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Assessment Comes First, Then Decide How To Fix It.

2013-08-23T07:18:00.003-07:00

Every Business Has Its Own Nature To Respect

This message is offered as an example of how not to jump in and go fix a broken business model without first getting all of the useful information you need. I will use a firefighting example. I want to make it clear that in no way do I disrespect those who put their lives at risk every time they go to work. Military services, public safety and several other professions involve great risks for losing a life. We owe these men and women a serious debt of gratitude for the dangers they face in the work they do. It is well above the call of duty. I, in no way, would ever disrespect the kind of work they do.

That being said, I watched a small lighting fire get out of hand in a small community recently. At first what seemed to be a small manageable fire quickly grew out of control and turned itself into something very dangerous. It has not yet taken a human life but has destroyed homes, property and natures friendly ways where the fire damage has occurred. It is still burning out of control.

One the third day of fire fighting, the local crews recognized the need to solicit more help. The State dedicated the funds and the phone calls were made. In short order hundreds of fire fighting crews from nearby regions headed to help fight this terrible fire. The State sent in its State Fire Marshall's to oversee the early arrangements of the organizational post. Several other leaders in the fire fighting community convened on the base to develop a game plan. The next morning we witnessed hundreds of fire trucks, loggers, tractors, large bulldozers, fire trucks, tankers, helicopters and spotter planes moving about to go do their job to arrest this fire. The winds were huge. Fueling the flames was a 30 knot set of gusty winds moving the fire deeper into the upper hills and dry lands. Some structures would be at risk with these fast moving flames.

The fire crews had their orders. The game plan was put in place. The maps, the satellite images, the radios, the computers and the technology was all fired up. These leaders headed to that ragging fire with a very organized bunch of well-trained firefighters. The day of attack was now in place. The plan was full steam ahead.

By the end of the day, some progress had been made. The winds won the day but the firefighters were able to get all of their heavy equipment placed well ahead of the fires path and begin breaking a large swath in the rugged hills for the fire lines they were making. The plan looked good. Their solutions were working.

Then came the next morning. Miles above this hilly region is a great snow-capped mountain. This mountain produces some very cool breezes that each morning draw down into the valleys until it reaches the large river at the bottom of all of the draws. This nasty fire happens to be placed somewhere in the middle portion of one of those draws. The heavy 30 knot winds of yesterday were being forced by nature to travel up to the mountain in those draws. That caused the fire to move uphill, quickly. This is exactly how the 'newcomers' in the area expected those winds to move. They were correct with those assumptions yesterday. That is why they had placed and arranged to move all of their heavy equipment up the rugged hills ahead of the fire. They wanted to get well ahead of the fast moving flames and make a huge fire line to remove the material the fire could consume. This way they could lower the intensity of the fire and put it out. It would burn itself out.

However, first thing in the morning the winds shifted. The cool air moved down the hill in completely the opposite direction where all of the fire fighting equipment was located. The leaders of the fire crews got caught off guard. They did not know about these unique pressures the sea, river, mountain and gorge designed regions produce. Each morning the winds go the other direction until about 9 A.M. when they finally shift around as the land mass heats up for the day. The cooler mornings produce moderate winds going downhill and northward. This is exactly the opposite direction they were planned to protect.

Let's evaluate this scenario. Page two.

Every Business Has Its Own Nature To Respect

In a broken business model there are many unwanted fires that need to be put out. Most of those fires are obvious. For example, a supplier is refusing to ship pre-sold products to the retailer until the products are paid for up front. The retail business does not have the cash flow to fund 'up front' buying. So the pre-sold products are being withheld from the customer who actually bought them. The customer does not want to pay for something they have not received. The retail business finds this awkward arrangement unmanageable to process. Everyone will lose. The fires in small business are easy to see. Fixing them is the hard part.

The owner hires someone to come in and help them re-direct their business affairs. They want to repair what is burning out of control. The first thing the repair specialist sees to do is to find cash to pre-pay for the held up goods. Off they go running to fight this business fire.

Things are not always as they seem, however. How many of you have heard this phrase? Well, it is certainly a true and accurate phrase to respect. Let's go back to the fire fighters.

Those leaders pulled their services, their experiences and their knowledge together to come up with a plan to arrest that ragging fire. The one thing they forgot to do was to run their plan by someone local who knew the area and how it uniquely behaves. Had they run that plan of attack by the orchardist in the area, those who make a solid living on the movement of the winds and temperature changes in the hillside draws of that area, they might have learned some important things about how the morning airs shift around. Had they had that information when they made their plan they would have been prepared to protect what the fire decided to do next. You guessed it. The fire turned around and went the other way. As it moved down the draw it found new material and headed a bit west which was uphill to a collection of many homes. The fire fighting now turned into a serious issue.

Sometimes it is best to lay low for a brief moment, before any solutions are placed in action, and collect some inside information about how the business land lays. The local employees have a lot they can offer even if their business model is operating on fire. Repair specialists can learn a lot of very useful things from the people who live inside the failing business model. Ask around, test the winds, collect the information that produced the fire and how it burns. Before any game plan can effectively work make sure all of the right data is being observed.

If you are headed to repair a small business model that is failing to produce what it needs to produce, gather more stuff from the ones who are living inside. As little as their information might seem, it can provide just enough useful stuff that can help make the corrections less damaging to employ. Leaders often forget this simple rule. Go ask the locals how the winds behave in the early morning hours. It may save more homes that did not need to perish in a fire that got simply tricked to move out of control by the unique characteristics this region holds. Every business model behaves exactly the way it uniquely behaves. Before you place any cloth on that business body of repair find out how that business behaves, first. The damage done will likely become less.

Until next time...

How To Manage Disappointment In Business

2013-08-18T08:10:00.001-07:00

Disappointment Can Become Very Ugly

Certainly the business world has grown up into this larger than expected set of complicated systems to manage daily. The business world has also become increasingly demanding for processing added requirements in order to compete well. We live in complicated times. No business owner would disagree with these developments. Our time has become very demanding and very slippery to navigate well. Costly mistakes appear out of nowhere, sometimes more often than we care to admit. Doing business in today's world can be some trying stuff.

Now add to this set of truths the wreckage of a poor economy and we have a tough recipe to place on our plate of responsibilities. Every business owner who reads this kind of stuff can easily relate. They have felt the negative pinch of all of these things in their recent years of business management. Many of them still carry the current scars.

Disappointment has become a steady part of the business owners routine diet. Downtown regions have suffered collectively in many local areas. Mall consumer traffic in other regions has dropped off significantly. Consumer activities have dwindled in many other areas of business design. Online retailers are not producing the increases necessary to support the design, maintenance and marketing costs of what they are trying to achieve. Disappointment is hovering above a lot of retail environments.

Add to this struggling consumer growth effect the idea that not all business systems are working healthy. For those who have been able to produce a manageable level of increased sales revenues, other complications have taken them down the disappointment trail. Human resources are strained, under-performing and increasingly expensive to manage well. Increased health care costs are becoming a troubling line item to manage. Property and location costs have become a new long term issue. Marketing has become so much more competitive. Communication demands and the issues related to improving communications have become part of the new massive demand on an already stretched level of time chip use. Business leaders just are not able to efficiently and properly keep up with the silent requirements of their processing work demands. Some important stuff just simply gets put off. Disappointment grows. It has become such a normal part of every business leaders day. We are starting to get used to it.

How do we properly manage disappointment in our business world? How do we help our self accept those things that occur outside of our normal levels of reasonable control? How do we cope with the stuff that goes wrong because we were too busy doing other important stuff trying to survive? How do we manage disappointment in this new complicated world?

Page two.

Disappointment Can Become Very Ugly

Yesterday I heard a good story. I will spare you the details. The message I gained from the story is the best point to make. When disappointment arrives learn how you plan to deal with that disappointment. Those who have their own character reasonably designed well are the ones who will offer the best chance for dealing with unwanted disappointments. In life, we all know how disappointment does appear. It does not come with a great deal of warning. It does not come with a clearly marked road map of things we can easily see. Furthermore, when disappointment usually arrives it has a tendency to carry with it some form of suggestive blame. It seems as though someone needs to be blamed. This is usually how many people deal with disappointing outcomes. They tend to lay blame onto someone other than their own doings. This is usually performed to exonerate oneself from creating the disappointment that arrived. We quietly play the blame game.

It does not take a whole bunch of life knowledge to see these kinds of effects that human beings process when disappointment arrives unwanted. They begin dealing with disappointment in negative ways. This only adds pressure to an already tough situation. It works much like adding gasoline to a smoldering set of embers. Flames will flare up. When disappointment arrives, work over time on avoiding the blame game. Get as far away from blame as you can muster. In fact, take the full blame on all by yourself. That way others will begin to move onto better things much quicker. Who cares, anyway, as to who is at fault? The disappointment has already arrived! Get it repaired, reconditioned and back onto the trail of success as quickly as is possible. That becomes the next best step to take when disappointment arrives. In order to make this step of recovery happen quicker the blame game must be removed. Learn how to work on the prevention process after the recovery is first set in place.

One of the easiest things to ignore when disappointment arrives is how to quickly adjust for better outcomes to begin happening. Usually when disappointment first shows up the next thing we tend to do is to try and find out why disappointment has arrived. We begin immediately looking for the reasons why disappointment landed on our doorstep. This is our first normal reaction. We receive some form of disappointment and immediately go looking for the reasons why it arrived. This is a good thing to do, however, it is also something we can work on just after we turn the disappointment back around into something worthwhile to build. Once we correct how the disappointment arrived, we can go back when it has been removed and find out what types of prevention we must add to our management ways. Blame and cause can be discovered well after we deal with and correct the disappointing event.

Learn how to plan for disappointment events. Learn how to mange the corrections first when disappointment arrives. Build your people up when disappointment lands in your backyard. Show your followers how strong you are when disappointment comes knocking at your business door. Lead them to the proper repair. Get your business model placed back onto the winning track. Find newer solutions to building better stuff. Generate support for how well your team deals with the disappointments your business will constantly face. Become the leader that survives whatever disappointment musters up to deliver. Find fault at a much later stage. I have never heard a great business leader describe how they did so well because of the faults they were able to point out. Not once has that ever become a part of any one's success story.

Much like the story I heard yesterday, all fault was avoided. Only correction to repair was added to the schedule of work when their disappointment arrived. Blame was never mentioned. Their outcome had already delivered a much better set of wanted results than what they were producing before the disappointment arrived. In their case, the correction was met and was delivering new outcomes that were better than before. Disappointment became their best friend. It forced a change that was necessary to do.

Sometimes our disappointments become the best change agents we can hire. They just do not look good when they arrive.

Learn how to manage your disappointments in life. They will arrive and they will come unwanted. Your next step becomes the way you properly deal with those disappointments when they arrive. Just make sure you do not add blame to that game of repair.

Until next time...