Business Coaches, Ideal Business Historians For Main Street Companies
http://www.careerfeed.net/articles/6258/1/Business-Coaches-Ideal-Business-Historians-For-Main-Street-Companies/Page1.html
Wayne Messick
Wayne Messick is sharing the secrets of his success, well over two decades helping business owners position themselves for the future. Here are his legacy of transferable ideas and strategies. By Wayne Messick
Published on 01/14/2009
That's right, business coaches are uniquely positioned and trained in the use of deep questioning techniques, making them ideally suited as historians who can help business owners and their advisors understand where the business came from - the first step in determining the right and best way forward into the rest of the 21st.Century.
That's right, business coaches are uniquely positioned and trained in the use of deep questioning techniques, making them ideally suited as historians who can help business owners and their advisors understand where the business came from - the first step in determining the right and best way forward into the rest of the 21st.Century.
Your businesses history is important to your advisors because it puts the current company and its structure into context. Most businesses are organized still the way they were originally organized, by default really - based on the level of advice the founders could afford at the time.
Possibly the current organization is the result of osmosis - evolving over time for one reason or another from what it was initially to what it is now. Your advisors want to know why the decisions were made and whether or not the assumptions that caused them are still valid. A company history puts a frame around this picture.
The business coach, as the planning coordinator for the company, can ask the questions of everyone from the retired founders to the most recent employee - then put it all together in such a way that everyone benefits from understanding more clearly and objectively where it all began, especially the folks you are paying for advice about your future direction.
Your company's history is important to your managers, supervisors, successors, and your heirs too. The process of learning and understanding where everything came from puts them in the picture differently than when all they know is what they've picked up piecemeal over the years.
Information such as how did the company get started? Who were the founders and how and why did it grow to become as successful as it is today. The past is always a prologue to the present and certainly the future of the company. Your company's history has more to do with its present than you might suppose. This story, in your own words, is important you the advisors and for your next generation to understand.
Naturally creating the history of the company may require an investment of time that your business coach can not bill for directly. Nevertheless if they are willing to make the investment and you are willing to wholeheartedly participate with them, the results will add value to their involvement with you and you will have an advocate unlike any other.
The company's history can be as in depth as you want it. The Internet offers a wide assortment of tools for adding audio remembrances, videos, and historical resources to the story. If your company has been around for twenty or more years an online history with photos of the founders, the first buildings, etc. can provide the next generation a very real sense of what it took to get the business from where it began to where it will be when they take it over in the future.
Business coaches will also want to include the history of your company's ownership structure as it has changed over the years or decades. This will offer to your stockholders and advisors a glimpse of what the founders felt was an acceptable process for the businesses transition. It may help you and them understand why you react to various suggestions the way you do.
It will be very helpful for everyone if the company's history can be traced - laid out on paper or on a private web site, from the time just before the senior generation of owners took over or started the company until right now. This will illustrate how the present ownership structure evolved.
By the time a company is 20 years old a lot of the conflict that usually exists in successful companies is because the past ownership transfers created some groups of people with more money and control than others. Often this was because one side of the family had more offspring than the other thus dividing their interests into smaller percentages. in the current or next generation it may be those from the "have not" group with the most to offer the company.
Addressing how nice people like you got into the situation you're in, sooner rather than later will make the next writing of the company's history a picture of an even more successful company with ownership transition in place more equitably than in the past.
Business coaches with a tape recorder, a camera, a willingness to ask questions and dig through archives and old ledgers can, with the help of the Internet create your company's history.
That history will be a great aide to everyone involved in planning for the company's future. Everyone will have a more real sense of what's important about your company.
Your businesses history is important to your advisors because it puts the current company and its structure into context. Most businesses are organized still the way they were originally organized, by default really - based on the level of advice the founders could afford at the time.
Possibly the current organization is the result of osmosis - evolving over time for one reason or another from what it was initially to what it is now. Your advisors want to know why the decisions were made and whether or not the assumptions that caused them are still valid. A company history puts a frame around this picture.
The business coach, as the planning coordinator for the company, can ask the questions of everyone from the retired founders to the most recent employee - then put it all together in such a way that everyone benefits from understanding more clearly and objectively where it all began, especially the folks you are paying for advice about your future direction.
Your company's history is important to your managers, supervisors, successors, and your heirs too. The process of learning and understanding where everything came from puts them in the picture differently than when all they know is what they've picked up piecemeal over the years.
Information such as how did the company get started? Who were the founders and how and why did it grow to become as successful as it is today. The past is always a prologue to the present and certainly the future of the company. Your company's history has more to do with its present than you might suppose. This story, in your own words, is important you the advisors and for your next generation to understand.
Naturally creating the history of the company may require an investment of time that your business coach can not bill for directly. Nevertheless if they are willing to make the investment and you are willing to wholeheartedly participate with them, the results will add value to their involvement with you and you will have an advocate unlike any other.
The company's history can be as in depth as you want it. The Internet offers a wide assortment of tools for adding audio remembrances, videos, and historical resources to the story. If your company has been around for twenty or more years an online history with photos of the founders, the first buildings, etc. can provide the next generation a very real sense of what it took to get the business from where it began to where it will be when they take it over in the future.
Business coaches will also want to include the history of your company's ownership structure as it has changed over the years or decades. This will offer to your stockholders and advisors a glimpse of what the founders felt was an acceptable process for the businesses transition. It may help you and them understand why you react to various suggestions the way you do.
It will be very helpful for everyone if the company's history can be traced - laid out on paper or on a private web site, from the time just before the senior generation of owners took over or started the company until right now. This will illustrate how the present ownership structure evolved.
By the time a company is 20 years old a lot of the conflict that usually exists in successful companies is because the past ownership transfers created some groups of people with more money and control than others. Often this was because one side of the family had more offspring than the other thus dividing their interests into smaller percentages. in the current or next generation it may be those from the "have not" group with the most to offer the company.
Addressing how nice people like you got into the situation you're in, sooner rather than later will make the next writing of the company's history a picture of an even more successful company with ownership transition in place more equitably than in the past.
Business coaches with a tape recorder, a camera, a willingness to ask questions and dig through archives and old ledgers can, with the help of the Internet create your company's history.
That history will be a great aide to everyone involved in planning for the company's future. Everyone will have a more real sense of what's important about your company.