Management confidence: the 6/24 Factor

The power of being you

Let’s just say there are only 24 things that people are good at. There may be more, maybe less, but when I make a list of those things, I tend to run out of steam around two dozen.

The list might include athleticism or empathy, mathematical competence or organisational skills, strategic thinking or the ability to concentrate, just to mention six.

Of those, I’m only good at two.

Overall in life, I probably do OK in a few more – in total, maybe five or six. Those are what drove my career. They generated most of the success I had along the way. Six out of 24.  Twenty-five percent. That’s what it took.

When did I fail most?

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Want a more collaborative enterprise?

Make a simple start: encourage joint responsibility.

Collaboration might be the buzz word of the moment but “command and control” is still around in management behavior. It sort of goes with the territory. If you are in charge, you figure you have to lead from the front.

It’s a hard model to break. Even if you practice that core management skill – effective delegation – you invariably just delegate the right to command and control to some other person.

You tell them what you want, give them the responsibility and the requisite power and let them get on with it. Individual responsibility, rather than shared responsibility, is often embedded in business culture. This kind of delegation perpetuates it.

Try something different.

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Add some risk to your career or business

Why you should dabble

A career and a business have a lot in common. Both are the focus of your working life; both largely determine your financial position; success in either can depend on the skills you bring to the party.

They also have another thing in common. We regularly question whether we can get more out of the cards we have been dealt.

Entrepreneurs with sound businesses look askance at more successful firms in alternative sectors; career individuals often plateau, wondering whether they should have done something else. The trouble is, they don’t know what.

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Struggling with tough times? Try leadership

UPDATE March 2020: I wrote this a decade ago in the midst of recession. Covid 19 may well take us into another downturn but the role of the leader hasn't changed.

A case for crisis management?

Taking off on a short flight 20 years ago, our plane lost part of its landing gear. There was a loud explosion; the aircraft listed violently. We knew something was wrong, although we didn’t know what. 

Within minutes, the pilot explained the next move. He would circle the airport while the debris on the tarmac was examined. Engineers with binoculars would assess the state of the undercarriage. He promised an update shortly.

The comfort of clarity

I can’t stress how comforting it was to simply be told that he was on it. He was calm and he was initiating a process. We were no longer quite so much in the dark. His next broadcast was both good news and bad news: the starboard wheels had fallen off, but everything else was working.

The plan? We would continue to our destination. We were already airborne and we had to land somewhere. It might as well be where we were going.

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The simplest way to increase the value of your business

How a dollar turns into more than a dollar

Here are four simple financial objectives in any business: generate more cash, cut interest costs, reduce debt and boost value.  Your product and marketing strategies address these objectives at the revenue and expense lines. But for any company, be it highly successful or struggling, a focus on cash flow can also aggressively optimize all four targets.

The fact is boring stuff like cash flow management boosts your wealth. Every dollar you create or save is worth more than a dollar.

Before you switch off, check out a real example

A client runs a successful business. Nonetheless, last year it had in excess of $100,000 in outstanding debtors stretching out past 120 days. He is a positive person. His view: it’s probably a hassle to fix it and I can afford it. The reality: it’s not that hard to fix and the return on doing so is worth the trouble.

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