How I learned to run a small company: Part Five in a series on the startup challenges of Wiesner Publishing.

• Author: Wiesner, Pat
• Position: ON MANAGEMENT

We started Wiesner Publishing with just three people: myself, Jim Fahnestock, our writer; and Phil Cook, our salesman. In the beginning it wasn't hard to manage since no managing was going on at all.

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Just about every day, we would talk about what was going on. Without even trying, we were doing the most important single requirement for good team effort: communicating.

Our division of responsibilities was pretty obvious: Jim tried to write great articles, Phil tried to sell advertising space in a magazine that didn't exist yet, and I tried to organize the machinery to create a magazine--and to find investor money.

It seemed to work fine. Jim found lots of articles to feature, Phil sold enough space, and I kept finding enough money to keep going. On paper we were making a profit, but we were always short of cash--a problem that would plague us on and off for years because we were growing, and growth is expensive.

But as long as we were a three-man team, management wasn't a problem. We ate lunch together just about every day, and we knew everything the other guys were doing.

Success came with fatter magazines. Phil needed more salespeople; Jim needed more help finding and writing articles. And we couldn't keep doing the production, art and circulation work ourselves, so we had to hire professionals.

We'd had a bookkeeper since early on, but it became obvious we needed an accountant. So soon we had a staff, secretaries and managers. That amounted to only about 20 people, but it was enough that we could no longer just assume everyone knew their roles.

My job was to make it all play smoothly, something I had never really considered.

In those days, "Management by Objective" was in its prime, and I really took that to heart. The idea was to get the entire company behind the objectives of the management. We seemed to put that to good use, but it didn't seem to be enough.

Around that time, I took a course in management from Dale Carnegie, and I still remember the content: PODCC--plan, organize, direct, communicate and control. Great stuff!

Success begins with a plan from top management that is organized around the people and the groups. Everyone in the company has to buy into the plan and the organization of the operation. Under this umbrella, direction is given and everyone knows their responsibility. You will not get good communication unless you require it. Control...