The Online Business Manager tagline is – Where Strategy Meets Implementation. Meaning it is vital to the success of the business and the sanity of the OBM to ensure there is a solid, tested, proven strategy in place for every element of the business. From sending a Newsletter to managing a Live Event to setting up a Standard Operating Procedure to ensuring team training is in place. If there is no strategy, no clear result based plan of action, then only chaos can prevail.
When we neglect the step of creating strategy we enable reactive execution to take place. What I mean by reactive execution is making decisions based on whatever shows up in our inbox at any given moment, shooting from the hip, allowing the tail to wag the dog (if I may). There is no way to create a strong predictable success in the midst of reactive execution… you are out of control, the business is out of control and the ability to grow is BEYOND your control. Unfortunately, this is often how solopreneurs run their businesses. Leaving us, the advocate for the business, at odds with our clients when it comes to ensuring proper strategy is in place. So what do we do?
Do we wait until it is at the top of the clients priority list to ensure there is proper structure in the business? Do we wait until the client says: ‘hey can you create a strategy for X for us to follow?’ Do we sit back and wait for the fires to blaze before we make an executive decision to set up proper strategy that supports the initiative of the client and vision of the busienss? NO NO NO!
As OBM’s we must be strategic in our service to the businesses that allow us the priveldge of leading them. We MUST be the proactive pivotal person on the team ensuring that proper structure, mapping and implementation are working together for the good of the whole. We must step into the deep of what it takes to create strategy from scratch, research, decide, test and prove to see our businesses soar above the rest.
In other words, if you aren’t clear on what your clients wants and the strategy to get there – then you need to ask and get that information from them.
You need to be willing to stand in the space of your expertise and say “dear client, I can’t properly support you until we get our strategy in place”
When a client comes to us (Tina or myself) and they say, well I really thought my OBM was going to X — that X always has something to do with strategy… it is the higher level of support we promise when we call ourselves OBM’s.
Now don’t get me wrong strategy is not the same as making decisions around WHAT the client needs to offer, be an expert in, deliver on.. it is however, the plan to get it (the WHAT) to the target market, get it (the WHAT) implemented within the scope deliverability, creating the pathway for it (the WHAT) to be successful. The strategy takes the WHAT of your clients vision and merges it with the HOW of implementation…. do this proactively, with purpose, at every level of the business and see if your being an OBM doesn’t become much easier! Results become more predicatable, clients feel a greater since of support and the business runs much more smoothly.