Dear Reader,

The Game of Business

Useful lessons can be learned by looking at business, managing resources to deliver some product/service to a customer in exchange for compensation, in the same light as playing a game!

Football is a game won or lost in the hearts and minds of the players, and on the “line of scrimmage”.  The basics of blocking and tackling determine who wins the line of scrimmage.

The game of business is won in a similar fashion:

1. Leadership that instills a sense of purpose and direction, that motivates people to “stretch”, and “peer pressure” to install a common “culture – the heart represent a firms collective commitment and willingness to win.
2. The head represents a firm’s ability to plan effectively and organize the business activities to deliver the value proposition to customers at a low enough cost to make a “winning profit”.
3. Business basics - “line of Scrimmage”:
   1. Customer Satisfaction
   2. Cash flow management
   3. Incentives for motivating behaviors in employees, suppliers, channel partners and customers
4. Intelligently manage costs

If you apply this analogy to your firm what lessons would you learn?

• Is your teams “heart” ready, able and willing to win?
  
•       Is your team prepared to win?

-       Business planning process in place and managed on a regular basis

-      Communication lines open – involvement of cross-functional teams in planning process

-       Value proposition in place for customers that differentiates you from your competition

-       Theory of constraints understood by management to leverage “bottlenecks” and scarce resources

•       Are you “blocking & tackling” effectively?
  

-       Do you regularly perform customer satisfaction surveys

-     Is cash flow managed to minimize bad debt, collection problems and vendor/partner dissatisfaction while funding necessary capital improvements and continuous improvement initiatives

-      Are your people (and suppliers) incented to perform to required levels

-       Are customers (and channel partners) incented to do business with you versus your competition

-       Have your critical business processes been optimized to minimize costs while speeding up throughput (delivery/processing time)

Ask yourself – honestly – these questions:

1. Do you know what to do to improve your business?
2. Do you know how to do what you plan?
3. Are you going it (successfully working plan)?
4. Can you renew/support/enhance it (the plan, project or process established to do it)?

Can you answer Yes to them all?  Would all of the people on your management team answer the same way?  Alignment of coaches and ownership is a critical requirement in winning professional football organizations.  This is especially true in Mid-Market & Entrepreneurial run organizations.

Rainmakers exists to help Mid-Market businesses, including Greater Chicago area manufacturing and distribution companies, as well as high growth businesses prosper through the intelligent use of Best Practices, Technology and Human Resources.

If your firm can’t answer Yes to these questions we can help. A simple phone call with me will help us determine if Rainmakers and our Consortium of Strategic Partners can deliver any value to you.

Call me at 847/251-3327 or click here : mailto:jon@rainmkrs.com to initiate a discussion.

Please let me know your preference for how you like to be communicated with.  Simply answer the survey questions to the right and click submit.  Thanks for your time.

Jon C. Liberman
Chief Rainmaker
Rainmakers
847/251-3327
jon@rainmkrs.com
www.rainmkrs.com