The 9 Fundamental Principles For Businesses

byjroth728

1.7K followers

13 years ago

Your chance for failure is high when the fundamentals are ignored!

For years there have been a set of fundamental principles by Sun Tzu in “The Art of War” that businesses use to asssure success. I was inspired to write this to enlighten those of you who are not familiar with this business plan and help to refresh the memory of those who already know it.

The fundamental principles of business are merely just guidelines for success. Although you do not always have to follow these principles, by ignoring them is taking a big risk with your business and is a major reason why many businesses fail in their first year.  The reason is because Professionals are aware of the basics of business rules and amateurs often ignore these rules, which leaves the odds in favor of the Professionals.

Here is the list of Fundamental Principles for a Successful Business:

Organize an Intelligence System - First off, you should always know the market that you are going into. This should be something you know like the back of your hand, because if not there will be someone else out there who does and your lack of knowledge will eventually be exposed. Your decision making should be driven by data.

Maintain Your Objectives – Determine a clear direction that you want your business to go and make sure you do not lose your aim. When you wander down side tracks is when you lose sight of the true purpose of your business. This is very important to keep your goals always in sight.

Establish a Secure Position – Strengthen the core of your competencies more than your competitor does. This will help you occupy a position that cannot easily be taken from opponents in your market because of the preparations that you’ve made in securing this position.

Keep on the Offensive – When you keep an offensive position it enables you to be free in your actions, which keeps you in control of the situation that you’re in. When you are on the defensive, it causes you to be reactive instead of proactive.

Plan Surprises – One of the best ways to gain psychological dominance and deny the initiative of your opponent is to catch them by surprise. An essential component of this is speed, so that your competition cannot keep up with what your business is doing.

Think Maneuver – Think of how you can put yourself at an advantage while at the same time putting your competition at a disadvantage. Find the niche in your market that is lightly defended or even completely unoccupied by competitors so that you can begin to dominate this sector.

Concentrate Your Resources - Use your superior forces at the precise place and time that they need to be. Be a guerrilla when you cannot be a gorilla! The person who is strongest at any given time and place will always defeat the weakest, so always know when and where to “fight your battles”.

Practice Economy of Force – When you concentrate all of your strengths in one area, you will become weak in other areas. Learn how to focus your strengths in more than one area without neglecting certain aspects of your business.

Keep It Simple – The simple things, they simply work best. Even the simple plans can be tough to execute.

Applying these principles should be an art. It’s within this art that your judgement should come into play. To know these guidelines and to simply ignore them is plain old stupidity. Although you may have to stray from these at times it is best to always keep on track and only stray if you have a valid reason.