It seems like so much of the business stuff I read is either:

• Irrelevant to small companies
• Focused on high tech start-ups
• Geared toward companies going public
• Pure self serving drivel

And yet so many successful companies are:

• Small. Half of the American workforce is employed by a company of less than 50 people.
• Privately owned. Did you read “The Millionaire Next Door”? the majority of people surveyed with a net worth between $1 and $10 million owned their own companies.
• Buzz-free. I was going to say boring, but that’s not really true. These are the kind of business not considered by “the media” as newsworthy, so they don’t get a lot of press – see Millionaire book above.

I thought I’d write for people who own and run companies like them.

Read as I write
I’m posting as I come across issues in my business, or those of my clients. And certainly, reading as I write is one way to use this blog. Feel free to visit frequently or use the RSS feed. And I’d love some comments.

Browse by Category
But I’ll also be using this blog as a place to store longer articles I write or have written so I can find them all in one place. To find those, it may help so search or use the categories. I’ll be categorizing each of the posts as I see fit. I’m anticipating that after a while the list of categories (meta-categories?) be fall into some manageable order. If/when I see that I’ll post it.

Organizational Structure – How I view a company
Perhaps you’re new here, or new to running a company and you want a lot of ideas fast. This page will give you an overview of how I look at companies. I’ve found it encompasses everything I’ve ever run across, yet strikes that balance between being overly simplistic and bombarding you with details. [Note as of 3/2/06 this link is to an older version of the grid. Don’t like to over promise but I’ll be cleaining it up and expanding it someday. The info is still useful.]

Science and Art
It takes both to make a business a success. The caracture of an MBA type knows only the science and nothing of the art. The caracature of an Entrepreneur plays their hunches and only knows the art. Both reject the other. I think the science of running a company is the stuff that applies to every business – or every one that has some similarity to yours. The art is the stuff that makes yours unique – your special sauce.

An interesting corallary is that if you screw up the science of running a business you fail. But if you don’t it’s like running a bug-free restaurant. The health department won’t shut you down and you’ll “make it.”  But to be really successful takes art (and a bit of luck).

I hope you’ll find my ramblings contain both. Enjoy.