How to Manage a Business: Three Key Areas for Success

How to Manage a Business: Three Key Areas for Success

By: Drew Starbird, Ph.D., MOBI Executive Director and Professor, Information Systems and Analytics, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University

The My Own Business Institute (MOBI) in the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University has just launched its 2024-2025 free online entrepreneurship courses with some exciting updates. The catalog includes our popular Starting a Business course, and a re-imagined growth-focused course called Growing a Business, which replaces our previous Business Expansion course.

Dr. Drew Starbird, Executive Director of MOBI

In addition, this year we are introducing a new course, Managing a Business, which aims to bridge the gap between the starting and growing phases of business ownership. The fifteen topics that comprise our Managing a Business course provide a strong foundation for small business management that will be helpful for entrepreneurs at any stage. Students will learn about leadership, operations, project management, negotiations, lowering expenses, hiring employees, and strategies to overcome unexpected challenges.

As we contemplated changes in our entrepreneurship curriculum, we identified three key areas that are essential for managing a small business. These include building financial stability, supporting operational efficiency, and cultivating strategic decision making. We have built our new course to enhance student skills in these areas. Recognizing that ethics is an important foundation for every stage of business ownership, we also added an ethics session to both our Starting a Business and Managing a Business courses. I’d like to share more about these critical areas for business ownership and how our 2024-2025 courses help aspiring entrepreneurs to achieve greater success in each one.

1. Building Financial Stability

Maintaining financial stability is essential for effective business management and for creating future growth opportunities. Small business owners, solopreneurs, and entrepreneurs in larger organizations all must navigate rapidly changing financial conditions and build a skill set that includes budgeting, managing expenses, and financial planning. By focusing on financial stability, business owners can ensure they have enough money to cover the costs of operating their business, weather unexpected challenges, and possibly invest in opportunities, equipment, or resources that could support future growth. Proper financial management helps prevent cash flow issues, supports strategic investments, and enables businesses to thrive and expand.

MOBI’s new Managing a Business course includes several sessions that contribute to better financial management. These include Getting Financial Controls in Place and Achieving Lowest Expenses in addition to sessions about areas of business that impact finances, such as Choosing a Business Location and Hiring and Managing Employees.

2. Supporting Operational Efficiency

Managing a business also involves optimizing operations to make sure your business is running efficiently and productively. Business operations are the activities that ensure your goods and services are delivered to the right customers, at the right time, in the right place. Operations include activities like scheduling production, managing production resources (including people and raw materials), organizing transportation and delivery, and monitoring performance. The way you manage your business operations can have a direct impact on your profitability and success. There are several areas entrepreneurs and business owners should consider when designing their business operations. These include how you produce your product or service, how you handle the flow of goods and information from your suppliers to your customers (supply chain), your sales and marketing activities, your customer service strategies, and how you manage and maintain quality control. Some businesses may also have information technology processes to consider.

The Managing a Business course provides a new session dedicated to Business Operations, so small business owners and entrepreneurs can learn strategies for efficient operations, to manage resources, create cost savings, improve profitability, and increase customer satisfaction. By focusing on operations, business owners can reduce waste, improve turnaround times, and ensure that their business runs smoothly.

Small business owners and entrepreneurs can also benefit from the new Project Management session to apply efficient operations management on a project basis. In this session, students will learn steps for each stage of project management, from defining the objectives and success criteria to developing the plan (with a budget, a schedule, the team members you need, risks to be aware of, and more), executing the plan, and closing out the project.

3. Strategic Decision-Making

Strategic decision-making is a cornerstone of successful business management. Small business owners and entrepreneurs need to make informed, proactive, and ethical decisions about resources and expenses; employees, partners, and investors; expenses and investments; product or service development and delivery; market positioning and marketing; and more. They must also anticipate and plan for unexpected risks and challenges. Strong decision-making skills help business owners navigate competitive landscapes, respond to changing market conditions, and capitalize on opportunities, ultimately driving the success and sustainability of the business.

Strategic decision-making often begins with Leadership, so that’s where our Managing a Business course starts as well. Small business owners and entrepreneurs, even those without employees, will benefit from lessons in leadership, including how to build connections among your stakeholders, how to inspire and motivate your team, how to develop critical thinking skills and solve problems, how to build a positive business culture, and how to use your emotional intelligence, or EQ, as well your IQ.

Negotiation also plays a key role in strategic decision making. Students pursuing MOBI’s new Managing a Business course will learn about the basics of negotiation, how to prepare for negotiations, and using negotiation skills in business. In addition, small business owners and entrepreneurs can plan for uncertainty with the help of our Adapting in the Midst of Change and Saving Your Business sessions. These sessions support strategic decision making by providing skills for proactive rather than reactive business management. Students will learn about common obstacles and challenges and ways to create a sustainable business model and disaster recovery plan.

MOBI pursues a mission of providing free online education to fuel dreams and build confidence along with supporting entrepreneurship and the creation of businesses and jobs. This focus aligns with the objectives of the Leavey School of Business and Santa Clara University where we strive to create a more just, humane, and sustainable world.

In thinking about entrepreneurship, we also recognize the importance of ethics in business. Ethics is the set of principles that govern behavior, whether that of a person, a business, or a community. In business, ethics plays a key role in decision making, leadership, culture, and more. By incorporating lessons in ethics in both our Starting a Business and Managing a Business courses, Making Ethical Decisions and Applying Ethics in Life and Business, respectively, MOBI aims to bring ethical thinking to the forefront of entrepreneurship. Aspiring and existing business owners can learn how an ethical mindset can increase the opportunities to have a positive impact in business and your day-to-day activities.

Summary

MOBI is proud to unveil its new Managing a Business course that directly addresses the three sets of skills that are critical to successful business management: building financial stability, supporting operational efficiency, and cultivating strategic decision-making. By developing and applying these skills, while learning how to foster an ethical mindset, MOBI’s students can build successful and sustainable businesses that create positive impact in their communities.

Visit the Managing a Business course page on MOBI’s website for more information. The full list of topics included in this course is also below.

Sep 17, 2024