Do everything better - 18 ways to improve a small business - Industry Trend or Event

Home Office Computing, Oct, 1997 by David Wallace

While Monty Python's Flying Circus was entertaining the world, John Cleese was also creating Video Arts in 1972 to provide business training through humor. Cleese's latest CD-ROM, The Balance Sheet Barrier, helps take the fear out of business finance.

For small-business owners, time itself is as precious as shark repellent in a room full of lawyers. But, unfortunately, there are only 24 hours in a day. You could, of course, unilaterally adopt the 48-minute hour, gaining six hours a day. But declaring a 30-hour day for yourself poses problems: You'd show up for 7 a.m. flight 84 minutes early, miss the 4 p.m. team meeting with your contractors by an hour, and have difficulty finding a restaurant that delivers takeout after 13 o'clock.

Instead, set aside a specific time you'll devote to training -- whether it's on your own or taught by someone else. Of course the best way to learn is by having fun doing it. I hope when people laugh at some piece of unintelligent behavior and then embark in that same direction themselves a few days later, that a little bell will ring in the back of their minds and they'll think: "Wait a moment, wasn't I laughing at something like this recently?" And that will give them the opportunity to try something different -- to train themselves in a new approach for running their business better. Don't take my word for it: The famed mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once said, "The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order." Try lobbing that one across the conference table the next time a vice president of self-serving obstructionism in your way. You could, of course, try quoting me directly, but people do remember that silly walks thing and may not be entirely won over.

Cope With a Killer Schedule

The latest anticorporate wit of Scott Adams's comic character, Dilbert, is featured in The Dilbert Future: Thriving on Stupidity in the 21st Century (Harper Business).

Forget basking on the beach in Hawaii -- Adams says microvacations are mandatory. "I get up and shoot pool in my office, or pet my cat, or just stare off into space. An hour doesn't go by without a microvacation," he says.

When you're not on "vacation," Adams says, "choose activities that have a synergy." By that he means pair projects in your day that require you to think hard with activities that don't require any thinking. For example, Adams says working his former day job at Pacific Bell was compatible with drawing the Dilbert strip because each exercised a different part of his brain -- corporate work occupied the logical side and left plenty of energy in the creative hemisphere. Adams even takes this theory a step further. "I manage my schedule by circadian rhythms. I've come to know in what part of the day I'm at my creative peak."

Adams believes that in addition to exercising your gray matter, even with a busy schedule you should continually strive to expand your mind to benefit your business. In his experience, studying brings refreshing relief from the stress of a routine workload. "Learn something new every day," he says. "It's like the miracle of compound interest -- the same is true of learning things. I learned about ISDN and radio engineering by setting up a quality audio mixer in my office. Now I can do radio interviews without even leaving home and it will sound like I'm in the studio. I've learned something I knew nothing about and the payoff is that I can give interviews in my pajamas."

Build a Better Business Plan

Seth Godin, founder of Internet-based games company Yoyodyne, is the prolific author of more than 20 business titles, including his latest, coauthored with Jay Conrad Levinson, Get What You Deserve: How to Guerrilla Market Yourself (Avon).

* Write a description of your company -- how many employees you'll have, what markets you'll serve, for example, for one year and three years into the future. This crystalball description may not be accurate but it will give your business a sense of direction.

* Have a monthly marketing strategy and plan on investing as much as 20 percent of your revenue back into marketing. Too many people prospect for new business only when work is slow or when they're flush with some spare cash for advertising.

* Plan ahead for expansion. Often there's a tendency to hire people or contractors because they're available, not because they're the best. Identify a specific task, the experience you need, and the personality that works best with yours.

* Watch the dollars, not just the profits. Instead of fretting over profit and loss, chart out cash flow and project how much money you have today and how much you'll need next month or in six months.

Prevent a PC Crash

Bruce Brown is creator of BugNet (www.bugnet.com), an online database and newsletter that reports on glitches in computer hardware and software.

Back up your registry. Whenever you install files that write to the Windows registry, back up your system files -- all dat and ini files -- before and after the installation. Then, if you experience a meltdown you can get back to what was there before without spending 10 days on the phone with tech support.