What to do when your business results are poor (and you have to create a plan on how to recover it quickly)?

What need to be done when your business is not performing to your goals and your team is now expecting clear direction from you, being the business leader? This can be quite a daunting question and a situation to handle. While you know this is urgent and all hands should be on deck, you can still be quite overwhelmed with the many things you can do. At this time, it can seems that the more options, the more confusing it becomes.

Amidst these situations and options available, please remember the focus must be on Execution. Yes, the focus is what is to be executed now as the priority step to save your business! This is because execution involves breaking down the recovery goals into actionable tasks, assigning responsibilities, and establishing timelines. This is exactly what need to be clear and communicated to the rest of your organization. There is no time or resources to waste.

The following shows you the 7 key steps to march forward with all hands on deck in creating a plan to recover your business quickly.

1.?????? Diagnostic – Investigate to know and understand what are the causes to the poor performance. Use proper methods like Fish Bone Method and data analytics to diagnose it and not just based on outward opinions. Without knowing the true cause and effects of the problem (back-up by data), you risk going down the wrong and costly path.

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2.????? Solutions – Device probable solutions to the problem. Do not only come up with one but rather several solution options for the team deliberation and feedback. You can use for example SWOT analysis to put the thoughts together. Team dynamics in providing workable solution is very powerful and foster ownerships.

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3.????? Timing – Understand the criticality as to when the recovery need to take place is highly important. Some recovery situations requires immediate attention while some can afford a bit more time. Your timing will determine the urgency to marshal the needed resources to execute the solutions. So often timeliness is the key determinant to how effective your solutions will be.

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4.????? Resources – Having understood the urgency, the next logical consideration is to do a stock take om what is available and ready to support the execution. For instance are the necessary talents available? Do you have a need of any financial support? What about any system readiness? And if you need them but there are not available, what is the solution to obtain them?

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5.????? Feasibility – At this stage it is time to put all together into an feasibility analysis. The feasibility analysis will indicate where do your business stand after considering ?the full spectrum from what the solutions says it should do to the timing of execution and to the financial returns. It poses questions like - ?Does it make financial and business sense even after factoring different probability of success? And finally what is the management confidence level?

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6.????? Communication – Once the management is comfortable with the feasibility of rolling out the solution, one final step is to communicate to your other stakeholders. You want everyone to know, understand and rally behind this solution. But at the same time you also wanted to receive any constructive feedback from them if the solution can be done and executed even better. Again clear communication and involvement always promote ownership and ownership is critical for success.

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7.?????? Tracking – After all matters have obtain clearance, it is time to roll it out with clear and precise execution. Execution is the key to success. Although sometimes the execution may not be ideal, never be discouraged. Learn quickly from it, make the necessary changes, adapt quickly and re-execute again. By this you are just becoming better and better. Also for effective execution, you? will need to have a tracking mechanism through a dashboard to know the progress, monitor for changes and provide communication and updates to your stakeholders.

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When you and your team have such clear focus, you are on your way in creating a recovery plan to turnaround bad results quickly. Stay focus and do not be distracted by short or intermittent setbacks.