Businesses don’t just run off of checklists. Every day there are new issues to deal with and problems to solve, and a company that cannot be flexible is unable to keep up with the daily demands required of a successful organization.
Flexibility, therefore, is critical in order to be able to adequately handle the multitude of things that happen in your business. And flexibility is driven by two things in particular: 1) the ability to make fast decisions and address situations, and 2) tools that are consistent, used by the entire organization, and provide you with a realistic, real-time snapshot of your business. These two things are tightly related, but they both require the right business management tools, and comfortable shoes.
OK, let's start with the shoes. Management guru Tom Peters talks about operating with your MBWA - "Management By Walking Around". His concept is that you cannot effectively know your business or address its myriad issues unless you get away from your desk and ask questions, learn what employees are doing, and listen to the people on the front lines. Comfortable shoes, therefore, might come in handy for those days when you need to jog over to Finance to find out how the bottom line is doing, hop over to Sales to make sure the pipeline is healthy, and then sprint over to HR to ensure they are filling the open engineering position. At the end of the day, you'll be wiser about your company and probably a whole lot healthier.
After you purchase your Nike's, however, the truly critical tool you need is reliable business software that allows you to see, manage and operate your business. In most of today's organizations, CRM, ERP, sales force automation and all the other elements of a business are handled by apps that have been integrated and pieced together. In an environment like that you will likely need to spend considerable time ensuring compatibility, which might require so much time that you never have a chance to burn any calories walking around and managing. Instead, you'll start to be consumed with things like missing data and integration, and before you realize it, you will be parked behind your desk instead of learning what's really going on in your company.
