Business

The understanding of concepts is a skill. It allows us to intellectualize what a business does and quantify all its actions. What we can measure we can improve. But more than that, what we can measure we can organize and it is the organization of measurable quantities and qualities that allows us to perform at our best.

Better still measurable qualities and quantities can become a formula of excellence we can apply. These are seductive concepts: excellence, formula. They whisper to us of ‘hidden’ secrets we can uncover that will make working life easier and more profitable. “Easier” and “more profitable” are the El Dorado of the business world.

So let’s apply conceptualization to how businesses are supposed to work. To get anything done a business needs edge. Edge is agility, versatility, innovation, action. The more edge a business has the more it gets done. The more it gets done, conventional wisdom suggests, the more opportunities it creates for itself.

In a boxing ring analogy a business with edge is all aggression. It sets the pace. It takes risks. It creates openings. It generates the conditions it needs to succeed. The Apple of 2007 was mostly edge.

To create sustainability that ensures its long-term survival however a business also needs structure. Structure is organization, hierarchy, command-and-control systems, oversight, accountability, planning. A business that has structure has margin. It can weather crises a lot better. It is better positioned to survive downturns. It is better provisioned to take advantage of opportunities.

In our boxing ring analogy a business with structure has great defense. It ducks and dives, sidesteps and moves back. It gets itself out of the danger zone while it looks for opportunities. The Amazon of today has structure.

In the business world edge is action but structure is processes. Action is tactics and processes are strategy. Hopefully you realize that a business is dynamic. Properly set up, positioned and provisioned it becomes a constant ebb and flow between edge and structure. Tactics and strategies. And when it does so it kinda flows. It surges where opportunities abound, taking advantage of the conditions it finds to maximize profit and it ebbs from difficulties that will inconvenience it, threaten its profit margins or increase its exposure to risk.

See how easy the formula for success becomes when we conceptualize things this way?

You and I know that no business operates in this ideal way. Start-ups are all edge (which is why we often call them disruptors) and established businesses strive for structure (which is why we often call them legacy business). Edge demands initiative, so empowerment is encouraged. Structure is all about command-and-control, so we fetishize status and responsibility.

Edge thrives on change and disruption (which often seems like instability) and structure flowers in routine and reliability (which kinda makes things appear pretty stable). A new business craves the former and every established player strives for the latter.

If you’re in-between, not quite a big, established player yet but no longer a start-up, you’re hopefully learning to balance both. And it is that balance that actually every business should have.

See how easy it was to get to what’s needed in order to have an amazingly successful business? Now comes the hard part: identify where your business is at, establish what’s holding it from achieving that balance and list what’s missing from the equation so your business can also be wildly successful.