Published by: Mike Brice, Brice Consulting
Business success is dependant upon providing a product or service that is valued by the marketplace thereby creating a recurring demand that perpetuates the business. Unfortunately many businesses loose sight of what the product or service is that the market values. As a result their market potential falls short of what it could be and [...]
A constant conflict in many businesses is the struggle between investing in long-term strategic planning to grow the business and executing short-term tactical activities to meet company objectives and customer needs. Feeding one and starving the other can result in not enough forward thinking or lack of focus and commitment to operational objectives. Successful businesses [...]
The US census reports that as of 2007 there were just over 6M privately held businesses with paid employees. Of those 2.2M (36%) businesses were owned by owner’s aged 55 and above. Including the next age range bracket (45 to 55) you include another 2M business. You therefore have upwards of 70% of all privately [...]
Many people often, incorrectly, believe that leadership is something that is based on image and physical attributes. Society has conditioned us to react to those who have an attractive image or possess above average physical attributes – size, strength or ability. But do these outward traits have a direct impact on how effective a person [...]
The cornerstone in preparing a successful strategic plan is the integrity and effectiveness of the business model that the company uses to exploit opportunities. Too often energy and urgency is applied to developing a business plan without determining if the business model is structured and resourced for success. What is the difference between a business [...]
Conventional management thinking relies upon strategic planning as the primary method to align company resources to achieve business success. I support this thinking for the most part but I believe the strategic planning process may not consider all of the issues that it should. The typical strategic planning process may not surface key organization shortcomings [...]
I recently engaged a business to do work at my house. On arriving I learned that the owner was doing the work and by the way he was going out of business after completing this project for me. Over the next three days of work (not contiguous) I learned the reasons for the failure of [...]
Owners and stakeholders want good value for their investment when the business is sold. Value, however, in the transaction means different things to each party. To those who have an equity position it means a big check – hopefully! To the buying person or group it expresses the level of certainty in the return on [...]
A struggle in many companies is the investment in resources to meet accounting compliance reporting requirements and the amount of resources left over to provide management with information to manage the company. When companies are small it is difficult to afford staff and time to do both so you know which one – compliance – [...]
As owners and members of senior leadership we can often become too complacent with the level of review and scrutiny that we apply to our businesses. I call this the “glass ceiling “ syndrome where we ease into an attitude of believing we have done all we can do and there is nothing else that [...]
