See Why I Call This
The World's Perfect Business!

Now, I can imagine there might have been times in your life, maybe even now, when you wonder how you're going to pay your bills next month, or how you're going to stretch your money until payday. After all, even top entrepreneurs are worried about this treacherous economy.

Perhaps you're even facing a challenge right now that's got you concerned — worried even. You have trouble going to sleep only to wake up each morning with the same problems on your mind as the previous day.

You will reap rich dividends if you follow this learning to the hilt. A SME needs people who think out of the box, are creative, and are perfectionists. For all critical roles, you need the BEST. So, unlike in large organizations where recruitments are conducted by the dozen, I believe SMEs should recruit only the BEST for critical roles, even if that means some delays in the recruitment process. Do not fall into the trap of recruiting people just to increase staff size.

I kinda gravitate towards authors and speakers who can compartmentalise and think through complex problems and lay them out in easy steps. Somehow the “x number of steps” style takes out a lot of complexity and blows away a lot of the fog for me.

I am kind of a logical and systematic thinker so the “do this, then do that” makes a lot more sense to me than abstract and random thoughts

India is surely a tale of more talk and less action, and less action not on the surface but it is action less from where the system takes root. There is a lot of prattle about what needs to be done; everyone will have a utopian opinion. But none will stand for the action; in fact it is a unanimous observation across the bureaucratic corridors, where we have ministers and secretary coming out in the open and saying that we lack true intent that is required for implementation of strategies and not lacking in resources required to meet these developmental activities.

As a CEO, you need to be a thinker and a strategist- with your feet on the ground and your mind thinking of the sky. Your effectiveness as a CEO, however, will depend upon your ability to identify and understand the ground realities of your business.

If you were asked, as the CEO of an SME, to identify the one ground reality, the single issue by which your company may grow or fall, you will probably pick staff retention as that issue. Since an SME is not typically a big brand, employees tend to jump ship into a branded organization at the very first instance.