Being Organised

I was speaking to a couple of industry colleagues recently over ‘teh tarik’ about the pressure of trying to keep organised in terms of running our businesses. Most of us self-financed entrepreneurs share a similar dilemma - inadequate funds to hire a full support team, which results in us having to adopt the ‘one-leg-kick’ role. Some of us are better in certain areas than others, but the bottom line is, we sometimes get stretched to the limit.

I have long come to the realisation that I can’t do everything, even if I had 36 hours a day. I am fortunate to have built working relationships with freelance consultants who help me out in areas where I need assistance. However, whilst these specialists do good work and I certainly trust them entirely, I have also had to make it a point to learn a bit more about their areas of specialisation. For example, a financial statement, no matter how well presented, is useless to me as an entrepreneur if I am not able to make sense of it. I need to know what to look out for and what the figures mean. Similarly, it is also imperative that one knows how to scrutinise the many proposals that come our way, such as in the sphere of branding, marketing and communications. The list of issues to contend with goes on.

My point is, we all need to keep learning. Be it through management books, the Internet, workshops or seminars, any new knowledge we acquire can help us in many different ways. The challenge is to understand and decipher the information we receive, develop new competencies in the process and then put these skills to work.

Photo shot at That Special Occasion, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.