Do you have a strong desire to develop your business management skills or do you want to improve on your management style? Do you know you can develop or improve your business management skills in 20 days or less?
Are you an entrepreneur or an aspiring entrepreneur? Do you inspire to be like great corporate managers and business leaders such as Ingvar Kamprad, Jack Welch, Alfred P. Sloan, Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, Mike Adenuga, Mo Ibrahim and Aliko Dangote? Then read on.
In this article, I am going to reveal 20 smart ways to develop your business management skills in 20 days or less. Call it high speed learning and you won’t be wrong. Do you know that business management skills is vital to strategically growing a business just like entrepreneurial skills is important to the entrepreneurial process of building a business?
Entrepreneurial skills are required to start a business but it takes good managerial skills to grow a business. So if you are prepared for this high speed learning, then I will share with you 20 smart ways to develop good business management skills in 20 days or less.
20 Ways to Develop Good Business Management Skills in 20 Days or Less
1. Have a strong desire to develop your business management skills; desire to become a good business manager. You might be an entrepreneur but you definitely need a bit of managerial skills to successfully run a business. If you don’t have a strong desire to develop the necessary managerial skills, then you will not be motivated to do what it takes to achieve the feat in 20 days.
2. Read books that will help you develop good business management skills. I am an entrepreneur but I read a lot of books on management. Entrepreneurs are generalist; they need to know a little of everything, from accounting and production management to people management.
I will advice you read the book “The Practice of Management” by Peter F. Drucker and “The Mafia Manager: A Guide to the Corporate Machiavelli.” Both books will teach you a lot about managing a business in an easy to understand manner.
3. Attend a business management training course or seminar. You can find a good business management training course or seminar by doing a search online. Or better still, you can find one in the national dailies.
4. Listen to audio tapes or CDs that will help you develop the required business management skills.
5. Look for friends and associates with the same goal and orientation; and work together with them towards improving your managerial skills.
6. Sign up for a business management training course online. Unlike the one suggested above, this course will be taken online from the comfort of your home. It could be a one on one course or a webinar.
7. Start a small business. The best way to improve both your entrepreneurial and managerial skills is by starting your own business. When you start a small business; you will have the opportunity to make all the business mistakes possible, learn how to handle business challenges and ultimate gain experience.
8. Volunteer to take up management role in non-profit organizations; you will learn a lot from the process.
9. Look for a business leader or any effective small business manager and seek mentorship from him or her. Propose to be his or her protégé in return for working for free.
10. When a situation arises that involves leading people on an assignment, or managing a project; volunteer to do it. Leading people helps strengthen your people skills; which is a necessity for good business management.
20 Ways to Develop Good Business Management Skills in 20 Days or Less
11. Study the business management style of great corporate managers such as Lee Iacocca, Jack Welch and Alfred P. Sloan. Read their materials and study their autobiography if possible; you will learn a lot.
12. Join organizations that will help build your managerial skills and an example of such organization is SIFE (Students in Free Enterprise).
13. Join a network marketing business that trains distributors on people management and how to manage oneself.
14. Visit blogs, forums and websites that share managerial skill development tips and spend some time there.
15. Look for a paid management coaching service and sign up. This is all about getting a personal management coach to guide you along the way. The Rich Dad Company and the E-Myth Worldwide are examples of paid management coaching services with worldwide reputation.
16. Join business or corporate networks and exchange ideas and techniques with like minded people who are at the helm of affairs of great companies.
17. Attend business conferences, meetings, corporate or entrepreneurial summit. You may pick inspiration by listening to the challenges faced by business executives and CEOs.
18. Read or listen to the speeches of great corporate managers such as Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett and Jack Welch. You can decode the source of inspiration of these great corporate leaders by simply listening to their speeches.
19. Develop the mindset required for managing people. Remember, managerial skill development begins with a change of mindset. Every top management position in a company comes with great responsibility and accountability. You must be prepared for such responsibility.
20. After reading books, attending seminars or trying out other management styles techniques; you must remember to work on yourself. Learning how to be a good manager without putting what you learned into active practice is simply a waste of time and energy.
Working on yourself entails changing your perception towards failure, working on your appearance and acquiring the necessary skills needed to become a good business manager. I am talking about managerial skills such as communication skill, analytical skill, delegation skill, negotiation skill and people skill.
In fact, I will recommend you start by studying the traits of successful corporate managers and work on yourself to develop such traits. I believe the article “12 Essential Criterion to being a Good Corporate Leader” will prove useful in this case.
As a final note, I want to state that anyone can become a great business manager; all you need is a strong desire and unyielding resolve to achieve your desire. I wish you the best of luck; see you at the top.