Edward A. Sundberg wrote the book “When Did I Lose My Company?”, published through Whitehill Publishing, in 2006.
There are thousands of books describing business structure and a hundred new ones are written each year. What could another book possibly say that already hasn’t been said many times before? Business journal articles repeatedly try to be constructive in their articles. Researchers accumulate, tabulate and summarize what has happened successfully or poorly to companies in the past. Yet businesses continue to fail! This book tells a fictional story to show a real proven process for recognizing and avoiding failure. Why write the book and give away the secrets?
No entrepreneur intentionally works hard to lose the business he started or inherited. No corporate executive intentionally builds a marketing plan to end in failure. Employees don’t typically come to work each day with the intent not to do a good job. So with so much positive energy so to speak, where are the flaws in the business that still can cause it to fail? When do they fail?
People normally have little formal schooling or training in entrepreneurship before they get started. There are few business schools that train let alone teach entrepreneurship. Some have courses in small business dynamics. Most business schools, however, teach to a larger corporate audience. When you think about the commercial nature of business schools, this makes sense since corporations are the largest employer group of their students and the largest buyers of executive education. Entrepreneurs, however, are the largest group of business leaders. Entrepreneurs can benefit from exposure to training programs within their various trade associations and training groups sponsored to keep them abreast of new ideas and management techniques.
Fundamentally, business owners together with executives of public companies, wrestle with the same problems year after year. Too many people are convinced there is little over lap. They are wrong! All organizations suffer from the establishment of goals and objectives often made for accomplishments not directly related to the bottom line. This book helps explain why hard work is not enough!!
If the truth be known, most factors leading to failure can be predicted and eliminated. But what does failure really mean if not related to the bottom line. Performance is very relative to the operational design of the enterprise, hence the importance of being able to simplistically explain the key operational features of a business so you can see what is and is not working as part of the daily management practice.
Many variables can influence business performance. The average business person has convinced him/herself he/she is able to juggle the job responsibilities on a daily basis. When span of control in managing the core business functions is stretched too thin, the effectiveness of any single manager diminishes. Organizational tensions increase and performance falls. This often takes place slowly and without fanfare. To the corporate executive there are a growing number of added distractions to include the need to survive the corporate “politics” that can get in the way of good business practices. With larger organizations, there are too many unanticipated and unforeseen factors that can take a great plan and render it useless anytime during implementation. Make no mistake, the fundamentals that drive the larger companies are the same that drive the smaller ones; hence, the universal applicability of this story to any size business.
There is no way to stop the external market driven risks in business. We can only remain vigilant to recognize them and mitigate any fallout from them. We can always have more control over the internal organization. The structural and other people generated risks that contribute greatly to performance are also the largest contributors to failure. How do we manage this?
The inspiration for this book stems from years of watching entrepreneurs and executives needlessly suffer through losing their businesses. Diligence to structural and functional integrity is how failure is predicted and avoided. Every business needs a current system of controls and processes. This book tells a story about an everyday business that forgot this rule. Through this simple but sad story a universally applicable picture for how businesses could fail or are about to fail, emerges.
The book is available directly from this web site or on: www.amazon.com.
To order the book at $29.95, please contact us today. Shipping is at no charge.
