Your Management Skill creates Business Success

Business success keys are layered into the elements of business management skills. If you are an owner or executive, effective management of your business is what makes the difference between a flash-in-the-pan success and sustained growth that results in long-term success.

The Business management process is defined as the management, coordination, and organization of business activities.

The critical business functions that drive the business to success are:

• Human resources
• Strategy
• Operations management
• Finance
• Marketing

The size of your business does not matter

Every business has to deal with each of the critical business functions. The actual size or type of the business may determine which is more important or requires more attention, but every business manager or owner should be concerned with all of them.

Each one of the key functions is different but they all have common activities. To be effective in managing the critical business functions, you will need to be able to:

• Plan
• Develop and communicate goals and objectives
• Be able to effectively allocate resources
• Organize around strategic goals and tactics
• Staffing
• Effective leadership

What is seen time and again at effective successful organizations is leadership that is able to organize and get people together to reach the desired goals. This is true if you are the only person you are leading, or if you are leading a large organization.

Maintain a consistency across the key critical functions

Success is driven by a consistent approach to each key functional area. How do you maintain consistency across the functional areas even though they have very different requirements?

You need a system that can be applied across all the key business functions that will help to apply the common activities in a consistent way. This system is commonly referred to as a business management system.
What is a business management system?
The big picture is that this system has a set of tools that can be applied to all of your key functional areas so you are not reinventing the wheel and can help you spot outliers that identify when changes or adjustments need to be made.

The business management system would be used to implement the key activities that are common across the business functions. The business management system is a sort of catch all term that does not relate to any specific business software product but is more of a type of process approach that builds consistency just because it is a consistent approach to each area.

The systems main goals are to provide a way to make strategic and tactical decisions concerning tasks, activities and procedures so that the organization stays on track to reach the goals and objectives that have been set and can avoid straying to chase the next shiny object.

It is important to understand that the level of sophistication of the business management system is directly related to the size and complexity of the business it will manage. Generally the simpler the better. Aiming for easy replication across the functional areas is always a main goal of the system.

A small busines can create and implement the system by referencing the business plan and just using a set of spreadsheets.

Remember the main idea of the Business Management System is to get the tools for effective, easy management to monitor, plan and control the activities of a the business. You can also use this system to implement a plan of continuous improvement.

Business manager job description

The job description for a business manager are responsible for the oversight of the entire business.

The business manager will set strategy, develop goals and objectives to achieve the business strategy. Depending on the size of the organization will determine the level of detail the business manager will need to be involved in.

Business managers are the leaders of the organization and have the main responsibility to get everyone together and working towards the main goals of the business. The business manager is responsible for the key activities in each of the functional areas of the business. These key activities are:

• Planning. In each functional area, there should be a plan for success that includes the goals and how to reach those goals. The manager is responsible for setting and tracking performance towards those goals.
• Develop and communicate goals and objectives. For each goal and objective that is set by the manager should come with a communication plan that will detail how that goal will be reached and what methods should be used to move towards the accomplishment of the goal.
• Be able to effectively allocate resources. In any business, resources are always limited and have to be assigned in a way that maximizes productivity while minimizing cost.
• Organize around strategic goals and tactics. The goals and tactics that are defined in each functional area need to be aligned to the overall strategic business plan. The manager will make sure goals in one functional area are not in conflict with the goals in another. Staffing. Business managers are responsible for getting the right people in the right jobs and keeping them there.
• Effective leadership, most of the above comes under the heading of an effective leader. A good business manager is a good and effective leader.

Tactics for business management

Strategy defines your long-term goals and how you’re planning to achieve them. In other words, your strategy gives you the path you need toward achieving your organization’s mission. 

Tactics are much more concrete and are often oriented toward smaller steps and a shorter time frame along the way.

The business strategy is composed of a series of objectives that are supported by goals that are implemented by a tactical plan.  Each of the strategic objectives are linked together to move the business towards achievement of the strategic plan.  By definition because the goals support the objective they must support the overall strategic plan.  

When developing a tactical plan that plan should drill into the details of how the goal will be accomplished and how measurement of the progress toward the goal is tracked.

The business manager is usually not the one responsible for implementing the tactical plan.  The manager will just track the progress and help to determine what decisions should be made to keep progress towards the strategic goals on track.