Did you realize when you got into business that your primary purpose is to be a “business engineer”—one who plans, constructs, and shrewdly manages an organization (online dictionary)? Your daily task is to develop people, products, and processes in an exceptional way to profitably find and serve customers.
Like fingerprints and snowflakes, there are no two businesses exactly alike. Each is a unique reflection of its owners and managers—YOU and your team!
An engineer uses technical skills coupled with imagination and creativity to produce something of lasting value. Likewise, you are the mad genius who will create a business model that provides the products and services uniquely suited to your target market—a business so well executed that you can one day sell it for top dollar, replicate it in other markets, or have someone run it for you.
Your entire organization is made of interdependent systems and processes, each working together to accomplish your business objectives. In a typical day, you design, develop, oversee, monitor, and evaluate all the systems and processes that make your organization run smoothly, create value, and generate a profit.
Growing a good business is both an art and a science.
Art and Science
The art of business development is to create products and services that provide the best solution for your customers and to develop an organizational structure and culture that help your people reach their full potential. You are constantly innovating to make people, products and processes better, faster, stronger, more efficient, of greater value, and more remarkable than ever before.
While innovation can be a new invention, technology, or business concept, most often it will consist of incremental improvements at the detail level of your business systems and processes. It is this right-brain activity that gives your organization a different fingerprint than all others—what separates you from the crowd. In time, your business can become an inspired masterpiece!
The science of business development is the application of laws, principles, and best practices to attain predictable and consistent results. It includes the Law of Cause and Effect, improvement methodologies such as Six Sigma, Lean Thinking, and the Theory of Constraints, performance standards, measurement, and other means for achieving operational excellence.
This disciplined and systematic approach comes primarily from the left-brain, and it is what your business has in common with other successful organizations—what enables you to efficiently produce quality products and services, please customers, and earn a healthy financial return.
Teamwork
Most people do not excel at both left-brain and right-brain activities. However, if you bring a team of people—with a variety of skills and talents—into weekly business improvement workshops, you will uncover the best ideas and solutions for your organization (consider this whiteboard method).
Your goal is to attract and keep customers by creating a company that is brilliantly distinctive and operationally exceptional. Attention to your core business systems and processes can make that happen and give you a memorable brand.
