It’s clear this pandemic is going to have a major impact on businesses for a good while, it isn’t going to be a flash in the pan. Congratulations on surviving this far. But what are you going to do to ensure your business survives the next 12 months?
If there was an easy answer to this question, everyone would be doing it. You probably won’t survive the next 12 months if you manage your business ‘reactively’ – waiting for things to happen before making major decisions – or work ever harder doing the same old things. Yet proactive, anticipative, brave management is not sure to work either. So, what do you do?
Doing a little more than your competitors, having several routes to market, daring to be different, reducing your exposure to dangers you cannot control, are all important. If this pandemic isn’t the prompt for action for major decisions to be made in any of these areas, I don’t know what is. Often business owners who I meet in a formal insolvency scenario tell me they regret not taking bigger decisions, and earlier. Why is that?
It’s because they went through a grieving process similar to that when someone goes through something very personal and tragic, like a life threatening illness:
(1) Denial – ‘this can’t be happening to me’;
(2) Anger – ‘Why me? Who’s to blame? But it’s not my fault!’;
(3) Bargaining – ‘Just give me more time and I’ll see my way through it’;
(4) Depression – ‘If it’s going to happen, why bother doing anything?’;
(5) Acceptance – ‘Well if it’s going to happen, I may as well prepare for it’.
I know this is a horrible comparison, but it is the reality of the situation for many businesses, their very existence is under threat like never before.
You see only at stage 5 is the business owner ready to take major action, make big decisions.
The problem is by then, it can be too late, there is less time to do what you really need to do.
My advice?
Put every option on the table, then devise a brave plan and act early.
Sure, it might not work, but even if some of it does, you will be doing more than your competitors who lack such bravery, who cling to the hope that things will somehow go back to how they were.
And that, I think, is the best we can hope for in these truly horrible times.
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