Small Business Management

January 2, 2009 By Mary White

When you decided to open a small business, you might not have made a conscious decision to become a manager. However, it is a fact that every small business owner must have effective supervisory skills. No matter how small your company is, you’ll need to utilize the principles of sound management in order to enjoy the success you want to achieve.

Operations Management
Even though you are the owner of your business, you won’t get to spend all of your time focused on the most enjoyable aspects of running your business. When you own your own business, you will often find yourself performing tasks that aren’t things you like or want to do. Everything has to get done, and you aren’t likely to have the luxury of delegating much of anything, especially in the beginning.

Small business owners are responsible for managing every aspect of business operations, including deciding how to spend your time, balancing your budget, making purchasing decisions, product or service development, marketing, customer service, and more. When you own your own business, you’re in the unique situation of being at both ends of the organizational chart. You’re at the top, but you’re also at the bottom. You’re responsible for everything from strategic planning to taking out the trash.

Personnel Management
When you decide that you need to hire employees, your role will continue to change. You’ll need to come up with job descriptions, go through a recruiting process, interview applicants, and make hiring decisions. Once you’ve decided who to hire and made job offers, you’ll need to orient and train your new employees.

As your new employees start to work, your responsibilities will expand to include employee management. If you’ve been accustomed to working on your own, or just with your business partners, for a period of time before hiring anyone you’ll likely experience quite an adjustment when you start to add personnel. Becoming a boss may take some getting used to, especially if your business has been up and running for a while before you start hiring team members.

The Balancing Act
Managing a small business is a balancing act. It might even be better to describe what’s involved in successfully running a company as a juggling act. On any given day, small business owners must change roles several times. To succeed in small business, you must have the ability to change gears on a moment’s notice, recognizing what needs to be done and taking care of all types of situations as they arise.

Posted in Management