Saturday, April 19, 2008

The Business Development Process is Not Static

The business development process is not something you do up front and then you're done.  It's a continuous process of innovation, quantification, and orchestration.  It's a living system that you continue to evolve.  In The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It, Michael E. Gerber writes about how the business development process is dynamic.

Continue to Innovate, Quantify and Orchestrate It
Gerber writes that business development is not static:

The Business Development Process is not static.  It's not something you do and then you are done with.  It's something you do all the time.  In other words, once you've innovated, quantified, and orchestrated something in your business, you must continue to innovate, quantify, and orchestrate it.

The World Will Not Tolerate a Stationary Object
Gerber writes that the business development process keeps you from being destroyed:

The Business Development Process is dynamic, simply because the world, moving as it does, will not tolerate a stationary object.  The world will collide with whatever you've created, and sooner or later destroy it.  The Business Development Process is that which enables you to preempt the world's changes.  It hopefully precedes them, and, if not, at least is infinitely flexible in relationship to them.

Key Take Aways
Here's my key take aways:

  • Your business is either growing or dying.  It's either growing or dying, climbing or sliding.   If you're not continuously improving it, you're sliding. 
  • Continue to innovate your process.   This is one place where I always find opportunity.  While it's easy to fall into routine, I think an important routine to have is experimenting and changing your approach.  I've found the most growth by experimenting with different techniques and testing results.
  • Continue to quantify your results.   You need to know whether your changes are working.  If you don't have a baseline, you won't know whether you're improving.  Know your numbers so you know your gains.
  • Continue to orchestrate your system.  Bake your learnings into the system.   You should have routines for everything you do, then build upon and improve your routines.  That's how you scale your effectiveness and continue to grow your business. 

My Related Posts

0 comments: