Why You Should Keep Yourself Accountable as a Business Owner

By Denise Turney

The Small Business Administration (SBA) defines a small business as “an independent business having fewer than 500 employees.” Small businesses were responsible for 65% (approximately 9.8 million) jobs created in the United States 1993 through 2009. At the helm of these companies is a professional, someone who is genuinely passionate about their business, its clients, unique challenges and triumphs.  

Accountable Business Owners Picture by CEJISS at Wikimedia Commons

During seasonal and cyclical downturns these business owners need to find ingenious ways to continue to hold themselves accountable various business components including: 

•          Impact of daily operations to the bottom line
•          Hiring practices and on-boarding top talent
•          Overall profits and losses
•          Motivating team members (and themselves)
•          Setting and meeting daily, weekly, monthly and annual goals

Even if you are “naturally” organized and have not missed a deadline in 10 years, working with a group of professionals who have strategic goals similar to your own can strengthen your personal accountability. Collective mind groups are tools you can use to improve personal accountability.

Collective Mind Groups for Business Accountability

Collective mind groups generally consist of three to eight people. Each member of the group has a shared goal (e.g. managing a successful enterprise). However, members of the group do not have to be active in the same industry. For example, a collective mind group could consist of a beautician, an attorney, two retail store owners and a magazine owner.

Part of collective mind group accountability springs from the intuitive nudges that members of the group give each other verbally and non-verbally. As Erich Brockmann and William Anthony state in their Journal of Managerial Issues “The Influence of Tacit Knowledge and Collective Mind on Strategic Planning” article, “Managers, through their strategic choices, determine the success or failure of an organization.”  The strongest manager at a company is the owner.

The authors going on to explain that, “The phenomenon of a collective mind is formed when a group of individuals enacts a single memory complete with differentiated responsibilities for remembering appropriate portions of a common experience.” Collective mind groups access tacit knowledge and their subconscious (equals years of working experience). Information that surfaces through a collective mind group can help you to realize the answer to a marketing item that had stumped you for months. Other benefits of working with collective mind groups are that they help you to clearly define and stick to your goals.

Habits of Successful Business Collective Mind Groups

As the authors state, “At any given moment one is conscious of only a small section of what one knows. Intuition allows one to draw on that vast storehouse of unconscious knowledge that includes not only everything that one has experienced or learned either consciously or subliminally, but also the infinite reservoir of the collective or universal unconscious, in which individual separateness and ego boundaries are transcended.”

To be effective, collective mind groups should: 

•          Clearly communicate a date and time that they will regularly meet (e.g. once a week or twice a month)
•          Outline the topic or challenge they will discuss at the meeting
•          Allow each member of the group to speak freely on the given topic
•          Rotate a designated leader who will help the group to remain on track and within set start and end timeframes
•          Track and monitor its results (e.g. increased sales)
•          Respect and value each other’s ideas and allow one another to feel safe that no member of the group will “steal” another person’s idea

Business Benefits of Collective Mind Groups

Meeting with a collective mind group can also help business leaders to: 

•          Remain on track (e.g. avoid staring out the office window for hours at a time while getting little work completed)
•          Stay motivated through sharing common challenges
•          Weigh goals to see if the business owner truly believes the goals are achievable (no need in setting oneself up for failure) 

Collective mind groups have been used for years. It is no secret that when two or more humans join together for a common cause, results are achieved. Working with such a group gives business owners a level of accountability that they might not otherwise have were they to try to tackle all business challenges solely on their own. 

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Denise Turney is a freelance writer and novelist who resides on the East Coast.  She is online at:  www.chistell.com

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Sources:

http://www.sba.gov/advo/stats/sbfaq.pdf (SBA: Frequently Asked Questions)

http://www.bnet.com/blog/entry-level/should-you-trade-your-mentor-for-a-personal-board-of-directors/3381?tag=mantle_skin;content (BNET:  Should You Trade Your Mentor for a Personal Board of Directors)

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6703/is_n2_v10/ai_n28708328 (Journal of Managerial Issues: The Influence of Tacit Knowledge and Collective Mind on Strategic Planning)