By David
Wright, BSA Marketing.
I was talking with one of our service
partners the other day. They offer specialist creative/technical services – and
they are good!
The business has become established
and grown steadily (though unspectacularly) over the past few years. In the middle
of last year, the owner decided he wanted to ‘go for it’.
He took on additional staff both in
sales and technical/creative, he moved offices to central Manchester – and he went
for it….
9 months later, things haven’t gone
quite according to plan. The business did not take off like a rocket yet the overhead
taken on to deliver the growth was still there month after month – something had
to give. The decision was taken to restructure the business back to more like it
was before. It was accepted that the plan hadn’t worked.
But that is business life. Things
don’t always work – statistically they most commonly don’t work!
The important thing is that the business
is still viable. Business is a process and it is important to try new things because
this is how we learn. If a new plan succeeds, great. The business moves to the next
level, ready for the next push.
If a new plan doesn’t succeed, it
shouldn’t matter, it is just part of the ups and downs of business.
Remember Google Answers, Google Reader,
iGoogle? All gone.
In the past 10 years, Google has
closed or reintegrated over 100 different services
In business, we are always learning.
It’s important to get something out of everything you do – even if it isn’t what
you were hoping.
Don’t ignore the signs
In September 1989, BSA Marketing was
going through a tough patch. Income wasn’t covering overheads and something needed
to be done. That ‘something’ included
redundancies but it was my job to make them and I tried to ignore it. I hung on
for 3 months until I had to face up to things. I still had to make the redundancies
and my procrastination cost me £30000 – over £50k in today’s money.
I’m glad to say we survived the experience,
but I have never forgotten it.
I take my hat off to our service partner.
They made a plan, implemented it, then took action when they saw things going off-track.
Have a written plan
Having your plan written down crystalizes
your objectives. If you specify your expectations and what it is you are going to
measure to control your plan, it is easier to avoid ‘specfication creep‘
where the plan adapts itself to fit the outcomes you achieve. If uncontrolled, this
can be dangerous.
It doesn’t actually matter if you
don’t match your targets. It does mean things aren’t going as planned and it is
an opportunity to review your plan in the light of real experience. It could be
that things are going better than expected though this can create it’s own problems!
The important thing is that you learn and get better at what you do.
Stay realistic
The reality is that most plans don’t
work out as expected (some work out better!) so if you over-commit resources and
don’t see the anticipated results, you can find yourself digging a financial hole.
Planned holes are fine – arguably they are at the heart of entrepreneurship and
business – but be careful not to let a hole get too deep. It will be difficult to
fill in! In both of my real-world examples above, we lost money, we dug a hole.
In both cases the hole was manageable and that’s the important thing.
And remember, the opposite of digging
a hole is making a pile. Even if you are only making a small pile, it’s still a
pile.
…and you are in business, ready for
the next step – whatever it is.
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