If you have a group of people working with you – in your office or from home, employed or outsourced – does that mean you have a team? Well that depends how you work together.
Small Businesses need to be build a team, a Small Business Team. A team is defined as a group of people who co-operate in such a manner that it achieves more than the sum total of the individuals achieve each, they are united around a common goal and are accountable to the team for their actions.
Examples of teams are:
- Work Teams
- Sales Teams
- Customer Service Teams
- Virtual Teams
I would suggest that small business owners need to form teams around their small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal businesses, too. This will achieve scalability, higher efficiency, more professionalism, in other words to grow your business with less growing pains, like struggling cash-flow, excessive financial and administrative overheads and much more.
In fact keeping business failure at bay, may very well depend on your ability to form these teams, in your office or virtually.
In a modern business context we also call these teams Small Business Communities or Small Business Networks. Even a small business may have different types of networks – as indicated above – you can have your office team, while your small office team member for sales may also belong to a external sales network (team).
As you can see we live not only technologically in a networked world – we live in a world of teams, communities and people networks. The benefits especially for small business and even more business start-up, can not be over emphasized – teams perform functions so important for small business success:
- achieve better work results than individuals,
- are ultimately more scalable and flexible than larger organisations,
- offer a wider range of services and products than individuals,
- offer the opportunity of “brain-storming”,
- motivate each other,
- develop more skills and confidence
- show more commitment to each other.
Whatever you do, employ new staff, hire a consultant, work with an accountant, think my-team, think my-community and think my-network – because you are building your Small Business Team. Do it even before you open your door for business, during the business start-up phase.
So, back to my question for you: Do you work with a Group of people or do you have your own Small Business Team?
