Time With Sands – Preparing My Business for the Future

My business has been struggling badly in the pandemic.  Thankfully, we received a loan and will be okay for now, but I’m concerned about the next big thing.  How can I prepare the culture of my business and reassess its practices so we’ll be ready when it comes?

– Lisa W.

As the leader, you have to be very clear, more than you’ve ever been before, about your mission, your vision, and what strategies no longer work. Consider what new market trends are coming, or are already there, that will change the response of your audience if you keep doing what you’re doing now. Take an inventory top to bottom.

Most of us were taught the Pareto principle: 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes. In business, many examples of this principle have been validated. 20 percent of products usually account for about 80 percent of dollar sales value; so do 20 percent of customers. 20 percent of products or customers usually also account for about 80 percent of an organization’s profits.

This applies to everything. Leaders need to understand this, and everyone in the company needs to understand this.

Investigate where do you need new effort, vision, ideas? What worked before isn’t necessarily going to work going forward. In fact, most of it won’t! Where can you get more talent, revenues, and joy? Looking at it through that lens is the best place to start. Sit around the table and talk about this with your top people and with the heads of each of the organization’s groups, so that everyone is contributing and being heard and valued – make sure you’re all in alignment. So, when change comes, and it will, we have to be able to be agile, adept, and in sync with the same goal. It’s like rowing a boat. If we all come together, moving in the same direction, it has got to be smoother sailing through these uncharted waters ahead.