I missed a week

It was inevitable that at some point I was going to miss a week and so it has come to pass.

Actually, trying to keep up with a weekly blog was always going to be challenging if we're honest, so not surprising that I have struggled a bit.

Aside from admitting the folly of setting myself unrealistic targets, what have I learned from this?

The reason it is difficult to keep up with optional extras like blogging is because there's already plenty of other things going on in my day. On the plus side, this is because there is no shortage of client work going on. In fact, it's probably the busiest it's ever been and that's great because it shows that after all the disruption of the last year or so, many businesses are thriving and actively doing deals. The problem with being a very small team though is that there is very little capacity at the best of times, and hence when lots of client work is ongoing, then other things can get pushed down the agenda.

In reality, it doesn't much matter if I don't get around to writing a blog every week, or month...or ever. This is just something I do for my own interest really.

More of an issue is the slippage of other things which are not urgent but are still important. Business development is an early casualty of a busy period (and I've written about the danger of stop-start previously). But there's all the good stuff like recruitment and team development and internal promotion that can get squeezed out too. Where easing off on the pipeline might harm the near term, not giving attention to the future shape of the team is damaging the medium to long term and ultimately threatening the achievement of the big goals.

Being too busy to recruit is one of those nasty "chicken and egg" situations where you need the resource to have the capacity to do it.

It doesn't particularly help the internal recruitment pipeline either. It's all very well being the "heroic team" smashing budgets by working really hard, but if the perception within the firm becomes "the team that has to do loads of extra hours" that can be a turn-off to potential converts. There needs to be the right balance.

So, mission for the coming weeks is to ensure the right proportion of attention is given to the important parts of the business plan that aren't just doing urgent client work.

And occasionally finding half an hour to write this.