Entrepreneurial firms think and behave much like children: willing to try anything, and an 
insatiable curiosity. Sure, they get into a few scrapes; but mostly they grow. Since those 
little guys often don't know any better, they'll try anything once. And some of them even 
strike it rich!

Pablo Picasso once said, "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist 
once he grows up."

Big or stable businesses tend to mirror adult thinking and behavior. They operate with 
sensibility and predictability. Growth and change require voluntary effort to vary their routines. 
So it's business as usual for corporate giants and older businesses, many of whose market 
share is gradually receding.

For a business to remain innovative, they must focus on constant improvement, and put 
voluntary effort to the envisioned tasks. Unfortunately, most people do the daily tasks they 
have always done, react to crises, and make little progress at best. Tragically, they think 
that their business, clients and circumstances are static, so the same old plans should 
be fine.

The majority of businesspeople slave themselves to Yesterday and Hope about Tomorrow. 
Successful entrepreneurs are always searching for change, checking its viability against their 
Vision and strengths, measuring the risk, and exploiting it as an opportunity.

Management expert Peter Drucker urges you to critically and rigorously review every aspect 
of your business every three years or so. Put every product, process, technology, market, 
distribution channel, and staff activity on trial for life. Ask yourself: given the marketplace, 
my clientele, resources, and vision would I create this TODAY? If not, then stop wasting your 
resources and get a move on!

Is this process difficult? You bet! Like anything else, it gets a little easier with practice. The 
right question is "Is it worth it?" Absolutely! What's worse, if you don't begin to manage your 
business this way, you may live to regret it. You are the only one who can take on leadership 
for your company. You must try new approaches to help you and your company to shift to 
greater success and competitiveness in the current global economy.

Surround Yourself With Creative Thinkers In Other Fields

Hanging out with the same old crowd promotes "inbreeding." In higher species, inbreeding 
causes genetic deterioration, leading to death. Manufacturers need to play golf with restaurant 
owners, and interior designers should invite engineers to lunch. Gather all the advice you can, 
then carefully choose which to use.

Benjamin Franklin may have discovered electricity, and Edison invented the light bulb, but the 
fellow that made the big money invented the meter and delivered the juice. Use others to help 
you brainstorm and you'll be amazed at how your creative thinking will improve.

A hospital administrator once was playing tennis with his friend in the hotel business. He was 
frustrated that the hospital wasn't attracting affluent cosmetic surgery patients. As a result of 
the hotel owner's suggestions, the hospital soon dominated the plastic surgery market.

Limousine service was provided to and from the hospital. The hospital installed a canopy over 
the entrance, and hired a doorman. A bellman then took patients' bags to their rooms, where 
baskets of fruit, room service, and first-run movies awaited.

Just as in luxury hotels, people like being pampered guests.

Study Beyond Your Trade

Make time to study all topics that affect your business. Reading strengthens the mind just as 
exercise does for the body. Like exercise, you must commit yourself and consistently make 
voluntary effort if you want the results. You're not going for a doctorate in everything: it's more 
effective to hire the expertise you need. You want to broaden your thinking and perspective, and 
understand the fundamentals of your business, like problem-solving, decision-making, negotiating, 
managing people, and the creative process.

Your job involves managing and selling to all kinds of people, to innovate and plan, to use all 
your resources and get results. Understanding people's behavior and perceptions, marketing 
and sales, philosophy, and history are all valuable for the business leader. Ben Franklin said: 
"Empty the coins in your purse into your mind and your mind will fill your purse with coins."

Manage Holistically

Peak performance depends on a healthy and fit body. Remember when you were injured or ill, 
and how it impeded other aspects of your life. View your business as a single organism. A 
problem in quality will affect sales. Poor management reduces production. Mismanagement of 
cash-flow erases the planned equipment purchases needed to expand the business. Your 
decisions and actions might seem isolated to the problem area, but they all ultimately affect 
your customer, and therefore, sales.

Long-term thinking is of critical importance to your success. The Japanese write 100 year business 
plans and update them regularly, and in three decades they moved from war-ravaged to world 
leader in business. Manage with the certainty that there will be a tomorrow. Maintain consistent 
quality and integrity. Your mistakes offer valuable lessons; embrace them. Consider customer 
complaints as opportunities.

Your resources are limited. Act decisively when amputation is clearly called for. Pour all you can 
into the areas that show clear promise, resonate with your passion and Vision, and are consistent
 with your strengths.

Regularly Rethink Distribution

If you think creatively, opportunities abound to deliver your products and/or services in new ways. 
This will have a dramatic impact on your bottom line. Here's another opportunity to benefit by 
surrounding yourself with creative outsiders: just as in farming, cross-pollination consistently 
produces the most profitable crops.

Get innovative in repackaging your offerings: combined with other goods, increase or decrease the 
quantity, use technology, an add-on or enhancement to another business' offering, quantity or 
long-term discounts. Look at how other industries generate excitement and sales for ideas. 
Redesign your image and packaging and be the first to go after a completely different marketplace.

Virtually any firm could add at least one distribution method to its current marketing strategy, and 
the possibilities are endless.

Convenience stores charge premium prices on common items, but they are open at midnight. 
Seminars allow individuals access to training where they can't afford personalized attention. 
Warehouse retailers can lower prices because of volume and less individual attention. How 
can you cut overhead or offer convenience to attract a different market?

Pay Attention To Unusual Requests

Most businesses do what's easiest and familiar. People who ask for something unique are turned 
away. I have problems getting healthy, vegetarian fare in most restaurants, because it's not a typical 
request. Don't ignore these folks, make friends with them, and pick their brains. They may help 
you anticipate trends. If you don't, someone else will. They're the harbingers change in the marketplace.

Track your customer's substitution requests. Discover what your clients want that they can't find. 
Ask about their lifestyle and tastes and figure out how you can accommodate them. Shift your 
hours, or create custom service for busy people who can't get in during regular hours. Offer quick 
solutions for free, rather than turn away business.

Focus On Your Real Assets

Tax-based and financial evaluation of a business ignore human assets like creativity, industry 
contacts, resources, and staff experience.

Accountants also don't assess the company's uniqueness and core competence. Speed, versatility, 
longevity, public visibility, proprietary knowledge, and customer loyalty. Consequently, they tend to
focus on cash flow and capital assets, which are worthless without vision and motivation.

For decades we have heard the motto "People are our greatest asset." Every day, employees are 
devalued and "starved" by business owners who are unwilling to invest in training. No school or prior 
employer ever turned out a finished product. Usually you get promising raw material. If you are smart, 
you hire someone with a great attitude and a great capacity to learn. If you don't train your people, 
your competition will. It costs time and money, but the alternative is obsolescence. Anyone who 
wants to stay in business, profitably can't afford not to invest in their best resource.

Find And Eliminate Bureaucratic Thinking

It stifles innovation, even if yours is a one-person operation. Uncover where you waste time and 
energy, like keeping unimportant mail, and generating unnecessary reports. Stay vigilant for routine: 
examine your procedures for inefficiency. You will likely find something wasteful "the way we've 
always done it."

Be careful you don't kill good ideas by taking them to a committee. Teamwork is a positive force, 
but be watchful for "bureaucratic-think." You are the leader in your company: make things happen. 
This sets the example for your employees. Then encourage them when they make things happen.

Carefully Manage Idle Entertainment Time

Television is a powerful source of information, education, and, of course, entertainment. Too easily 
it is also an easy escape from your reality. Like junk food, it fills up your mind without nurturing it.

Select your leisure activities carefully. Relaxation with the TV is OK in limited amounts, but what 
about a book, music or quality time with friends or family? Leisure activities don't have to be 
focused on business. Stimulate your imagination and nurture your soul, and you'll be ready to 
"hit it hard" again tomorrow at work.

Embrace Failure

Creativity isn't an extraordinary capability. Everyone has it. Some just exercise theirs constantly. 
Einstein's brain was analyzed after his death and was found to be just like everyone else's.

Thomas Edison failed hundreds of times before he finally hit on a successful light bulb. There's 
nothing mysterious to innovation. It's systematic, persistent work.

Peter Drucker suggests you watch for the unexpected. Unexpected external events can be full of 
opportunities or dangers for your business. Unexpected failures will give you clues to where your
thinking and assumptions were off. Consider how high tech electronics has revolutionized virtually 
every industry. Even your car and your child's toys have computer chips inside.

More Opportunities For Innovation

Rethink your procedures: how is the work done; how is your product or service delivered; Are you
trying to do everything in-house? You can uncover a wealth of effectiveness, profit, and differentiation 
from your competition by revolutionizing processes.

Compare the fast food industry to that of a generation or two ago. Quick-lube shops specialize, 
get customers in and out in ten minutes, and are booming. Computers redesign and run simulated 
tests on new products in a fraction of the time and at great savings. Cosmetologists use computers 
to try new looks for their customers. Today, your banking can be done 24 hours a day by automated 
telephone programs, at automatic tellers, and from your computer.

In the USA, demographics and trends are changing dramatically, and need to be watched. Asians and 
Hispanics are becoming a majority, income and spending habits are changing, the marketplace/
economics/opportunities shift almost monthly. Americans are having fewer children later in life. Baby 
Boomers are aging and their needs and tastes are changing, too. Levi's and sports cars have given 
way to Dockers luxury sports sedans.

Major industries are shifting processes as well. Until a couple of decades ago, the shipping industry 
kept trying to design and build faster and more fuel-efficient ships, requiring fewer crewmen. The 
industry was attempting to be more cost-efficient by concentrating on the economics of ocean transit.

Ships are capital equipment, and for such equipment idle time is the biggest cost. The shipping 
industry hit upon an elegant and simple solution: handle loading separately from transportation.

They began to load containers on land, where they had ample space, and could schedule it before 
the ship arrived in port. The containers could be quickly loaded and unloaded, almost simultaneously, 
as soon as the ship docked. Now, those containers are carried on special semi-truck trailers directly 
to the businesses that contract for shipping.

Begin Boldly, Begin Now

In politics, we vote for changes to improve our economy or some other area. Every business day, 
across the counters and phone lines in our businesses, people are voting with their dollars. Customers 
are picking winners. As a business person, you can never stop campaigning. That's called marketing.

You must be brave to live life creatively. It's not a place that most institutions and families enthusiastically 
support, and it's not a well-charted place. You will need to leave what is familiar and comfort to you and 
brave the wilderness of your intuition. You can only get there by hard work and risk, and by being willing 
to not quite know what you're doing and suffer the disapproval of others.

Not every creative idea or action can be a winner. But like a muscle, the more it gets exercised the 
stronger and more coordinated (accurate) you become. Without this strength and accuracy, your business
 will languish and die. With consistent innovation you will delight your customers and attract new ones. 
I suggest you'll also regard your life as richer and more rewarding.

(NOTE: Allies Consulting offers several programs that can meet or exceed your expectations in the 
area of increasing your effectiveness, and that of your staff: they are designed to deliver real results. 
They also leverage our other programs, magnifying your ROI!)
Source: http://www.alliesconsulting.com/allies/bios.html#rcl1