective communication, you need to listen to your employees, discuss options with them, get their opinions and then make a decision. In most cases, your employees are in direct contact with customers and they are very resourceful. As a good manager, you need to listen to them instead of just giving them directives. In addition to getting information, you motivate your employees to work harder, give their ideas and get involved in making decisions that affect their working conditions and the job. You will greatly benefit from interacting freely with your employees.
No one is perfect even the world itself. Therefore, you don’t need to patronize your employees when they make a mistake. Everyone can mess up but if you don’t learn to accept it as it is and move on, you will develop a bad attitude that may damage the relationship with your employees. Since you cannot control every detail of your business, try to be content with what you’ve got. However, you can talk to your employees from time to time if you’ve noted mistakes, to prevent them happening in the future. A good relationship between you and the employees is a catalyst to business growth.
In some cases, business owners fear hiring skilled people in fear that they will be outdone! They fear is that the employees will get all the glory and praise after great achievements. This is wrong and as a good manager you should not fear hiring competent employees. In fact, if you want your business to grow fast, get qualified and experienced employees. They will have a range of ideas and opinions to get more customers and increase the profit. However, you must be prepared to be challenged with tough questions. As a competent manager you will have to be prepared to face this.
Most successful people around the world have depended on others for help at one time or another. You cannot be great at everything which is one of the reasons why you need to have other people in your business. You can be a good manager but not good in marketing and accounting and every other function too! Hence, you need to hire good employees who will help you in every sector to take your business forward.
One main objective in starting your own small business is to make a profit. The profits will help you keep the business running, paying yourself as well as your employees. Therefore, there is nothing wrong in prioritizing your profit. If you have good managerial skills and competent employees that offer quality services to your customers, it will be easier to make profits.
Local businesses in your area have more than likely already been through many of the battles you will have before you in starting up a small business. So why not outreach to them?! Making relationships with local businesses is a great way to build your own business up. They may be able to offer help through word of mouth, known suppliers, potential customers and so on.
If you are planning to start a small business, or you already have, work to avoid these pitfalls to have the best chance of success.
