Business management

Principles of Business Management

Business Culture

Managers and leaders set the culture of a business — often without realising it. Examples include:

  • Time-keeping: if managers arrive late, employees will too.

  • Praise: if managers fail to encourage, staff won’t either.

  • Team spirit: if managers don’t emphasise teamwork, employees won’t feel part of one.

Take a Look in the Mirror

If you sense that morale or work ethic in your company feels wrong, start with yourself. If you are overworked, stressed, and frustrated, chances are your employees feel the same. To change their experience, you may need to change your own.

Vision and Values

If you want your business to thrive and your employees to commit, communicate your vision clearly and regularly (at least once a month). A compelling vision inspires loyalty and helps staff forgive mistakes. If you aren’t clear about your vision, it’s time to reflect on both your vision and values.

Taking on Staff

Recruitment is one of the biggest commitments a manager makes. Principles to keep in mind:

  • Be slow to hire, quick to fire.

  • In the early days, you may need someone who gets tasks done efficiently. But in the long run, ensure staff embody your values.

  • Adjust both staff and criteria as your company grows.

Team is Everything

The long-term success of any company depends not only on leadership, vision, finance, product quality, and marketing — but also on teamwork. Too many leaders secretly believe they can do everything better themselves. This is fatal: it breeds insecurity and inevitably leads to burnout.

To build a strong team:

  • Invest time in understanding strengths, weaknesses, skills, and motivations (tools like Belbin or Myers-Briggs can help).

  • Align staff skills with your company’s vision and needs.

  • Hold regular, meaningful meetings.

  • Avoid negative talk about one employee to another.

  • Create opportunities for staff to bond outside work.

  • Remember: actions speak louder than words.

Work Smart, Not Harder

A common mistake is working longer hours as stress increases. This leads to burnout and loss of perspective. Instead:

  • Audit your day and cut what isn’t important.

  • Revisit your vision: are your activities aligned with it?

  • Use the urgent/important matrix to plan effectively.

  • Delegate wherever possible.

Meetings, Agendas and Minutes

Meetings are necessary but must serve a purpose. To keep them effective:

  • Send out an agenda in advance (with space for contributions).

  • Keep the number of items manageable.

  • Time-limit agenda points and assign responsibility.

  • Appoint a chair, minute-taker, and timekeeper.

  • Keep minutes concise, with clear action points and deadlines.

Create a Culture of Encouragement

People work best in an atmosphere of encouragement. Criticism is necessary but should be:

  • Private, not public.

  • Fact-checked and clear.

  • Structured, balanced with positives.

Formal appraisals at least once a year are best practice, ideally tied to professional development and pay.

The Future is Always Younger

Remember: the future is always ten years younger than your average customer. Many managers shape products around their own age group, but by the time they launch, the market has moved on. Always look to younger demographics and invest in younger people.

Short placements for students can help — but they must be well-structured and genuinely developmental, not cheap labour.

Jettison What Doesn’t Work

Don’t copy competitors blindly. What works for them may not work for you. Focus on your USP and regularly carry out SWOT analyses to reassess your direction.

Marketing

Today’s most effective strategies are:

  • Internet presence: rank highly on search engines.

  • Word of mouth: encourage recommendations via apps, social media, or incentives.

Stories engage more than press releases — show real outcomes and customer experiences.

Bring in External Advice

It’s hard to apply these principles alone. A skilled consultant or coach can accelerate growth, even if it’s costly — it usually pays off.

Measuring Success

Beyond profit, market share, and growth, some questions are harder to measure:

  • Will research investment pay off?

  • Are trade fairs worthwhile?

  • Is customer service helping or harming?

  • Was the consultant worth it?

Here, gut feeling often matters as much as spreadsheets. If you know your vision, you’ll sense when an activity is (or isn’t) worth it. Confidence in leadership makes success self-fulfilling.

Vision and Values

A clear vision is not a mission statement. It’s an inspiring picture of the future. Combine this with strong values, a great team, and focused action plans (“vehicles”) to move from A to B.

Articulating Vision

Be able to express your vision in:

  • One sentence.

  • A three-minute summary.

  • A 30-minute presentation.

Articulating Values

Most companies have around five values. They should permeate everything you do.

Articulating Vehicles

Choose no more than five vehicles (projects or tasks) to focus resources. Too many means dilution.

Engaging Your Team

Ensure staff embody the vision, live the values, and drive the vehicles. Assign responsibility for each vehicle to a team member to sharpen focus.

Bringing in a consultant to clarify vision, values, and vehicles is usually worth it. Better to discover mistakes now than spend decades heading in the wrong direction. As the saying goes:

“Who wants to spend their life arranging deckchairs on the Titanic?”