An Entrepreneur’s Quickstart Guide to Starting a Successful Business (Part 2 of 3)

Managing People and Systems

A. How Best to Manage People?

Be it your Staff, Partners, Associates or Customers, the key to dealing with people, internally or externally, is to build your credibility. Pay peanuts and you get monkeys: Hire the best. Invest in good people.

Firing People: Do not hesitate to dismiss anyone for the best of your company. The key however, is to do it with consideration for the person.

Set the Culture: Provide directions and guide the staff in their daily operations to ensure the success of the company. Communicate and reinforce these values.

Develop A Team: Equip your people with new knowledge. Training is therefore important. Always encourage teamwork among frontline and support staff.

Choose partners with the right mindset, expectations and same values:
Respect and treat your suppliers well and they will give you their utmost support. It is important to your long term planning.

Customers Are Not Always Right: When the customers keep stretching the privilege given to them, it is necessary to take a stand. Yet, it is also crucial to honour your promises to your customers as it builds your credibility.

B. How Best to Manage Systems?

Be it reporting or administration, a good information system allows a company to run efficiently, reducing the reliance on any one individual staff. One way of systemising is to have reports. Good reports show the heartbeat of the company and help you to analyse, plan, take action and monitor the business. They should be timely.

Administration contributes greatly to the productivity of the company. Do not wait for your company to grow too big to start systemising your administration. Do it right from the beginning. To avoid costly down time, set up systems for circulation and filing of documents and backup your computerised management information system.

How do you start a business right? How do you make yourself known in the market? Learn how by clicking here to read Part 1 of the series.