Understanding The Pieces
 by Gene Muchanski, Editor
The Dive Industry Professional

What makes your business a business?  It’s really easy to understand if you know the individual pieces that go into making it whole. Your business is a collection of components, sub-systems, and systems that are integrated into a functioning organizational whole.  Business Developers and Strategic Planners look at businesses from the bottom up and from the top down.  It is important to understand how individual business components affect the systems and sub-systems they are designed for.  Much like the individual organs of a human body or the systems and sub-systems of an automobile.

When you think of your diving business as a machine, you can begin to appreciate how it operates.   A business has internal and external components that affect how it operates.  The internal components are the ones you create to perform specific tasks.  The external components are elements outside of your organization that you may or may not have control over.  I like to look at the internal components of a business as pieces of a puzzle.  Business Consultants teach their clients how to understand each of the individual components and how they fit together to create the final image (result, outcome, or finished product).

I have been a Professional Marketing Advisor my entire life.  My number one specialty has always been the diving industry, although much of my education and experience has come from working outside of the confines of diving-only companies and organizations.  The reason being, is that business tools and marketing technologies are universal in nature and are used to create outcomes for problems and applications they were designed for.  Any business consultant, worth their salt, needs to understand the business tools and marketing technologies that solve problems, as well as the scientific method of problem solving.  For my fellow “dive industry consultants” who are known for putting simple band-aid solutions on deep, underlining problems, allow me to take the issue of problem solving to a whole new level for you.

Obstacles, challenges, and problems are not as simple as you may think.  They are usually the summation of a number of components that have contributed to the problem.  I learned that from my VA Health Team.  Medical problems like obesity, high blood pressure, and even cancer are not caused by one thing.  To treat one thing and hope to cure the entire problem is foolish thinking.  Same thing in business.  Low sales are not an isolated event.  And it can’t be “cured” with a single campaign to “increase sales.”  You have to look deeper into why sales are down and you have to employ a number of business tools and marketing technologies that create outcomes which produce increased sales.   

To help you appreciate the scientific method of problem solving, let’s look at Weight Loss Programs as compared to integrated Health & Weight Management Programs.  A person can lose weight by going on “diets”, taking weight loss medication, or even electing to have surgery.  With all of these options, there can be serious complications or side effects and there is no guarantee that you will be healthier after reaching your weight loss goal.  With Health & Weight Management Programs you will learn more about food composition, food consumption & tracking, preparation, cooking, calorie intake, caloric targeting, meal & menu planning, portion control, exercise & tracking, physical activity and limits, health factors, limitations and risk factors, and blood chemistry analysis.  You will learn to maintain a healthy lifestyle and how to adjust your caloric intake to produce sufficient caloric output.  With such an effective weight management program, your goal may switch from “weight loss” to “creating a healthy lifestyle.”  Achieving a healthy lifestyle is more likely to produce positive outcomes such as weight loss, lower risk of heart attack, reduced blood pressure, lower cholesterol, lower A1C, balanced blood chemistry, and many other benefits.

Understanding the components that go into a business organization is the foundation of any good business plan.  When you create a business plan, you will learn what a business does and what business tools you will need to get those tasks accomplished.  Business tools not only perform specific tasks, they usually have the ability to record the work that has been done.  Part of your job as a business manager is to analyze the results of your performance.  That is the part of the problem-solving process that most managers fail to follow up on.  Too often, they will use a business tool or technology to solve a problem but fail to analyze the outcome to see if it was what they had planned for.  By not questioning the default outcome, you are assuming that you used the right tool for the job and that you used it correctly.  Both assumptions could be wrong if you don’t understand what business components do.

In future articles in The Dive Industry Professional, we will discuss a five-point process to solving problems.  1) Awareness. 2) Education. 3) Planning. 4) Action. 5) Review-Analyze-Adjust.

Become a Member of our Global Diving Business Network: Annual Membership in the Dive Industry Association is $125 and includes placement in a number of Trade Directories and websites.  Our organization uses these websites and directories in advertising and marketing campaigns to refer business to our members.  By joining our network, you are getting more than a listing in a directory or website.  You are becoming part of a network that works actively on your behalf to bring buyers and sellers together for the benefit and growth of the Global Diving Community.  Download a Membership Application today.

For more information about the Global Diving Business Network, contact Gene Muchanski, Executive Director of the Dive Industry Association, 2294 Botanica Circle, West Melbourne, FL 32904.  Phone: 321-914-3778.  Email: gene@diveindustry.net  Web: www.diveindustry.net

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