Successful Business Career Building Flows from Building a Successful Business
Successful business career building goes hand in hand with successful business building. Research and analysis demonstrate that four key elements underpin highly successful businesses. Top performing business people know how critical it is for them to pay careful attention to these four fundamental elements from inception through the lifetime of their business.
Regardless of whether the business is a multi-national corporation or a sole proprietorship, these four key elements must be present and properly formulated to ensure their business success. Just as when building a house, whether it is a luxury home or a small cottage, we pay careful attention to the picture in our mind’s eye of the end result that we want, so it is with creating a business. The key undamentals apply.
The four key elements that underpin highly successful businesses and business careers are:
Element One – Clearly Articulated Mission, Vision & Values
Successful businesses have well thought through and clearly articulated Mission, Vision and Values statements. These statements are the visible expression of the “heart and soul” of the business. They point to the business’s aspirations in all of its activities and the way its people are expected to conduct their affairs in relation to each other and to customers. This vital element aligns strategy with leadership and customers.
The words in these statements are not mere platitudes that hang on an office wall for decorative purposes. Successful businesses use these shared understandings to capture the purpose, direction and expectations of how their business is to be conducted. When implemented correctly, they create value-based, dynamic, customer-focused cultures that deliver excellence across the board.
People in high performing, successful companies live their Mission, Vision and Values and drive them into the very fabric of everything that their organization says and does.
Element Two – Strategy Formulation & Business Planning
Strategy formulation is the framework of choices that successful businesses implement to achieve their Mission and Vision. Strategic thinking ensures leaders understand the nature of the business that they are in and precisely where they are headed.
Once they have decided the critical issues that need to be addressed through this process, they create the Strategic Business Plan. This plan ensures that the business is built and operates in the manner that was envisaged and intended.
Element Three – Leadership Development
Successful businesses develop their leaders in a particular way. They ensure that their personal business career building and development is aligned to the Mission, Vision and Values of the organization, that it is part of the strategic agenda and that it focuses on customer need.
As a result of this type of leadership development, leaders in successful businesses are highly self-aware. They are conscious of the impact that they are having on others, and they get results. Such leaders continually build the business and the people around them for the future.
Element Four – Common Tools for Problem Resolution & Decision-Making
Successful businesses adopt common and systematic thinking processes and tools that can be used across the three streams of thinking in organizational life, namely strategy, operations and continuous improvement.
Having a common set of thinking tools that are used by everyone in an organization builds speed in the flow of information and ensures that problems, issues of concern and decisions are visible, rational, collaborative, traceable and conscious. Because they have these tool sets and processes in place, successful businesses think quickly, adapt and innovate.
So, in summary, all successful business career building begins with building a successful business. The four fundamental elements that must be in place for a successful business are:
– Mission, Vision and Values – a shared view of the purpose of the business.
– Strategy Formulation – understanding the nature and direction of the business.
– Leadership Development – building for the future of the business.
– Problem Resolution and Decision-Making Capabilities – building effectiveness and speed into the thinking and decision-making of the business.