Business Owners, Managers and Leaders
Nicole King
Leadership Across the Stages of Growth

The Stages of Growth clarifies the optimal number of managers and leaders for a business. This blog post shows what that ideal number looks like across the seven Stages of Growth. This framework serves as the ideal for businesses to follow, with the management and leadership teams growing in proportion to the needs of the organization. In reality, however, many leaders miss these transitions.

Leadership Across the Stages of Growth
Business Owners, Managers and Leaders
Nicole King
Position Role Sheets

The Position Role Sheet is a management tool that organizes the work through Positions, Roles, and Types of Work. It is a fundamental way to accomplish the goal of first organizing the work before organizing the people doing the work. As a building block for departments of all sizes, Position Role Sheets break down the roles and responsibilities of each position within a department.

Position Role Sheets
Business Owners, Managers and Leaders
Nicole King
Enterprise Thinking: The antidote to department ...

This natural tendency to focus on the immediate needs of one’s department can work against the success of the enterprise. Due to daily challenges, needs, and opportunities, departments can become self-focused and lose sight of the big picture. The outcomes of this silo mentality are a lack of cooperation and hoarding of information. What works for one department might make things difficult for another. Departments begin to compete for resources without understanding or even caring about the needs of the enterprise.

Enterprise Thinking: The antidote to department silos
Business Owners
Nicole King
The Significance of Process and the 85/15 Rule

Dr. W. Edward Deming is recognized as the father of the modern Quality Movement that ignited new ideas and focused energy on process improvement. He contributed to Japan’s economic recovery after World War II, largely through his influence over manufacturing processes.

Dr. Deming was a champion of systems and processes. At one point, he made this poignant statement: “If you cannot define what you are doing as a process, you do not understand what you are doing.”

The Significance of Process and the 85/15 Rule
Business Owners
Nicole King
Why your business needs Key Performance ...

A Key Performance Indicator, or KPI, as it is commonly referred to, is a measurement that helps gauge the success of a business, department, or team. By tracking the outcomes that are being achieved, a company gets insight into what is and what is not working.  

Why your business needs Key Performance Indicators

Business Consultants

Two common mistakes that stop sales

Two common mistakes that stop sales

As the second step in the business development process, sales is the function responsible for turning leads into revenue. It’s an important part of every business, large or small. Without revenue (or donations, depending on your business model), you don’t have the resources you need to keep your doors open and continue providing the same high-quality products or services.

Sales professionals have the benefit of extensive training, but not many small business owners have that luxury. As with so many other aspects of business, the small business owner improvises, learns on the job, and picks up resources whenever possible.

Business Consultants: Are you having the impact you want?

Business Consultants: Are you having the impact you want?

Business consultants and advisers want to have an impact on their clients. The whole reason most of them get into consulting is to make a difference—to use their knowledge and experience to help business owners thrive. A common frustration we hear from consultants, though, is that they aren’t able to make the significant progress they’d like to. They don’t get the opportunity to go deeply enough with a client to make a significant, long-term impact.

How to tell a business owner what’s wrong with their business.

How to tell a business owner what’s wrong with their business.

There’s no getting around it. It’s awkward. You’re face-to-face with a business owner who has poured time, energy, and effort into running a business. Things aren’t going well, which is why you were hired in the first place. And yet, even though your advice was solicited, you hesitate to share your findings with the business owner.

While we can’t get rid of all the unpleasant confrontations that may arrive throughout the course of work for business advisers, we do have some advice for anyone looking for a better way to deliver tough news.

How to sell consulting services to small business owners

How to sell consulting services to small business owners

In our previous post, we focused on ways to successfully market yourself as an adviser to small business owners. In this article, we’re going to talk about how to sell to small business owners.

To clarify, and make sure we’re all on the same page, marketing and sales are two distinct functions of a business. The purpose of marketing is to generate leads, while the purpose of sales is to convert those leads into revenue.

How to market consulting services to small businesses

How to market consulting services to small businesses

As a small business consultant, you have a wealth of information and years of experience. You’re also keenly aware that there are many businesses in need of help. The question is … how do you reach them? How do you hold their attention long enough to explain what you do? To help you make the most of your time and effectively raise awareness of your services, we’ve put together three tips on how to market to small business owners.

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Structure, Clarity, and Focus

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Structure, Clarity, and Focus

One of the phrases that is often used in the Organizational ReWilding® methodology is “Structure, Clarity, and Focus.” While not a key element package, these important concepts underpin many of the principles and lessons that are part of the methodology. The purpose of this article is to take a closer look at what makes this phrase so meaningful—first by defining each term in the phrase and then connecting them to specific key elements.

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The 7 Stages of Business Growth

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The 7 Stages of Business Growth

Over a decade ago, James Fischer published the book, Navigating the Growth Curve, in which he presented a groundbreaking methodology for understanding how businesses grow.  Based on decades of research and observation of small and mid-sized businesses, Fischer discovered how the complexity of an organization drives the rules by which a business must operate to continue to grow.