(ThySistas.com) We all know what ‘those’ business mistakes are. You might not understand what we’re referring to right now, but we’re going to hold you in mystery a little longer. First, we wish for you to feel said feeling, for illustrative effect. Let’s take a similar, hypothetical scenario. You’re at a wedding, perhaps for a friend. You’re the ringbearer. The vows are read, and the rings are called. However, you realize you don’t have the rings to hand. This was crucial. You start to remember that you failed to hunt them down beforehand. Perhaps you didn’t ensure a process of reliability was followed. Now it’s just finding who is truly accountable that holds your priority, but the mistake has been made.
A business can suffer from these problems too. These are mistakes that hit you like a tonne of bricks when you realize they have been ignored, or allowed to grow. Worse yet is when you haven’t been able to find out where the mistake came from, meaning you might even be liable to repeat it again. These mistakes are called ‘those’ mistakes because they are so embarrassing, you wish they weren’t present.
Let us consider what they might look like in a business, and how to counteract them.
Stay In The Loop
As a boss, there are many responsibilities on your shoulders. We can often focus on the overarching goals and ‘leadership’ needs day in and day out because of this. But sometimes, this effort to understand the future can prevent you from absorbing the present as you should. For example, it might be that you need to present your daily morning briefing. You feel as though you have some important knowledge to disseminate. You head to the meeting hall, and start to delve into a report or begin discussing something of relevance that happened in the past week. However, your managers have already briefed their team on this, and you’re treading over worn ground. Perhaps your team have already advanced past this during the previous night. Not only will you repetition waste the team’s time, but it also limits their creativity, and can even lead them to question your leadership.
Staying in the loop is essential. You expect it from those under you, so expect it from yourself. Keeping up with memos, crafting a digital reporting system or IM channel for you to speak seamlessly with your managers, and taking an interest in the responsibility you have deferred can help you ensure you’re continually up to speed no matter what. While a mistake such as the one just outlined can be a harmless one, and might happen from time to time, following these efforts should reduce their frequency.
Accountancy
Keeping the books clean and routinely accountable (no pun intended) is a crucial and essential element of running any business. The revenue and outflow of capital you will handle on a daily basis can be extreme, as well as the accounts you run it from. Keeping payroll, contributing to insurances, paying bills, and keeping up to your tax standards is important. Even one mistake in your books can grow and become a problem you’ll have to deal with over some time.
Not only this, but regularly being confused in your financial handling can leave you mismanaging your budget, overstretching yourself, or not realizing your fundamental capabilities. After all, your cash flow is quite literally the lifeblood of your firm, particularly if you’ve started your business with a loan or hefty investment. To this extent, finding an excellent accountant should be your first choice. But unless you hire one to work at your firm full-time, which is unlikely, you’ll have trouble keeping up with everything. This is where crucial accounting software can help you simplify your finances. From entering hard numbers you’ll be able to see predictive patterns, guide your spending appropriately, and also generate reports that can help you keep on top of your financial matters. After all, it’s one thing to be caught unaware in a meeting, but with your finances? That’s a whole different story.
Marketing Errors
There have been no small amount of businesses that have seemingly failed to grasp what is OK and what isn’t when starting their campaigns. Of course, you can see how mistakes are made. Perhaps a marketing department is too keen to prove their worth. Perhaps the business wants to push the limits and get noticed as a result. Perhaps a simply miscommunication or misreading of the zeitgeist can lead to a problematic advertising approach.
It’s not just small businesses who get this wrong. Since Wendy’s started their new ‘aggressive’ Twitter approach, how many firms have tried to replicate it and have failed? Even huge beverage titans such as Pepsi implied that a civic protest could be calmed with a can of their memorable drink, and not only that, but somehow the use of Kendall Jenner irked people more. Consider the controversy at the start of this year with Gillette. No matter where you stand on social issues (or perhaps not at all,) but there’s no telling their advert ruffled a few feathers, to the point where they since rectified that once again painting their target audience in a positive light.
Marketing is tricky. There’s a reason it’s a billion dollar industry, and why many dedicate their whole lives to understanding how to influence and to secure people’s intentions. There’s a reason why platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and Twitter now feature ‘influencers,’ those gurus who seem more than happy to promote brand deals and review products to keep the lights on. Delivery, tone, subject, reach, all of this matters when marketing your best business self to the world. To that degree, it’s important you take this seriously, and give yourself enough time to better your approach. Study the failings and successes of those parallel to you in the industry, and then research some more. If you keep a good pace, you might be able to avoid the worst.
With these tips, you’ll be certain to avoid ‘those’ business mistakes.
Staff Writer; Paula Hall