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Dr. Larry is a mental health professional and business leadership trainer of many years. Check out our Executive Leadership site for a schedule of his open trainings, as well as to consider booking a training for your company or organization.
Stress is a bummer: not good for one's health, not good for relating and communicating, definitely not good for business managers and those whose work they manage. Other features of stress include worry, anxiety, high blood pressure, being uneasy and very hard to live with. The business manager is well advised to learn effective ways of preventing stress and managing stress that cannot be prevented. Managers of small work forces will find this to be a critical factor in employee retention. The one-person business manager will find stress management to be of enormous benefit for maintaining sanity as well as pairing home life with business endeavors.
Here is a list of what to do, not necessarily complete but more than enough.
Out of sight, out of mind. When you are not working, quit thinking about it. Learn how to close down the workday when it is over. Put everything away, finish the filing, close the drawers, lock the security file
Delegating responsibility is by far the favored management approach these days. The person at the top is there to make sure everyone else is supported as they accomplish their responsibilities. When this approach is fine-tuned the super boss should be free to move about while watching, listening and encouraging the whole managment force to make the operation whir at warp speed and peak efficiency.
The smaller the business the more such an approach becomes unworkable. In the very small business setting such an approach becomes completely unworkable for the simple reason that there is no management staff, nobody to whom anything can be delegated! You are the boss and there is no one else to help you be the boss! That being the case, managing by the minute becomes impossible. Your only choice is to manage by the week.
What does it mean to manage by the week?
First and foremost it means that in any given week you select priorities. From all the tasks needing to be acco
"Oh, sure! you might reply, "all that spare time."
Therein lies a trap: staying current and doing research are not activities reserved only for those managers who are not constantly busy. Most, if not all managers, are constantly busy. Small business managers are usually much too busy. The temptation is to consider staying current with the profession and doing research relating to your product, services and costs of doing business as something not necessary or not possible. Try telling the family farmer that it is not necessary to watch market prices and continually research market trends for his or her crops! Try telling that to the folks raising catfish or the business manager who plans to purchase a faster printing press for the county newspaper.
Being uninformed becomes a source of stress. It is nerve-wracking to be uninformed about matters pertaining to the future of the very business you are managing.
Family owned businesses present golden opportunities for family feuds. The business manager has an extra challenge: not just to run the business well but also how best to serve the interests of the family. In the case of family businesses, disagreements about the business present a frequent and serious challenge for all concerned. It is part of the manager's responsibililty to make sure these disagreements are taken seriously and resolved for the sake of both the business and the family that owns the business.
Many marriages and families have been destroyed by quarrels about the business. Many businesses have also been destroyed for the same reason. Lawyers, marriage counselors and business coaches typically check for not only who owns the business and how the ownership is structured but how the family will relate to the business. On a somber note, for example, they will encourage the family to protect the business against divorce, death and inheritance taxes. Painful
Time management, as business managers well know, is vital in business. In small business management many of the issues about schedule revolve around "non-productive time". The phrase says it all: we prize time spent productively. That commodity is limited in the world of business and so it needs to be managed wisely. Generally speaking it is managed wisely, because management skills focus on getting the most out of productive time. We prize being efficient.
What about "non-productive time"? Is it a necessary evil? Of course not! How a manager approaches breaks, quitting time, leaves and vacations actually makes a difference in the productivity of the company as well as the quality of work. Humans bring to their tasks something computers do not bring: a brain.
Unlike computers, that brain begins to malfunction with constant use. Humans are subject to fatigue. Humans are subject to burnout. Tired humans have more accidents, become less efficient, m
Is it redundant to say, "The whole big picture?" Not for the business manager. Your job demands that you keep one eye on the daily details and the other eye on the big picture: what is happening with the company overall. And you must make decisions and give leadership from the perspective of what is best for the company not only today but in the long run. How will today's decisions and activities impact the rest of the company's activities? Where will we be tomorrow? That's the big picture.
How well you make decisions, give leadership and stay in perspective depends on how well you are able to keep track of everything while attending to the details of some specific thing. It is the art and discipline of paying attention to details while keeping perspective. This is nearly impossible unless you are in reasonably good shape, of sound mind and emotionally stable. In other words, you need to have a life. That's where the "whole"
"Family business" means many things to many people, from the family farm to the heirs who own business empires built by their ancestors. Millions of small businesses today are family businesses. They might be a husband-wife or father-son team. They might be family members developing former farmland into a nursery or managing their golf course. They might be siblings turned partners trying their hand at a new bsuiness. They might be relatives working for relatives. The variations are endless because families are unique and opportunities for business come in all sizes and shapes.
As the manager of a family business you can utilize principles gleaned from the experience of others who have walked in your shoes. Much of that experience was painful. Managing family business is "tricky business." Your stress level will be lower if you learn from the experience of others. Here are four of those learnings.
We have all heard the refrain, :"My work is never done." Usually the person uttering this phrase means to say that there is more work to do than time in the day for doing it. Those hearing the phrase take the remark as a sign of dedication. The business coach hearing such a remark, however, makes a mental note that here is a person on a collision course with burnout.
Reflect for a moment on the stress you feel when a task must be left unfinished. Even more to the point, imagine that the task did not get finished in the specific amount of time you knew was sufficient. When the amount of time is reasonable but the job still isn't finished we all know something went wrong. We stress when something goes wrong. We stress when we miss a reasonable goal and fall short of achievable standards.
We stress when the schedule breaks down, too, especially when it breaks down for reasons of carelessness or poor planning or lack of proper effort. That is how we
What do small business managers think about all day every day besides their actual products and services? Money
What creates more worry and stress for small business managers than issues relating to their products and services? Money
What worries wake small business managers up in the middle of the night? Money worries.
What sinks small businesses more than any other single factor? Problems with cash flow, meaning lack of money.
Small businesses feel the pressures of cash flow day in and day out, not generally having the large cash assets available in larger businesses to cushion cash flows needs. There are always things to be bought and bills to be paid. There are payments for rent or leases, installment payments due on vehicles and equipqment, payrolls to be met. There are surprise bills. The list is long but the certainty is that not a day will go by without the need for oper
Only fools and dead people have no worries. Human nature being what it is, all of us worry about money. We worry when we have too little, when we have enough and when we have extra. But not everyone worries equally.
Those who worry well about money are relatively stress free when it comes to money management, no matter whether the concerns are about too little money or how best to manage adequate and surplus funds. Those who do not know how to worry about money are nervous wrecks and consider finances to be a headache producer.
I suggest three rules of thumb about ow to handle the financial concerns that go with every business and that are almost always pressing concerns with small businesses.
First: organize the worries. Financial matters fall into a very few categories such as cash flow, debt management, credit development, receivables, taxes and asset management. Each have their own considerations and need to be well organized, carefully filed a
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