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How to run a successful business by Lukas Michel
By Guest Contributor Lukas Michel
Author of Diagnostic Mentoring & Management Design (3rd edition), Lukas Michel, explains how to run a successful business.
A recent study by Statista shows that the average lifespan of Standard and Poor’s 500 Index companies nowadays is just around 20 years. Hence, managing to build a brand, run it successfully for 20 years might take quite a lot of resilience and dedication.
My company, Agility Insights, is a global network of experienced business mentors, who help and mentor business leaders. The company is celebrating its 20-year anniversary in 2022 and it keeps growing to this day.
HOW WE MANAGED TO RUN AGILITY INSIGHTS SUCCESSFULLY FOR 20 YEARS
Early on it was decided that investors will not be involved in the company for financing. That, of course, made it more difficult to develop and grow the business but provided us with the freedom to work in the exact direction we wanted to. We didn’t have to comply with the requirements of external stakeholders and managed to build the brand we have envisioned from the very beginning.
Agility Insights is a completely digitally based business. The only thing that’s needed in order for us to work is a laptop and a stable internet connection. And that wasn’t implemented when the Covid-19 pandemic took over the world in 2020, we have been working fully online since the very beginning.
That allows working with partners and clients from all around the world, not being limited to a specific location.
Being full digitally based makes Agility Insights, with its diagnostic mentoring services, easily scalable. We can easily grow without adding cost, which made it possible to continuously invest in the past 20 years in the company and its development.
Nowadays, our service is unparalleled in the market and diagnostic mentoring is viewed as an alternative to traditional consulting.
MY TOP TIP FOR EVERY MANAGER OR EVERYONE WHO WANTS TO START OR RUN A BUSINESS
If you want to make fast money, don’t do it our way. However, in order to achieve steady and consistent success for your business, you need to build it slowly and profoundly. You have to invest quite a lot of time and attention, especially at the beginning to ensure you are building a brand, company or organization that people will return to. Starting from scratch and working your way up is a slow process. That’s why it requires quite a lot of resistance and not giving up at the first few months when it might feel something isn’t working right. And that’s because success takes time.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LUKAS MICHEL is the owner of Agility Insights AG, based in Switzerland, and CEO of the AGILITYINSIGHTS.NET, a global network of experienced business mentors. Over the course of his 40-year career, he has worked with executive teams around the world, focusing on management and agility for a diverse range of local, national,and global organizations. Lukas is the author of The Performance Triangle, Management Design, People-Centric Management and Diagnostic Mentoring.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukasmichel/
Suggested Reading
It’s every manager’s prime job to manage better: to change the way they lead people and how they organise work in the new (post-pandemic) business context. The book discusses the role of the operating system to do that and clarifies managerial priorities and goals. This then sets the stage for Diagnostic Mentoring – the methodology that enables the transformation of the way we manage.
Management in turbulent times needs greater vision and foresight. This book offers an exciting visual-thinking approach to help managers, leaders and entrepreneurs think through their options and find a way that best meets the needs of their businesses, that supports their talent to perform at their peak, and simultaneously builds the capabilities to cope with turbulent times.
Other books by the author
If you have not yet experienced the benefits of agile but don’t want to miss the trend, then Agile by Choice offers a gentle introduction into the core concept and the prerequisite of people-centric management. This book offers a new way to think about how you lead people, how you use your own resources, and how you personally perform at your peak.In line with his previous books, Lukas Michel presents a diagnostic self-mentoring approach with 21 exercises for leaders to learn about agile and people centric. This book initiates the shift to strategic agility with your team to establish leadership everywhere.
Today’s dynamic business environment requires new ways to man- age, lead, work, and organize. Traditional paradigms of efficiency, agency theory, transactions and scale are replaced or augmented with principles that focus on people, self-organization, and purpose for greater innovation and growth.
To expand on his previous books, Lukas Michel presents new research, practical applications and the experience with People- Centric Management, agile organization and work on the system to establish new management where people unlock their talent, master greater challenges and perform at their peak.
The book offers the legendary People-Centric Diagnostic that forces the reader to decode and rethink the many assumptions underlying their management model and systems. In combination, the people-centric model, the three-step process and action agenda will help executives establish leadership everywhere to succeed in a dynamic environment.
It is a new era. To win in an increasingly dynamic and volatile environment, leadership teams must be agile – they must be flexible enough to react to early signs and act on them quickly.
An agile company needs good decision-making at all levels – from the centre to the periphery, tapping into the full potential of the people, operating model, information technology and leadership practices. And decisions are made by people. This guide forces you to re-examine the assumptions underlying your leadership and how agility within your company can be built through a three-point, people-centric approach. The author’s insights will help you understand your options, make the choices required to successfully coach your team, and start creating agility as a competitive advantage today.