Short pieces, one topic at a time.
Organization
Why being busy all day still isn't producing anything
Activity is not a product. A business is measured by what goes out the door and earns something in return, not by your hours or how full…
5 min
What you are actually selling, and why it matters
What you sell is not what you do. It is the thing someone outside your business will give you something for, and when that slips, income…
5 min
Fixed it and nothing changed? You fixed the wrong problem
A problem that survives every fix is not the real problem. The real one sits somewhere else, and fixing harder only spends more time on the…
5 min
You have a goal for your business, so why isn't it moving
A business goal rarely fails because it's too big or you lack discipline. It fails because the links that turn it into real actions are…
4 min
Goal, purpose and ideal scene: the difference that matters
A goal is the big long-range direction, a purpose is the smaller aim of one activity, and an ideal scene is that purpose worded as a…
5 min
Business policy: you have one even if you never wrote it
No business runs without policy. When you never wrote one, a random policy appears and everyone decides for themselves, so the question is…
5 min
What a business statistic is, and which numbers to track
A statistic is a number compared with its own earlier value, counting product delivered rather than effort. A lone figure or hours worked…
5 min
Why the wrong action can hurt your business more than none
Run the actions that belong to a lower condition than the one your business is in, and you end up there. A wrong diagnosis takes you down…
5 min
Why explaining a slow month never brings the number back up
An excuse for a falling number doesn't raise it, and the excuse itself is the finding. What helps is preventing the drop and acting fast…
5 min
Why the costliest business problem is what never got done
The most overlooked problem in a business is not a mistake but something that should happen and does not. It is silent, so nobody complains…
5 min
Why owners are the last to see the problem in their business
The owner is the person least able to see the problem in his own business: admitting your own error is hard, reasonable answers blind, your…
5 min
Why your staff know the procedure and still don't follow it
Knowing a procedure and performing it are two different things. Most checks test only the knowing, and what closes the gap is drill, not…
5 min
What a hat is, and why it isn't just a job description
A hat is everything someone else needs to hold a role in your business without you. A job description names the post; a hat lets you hand…
5 min
Why handing over a job in a small business fails on day one
A handover fails when someone gets the title before they can do the job. A learner is assigned beside whoever is responsible, and posted…
5 min
How many roles one person can hold, and which to keep apart
One person can hold several roles if they share a pole. Production and organising on one head pull in opposite directions, and organising…
5 min
The three hats every business owner wears, even alone
Every business runs three functions: driving production, organising the flow and building the foundation. Blur them and production always…
5 min
Why building the business is not production work
Whoever builds and maintains the foundation of a business should stay out of production. Production has no bottom, and once pulled in…
5 min
Why stopping the business to get organised never works
The week you stop everything to get organised almost never comes, and when it does it fails. Order grows out of the work, so you organise…
5 min
Your business grows and breaks: the problem isn't growth
What looks like growing too fast is almost always too little organisation: volume and demand race ahead while the capacity to handle them…
5 min
What overwhelm really is, and why less work won't fix it
Overwhelm in a business is not too much work. It is things coming in and not going out, so the fix is to restore the outflow, not to cut…
5 min
Why the owner becomes the bottleneck in their own business
When everything in your business waits for you, the cause is rarely control. Too much runs through you, and nobody was trained to hold what…
5 min