After the decision to start a business of your own, perhaps the most challenging decision you can make is whether to sell that business. You conceived it, built it, poured your lifeblood into it, and now find yourself with a viable, profitable enterprise you can call your own. You have built an asset! Now… what to do with it?

For many business owners, the prospect of selling their business is both daunting and alluring. For others, it is something of a dilemma – how do you decide whether selling is the best strategy?

If It’s Such a Good Thing, Why Shouldn’t I Keep It?

Taking a strategic approach to the prospect of selling your business is essential. The decision to give up ownership of your business and all that went into building it is no less significant and life changing than the decision to start a business in the first place. A number of key questions need to be addressed before you even put your business on the market.

1. What is your primary reason or objective for selling your business? The motivations to sell are almost always personal and never purely financial. Being clear as to why you want to sell is crucial for making the final decision.
2. If you have decided to sell, is the timing right? Some will argue that economic downturns are not the best time to sell a business. And other timing issues may involve personal concerns, the financial health of your business and even how well developed your systems and processes are.
3. What selling price do you realistically hope to get for your business? What you would like to get and what the market will offer may differ significantly. If you find that your selling price is not being met, how will this impact your resolve to sell your business?
4. Is your business “ready” to be sold? An informal poll of business brokers revealed three major reasons why a business either cannot sell, or cannot demand a selling price that represents an acceptable ROI for the owner:
   • The business cannot operate without the business owner. For example, key relationships, sales, and deliverables are largely dependent on the owner as an individual contributor.
   • The business has no management systems to support a seamless transfer of ownership. Without a smooth transfer the amount of cash needed by the new owner to support overhead and operations goes up because of downtime and loss of productivity, as do the risks of failure and the loss of key employees.
   • The business has no strategic valuation. To maximize the value of a company the purchaser needs to see more than the EBITDA (Earnings before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization) - the business must also have a strategic vision of how the business will provide the new owner with growth and profit that increases the value beyond current financials. 

In addition to the questions above, a prospective seller should also answer this last question: What are the alternatives to actually selling my business and should I consider them first?

Prepare for a Winning Transaction

Your potential buyer may be assuming the greater risk in buying your business, but it is up to you to maximize your return while ensuring a truly successful transfer of ownership. Here are some essential considerations you will need to address:

• Is the business fully developed so that a new owner can step in and run it just as you do?
• Have you identified the “ideal” buyer and the optimum price for your business?
• Are there potential buyers in the market who can afford your price?
• Will you have to finance part of the sale and, if so, how much?
• What will the expenses be in selling your business?
• What kind of due diligence, or investigation, will a buyer want to do?
• Will you have to stay on after the purchase and will the buyer keep your current employees?

These questions are not exhaustive, and you should prepare as completely as if you were looking to buy a business – taking into consideration all the relevant factors, and seeking professional advice to help you in areas you are not experienced in.

Once You Decide, It’s Time to Act

A Gallup poll conducted among owners of private companies with an average of 50 employees revealed that 65% planned to pass the business on to family members while only 7% planned to sell or liquidate their business. Yet, incredibly, 75% of the respondents did not have written succession plans! 

According to some experts the single largest reason most businesses are not sold is that the owners never acted on the decision to sell. As a result, the succession or transfer of many businesses is determined by outside forces. Hesitation, indecision, or simple procrastination has derailed the successful sale of more businesses than price issues, timing, or the state of the economy.

Alternately, you do not want to act on impulse – like receiving an unexpected cash offer for your business – when selling is not currently in your strategic plan and goals. Ultimately, however, the realities of life demand that you have a strategic exit plan in place.

A few months ago my wife Eleanor came home upset after an incident with one of the parents at our daughter's school. That afternoon, when Eleanor said hello to Michelle, Michelle completely ignored her. Thinking maybe Michelle hadn't heard her, Eleanor said hello again, this time louder. Again, no response. Michelle wasn't speaking on the phone or in a conversation with another parent. She was able to respond, she just refused to. Eleanor was getting the silent treatment. Not one to give up, she said hello a third time. Finally, Michelle mumbled something without looking up and walked away.

Eleanor wasn't friends with Michelle. They had only spoken a few times in the past, most notably when she called Eleanor to complain about something our daughter did. Still, she was thrown off balance by Michelle's cold shoulder. It was one of those small things that's hard to get out of your mind. She wasn't expecting it.

We are constantly shocked by the things other people say and do or by the things they don't say and don't do. How can my boss have ignored me? How can my colleague have taken the credit? How can my employee have made that mistake? Can you believe my manager said that to me in front of all those other people? How can my partner be so inconsiderate? Why doesn't my spouse appreciate what I do for her?

When I coach executives or mediate conflicts between leaders, each person is always amazed at how the other people behave. This has led me to a very simple conclusion.

The problem is not us. And it's not them. The problem is our expectations.

It's not that people behave well or badly. It's that we expect them to behave differently than they do. Even when they have proven our expectation wrong time and time again.

At this point, should you still be surprised when your boss for the 100th time doesn't invite you to a meeting? Or when you send a colleague a nice email and it goes unanswered? Again.

Here's my advice: don't go to a hardware store and get upset when they won't sell you milk.

In this case, the answer to frustration is acceptance. It's amazing how changing your expectations can change your experience.

Because the world is more global and organizations are more diverse, the likelihood we will interact with people very different from us is increasing exponentially. And people who are different from us do things we don't expect or want them to do. Sometimes they don't look at us when we speak to them. Sometimes they talk back. Sometimes they don't talk at all. They defy our expectations, and we feel frustrated.

Remember the golden rule? Treat other people the way you'd like to be treated? Forget it. It doesn't apply anymore, if it ever did. Try this new rule instead: Treat other people the way they'd like to be treated.

If you don't like to be micromanaged, for example, you probably try to avoid micromanaging others. But there are some times and some places where that would be a mistake. Like India, for example.

According to Mike Schell, co-author of the excellent book, Managing Across Cultures: The 7 Keys to Doing Business with a Global Mindset, Indian workers prefer — and expect — to be micromanaged. Mike told me recently: "That ultimate sin of Western managers is the best way to get things accomplished in some cultures. Once you begin to treat people the way they want to be treated, you'll find the results much more rewarding. When operating in a new country, we don't just need word translators. We need people translators."

In some cultures it's important for meetings to start on time. In others, it makes no difference. In some cultures it's rude to interrupt. In others, it's simply the norm. Understanding other people's expectations can help you reset your own. And that helps you work with them more effectively

When I'm sitting in a meeting with Yukiko, my Japanese partner, and she doesn't speak, I might assume she agrees with what I'm saying. But I'd be wrong. It's not that she agrees with me, it's just that she would never disagree with me in public. If I understand that, I won't be surprised when she doesn't follow through.

Still it's almost easier to understand Yukiko because I'm from New York and she's from Tokyo. I expect her to be different.

But Chris in the office next door? Who's also from New York? That's a different story. I shouldn't need instructions on what to expect from him.

But I do. Because each one of us is, in effect, from a different culture. We have different parents, different teachers, different experiences, different hopes and dreams, successes and failures. Even if we understand the same words, we're still speaking different languages.

So instead of getting frustrated with other people, learn their rules of engagement. If you pretend each person is from a foreign country you don't fully understand, you'll be more open to accepting him or her.

Think of every interaction as an experiment that explains a little bit more about the individual you're dealing with. Then, when someone defies your expectations, don't get mad. Just change your expectations to more accurately align with reality. Once you understand your colleagues' operating instructions, you might decide to approach them differently. Use different words. Be more or less aggressive.

Or you might decide to leave — to go and work somewhere else with other people. Because once you accept your colleagues, once you realize you simply can't buy milk at a hardware store, you might decide you don't want to be in a hardware store at all. I'm not saying people can't change. I'm just saying you're setting yourself up if you expect them to.

"Do you think I should call Michelle to talk with her about this afternoon?" Eleanor asked me, still stewing over getting the cold shoulder.

"That depends, " I answered, "will you be OK with it when she blows you off?"

I used to be amazed when I would watch my daughter at the computer terminal working on a high school paper, listening to music, eating a snack, and conducting simultaneous instant messaging conversations with a dozen friends around the world. Had her brain been re-wired by the constant use of technology so that she could concentrate on different activities and actually get things done; or should I worry that she was trying to do too many things at once?

Now a study from researchers at Stanford University suggests that my concerns may have been well-founded. The study conclusions, reported in the Aug. 24 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are unambiguous: "Multitaskers were just lousy at everything," according to Clifford I. Nass, a professor of communication at Stanford and one of the study's investigators. Despite starting the research on 100 college students with the hypothesis that multitaskers had some special abilities, the study found that multitaskers were actually quite ineffective at managing information, maintaining attention, and getting results. Compared to study participants who did things one task at a time, they were mediocre.

While a single study of 100 students doesn't prove anything definitively, it does reinforce what many of us have probably suspected - that trying to do too many things at once often means getting none of them done well.

In organizations however, the implication is much more pernicious because individual performance, for better or worse, is multiplied and amplified many times over. If dozens of people are reducing their effectiveness by multitasking, then the organization runs the risk of being tied up in knots.

Anyone who has been through a post-merger integration or a major systems implementation or a large-scale reorganization knows what I'm talking about. The success rate of big projects like these is around 30%. One of the reasons for this dismal track record is that well-meaning project managers try to cram everything in at once so that multiple work streams involving hundreds of people are simultaneously making changes in work processes, reporting relationships, technology usage and more - while everyone also attempts to keep going with their regular jobs. It's an organizational version of multitasking, or multitasking on steroids. And just like individuals who (according to the Stanford study) reduce their effectiveness by multitasking, so do organizations. If it's hard for one person to concentrate on a meeting while responding to blackberry messages while eating lunch, imagine what happens when you multiply the distractions by the thousands?

Before you turn in your Blackberry and refuse the next big organizational project however, let me suggest that the alternative to multitasking is not single-tasking. In this day and age, that would be too slow. Rather the answer is to shift our mindsets from a focus on volume to a focus on value. Instead of checking off all the boxes and trying to get everything done, let's identify those activities and initiatives that will truly add value. It's OK not to do certain things, or to do them later. For example, in a recent merger, a team was debating whether to adopt Lotus Notes or Outlook as the standard email system. It's an interesting discussion, but in the short term it's not a value-creator for the combined company.

We all have choices to make, as individuals and as managers of organizations. What can you do to make sure that those choices are based on value rather than volume?

Ron Ashkenas is a managing partner of Robert H. Schaffer & Associates, a Stamford, Connecticut consulting firm and the author of the forthcoming book Simply Effective: How to Cut Through Complexity in Your Organization and Get Things Done (Harvard Business Press, December, 2009).