Zen and the Art of Business

In case you hadn't noticed the Chinese know a thing or two about business and have been pretty successful at it for a few thousand years. The communist revolution put the brakes on entrepreneurship for a while, but you can't keep a good thing down and the leaders of China know it. Entrepreneurship is the new religion in China again capitalism is not a dirty word any more.

I thought you might like to look at a few Chinese proverbs and how they are applicable to business. You could do a lot worse that incorporating some of this Chinese Zen philosophy in how you lead your own business, so read on.......

1. “In every crisis, there is opportunity.”

Most entrepreneurial ventures arise from a solving a problem. If you are faced with a problem, craft a solution and sell that solution to others. As an interesting side note, it’s a common misconception that the word crisis and opportunity mean the same thing in the ancient Chinese language. This misconception initially gained momentum when John F. Kennedy incorrectly cited it in a speech in 1959. (source: smallbusiness411.org)

2. “Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny.”

Entrepreneurship starts with an idea and ends with a destiny. You craft your destiny with your actions, habits and character. You make your destiny, it doesn’t make you.

3. “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”

Aside from 20 years ago, there is no better time to start a business than today.

4. “If you want one year of prosperity, grow grain. If you want ten years of prosperity, grow trees. If you want one hundred years of prosperity, grow people.”

The goal of every entrepreneur should be to start a business and find capable people to run the business so that they don’t have to.

5. “A bad workman blames his tools.”

A bad entrepreneur places blame on someone or something else when things go bad. First and foremost, you should hold yourself accountable for a negative outcome of your business.

6. “A closed mind is like a closed book; just a block of wood.”

As an entrepreneur you always have to be open to new opportunities. If you aren’t actively looking for new ways to make your business more innovative, you won’t be very successful as an entrepreneur.

7. “A fall into a ditch makes you wiser.”

When bad things happen, a good entrepreneur learns from them.

8. “A fly before his own eye is bigger than an elephant in the next field.”

When you focus only on the opportunities that are right in front of you, you might miss the larger ones that take effort to find.

9. “A jade stone is useless before it is processed; a man is good-for-nothing until he is educated.”

A strong education is often the foundation of a strong business. The more you know about entrepreneurship, the more equipped you will be to face its various challenges.

10. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

Every entrepreneur in the history of the world started their business with a single action.

11. “A person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the man doing it.”

As an entrepreneur, you will undoubtedly encounter people who will doubt you. Don’t let those people get in your way. Instead, use their doubt as motivation.

12. “A single conversation with a wise man is better than ten years of study.”

You can learn a lot from talking to experienced entrepreneurs. They have been through the process and can teach you more than most any book.

13. “All cats love fish but fear to wet their paws.”

All people love to make money but few people pursue entrepreneurship because it’s full of challenges and uncomfortable risks.

14. “Cheap things are not good, good things are not cheap.”

As a small business owner, always focus on providing quality.

15. “Customers are jade; merchandise is grass.”

What good is a business without customers? You should value your customers more than any other aspect of your business.

16. “Defeat isn’t bitter if you don’t swallow it.”

You will encounter setbacks, but don’t let those setbacks defeat you.

17. “Defer not till to-morrow what may be done to-day.”

One of the most challenging things for an entrepreneur is simply getting things done. According to numerous entrepreneurs I have spoken with, procrastination is one of the largest causes of failure in new businesses.

18. “Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched.”

Though a good entrepreneur isn’t afraid to take risks, never rely too heavily on projections of profitability, success in a certain market, etc. A good entrepreneur always considers, and has a plan for, the worst-case scenario.

19. “Don’t stand by the water and long for fish; go home and weave a net. “

Instead of complaining about how you aren’t making much money, find new ways to earn it.

20. “Easy to run downhill, much puffing to run up.”

It’s easy to run a business when the going is good, but the true test of an entrepreneur is how he or she behaves when faced with challenges. As the current economic climate makes overwhelmingly clear, every market has its ups and downs.

21. “Failing to plan is planning to fail.”

This one is so clear, it requires no explanation.

22. “Falling hurts least those who fly low.”

The less amount of money you spend, the less it will hurt if your business fails. It’s common for entrepreneurs to bootstrap the initial costs of their business. Bootstrapping means doing whatever you can to spend as little as possible.

23. “If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.”

If you’re going to put effort into starting a business, then make sure you put 100% effort into every aspect of your business.

24. “If you get up one more time than you fall you will make it through. “

When you get knocked down, get back up. If you don’t get back up, your business will fail.

25. “If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.”

When you get to the point of hiring employees; the more you pay, the higher quality effort you will receive.

26. “It’s as difficult to be rich without bragging as it is to be poor without complaining.”

As an entrepreneur, it’s important to remain humble, especially when you’re rich. Humility is difficult to maintain when things are going well.

27. “Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.”

Learn from your business and it’s something you will never lose.

28. “Make happy those who are near, and those who are far will come. “

If you make your customers happy, they will talk and those they talk to may become new customers.

29. “Patience is a virtue.”

Having patience with your business is essential to your success. Very few businesses are profitable in their first year.

30. “Rich not gaudy.”

When you become rich, don’t become gaudy, or tastelessly flashy.

31. “Teachers open the door. You enter by yourself.”

Being taught something will only get you so far. You must independently apply that learning to become successful.

32. “The diamond cannot be polished without friction, nor the man perfected without trials.”

You will encounter trials and tribulations as a business owner, but these trials and tribulations will mold you into a better entrepreneur.

33. “The emperor is rich, but he cannot buy one extra year.”

Your business and the money it generates are not the most important things in your life.

34. “The loftiest towers rise from the ground. “

Even the most successful businesses in the world started with the conception and implementation of an idea.

35. “The palest ink is better than the best memory.”

When you conceive an idea on how to improve your business, write it down!

36. “There are two perfectly good men, one dead, and the other unborn.”

No one is perfect. Always be open to learning from other people.

37. “To open a shop is easy, to keep it open is an art.”

Starting a business is simple in comparison to keeping it.

38. “We all like lamb; each has a different way of cooking it.”

Entrepreneurship is like an art: there is not always a right and wrong way of pursuing your business goals. Let your personal taste and style as an entrepreneur be your strength.

39. “Who is not satisfied with himself will grow; who is not sure of his own correctness will learn many things.”

Remember you don’t know everything. Actively seek out advice and information, and you will learn.

40. “A smile will gain you ten more years of life.”

What’s the point in owning a business if you’re not having fun with it? If your business doesn’t make you smile, then it’s the wrong business for you.

DO Sweat the Small Stuff

As the old adage goes, “perception is reality”. In the absence of facts or prior knowledge, what a person perceives about a business becomes reality in their mind, even if it not actually correct.

Business owners should keep this in mind when hiring and training staff, and in all their future interactions with customers. It can be particularly important when the owner is focused on the technical delivery of the core business function and becomes detached from thinking from his customers’ mindset. Many customers have a limited understanding of the technical aspects of what the business actually does because they do not have the specific knowledge or skills of the trade, or actually care about such things for that matter. What they DO understand however, is how the business and staff PRESENT to them, and often in ways totally unrelated to the core function of the business. A restaurant may have the best award winning food and the top chefs in the country, but if the toilets are not clean many customers won’t come back as they assume the kitchen and chefs are in a similar state.

These are things that Paddy Lund, a famous dentist in Australia, calls Critical Non-Essentials. Aspects of business that have little or no bearing on the core service delivery process, but are just as important, BECAUSE THE CLIENT UNDERSTANDS THEM. Ignore them and you risk your business suffering, even if you are the best at what you do and have the best products or services on offer.

The famous management guru, Tom Peter, reported another example of this phenomenon in action. A study of 140 former patients from 225 U.S. hospitals revealed that of the top 15 factors determining “patient satisfaction,” none—NONE!—was related “to the patient’s health outcome.” The two biggest contributing factors were “staff interaction [with the patient]” and hospital “employee satisfaction.” The implications are clear: An obsession with the “simple” human factors pays off—and, furthermore, these sorts of reactions grow rather than diminish in the patient’s recollection with the passage of time. The rallying cry of one successful hospital, derivative of these findings, is their “kindness is free” strategy. Listening to patients or answering their questions was encouraged, and by-the-way costs nothing. Being non-responsive to patient needs or requests for information results in them being angrier and less co-operative, thus increasing the time and therefore cost of interacting with them. Being nice pays off.

What are the Critical Non-Essentials in your business? Have you ever taken the time to consider this? If not, I suggest you contact me and we can review your business and develop a customer orientation program that will help you build greater customer satisfaction, more referrals and lead to better profits. Either email me direct andyburrows@iconbusinesssolutions.com or visit my website here: Coaching in Business to find out more about what I do with the owners of private businesses.

Confessions of a Micro-Manager

I know that modern management books and HR people at seminars tell you that you should hand duties to your staff and let them get on with it. Great in theory, but I hear from a lot of business owners that it doesn’t work. “People never listen”, they say, or “They only do a half-arsed job and take twice as long as me”. So what is going wrong?

A common scenario is that the owner is handing over control of some relatively important jobs and not following up like they should, often because it was a job that they didn’t like anyway and were glad to get rid of it. It may not be a core production job (most owners like to keep those) but an equally important support job that is equally as critical to the success of the business. Maybe invoicing, for example. What often happens is the owner ABDICATES the job to another person rather than DELEGATING it. There is a big difference and it is around the process used and the control retained by the “delegator”.

Like many things in business, delegation is a process and involves several steps. Miss one or two and the process breaks down, the job doesn’t get done properly and the boss gets (more) stressed. So step one is to delegate properly, don’t abdicate.

Until you feel VERY confident that a staff member is competent, check and re-check what they are doing until the process is as smooth as a machine running in a bath of oil. Then check some more. Have the staff member report back to you on a regular basis on what is happening, the roadblocks they are facing and the progress they are making towards activity and performance goals. That might be a DAILY reporting process for some tasks. Like President Ronald Regan said during the cold war, “Trust, but verify”.

Keep control of the cash. There are some areas of small business that I am loathe to encourage an owner to delegate. One is the control over the bank account. By delegating (read abdicating) control over the accounts payable function in particular, a business owner can lay themselves open to less than ethical employees taking advantage of the situation and starting to steal money. I remember being in a network group a few years ago and one of our members was a panelbeater. He employed an office lady to look after the accounts as it was an area that he didn’t like and had little interest in learning about. The office lady was actually the wife of a good friend of his. Not long after employing her, the panelbeater’s wife developed cancer and grew steadily worse. They had 2 young children who needed attention and this started to take an increasing amount of his attention, which was not unexpected in view of the situation. Unknown to the panelbeater was the fact that his office lady had a gambling problem and she started to siphon money out of the business to feed her habit. Remember, this was a family friend who on the face of it was saying she would look after the accounts so the panelbeater could tend to his gravely ill wife. The stealing was eventually uncovered after the business started to perform poorly and an audit was conducted, but tens of thousands of dollars had gone.

The moral of this tragic and true story. Trust no one! I am not saying that you need to retain all the day-to-day accounting function yourself, but don’t pass over control of this area until you have some strict policies and reporting functions in place. If you don’t understand about money matters, learn about the critical issues and find a good accountant to help you put good control measures in place.

It’s okay to micro-manage a bit. Wear your control freak label with pride.

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