| "Regardless of company size, the concerns of | | | | money corporate executives invest in managing their |
| executive management are all essentially the same." | | | | company's affairs. True, some things require |
| - Bryce's Law | | | | considerable time and effort to investigate, such as |
| I was recently at a gathering of independent | | | | researching new products/services and checking |
| consultants from around the Tampa Bay area and | | | | market conditions, but most of what is done is what |
| we got around to talking about the concerns of | | | | I refer to as "meatball" type analysis which should be |
| owners of small businesses. From this, we devised a | | | | easy and relatively inexpensive to prepare. Let me |
| list of pet peeves commanding the attention of | | | | give you an example; a couple of years ago I was |
| small-to-medium sized business owners, to wit: | | | | working with a Fortune 500 company who had |
| - Employees/Human Resources - staffing and | | | | contracted with another firm to produce a Business |
| allocations, payroll, benefits, and management. | | | | Systems Plan. This took several months to perform |
| - Work environment - facilities and equipment, | | | | and resulted in a substantial document over three |
| corporate culture. | | | | feet thick (I kid you not) costing the company $1.5 |
| - Systems - implementing business processes | | | | million. I was asked to flip through the document and |
| productively, and staying abreast of technological | | | | give an opinion. It only took me a couple of minutes |
| developments for competitive advantage. | | | | to discover the authors had reused narrative from |
| - Regulations - complying with rules as established by | | | | other client projects in the document and that most |
| government and industrial concerns. | | | | of it was superfluous. But the fact that it was |
| - Time Management - scheduling and devoting time | | | | incredibly thick and printed on some pretty impressive |
| to the proper set of priorities. | | | | looking paper, gave the company the feeling they |
| - Financial Resources - managing and planning cash | | | | had gotten their money's worth from the consultants. |
| flow and investments for optimal return on | | | | Interestingly, the company never acted on the |
| investment. | | | | information contained in the document simply |
| - General Planning & Strategy - both short term and | | | | because it was so voluminous and they couldn't find |
| long term, including an analysis of the market and | | | | their way through it. In reality, a ten page report |
| competition. | | | | could have satisfied the company's needs, but I |
| At the end of this session, we discovered that the | | | | guess you cannot charge $1.5 million for a ten page |
| concerns of small business owners are essentially no | | | | document can you? |
| different than large corporations, except on a much | | | | The point of all this is that the size of a company |
| smaller scale. The only difference was that the small | | | | really has no bearing on the concerns of those |
| business owner has to move faster than his | | | | charged with running it. They are all essentially the |
| corporate counterparts simply due to the size of his | | | | same. Nor does any business owner have the time or |
| operation. For example, he doesn't have time to read | | | | inclination to be devoured by detail. Although detail is |
| voluminous business plans and financial statements. | | | | important to substantiate claims, summary reports |
| Instead, he requires summary reports which get to | | | | are more effective for supporting the needs of |
| the point in a couple of pages. He needs good, sound | | | | business owners. They simply want accurate and |
| supporting advice to make his life easier. | | | | reliable information to act on regardless of the form |
| This got me thinking about the amount of time and | | | | it takes, but preferably not three feet thick. |