Small Business Survival: Teach Yourself

: 110 pieces of other peoples’ wisdom: ·        How to develop your business successfully: ·        The guide to growth: ·        Beating the blues: ·        How to plan the next big thing: ·        If I’d known this when I started…: Phase I: Confront: 01. So your business is under pressure. What now?: ·        What to do when things go wrong: ·        You cannot be prescriptive about survival and growth: ·        Time for tough love and some tough thinking: ·        Some nasty questions: ·        Some So what? questions: ·        Can’t get no satisfaction: 02. Are you disciplined enough to survive?: ·        New company: same as the old company?: ·        Ripping up the straitjackets you built yourself: ·        Turning native: ·        Growing panes: a new look through the business window: ·        Efficiency is a sophisticated form of laziness: ·        Are you suffering from attitude sickness?: ·        Beating the blues: 03. Thinking is free: ·        Do it more often: ·        Try this. It might just work: ·        Why the next big thing might be small: ·        A strategy is when you have decided what to do: ·        KISS: Keep It Simple and Sensible: ·        KITSCH: Keep It Terribly Simple and Cool Headed: ·        Didn’t work? Try again: Phase II: Hone: 04. Thinking stage 1: What are the facts?: ·        Rivers and dams: ·        Send it down to the boys in forensics or go completely ballistic?: ·        Common Sense Analysis: ·        Always admit if something was a fluke: ·        Remind me, what was the original idea?: 05. Thinking stage 2: What’s your own opinion?: ·        The doctor who died of ill health: ·        Heed your own counsel: ·        The pragmatist who was sceptical about the cynic: ·        Death to compromise: 06. Thinking stage 3: What can you learn from the experience of others?: ·        Six crucial questions answered:: 1.      What is the hardest thing about running and growing your business?: 2.      Is growth always a good thing?: 3.      Did you ever suffer from post-launch blues or a three-year itch?: 4.      How do you plan the “next big thing”?: 5.      If you could have known one thing when you started that you know now, what would it be?: 6.      Is there anything else you would like to pass on about growing or evolving your business?: Phase III: Evolve: 07. Set up your business tripwires and grenades: ·        How to trip yourself up on purpose: ·        Write it down and it gets done: ·        Idea tripwires: ·        Personal planning tripwires: ·        Business planning tripwires: ·        Dropping grenades in fishponds: ·        Idea grenades: ·        Personal grenades: ·        Business grenades: ·        Don’t replace the original, replace the spare: ·        Multitasking versus Rapid Sequential Tasking: ·        Put the effort in only where it gets you somewhere: 08. Write your own Lifesmile Statement: ·        What am I like?: ·        Decide your own style: ·        So what do I really want?: ·        I pledge…: ·        My Lifesmile Statement: ·        Try being angular: ·        A board meeting with yourself: ·        Nailing a jelly to the wall: Phase IV: What next?: 09. Don’t confuse movement with progress: ·        Action not activity: ·        Outcome not output: ·        Spotting obfuscation: ·        Business does not have to mean being busy: ·        There’s a tidal wave coming. Here’s a paper cup.: ·        Everything busier than everything else: 10. Corporations don’t have memories: ·        History does not repeat itself: ·        Corporations: just clusters of individuals: ·        Overcoming corporate amnesia: ·        Overcoming corporate apathy: ·        Overcoming corporate aggression: 11. Everything may or may not be related to everything else: ·        “Butterfly destroys city”: chaos theory revisited: ·        Action and chain reaction: ·        Everything changes: ·        It’s all in your mind: ·        Yes, but have you actually done it?: ·        Closing remarks