The top 18 things that a businessman should know

I'm returning to this blog after a long period of inactivity. Inactivity on the blog, that is - in real life the degree of activity around me has soared like Delhi's blazing heat in this, the hottest early summer in decades.

Manu, Varun and I have been designing the Family-Managed Business program that we are going to launch shortly. We have been thinking that in this program we will focus on a different aspect of family-managed entrepreneurial business each month. Thus the 18 month course will allow us to dive into 18 different things, which should together provide a practical and comprehensive 360 degree view.

To decide what these top 18 things should be, we first drew up independent lists. When I compared my list with Prof. Varun's this morning, I was not surprised to see that there was a 90% overlap. (I haven't compared it with Manu's yet.)

This then is my informal list, in no particular order, focused solely on practical topics for the small-scale or medium-scale business:

Defining your narrower market niche (in which you are THE best)

Developing a vision for your business (this is closely tied to the first point)

Leveraging the power of Internet marketing (using websites, SEO, SEM, social networking, blogs, etc.)

Getting the most from real world marketing (ranging from smarter business communication to cultivating newsmedia for PR)

Conceptualizing, planning and executing initiatives (project management)

Scaling an organization through modularization and processes

Understanding accounting and tax optimization

Understanding people and what they are good at, developing reporting systems

Leveraging business IT

Understanding business law, contracts and litigation

Managing your time and your mind

Understanding quality

Maximizing profit and cash flow, not just sales

Balancing family relations and the business

Professionalizing the family business without affecting the bottomline

Learning the art of selling and negotiation

Managing business risk

Handling the regulatory environment

Most of this I learned by trial and error and had we been taught this through our formal education, we would have done better and gone further.

Anything I left out?

Read the rest of this post »