What makes a business successful?

Business managers determine its success

Business success doesn't depend on luck. No, but it can happen to you. If you asked successful businesspeople what made them successful, they are likely to tell you, "I worked hard." In fact, hard work is as good a place to start as any.

But hard work is not enough. You have to put in the right kind of work. And you have to know how to work. Hard work and intelligence are closely related. If you get smarter, you will get better. But only if you are able to work on the right things.

The skill of working on the right things is the art of managing yourself, and the art of managing yourself is the art of knowing yourself. First, the facts about yourself. What are you good at? What are you bad at? How do you respond when you are under pressure? What is the worst you can do?

Then, the fictions about yourself. What image of yourself do you want the world to see? What image do you really want to see yourself? The two are not the same. The world sees your business success as a reflection of your talent. But your talent is a reflection of your self-knowledge.

Richard Feynman, for example, was brilliant. But he was a quirky guy, and people thought him a little crazy. But he learned to love his art. He was proud of his quirky character, and he shared it with the world. He did not take himself too seriously. He didn't take his successes too seriously. He worked hard, yes, but he knew how to work hard.

And, most important, he worked on the right thing. He enjoyed physics. But he understood physics as part of a larger picture. His understanding of physics led him to work on the theory of quantum electrodynamics, and he discovered the Feynman diagrams.

His success was a reflection of his self-knowledge,

Which technology does the business use?

A lot of companies now use online employee management system to track how employees are doing. Often these systems are web-based, and they provide a variety of features. You can track when employees start and end shifts, and how long shifts take. You can track when employees take breaks, and how long they spend at different tasks. You can even track the locations where employees work, and how often they travel.

But there's another aspect to employee management systems that most companies don't mention. If you track an employee's locations, you can track her movements. If you track her tasks, you can track how she spends her time. If you track her breaks, you can track when she goes out, how often she goes out, and where she goes. If you track her travels, you can track where she likes to go, and how often she gets there.

You can track all of this because the information is recorded electronically. People don't keep track of all this on paper anymore. And by tracking all this, you can predict when employees are going to be busy, and busy places, and when there's lots of extra demand, and when there's low demand.

Employers can use employee management systems to predict all sorts of things. Because employees don't keep records on paper, there is no "surprise" factor. When employees don't keep records, you don't know what they are going to tell you, and you can't make plans around them. Electronic employee management systems make this level of control possible. They allow businesses to plan ahead, and to forecast demand. If demand is low, you can contract out work. If demand is high, you can recruit and train new employees.

That's one reason companies are now using online employee management system for businesses

Are the employees satisfied?

Organizational success is closely tied to employee satisfaction. A happy workforce leads to better productivity, higher employee retention, higher profits, and an overall better working environment.

Employee satisfaction, however, can be a difficult thing to measure. What is an employee's happiness, anyway? When an employee is unhappy, is he unhappy at his job, with his company, with his co-workers, or with his boss? One way to measure employee satisfaction is to ask, "What's it like to work here?" This poll is usually biased - employees tend to give answers that make them look good. But you may get some useful information.

Another way to get clearer answers is to ask employees how they feel about the job. A clear majority of people say that feeling good about their job is important for their happiness. So it's important to know how they feel. One approach is to ask employees to rate their feelings on a scale of 1 to 10. But employees don't always rate their feelings that way. They may tell you they are happy. But they may tell you they are miserable, too.

A better way to measure happiness is to ask, "How would you rate your happiness at work on a scale of 1 to 10?" This way, employees answer in a way that makes sense to them. They can tell you how they feel. Employees also like to talk to other people about their happiness. Sometimes, they talk to their co-workers, and sometimes they talk to their boss. But often they talk to their friends.

To measure employee happiness, you can ask employees to rate their happiness on a 1 to 10 scale, or you can ask employees to rate their happiness on a scale of 1 to 10.

Team work is key to business success

Business success is a serious business. It requires discipline, strategy, and relentless execution.

It also requires teamwork. To succeed, you must surround yourself with brilliant people. But, paradoxically, brilliant people are often willy-nilly. They get bored doing the same thing over and over, and tend to find each other. They end up talking in each other's offices, and before long, the office is crowded with people you know nothing about. Worse, the people you know nothing about often know a lot about your business. And they are always eager to prove their brilliance. So, what you thought was a team is, in fact, a motley collection of brilliant people, each with his own agenda.

And without discipline, strategy, and relentless execution, your business is going to be a tough act to follow. Workers are often a problem. They rarely work as a team, and often have conflicting priorities. They're also often absent-minded. Workers are also contagious. Their ideas can infect co-workers, who end up seeing problems in new ways and changing the way they do things. Then, every decision they make is shaped by that new perspective, not yours, and things get messy fast.

But online employee management system for companies can solve this problem. They allow you to assign tasks to workers, and track progress, at whatever level of detail you like. Employee management software also gives you total control over what workers can see and do, and when.

You can set up your system, and then forget about it. It doesn't make any decisions for you. It's there, ready to track progress, and alert you if anything goes wrong. And, unlike workers, it is never absent-minded.