These include general accounting, management control, financial management, legal compliance, information systems, staff development and change management. It’s a long list, and often everything is urgent and rarely everything is clear. For those working in administration in small or medium-sized companies, feeling that you have to do everything at once is the norm, not the exception.
Yet there is a way out of this labyrinth.
And, like solving a Rubik’s Cube, it doesn’t require genius; it just requires the right method.
The criterion that changed my way of working The criterion that I followed, and which allowed me to achieve excellent results during many years of working in SMEs, was to be guided by internal customer service. This means providing services to everyone along the company’s value chain, from production to sales and from logistics to management.
I was lucky to begin my professional journey as a controller with an enlightened entrepreneur like @Giordano Bruni, who made me realise the advantages of embedding this criterion in my professional DNA. This had a profound influence on my administrative work, pushing me to adopt a simple communication code free of accounting and tax technicalities.
This is not to say that the technical aspects don’t matter — they do. It’s just that those who work in production, sales or logistics don’t need accountant language; they need clear information to take good decisions. And if that communication code is the prevailing one, it ends up influencing the way you express yourself.
From complexity to order: the Rubik’s Cube
I use the metaphor of a Rubik’s Cube to describe this journey. At first glance, it may seem chaotic — 54 tiles of six different colours in seemingly random positions. But with the right method, each tile finds its place. The end result is an orderly, coherent and functional system.
The administration function of an SME works in exactly the same way. There are many issues, but if you approach them with the right criterion, they all find their place in a coordinated whole. 54 weeks, 54 tips, a complete system
Starting this week, I’m launching a weekly publication programme: 54 tips for good SME administration, one for each tile of the cube.
The six faces correspond to the six major themes:
- Administration — reviewing the function to free up time and create value
- Management control — measuring performance to improve decision-making
- Financial management — managing invested capital to ensure sustainable growth
- Legal services — reducing risk with straightforward, practical tools
- Information systems — using data as a strategic lever
- Leadership — driving change with method and motivation
The content will be published every Wednesday on LinkedIn. Every Monday, it will be explored in more detail on the Kenning Consulting blog.
My experience confirms that, when everyone involved in management uses the value creation criterion as a point of reference, it supports a path of balanced, profitable and sustainable growth.
The Rubik’s Cube can be solved. Let’s get started!
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