Go Off Blueprint

What did your 2020 strategy look like? 

How much were you supposed to grow by? 

What headcount were you supposed to add? 

By now we have all come to terms with the fact that this year (and many the next) are a bit of a wash. We still have to make sure we do what we have to do to ensure that our businesses stay open. But for the most part, growth has been thrown right out the window. 

This isn’t new information. If anything, everyone has been making adjustments for the past six months or so. 

In fact, it has been impressive the way that companies, seemingly overnight, have shifted in the way they do operate. The marketplace as a whole made changes and they made them quickly. 

Let’s be honest though, businesses are not known to be the most flexible of beasts, but if we have learned anything since Covid it’s that, by and large, change will happen if survival is on the line.

Trust your gut

I was reminded of the importance of flexibility last week when I was driving out to a remote village to drop something off. I had never been there before and cell signal was more of a dream than a reality. 

The directions I had said the place I was going was on the left-hand side. I drove up and down through the village, but never found the place on the left. There was however a similar place on the right. 

After making multiple loops, I stopped and asked someone and they pointed it out to me. It was the place on the right. My directions were mostly right, it got me all the way out to the village, except for the final bit of detail. 

I just didn’t deviate from the plan, even though it was fairly obvious where I needed to be. 

Not trusting my gut ended up costing me about 45 minutes, but in business, it could have been much more expensive.  

“Terribly embarrassing”

To bring this analogy to something quite literal, a few years ago in Melbourne they were expanding a bridge near my house. It had been built in the 50s in preparation for the Olympics. 

During the expansion efforts, they found the original blueprints had been drawn by hand. At the time, this raised suspensions that things may not be right. 

Instead of taking a bit more time to make sure that the blueprints were completely right, they figured it would be close enough. This was in large part due to timeframe milestones and bonuses. So without deviation, they started reconstruction.

And within a couple of months, they realized that the blueprints were wrong. The project was delayed 6 months and added a third onto the price. 

The Road Works Minister could only say that the project was “terribly embarrassing”. 

The thing is, we know what the right move to make is most of the time. It’s not going off 70-year-old blueprints. 

Things change, so adjust

We have annual strategies so we can see where we are going. They give us ambitious goals. 

The problem is that they can be very rigid. If the realities for a company change, many times, there are no mechanisms in place to change the strategy. 

As a result, things don’t get identified until the end of the year. That is too slow. Your strategy has to be more than a tick-box, but it also has to be fluid enough to move with the times.

And I can hear you now: “But look at how fluid businesses were at the start of the pandemic”. That is a fair point but it leaves out one major fact, everyone was changing, so it was the only thing to do. It was a rare period where everyone was making decisions, and in many instances, decisions were made for businesses. 

But there is going to come a time in the near future when businesses individually must make tough choices. They will put out new strategies and the responsibility will be on them alone to stay fluid. 

Don’t think that this is over. Keep fighting and doing what you have to do to survive. Have a plan, but also don’t be afraid to deviate from it to keep the lights on.