July 27, 2011

If there’s one thing that every business owner can do to improve his or her company’s sales, value and growth, it's to take responsibility for absolutely everything.

This is something that is tough for many business owners to learn, with good reason.

When you were in elementary school, having an excuse for your mistakes didn’t sound so bad. In fact, it was often favorable and kept you out of trouble. If you missed school, it was all forgiven if you had an “excused absence.”  If you were late on an assignment or even were mean to another child, an excuse could be the difference between harsh punishment and complete immunity to all charges. Some teachers would even literally ask “What is your excuse?” when a rule was broken.

Once you get to the later years of high school and college, excuses aren’t so hot anymore. You may tell your professor that your paper is late because the library’s printer broke, but it doesn’t have the same effect it used to. The professor might say, “What a shame…” and lower your grade without even arguing with you. Excuses keep losing their effectiveness in the working world. Even when you start to realize that excuses aren’t working anymore, it just doesn’t click until you’re completely on your own.

When you become an entrepreneur, you are forced to not only give up excuses, but to deny that they even exist. I’ll take you through the three areas of business that you have to take full responsibility for, to maximize your profits and growth.

Responsibility to your customers

Whether you are providing for individual consumers or Fortune 500 companies, your business will only thrive if you take full ownership of what your customer experiences when dealing with you. This includes when events happen that are completely out of your control. I’ll give you an example of how this plays out in the real world.

One day, I went to the mall with some friends for pizza. The pizza stand we went to was closed, with a sign saying, “Due to events beyond our control, we cannot open today.”  For some reason, the sign made us madder than if the place was just closed with no explanation. Next door, a sandwich shop said “Due to a gas leak, we must close for the day. We apologize for any inconvenience.”  That sign made us respect the sandwich shop a lot more than the pizza place. They explained the situation, but did not reject responsibility for what happened. In fact, instead of pointing out that they did not cause the gas leak, they acted as if it was their fault anyway.

It’s a well-kept secret that customers absolutely love it when you accept responsibility for things you could not possibly control. This includes power outages, economic shifts and even the weather itself. Even if you run a ski resort which is nearly destroyed by lightning storms, apologizing for the delay will strengthen your customer relationships. In fact, the near absurdity of you acting as if the weather is your fault will make things even better.

Your customers want the illusion that when dealing with you, all of their needs are taken care of. They don’t want to have to think. When you make an excuse, you’re outwardly saying that you’re not in control of your operation and that the customer has to take responsibility for his own experience. They feel much safer with the thought that you made a mistake in your service rather than that you are unable to protect them from issues in the future. When you take responsibility, you send the message that they can relax and forget about looking after themselves. They are under your protection.

Responsibility to, and for, your employees

This is a tricky one because your employees are so crucial to your success. When you have a great employee, you want to give him credit for his contribution. But sometimes a bad employee can cause unexpected problems as well.

What you have to keep in mind is that you are the one who hired both the good employees and bad employees. Even if you didn’t hire them directly, you hired the people who hired them. The responsibility still falls on you. Sometimes things will be tough and you’ll have to lay people off or make paycuts. When this happens, your PR team may advise you to be silent on the issue or publicly make a statement of accountability.  However, you must always acknowledge to yourself that you created the situation and that your management has led to the current circumstances.

When things are going great, you can take proper ownership of that as well, while still crediting employees for their valuable assistance. The one thing you have to make sure of is that you never outwardly blame employees for the circumstances of the company. If someone is screwing up, it’s your call whether to keep them or terminate them. If it takes a while to tell if someone is a bad employee, then this is because of the system you set up yourself, as well.

Responsibility to yourself

The same rules apply to you within your own business. There will always be challenges that make your operations and growth difficult to manage.  What you have to do is take responsibility for yourself regardless of what things are happening around you.

The entrepreneurs who make it in the long run are the ones who don’t let conditions slap them around. This is more than a gung-ho attitude. This is so important because people who love you will be harmfully forgiving if you fail because of external circumstances. You’ll be let off the hook if bad economic conditions hurt your business or if a new tax law makes your business unprofitable.

If you can relax and think that it’s not your fault you failed, then it will be that much easier to quit. But if you take full responsibility in both good and bad times, then you will not only keep working through the difficult periods, but recognize opportunities for growth that many miss.

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