So how does your company stack up? If your company is what Senge describes as a ‘Learning Organization’ then there is no need to protect your turf, no need to accept compromise, no need for management to know everything. In a Learning Organization knowledge that employees have is used and each member of management team is there to support other. They realize that everyone wins if team does well and they also know that a failure is just another term for a learning opportunity.

Wouldn’t you like to work in an organization where your opinion counts and where you CAN make a difference in companies success? Where you don’t have to pretend to be busy, or pretend to know everything. So how do you create a learning organization? It starts with creating learning individuals in learning teams which then cascade into a learning organization. The only process that we know of that comes close to achieving goal of a learning team is Best Year Yet system (http://www.arcturusadvisors.com/partners.htm). Through this facilitated process team members learn to work collaboratively, learn from their mistakes and continually challenge their assumptions about reality. Above all they work together as a team to solve problems and improve results.

A Learning Organization is possible!

Achieving right balance requires a management skill, even though you may never before have seen it that way. Where do you apply that management skill and how? I suggest you at least bear following in mind at all times:

· Managing your business is an attitude of mind; an awareness. If you can elevate yourself to thinking as a manager, even though you have nobody other than yourself to manage, then you are setting yourself up to be a better and more successful business owner.

· Critically examine all requirements, or temptations, to spend money on marketing. If marketer in you is anxious to spend, you should stand back from that and take a balanced view. Examine your proposed spend again next day. You may have a different and more circumspect view next time.

· Having a marketing budget is important. Try to stick to it, but be prepared to increase it out of profits if something is going well.

· Evaluate all marketing options in terms of your budget, time, risks and expectations.

· Be very selective about marketing options you choose to utilize, and then ensure you have a way of tracking their effectiveness. If you don’t, and you’re trying a number of options at once, you will not have much of a clue as to what is successful and worth continuing, and what should be dropped from your marketing mix.

· Be prepared to stop any marketing campaign that is not getting results within a reasonable time scale, but also try to make a sound judgement on what is a reasonable timescale. It is as bad to prematurely stop a campaign that could have been successful following month, as it is to carry on with a campaign you should have stopped.

· Review effectiveness of your marketing efforts regularly, at least monthly but preferably weekly. Keep your finger on pulse of business.

This has just been a brief introduction to managing your online business marketing. In any business, getting marketing right is crucial. Online marketing, with its thick veil of hype, is particularly hazardous. As you develop more of a management attitude, you will find it that much easier to see through hype, and nurture your business through many steps to success.