The “DIY” leader is the one who wants to do it all by himself, and does not resort to the immense wealth of management resources that he currently has at his disposal. And this applies to all types of leaders: owner, entrepreneur, businessman, manager, executive, senior or middle in the structure of the company.
Known story: "My grandfather, who barely knew how to read and write, and without any experience in business management, started a small business that over time has become a gigantic emporium." 50 or more years ago these things could happen. Today no more.
Decades ago the markets were "havens of peace" compared to today. Consumers were less knowledgeable and less demanding; they had to resign themselves to buying and consuming what the few companies (of products and services) that existed made them available.
Today's situation
But, that panorama (almost idyllic seems to us today) has turned 180 degrees, making it extremely complicated. Today, markets are saturated with different products and services that compete fiercely with each other and consumers know that they have real power because they can freely choose between a growing variety of different offers in the same category of product or service. No one can force anyone to buy anything anymore. We all know that by turning the corner we can find a better product or service, even at a better price.
This has meant that today the mere fact that a micro-company intends to advance to the rank of small company requires a certain amount of knowledge, at least basic, in the efficient management of a company. And that need becomes greater when it comes to going from small to medium and grows exponentially in the case of going from medium to large.
For example, it is not the same to manage a staff of 5 or 6 people, possibly family and acquaintances, to a staff of 20, 40 or 50 employees. Selling to a hundred customers, which you can personally meet and get to know very well, is not the same as selling to several hundred or thousands of customers who are served by commercials or vendors. The difference is total, from heaven to earth.
However, many leaders intend to continue improvising, trying to do it all by themselves, following the DIY principle: "do-it-yourself" or "do-it-yourself" in English. Where does this attitude lead? Let's see.
Invent the car and gasoline every day
The practice of business management is thousands of years old (some Egyptian hieroglyphic writings of more than 5,000 years bear witness to this), but what is known as "scientific business management" began almost a hundred years ago.
Well, during that almost century of evolution, hundreds of thousands of companies have developed a set of management resources following the “trial and error” method: testing, checking, approving or rejecting. To do this they have invested enormous amounts of time, effort and money investigating what works and what does not work.
Fortunately, most of that immense wealth of management resources is already organized, formalized, analyzed, studied and made publicly available to any leader, including (with the advent of the Internet) many of them for free. This GestióPolis portal is clear proof of what we say.
Imagine that every time you want to travel from the city where you live to another, you discarded the existing roads and opted to build a new road yourself, and then dedicate yourself to inventing the car and later exploring until you found a well. oil to finally install a refinery that will allow you to get the gasoline you need for your trip. Absurd, right? Before you have been people who were planning and building the road, exploring and drilling for oil wells, building cars, and refining gasoline. All you have to do is use other people's work to achieve your goal.
Well, exactly the same thing happens in business management.
Consequences of the DIY approach
When you discard existing management resources and go for the DIY approach ("I don't need anyone, I do it all myself"), you face multiple consequences, all of them negative for you. The two most important are:
Waste of time, effort and money from your company, repeating the same tests that thousands of entrepreneurs have done before you and have shown that they were wrong.
Exponentially increase the possibility of making wrong decisions, which lead to more waste of time, effort and money.
Furthermore, the desire to do everything by themselves, not to seek help, is at the origin of the high death rates of SMEs that occur worldwide. (one)
So we must ask ourselves: why do some (or many) leaders decide to follow the difficult path and try to invent, every day, by themselves, DIY style, the wheel, the warm water, the road and the car, when we know What are things properly tested and proven with very high percentages of safety?
How much is an idea worth?
In the title of this article we used the expression “DIY leader”, but we could also have used “DIY professional leader” without problems. It would seem a lie if we had not verified it abundantly: there are professionals who, once they have finished their university degree, never take a book of the profession in their hands again. They feel totally self-sufficient. Possibly they do not know the results of a research carried out by several prestigious US universities, the results of which indicate that in the area of business management 50 percent of knowledge becomes obsolete in five years!
Do not make the same mistake, which may affect the future of your company.
Perhaps you think that the money you will invest in buying a book or a course would be more useful to invest in your small business. But, think about the following: in the market there are excellent books on business management that cost 25 euros or less. If you find a first idea in one of those books that allows you to save 25 euros in your company or earn an additional 25 euros, you will have already recovered your investment. All the other ideas you can find in that text are one hundred percent profit for you!
DIY = improvisation
In reality, the leader who adopts the DIY attitude what he is doing is putting the future of his company in the hands of improvisation. And improvisation is known to be the most direct path to error.
The dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy of Language defines: “improvise, do something suddenly, without any preparation”. And note that improvising has the same etymological root as "imprudence". Do you want to leave the future of your company in the hands of improvisation and recklessness?
Every day's practice tells us that the time for improvisation is over, as Domenico Bracone, President of Fox & Parker, SpA, Italy, rightly warned: “It is increasingly difficult to be an entrepreneur by just improvising. This is an unappealable sentence. The alternative does not exist. Or rather, we always have the possibility of continuing to do the same… until the company closes! ”
Don't forget (never) the old sentence that says: “The fool is one who does not learn from his own mistakes. The intelligent is the one who learns from his own mistakes. The wise man is the one who learns from the mistakes of others. ”
Learning from the experience of others is, without a doubt, one of the keys to saving time and money in your business. But, in addition, using the experiences traveled (and suffered) by hundreds of thousands of leaders is the wisest way to ensure the success of the company itself. Everything depends on you. And on your way to deserved business success, don't forget Miguel de Alzáa's warning:
"Starting the road with the wrong idea, with the wrong concept, can only lead you… to the wrong destination!" The future of your company depends on you and the attitudes you assume.
(1) See the article entitled “80% of SMEs fail before the age of five and 90% do not reach the age of ten. Why? ”, At www.rgpymes.com.
