Five Ways You Could Be Killing Your Business

This article was written by Geoff Williams of Entrepreneur.com

Businesses perish in untimely ways, many of which are largely out of an entrepreneur's control: There's too much competition. The public is no longer interested in your product or service. You're a victim of bad luck -- you opened a business on the Gulf Coast a few weeks before Hurricane Katrina hit. Maybe a trusted employee has been cooking the books, or a family crisis is dragging you down.

But sometimes, the painful reality is that a business falls apart for one reason: you. In the end, when any company is suffering, there is a question every entrepreneur must ask when he or she looks in the mirror: Am I killing my own business?

We asked a number of experts for their thoughts on how we most commonly shoot ourselves in the foot. Although there are probably 500 or more methods to murder a multinational or strangle an S corporation in the dead of night, we agree that there are five ways it's most likely to happen.

Micromanaging

As the saying goes, the first step is recognizing you have a problem. Fine, but what are the signs? Margaret Morford, owner and president of The HR Edge, a management consulting firm in Brentwood, Tenn., points to several subtle signs that your micromanaging is out of control. For instance:

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