One-Person Organizations

My favorite management thinker is Peter Drucker, my favorite pianist is Maurizio Pollini, and my favorite cellist is Yo Yo Ma. If any of them decided to grow by developing an organization that offered me the alternative of having others provide the services of what they do best, I would feel that I was losing twice. I only want to experience the best in these areas, and do not want these people to spend any time on anything other than improving what they deliver to me now so superbly.

Your customers probably feel the same way, but you probably require them to deal with a substantial number of people at your company -- such as those in sales, quality, technical support, accounting, and customer support. This can feel like dealing with eight octopi, each with eight arms waving in a different direction. Some of these employees may also not yet be the best in the world at what they do.

You can greatly improve your success by locating areas of customer interaction where delight and value can be significantly increased by having one terrific person provide all of the service that the customer needs. If you do this where competitors are weak and marketing costs are not high, you can dramatically shift the strategic balance with this initiative.

If you would like to explore how to achieve the enormous sales improvements, profit expansion, cost reductions, and stress elimination that come from this simplification, Please e-mail Don Mitchell at askdonmitchell@yahoo.com. I will provide information about One-Person Organizations for you on behalf of Mitchell and Company.

© 1999 Mitchell and Company