If you own or operate a

business or professional

practice . . . . . YOU are

“The Mother of Invention”

If you work anywhere in that vast sea of government or private mega-enterprise incompetence, click off here and visit some other website that lets you be corporately lethargic and obscure. If, however, you’re running or managing your own business or some innovative part of a business –real parent or not– read on: YOU are the “Mother of Invention.”

Now Peter Drucker who’s referred to as the “Father of Management” may not like that idea, but–I would challenge him. I mean, when did “Mother” ever lose to “Father”?

Today, in other words, is also a day to celebrate YOU being your business’s parent.

First off, anyone who works for you sees you in a parental light. You are looked up to for guidance and leadership. You are a role model. You may not like providing inspiration or being thought of as something special, but you ARE.

When you can face up to it and make the most of it, you’ll be helping your staff, your self and your business to grow.

Don’t just provide leadership. Provide leadership by example; people want to learn by watching and trying and doing.

Don’t just provide leadership. Provide leadership that’s transparent. Keep all your business dealings clearly defined and out in the open. Forget that you have a “Bcc” setting on your emails. Stop closing doors. Share information freely.

If you’ve hired good people to start with, you’re only toying with risk levels that are reasonable. If you’ve got a bad apple or two, your open-and-above-boardness will flush them out.

In other words:

Give everyone a chance to give you a chance

for your business to have a chance to succeed.

Now, Mothers and Fathers, let’s look at that “Invention” word that you’re parenting. And this, by the way, includes the world of healthcare– especially hospitals! If you’re not CONSTANTLY creating and inventing and innovating . . . coming up with new ideas, ways, methods, designs, plans, steps, contacts, messages . . . EVERY DAY, then you are investing in the status quo.

Keeping things the same, not rocking the boat, and “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” are the prevalent nonproductive notions anchoring most stagnant corporate giants, every government agency, and all unsuccessful small businesses.

Business owner Job One is to stay out of that trap. Don’t let anything interfere with your daily birthing of inventive thinking. It’s how you started your business. It’s what’s carried your business. It’s what will will make the difference between your business surviving and your business thriving in the months and years ahead.

This doesn’t mean every lightbulb that goes on over your head needs to light up the world, or even that little dark corner of your workspace, but it does mean that you and your business cannot afford to pull the plug on that open socket; keep trying out new bulbs; follow up with some and discard others. [Edison made 10,000 tries before inventing the lightbulb!]

Innovation, remember, is taking the rarest of those good ideas and seeing them all the way through, every specific step of the way, to their final destination markets — even if only on paper or the computer screen. Together with your business itself, it’s those parented ideas that become the inventions that you mother and nurture into adulthood. Happy Mother’s Day!

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Hal@Businessworks.US    302.933.0116

Business fills me up

364 days a year.

But not today.

     She always urged us forward. She spoke so proudly of her two sons for running their own shows…mine and my wife Kathy’s in creative marketing services, my brother’s and his wife Ann’s in insurance.

     She’d sit quietly off to the side and visit for hours in our offices, clutching her pocketbook on her lap, watching and listening and smiling, overcome with pride in what she thought was our humble success…each of us living the kind of life she’d only ever dreamed of    

     Mom never knew the word “entrepreneur,” but she knew that what each of us did, independently, on our own, with our own offices and our own businesses was something special. And she knew it beat working for a huge company as she had, or the government as Dad had.

     Growing up, Dad made our lives possible (though barely, never earning more than $5000 a year, half of which he drank), but Mom was the one who gave our lives meaning. She taught us about helping and taking care of others.

     It was Mom who taught us about reading and writing and laughing and having fun. She also taught us about scrimping and saving and making careful choices in life, about going to church and spending time with family, about being polite and keeping clean, and about how to take out the garbage and tie our shoelaces. And about love and tolerance.

     And all these many years later, though she left us long ago, she lives on in my mind and heart (and I know my brother’s too). If ever there was a heaven, she is surely there bringing still a smile to my face just to pass her impish grinning photo hanging on my stairway wall.

     Thanks Mom for all you gave of yourself to be the best you could be. Happy Mother’s Day to EVERY Mother and to everyone who mothers or has mothered others in their lives. God Bless You All.

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Send your input anytime: Hal@TheWriterWorks.com (”Businessworks” in the subject line) or comment below. Thanks for visiting. BACK TO BUSINESS TOMORROW! halalpiar              # # # 

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