Look toward the future. It’s any
businessman looking at, is he
making something the market
wants and will pay a fair price
for? If not, then he’s going out
of business.
You have to refound your business continually. You’re never
finished. Whatever you’ve
accomplished is history. It’s not
the future.
Some successful businesses
take for granted that they’ve succeeded, and that’s when they
start to fail. My father had a
small textile manufacturing company in the South. He did well
through the late ’40s and ’50s and
early ’60s, and then a lot of foreign imports came into the market, and frankly, foreign competition could make the same quality
product he was making at substantially less than his costs were.
He refused to focus on that, and
so 10 years later, he went out of
business. His past success caused
him to misjudge the future.
Have metrics. You have to keep
score. You have to match at
least the revenue with the
expenses of that day. If you
don’t, you will fall behind.
Measure what your performance is against your expenses.
Otherwise, you don’t know
whether your efforts are being
effective. You have to turn your
efforts into dollars.
There are four or five key indicators that, if they’re on track,
then we’re doing things right. If
they’re off, we’re not. If I had 170
lawyers and I knew what the
budget was for all 170 and I get
a report that shows me that 150
of them are working at budget
or better, I know that 20 are not.
If you can identify the right
metrics, you can manage the
exceptions.
Know your weaknesses. I am the
worst hiring person in the
world. About 20 years ago, I
hired some people that, about
six months later, we realized
were just colossal mistakes. I
went back and thought about it
and went, ‘I’m the problem. I
just don’t see people.’
A lot of businessmen do this.
When they have a need, they
want to get it solved, so you
make that person who comes
through the door into what you
want them to be; you hear
what you want to hear when
you interview.
After you’ve made all the bad
hires that I did, you have to figure, I’m part of the problem and
not part of the solution. Avoid
making the same mistake over
and over again. We all have
strengths and weaknesses.
HOW TO REACH: Morris, Manning & Martin LLP, (404) 233-7000 or www.mmmlaw.com
