Maximize Revenue

So some of the “making money” goals are rather obvious – some are not.  Let’s take a look a the fundamental equation of the vast majority of companies C-Suite focus:

Profits  =  Revenue  –  Costs

Brilliant in its simplicity!  In order to make money there are really own two things you can do: maximize revenue or reduce costs.  Everything else is subtext – mere footnotes to the primal objective.  Let’s take a look at these two major players first.

Maximize revenue.  The goal of maximizing revenue is nearly universal in the business world.  There are exceptions in the not-for-profit, non-profit, foundation and gifting world, but nearly all companies are trying to at least move to increasing revenue – even if in the short term the metric of new subscribers acts as a proxy for the eventual need to show revenue to the investors.  Senior management is often manically absorbed in this goal – particularly the finance, sales and general management functions.  This may not directly be a big goal of human resources or operations functions, but everyone they report to will have this myopia.