Effective management is a significant part of any business, as it provides revenues. A properly organized management process may increase the business’s profits, help find new clients and suppliers, and reduce costs. At the same time, companies with improperly built management lose money, work at a loss or even face bankruptcy. A person may make and sell really good and high-quality goods or services.
However, without proper management, the quality itself will not provide high revenues or customers’ attention and trust. It is important to understand that a good and experienced manager can help to solve such a problem. The video “The Profit in 10 Minutes: Coopersburg Sports” by CNBC Prime proves that Marcus Lemonis helps the struggling owner of the company making baseball tools, which risks losing both his money and business because of ineffective management.
Despite the fact that the company’s owner managed to make it profitable in the past, it slowly collapsed at the moment the video was filmed. It happened due to several management-related mistakes the owner made. The first one is related to the fear of innovation, as the company continued making baseball tools, though they did not pay expenses. Such a decision contributes to one of the five reasons for making bad decisions in business, which is justifying past decisions. The owner transformed his father’s business of tool handle, turning to a baseball tool company, and was not willing to change the course. He believed that selling equipment for baseball players was the most effective marketing strategy.
The next wrong management decision concerned the team of workers. The audience does not see many of them, but the appearance of the owner’s children shows that they do not have clear positions at the company. The daughter was supposed to manage sales and marketing, but she confessed to doing more jobs than these. The son also says he does “a little bit of everything” (The Profit in 10 Minutes: Coopersburg Sports). Such a wide variety of jobs pertains to teamwork dilemmas, specifically, to uneven workload, which does not let workers focus on one job to perform it accordingly. As a result, they do many jobs, but rather poorly.
The third management principle that can be found in the video is the biased attitude of the owner towards his workers and his children in particular. When discussing future business strategies with Marcus, the owner does not listen to his children’s advice on incorporating new categories. That means that he does not trust his children and considers their ideas unreliable. The bias here is combined with the owner’s justification of his past decisions, as he cannot accept that they are not profitable anymore and the business needs something new.
The fourth concept related to the mistakes in management that are shown in the video is the lack of alliance between the owner and the workers. His daughter mentions at the beginning of the video that her father takes part almost in every action the workers perform. Such a waste of effort is useless because the man cannot properly concentrate on one concrete job or action instead of doing everything at a time. His behavior proves that he does not trust his workers and is unable to form a mutually beneficial alliance with them.
The next concept concerns the owner’s misleading the partner on the real scale of the business. It contributes to the principle of sunk cost effects because the real losses from the business were higher. The motives of the owners hiding this information from the partner remain unclear. However, it still regards the fact that the owner intentionally decreased the company’s losses and the real scale of the trade. It is necessary for the owner of the business to understand the consequences of such an action. It might have become the reason for the total collapse of the business if his partner did not notice it.
The sixth concept of management-related mistakes regards the fact that the business was not long-term oriented. Baseball is a seasonal sport. Hence, the demand for equipment depends on the season. The business had almost no revenue during the low season selling only baseball tools. However, if the owner had listened to his children and started selling wooden goods apart from the baseball equipment, the business might have had stable profits during the whole year. The long-term perspective is one of the key concepts of managing the business, as it enables the owners to get regular revenues as well as strengthen their positions in the market.
Taking into consideration all mentioned above, it is possible to conclude that managing a business is a very difficult job, and not all people are able to perform it. Hence, it is necessary for business people either to hire a skilled manager or study management themselves. The case of Coopersburg Sports company has shown how well the presence and help of an experienced manager may transform the business, turning it from a collapsing to a thriving company.
Work Cited
“The Profit in 10 Minutes: Coopersburg Sports”. YouTube, uploaded by CNBS Prime, 2020. Web.