Business values for small companies

Posted on May 20, 2007

I’m not sure how things are going in your country, but here I hear (or say) way too often:”this (product) is not like it used to be”, mostly about big well known corporations. My washing machine is not as good as the last one, my watch only lasted 2 years, my car broke too soon (obviously can’t give any names here).

Obviously that is the downside of globalization and cutting cost strategies. First, products are no longer produced where they are supposed to be produces (I mean country of origin) and second, it’s really hard to transmit the companies business values across continents and cultures. In a way this is actually not about quality control, cutting cost and cheap labor force, but more or less about losing their business values.

So if big corporations that enforce business values through their bureaucrat mechanism are loosing it, what about small businesses? I think we should think about it in two dimensions:

  • defining the business values
  • keeping and communicating the business values

Probably, no matter how you start a small business, you start without a clear business value, or in the best case you have them at a declarative level. You say you will do the very best for your customer, provide the best value, etc, etc but in most cases you are not really in the position, financial strength and expertise to match your declared business values.

If things are starting to move in the right direction, there is a second phase, where due to changes in your business plan, strategy and positioning you either tend to ignore your business values or you simply forgot them. I mean I can hardly remember how I’ve started my business, how can I remember what where the strong things that were supposed to drive the company? And once you don’t remember the values anymore how can you communicate them to your customers? I’m not sure if this makes me a bad entrepreneur, but sometimes your ideas and suppositions about starting a new business are pure fantasies, nothing will be perfect, nothing will go by the book, because entrepreneurs are simply human just like any other.

Ok, so here is what I did: searched my first business cards and looked for the business values. When you are just starting out, you should put these on your business card, then prove they are true. When your customers know they are true, you can take them out from your business cards - the business values come from what and how you do and not what you say.

So here they are:

  • Keep it simple. I hate everything that complicates my life, so we (the 3 partners that started Energybyte) decided that we should provide our customers with simple solutions that will not complicate their life, and keep it simple for ourselves as well
  • Correctness towards the customers (actually this sounds better in Romanian than in English, so it should be ok). Choosing the correct solutions for them, the correct prices, the correct finality

It’s not about innovation, the best solution, changing the world or all that crap you are used to hear as company values. It’s about being correct and simple. Something that some big corporations have forgotten.

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