Today, we’re going to talk about managing your organization in the middle. Let me explain what I mean by that. Many business owners, CEOs, entrepreneurs manage their business from the top-down. The top-down is something that’s very necessary. It’s about creating the culture, the structure, the systems of the organization, your hiring process, your on boarding process, your review process with your employees, so you retain them. It’s about implementing all the right things you need to do to create a systematized structured business. It’s about sitting down and interviewing people, having the right conversations, working on yourself in becoming a great leader. Everything it takes to be an entrepreneur, a business owner, a business leader, to create a business that works for you. That’s the top-down.
The bottom-up is knowing your numbers inside and out. So, you can sit down and look at your Quick Books or sit down with your accountant or your bookkeeper, of which they’re delivering the numbers you need, that you can identify to make decisions. To look at all the different line items month in and month out, to see if there are any variances that are out of order and inconsistent with everything else. You are now able to make decisions for your business based on your P&L, your line items and how those percentages and costs relate to something else, like marketing. Whatever money you’re spending on marketing, what result are you getting? How are you measuring it? How are you positioning the people that are doing your marketing so that their expectations are in order so they know exactly what you’re looking for, so you can measure them properly? These are all the decisions you will make from knowing your numbers and managing bottom-up.
Understand, first of all, some people are really good at managing top-down. Some people are really good managing bottom-up. However, the goal is to manage in the middle, to master both the top-down and the bottom-up. Now, there are a lot of different behaviors of those who run businesses. Some are really good at really managing numbers, spreadsheets, and analyzing all that stuff of where they’re really good, obviously on the bottom-up. Some are really good people persons, they’re great leaders. They know how to motivate and inspire their team. They know how to create the culture and environment, where they are able to run the business top-down very well. If you’re not good at the bottom-up, hire somebody. Get a bookkeeper, get a CFO, CPA, and make sure they report to you accordingly. However, ultimately your goal in business, is to manage in the middle.
Whatever you have to do, whoever you need to hire, whoever you need to surround yourself with, your goal is to manage and master from the top-down and the bottom-up, so you are managing in the middle. Because when you manage in the middle, you’re killing it. You’ve got everything in place. You’ve got the structure, the systems, the culture, and your team is aligned with the brand of the organization. You know your numbers and you know them well and you’re making the decisions accordingly. You’re not getting out of balance, managing from a balance sheet where you forget your people and managing top-down where people are important and you’re forgetting the balance sheet. You’re managing in the middle and you’re doing business right.
COACH MICHAEL DILL is an Award-Winning Certified Business Coach, global speaker, and published author. He is a proud Action Coach Franchise partner as well as the President of Power & Ice Wealth Creation a strategic leadership company that works with business owners, leaders, teams, and entrepreneurs to both develop a systematized and structured organization while accelerating their mindset, efficiencies, and effectiveness to grow both personally and professionally to achieve extraordinary results. He brings more than 40 years of business and entrepreneurial experience in his leadership, team training, and mentoring practice. Businesscoachmichaeldill.com