There are many types of business advisors—financial, legal, insurance, special projects, etc. —who can offer expertise in solving specific problems that inevitably face every business owner or budding entrepreneur.
Employing specialty advisors on an individual basis has value when the business owner has accurately determined what the specific problem is. However, many business owners struggle with the process of determining just exactly what that problem is!
Unlike most business owners who focus on the trees, the general business advisor focuses on the forest. The business owner may look at financial statements and decide that a cash flow crunch is caused by a problem with sales and marketing. So, he engages a sales and marketing specialist to come in and attack what he believes to be the problem. Unfortunately, sales and marketing may not be the root of the problem at all!
A business is a system, and any issue within the system is inextricably linked to other issues elsewhere in the system. Like a general practitioner in the field of medicine, a general business advisor can look at the big picturethe entire companyand see exactly how the...