The matter of running a business could be considered in many different ways. To begin, you could consider this in two categories. Either running a business is an art, or a science. Whichever option you take will largely determine what business leader you become. The truth between these two categories is somewhere in the middle, of course. From there, you can diversify it in many ways. Is your business a hard and faceless organization, something that should run like clockwork, reliable, well presented, maintained with clinical precision? Or, is it a human affair, loose and humorous, something that tries to win hearts and minds through great branding and user experience?
Neither of these methods are wrong or necessarily correct. This is because your style of ‘governance’ can be dictated by many different things. It will depend on the style of industry you are in, the zeitgeist around the products you make, the millions of small decisions regarding your capacity and how you can realistically proceed, and the general daily wisdom you must employ to keep your business’s proverbial head above water.
However, one of the things that is universally true, no matter how well developed your business plan, is that life is more fun when your business is hospitable. Why are you amassing all of this effort to run a business in the first place? To make an impressive amount of regular profit? To make a positive stamp on the world? To revolutionize your industry? Well, these reasons are not necessarily at odds with one another. Being hospitable in many functional ways can make these reasons become a reality, and help your general peace of mind and enjoyment in the process.
How? Well read on, and you’ll understand:
Functionality
Now everyone wants their website design to truly portray the best of what they and their business has to offer. It’s important for this to work in your favor. Website design is obviously a priority here. This means designing your website in a manner that is aesthetically pleasing, relatively minimal yet conveys the information you’d like a client to receive. So far, so good. It doesn’t take us to tell you that, as you are likely well versed in the need for a pleasant website. You have likely be using and admiring them for years.
However, what’s not always completely a given is the navigability of a website. You might find that the most minimal and aesthetically refined pages are hard to navigate and find the resources you are truly looking for. If there is an extensive product line featured on the store, this can become even more of a nightmare. If you have the ability to, it could be more than worth it to develop your website using UX design services, a manner that allows the end user to move through your website like a hot knife through butter.
This will help embed searching indexes and a catalog, product comparisons, an ability to link every page to every other page to minimize delay and frustration on the end user, and to install widgets and features that keep the user’s computer resources in mind. This provides a friendly user experience, some might use the term ‘hospitable.’ This not only helps your website stand out, but genuinely reflects on your firm in a positive light. It shows that you care about the details, and you care about the entire experience of the user, no matter how, when or where they choose to interact with your firm. This is powerful, and fun to know that your website rivals many other professional industries on the web.
Giving Over The Odds
Now, a business relationship with a client is of course something that relies on fair exchange. You set a reasonable price for an adequate service or product, and fulfill the terms of your contract. When this happens, both parties are satisfied. You likely know this if you even understand the basic concept of a business. We’re sure you do. However, is a satisfied client or customer good enough?
We’d argue it’s not. Ideally, you want your customer base to keep a glowing review of you at all times. If your customer would rate you anything lower than five stars out of five, something is wrong. You need to look at your weak points. Now, what seperates a middling firm from one that gains repeat customers, even if they both share the same pricing tiers? Well, it’s that willingness to get to go overboard in your treatment of the client.
For example, let’s say you sell speakers. You could just sell the units and have salesmen over describe the benefit of having one of these connected to a home cinema or computer. However, could you additionally provide a better service for the same price, or for a heavily discounted rate upon purchase? This might include a longer warranty than most, a repair service, a helpdesk which offers free and impartial advice regarding customized setups or installation guides.
It could even be something simple, such as playing soothing music in your stores, or allowing for a celebration of the customers that use your services the most frequently. The little things add up in the mind of people who utilize your firm, and retaining this business is surely a wonderful thing for your bottom line. It will keep your staff motivated and happy when dealing with so many positive interactions. Positivity is fun, and feeling as though you made the day of someone who entered your fray is more than worthwhile. If you can justify this within the spending of your business, the entire affair will be much more tolerable, especially considering the breadth of heady administrative duties you must take care of each and every day.
Running a business is difficult. It takes time, effort and patience. It requires a steadfast discipline and the willingness to make mistakes and fail. It can be worrying, filled with strange events and disappointments. The more fun you can inject in everything you allow your business to stand for, the more your firm will be imbued with this attitude, and the more it will reflect in your daily perceptions. This will justify the monumental effort of running a business, and make you look back in pride that you had the strength to carry it in this direction.
Good luck!
Absolutely agree. And in this regard I would like to add my own consideration, which has already been done in other discussions.
Irony (Humor) and seriousness can live together in a manager.
In the workplace the seriousness has always had a positive connotation. When an organization wants to give itself a positive image is defined as “serious”. One is valued and tends to evaluate on the basis of concepts that have to do with the reliability, efficiency, meaning the seriousness as rigidity. Managers are, on average, people rather measured, whose look [by the clothing or the posturing] is often the result of choices dictated by the business context and the social environment. They chose the “mask” of serious-angry because they believe that this is the only way to be a leader, to pursue a career, collect the consent. Yet the irony is an integral part of our lives, allows us to defuse the difficult moments, to make the day easier and above all to download the stress accumulated. Even in the workplace the irony is an extremely important component: during a busy day, hard and tiring, a joke or a laugh helps us to better deal with our tasks. If we learn to take slightly less seriously, probably we would live better and would be better in our work. Frown attitude, that distinguish effective leaders, reliable workers and professional consultants, are part of a bureaucratic vision of the work. There is nothing better than to get into an office, regarded as a “place for things serious” knowing in advance that you will have at least the opportunity to smile. In the real world irony serves to establish the climate of complicity, of correspondence of intent and visions to work better. This is not to say missing respect, do not recognize multiple hierarchies and dependencies. More simply, we start from the premise that people are basically professional and serious, but precisely for this reason, able to defuse with a sense of humor. The humor is the other face of the seriousness, the world of work requires you to mix them into a masterful cocktails, alternating depending on circumstances. Irony and seriousness is only a complementary way of dealing with life and work.