Thank you for joining in on our Maiden Blog. The inspiration for the blog about “Improving the Business of the Business” has come from several friends- all in different roles- but all in the search of wanting their businesses to be better.

Over the past few months, we engaged several people with the question: “Do people in your business [who manage resources and whose decisions have an impact on strategic, operational or financial performance] really understand the business of your business- how you create value and make profits?”

Generally, after a recognition smile emerges, the conversation opens and covers a range of current concerns, and aspiration that once leaders developed and objective and shared view of the real “Business of the Business, a lot of potential will emerge.

The conversation engendered a lot of rich dialogue and we thought it might be really informative to engage a wider group on the subject. We think it might be timely, because as the economy begins to turn, it would be refreshing to turn thoughts from merely surviving- to thriving. We also believe it is a fundamental question because this understanding (or at least this set of beliefs) should be the starting point for assessing your own business, its performance, devising strategy etc. Without this settled, the foundations of strategy, day-to-day operations and ultimately performance could be at risk.

We thought this might make for a rich conversation topic. I know that most all of the people on the initial announcement have an interest and a passion in always improving the Business of their Business- and can only assume that many of their contacts share the same passions. We encourage you to share this topic with folks you think might have some sharp insights- and drive up the quality of the conversation and benefit from it as well.

We hope to host and operate this as a legitimate Discussion Forum- with a rich conversation as opposed to a monologue with a few comments thrown in for good measure and feaux legitimacy. We will see where this journey takes us and once we get a few of these “logs on the fire” we can really jump off into some meaningful conversation.
So- we leave you with a series of related questions:
• What are your thoughts on the importance of a shared agreement among business leaders with regard to the essence of the Business of their Business- what does it take to create and sustain value?
• What are the critical elements to consider as you embark on “improving the business of the business”?
• If you could do just one thing to improve the business of your business- what would it be? – and what’s holding you up from getting it done?