Confronting Reality

October 7th, 2008 Chris Posted in General | 1 Comment »

Colleen came home for a brief pit-stop before leaving me again - this time leaving for …ah… Actually, I can’t remember where. I stopped trying to track her travels. Not that I don’t care - it just doesn’t matter in this day of cell phones and blackberries (surely iPhones?).

Until yesterday, I thought Colleen had the utmost faith in my work ethic. I had hoped that despite being out of sight when she was travelling, she trusted that I continued to work hard. However, my faith in her faith was a bit shaken when she got home yesterday and asked what the heck I was doing.

I don’t know why – I was in the office, leaning back in my chair with my feet on the desk and my eyes closed.

While I would be fibbing if I said I had never taken advantage of a mid-day siesta to restore engery and vitality, this time I swear my mind was whirling away.

I had just watched the record drops in stock markets but it wasn’t the fact that we’ll now need to work till we’re 80 to retire. It was wondering what fundamental changes this means to our business.

I remember reading a great book, Confronting Reality, shown above. It made the case that people who run businesses need to step back and recognize key market trends. More importantly, it is critical to recognize these realities and act.

An example cited in the book was an American business intensely trying to increase efficiencies in their American operations in the face of increased competition from lower cost suppliers. The prescription was to Confront Reality: Competitors were taking advantage of overseas manufacturing and all the fine tuning in the world wasn’t going to make an American plant competitive. Confronting Reality meant facing the fact that only through moving product overseas would the business continue to be competitive. Strategic action – not tactical – was needed.

So, in today’s tough economy, we all could tweak away with pricing and marketing copy. Or we could Confront Reality. Reality that the economy is going to change what customers are attractive, change what they want to buy and change how they buy it.

So with my eyes closed and my chair-back definitely not in the upright position, I was trying to do figure out what fundamentally was going to change for us:

• What value was the customer looking for. Growing sales versus maintaining sales in a tough market, etc…
• What product the customer was looking for. High-end customized solutions versus cost effective off-the-shelf products…
• etc…

If you haven’t sat back with your eyes closed (or paced, or went for a run, or whatever works for you) and ran through the realities of your situation, you are setting yourself up to be a victim of the times versus someone who capitalizes on the times.

C.