Spinning plates

Running a small business is a bit like a juggler spinning plates on sticks.  You must keep them spinning otherwise, they will slow, eventually stop and then fall off the sticks and break.  Perhaps I should now write, it is not ‘a bit like’, I should write it is exactly like.  It is almost the perfect analogy.  In small business, in fact, in all business, there are the must do plates; product / service, sales and finance.  Sure there are a heap more, but they are generally just a sub category of these three.  Price, quality, service, cash flow, governance (ooh, that’s a touchy one) and so on.  In small business, you must do them all.  In small business, you need to attend to each in just the right measure to ensure the plate keeps spinning until you can get back to it.  Not enough and the plate breaks.  Too much and the next plate you should have been attending will stop and break.

The biggest challenge in this scenario is just how many can you spin and spin right?  Nothing is quite so distracting than a wobbly plate.  It does not add value to you or your customer.  Most determine the number of plates by trial and error.  Just make sure, that when you get the magic number stick to it.  Then, once you need another plate, you can add the need for additional resources into the plate spinning planning process and keep your plates in order.

How many plates are you spinning?

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