My dad’s business was a little bit of a joke right off the bat. A joke that I’ll never know for sure. It’s pretty much the definition of “business”.
Well, duh. So my dad’s a lawyer for a major corporation… and he’s a very smart guy. He’s not a stupid guy.
For many people, the way things are set up at corporations is a big part of what makes them special. Even if you are a programmer, a designer, or an engineer, you know that your job is to make things happen. Some of the smartest people in the world are in a position to make a difference because they have a position that can affect others.
I am not saying that some people are more successful because they have more power, but rather that their job (or business) is to influence others in order to make things happen. For example, the CEO of a successful company (i.e. an American company) is the most powerful person at that company. But the person who is in charge of that company in a way that affects his/her employees is the weakest person.
To me, the business decision of a corporation is made by whom they hire. It is made because the person who is hired has power over others. If I want to be successful and have my own business, I need to take a different job, because I don’t have the power to make things happen. You don’t have to be the CEO of a company or even the owner.
For instance, if I am the owner of a business, I have the power to hire other people to work in my business. Because I have the power to hire people, I am in a better position to make decisions about how things work. I can hire people that I know and trust more than anybody else (and I have more of those people than most people have in a company), and that means I should be able to have a better idea about how I want the company run.
For the CEO, no, because he or she is in the position of making decisions about how the company looks, how it runs, and how it functions. There are lots of things that these decisions can and should effect, many far more important than the company itself. Take your company to a conference, to a trade show, or to a client gathering, and these decisions can have a huge impact on whether your company gets the recognition it needs and whether you make it to the limelight.
A lot of these decisions have to do with how we look at the company, how the company should be run, and what we think will make it successful for the future. All employees, regardless of their title, should be valued for how they make decisions. I think it’s easy to forget that, and that makes it impossible to make these decisions.
Sometimes corporations are just businesses that are run by owners who think their decisions should be the right ones. One reason why so many businesses fail is because they aren’t run by good leaders. We are trained to think that leaders are all about making decisions, without seeing the business decisions they are making as a part of the business. I am a big fan of leadership training, and I always recommend it to the leaders I work with because it gets them to realize that the decisions they make are important.
The fact is that the decisions we make in business are really a part of the business. The CEO or president of a company is the person who makes the very first decision to raise capital, sign a contract, hire people, and so on. The CEO or president has much bigger decisions to make, which may not be the right ones, but they will always be the right decisions that create the company that exists.
