0:01
Hi, this is John Heinrich from the Small Business Success School. I noticed one thing; as I said in one of my other posts, we’re reading “In Search of Excellence” by Tom Peters and Bob Waterman. One of the first chapters they have is a bias for action, and I wanted to comment on that a little bit because I see a non-bias for action among a lot of small businesses.
0:29
It was never my case. I was always acting on something starting at about seven o’clock in the morning. But I notice as I call around and talk to small businesses, a lot of ’em are continuing to just do things the same way they have ’em for the last 25 years, and that’s not necessarily going to lead to long-term success in their business, in my humble opinion.
0:54
We were always tearing up the playbook as we expanded to the other end of the country and knocked off competitors, stole salespeople, and so forth. But, the one thing that they did say in the chapter is that they introduced the concept of management by walking around, which is very good because I used that a lot.
1:18
As I mentioned earlier, “In Search of Excellence” was the first management book that I actually paid attention to after getting my MBA at Wharton because I thought I could tailor it to small business, even though it was written for big business. And by large, I did that and probably helped ensure our success.
1:43
So, the main bias for action is that you need to be doing something you ought to be doing, such as calling on customers. You ought to be walking around talking to your employees, which helps morale. In general, don’t just sit there in your office and pontificate. You know, talk to your staff, talk to your plant workers, your warehouse workers, talk to your sales reps.
2:07
I used to get all kinds of interesting information from my sales reps about who was doing what to whom, and I think you’ll find that, magically, you might start growing again. So that’s our TikTok tip for this time, and again, thank you for taking our courses at the school.