Collaborative Business Structure

There are 101 business models in the world and one always strive to find the best. What is the definition of best? My personal advice is to find one that fits your lifestyle and your objective in life.

Collaboration is my approach towards building my business. Customer is important but working partners are equally important to help sustain a business. Without a good working relationship between your working partners, it may be pointless to have a lot of customers. The reverse is also true. My philosophy is that inter-personal relationship skills are important to making a business successful, retaining good talent and preventing them from jumping over to work for your competitor simply because they are offering them higher wages. If you do not attempt to understand your working partners, you may have a problem getting them to work loyally for you to help making your customers happy.

To make this business structure work, one should not hold back rewards. Rewards are the key to recognizing and showing people you are aware of what they have done for you and that you appreciate them for who they are. So do not hestitate to reward people. Also, reward people based on their efforts and not just on the results they produce. It is important to never take rewards as an additional cost to you as an employer. Instead, you may want to consider it as a long term investment. "When there's no pain, there's no gain."

For example:
John is an young developer in the company. He is very hardworking and put in his 110% effort in everything he does. However, because he is young, the company does not want to consider promoting him nor keen on giving him any pay raise for his commitments and sacrifices to the company. As a result, he quits the job after 2 years. The company has to retrain a developer for at least 6 months to take over his tasks. As we all know, there are risks and costs involved in getting a new developer. Just a rough estimation, 6months * $2500 will equate to $15000. The company incurred $15000 as compared to giving a $200 monthly pay increment which equates to 75 months that is about 6 years. This example is based on just an employee. Just imagine the impact to the entire company. In terms of knowledge management, this will definitely cripple your business processes.

Therefore, I feel that management should always judge each individuals based on their attitude, commitment and abilities instead of just age and experience. Age and experience should just be a guideline and not a requirement.

Thanks and feel free to comment.

For potential collaboration, feel free to contact me at eugene.chen@unicomi.com or visit my website at http://www.unicomi.com/