And it all started so well...

When broken down to its main processes - operations, marketing and finance,  running a business seems pretty straightforward - right?

Operations is making the product or delivering the service,  marketing is promoting and selling it and finance is sending the bills and collecting the money. No problems so far.

So why does it sometimes go wrong? Well of course it's a journey. At the start the business owner probably needs to wear all the hats and do everything. Many people are content with that and the business stays small.

If the business grows the owner needs to transition from being the 'Technician' to being a manager and then the entrepreneur, developing and growing the business. Michael Gerber describes these 3 roles - Technician, Manager and Entrepreneur in his brilliant book, 'The E Myth Revisited'. The E Myth or 'Entrepreneur Myth' is that business owners are entrepreneurs. In truth, we are mostly technicians building a business around our core skills and experience. Gerber argues that to be really successful and grow, business owners need to move on from being solely a technician and ensure they wear the manager and entrepreneur hats too.

If I reflect on the many businesses I have worked with and am still working with, surprisingly few are what I would call real 'entrepreneurial' businesses. By this I mean the owners are focussed, to the point of obsession, on building something big and valuable and they relentlessly pursue this goal. I have worked with a few - some of whom have had successful exits with a pot of money and some where it all went wrong and the businesses failed.

So to go back to the original point. If business is simple - operations, marketing and finance, why did these smart and driven people end up failing?  In almost every instance I can think of, failure came down to a lack of balance. One or more of these key processes was not done well enough. I've seen brilliant marketeers and sales people who sell stuff but don't deliver it, businesses that expand without having finance in place, people who make great stuff but can't sell it and so on.

Those that don't give sufficient attention to any one of operations, finance or marketing are unlikely to stay the course.

www.base52.co.uk