Businesses spring up everyday and the drive to empower small businesses has become a global means to building dwindling economies. Small businesses have become the sure route towards sustainable and thriving economies. Every enterprise has a visioneer/founder, Directors/decision makers, team, clientele, vendors and etc. These groups of people are stakeholders involved Business in the success of any enterprise; they have defined contribution, stake and reward geared towards the success of the enterprise. When organization succeeds, these stakeholders benefit and when it fails, crumbles or go bankrupt, they are affected also.
Personally, it grieves my heart that indigenous organizations that are a century in age are scarce in this clime. It is worrisome as there's no certainty that the existing organizations will survive the next century if drastic measures are not taken. In this clime, the rate at which businesses spring up is as remarkable as the rate at which businesses fail, fizzle out or go bankrupt. Looking back, I can't count many companies that I knew as a child that are no more, these were businesses with high potentials and business performance but today, they are no more!
Below are critical points to be assessed and reviewed either before a venture starts, as it is starting or thereafter :-
▪ How long can this business last and How long do I want it to last?
▪ What's the vision of nearest future and the desirable future with feasible timelines
▪ How soon can this business be weaned off me as a business owner?
▪ What does succession mean to my venture and how soon can succession plan be put in place?
▪ Is there room for diversification in the future?
▪ What I'm I putting in place for sustainability?
Why do businesses fail? Every aspiring entrepreneur/business owners/visioneers must be a researcher in this field, to identify the points of failure of the previous generation and determine how to avoid them. Businesses fail for many reasons which includes personal interest, personal weaknesses, leadership failure, mismanagement, lack of structure, lack of innovation, lack of infrastructure, lack of financial aid, policy change and etc. It's therefore important to define sustainable path to follow what will suit our economic and peculiar conditions.
Answering these questions will help to determine how the business will be run, how flexible to be, how to manage scale of operations to ensure sustainability, how to identify opportunities for growth and expansion, alternatives when the unforeseeable happens.
The clarion call is for our generation of business owners to become dogged, learn from the mistakes of last century and build our enterprises as legacies that will live long after we are gone.
Olubamike Oluyemisi Fadipe is a writer with a passion to inspire, impact and motivate.
Email: bankysanya@gmail.com Twitter: @Bankysanya
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