Syntony Business Advisors, LLC

I ended the last post with the question of how the owner’s unique profile relate to the state of his or her business.

 

Well a business can also be broken up into 8-11 areas.  The founder of CMT, Carl Gould discovered an interesting association. He labeled Sales and Marketing into “I”ncome, Operations and HR into “S”ystems, Legal, Finance and Technology under “C”ontrols, and Planning and TLE Management into “D”irection.  Empirical data shows that individuals with a strong D in their personal preference which stands for Dominance also are stronger in their personal focus on Career and Time Management, etc. and do well with planning and TLE management.

 

One of CMT’s many tools is DISCoverY Diagnostics which measures a company’s performance in those 11 areas.  The Result is the business wheel which is shown here.  There are some significant observations about this wheel:

 

First, if we develop the owner’s personal profile using CMT’s DISCovery Behaviors, you will observe a visual correlation between the two wheels. After the earlier discussion this may now sound self evident. 

 

The other thing that is clearly evident is that if the following was the wheel of your car you would have a pretty bumpy ride and the same applies to your business.  In fact a healthy business needs to be measured at 5 in all the areas on this graph; that is equivalent of a fully inflated tire.  Any area which is rated below 4 requires attention and any area below 3 is in crisis. 

 

The gap between 5 and the actual rating in any area is the result of the owner’s response to a series of highly objective questions.  Two different companies could have the exact rating in a particular area and yet the issues that caused the gap could be different for each.

 

But one thing is certain; making the business thrive requires filling that gap, and in the same way that the cause of gap for two different companies could be different, the order and priority of measures to be taken could be different.

 

So in summary to maximize a company’s capabilities and chances to thrive in hard times first we need to develop a profile of how that business rates in various areas of business and then come up with specific strategies to fill their gap.

 

There is however an additional point to which we alluded earlier.  As we said earlier the current profile of the company correlates to the profile of the owner. So just setting plans and strategies may not guarantee change.  If it was that simple entrepreneurs being the smart people that they are they would have made those changes already. 

 

To better understand the issue here I must introduce you to another finding by Carl Gould of CMT International.  That is the concept of seven stages of a business success.  Without getting in to the details of each stage, suffice to say that as a business develops it requires a different level of emphasis on D, I, S, and C functions of business.

 

So the owner/entrepreneurs face two challenges; just like any other human being they have a particular DISC profile which means they naturally tend to focus on some areas of business and there is a natural tendency to neglect other areas to which they are not naturally gravitated.  Secondly, a company’s need in terms of focus on D, I, S, C varies based on the company’s stage of development.

 

If you have followed this blog to this point and specially if you are a business owner, then I am sure you agree with me that where a business owner sits is one of toughest and loneliest spots in business, and so many things are stacked against him.  And I have not even mentioned the “common xx reasons for a business failure”.  And that is why the role that the Institute for Independent Business and it’s Business Support Program plays in filling these gaps are so essential to business success.