The “fire in the belly” entrepreneur is legendary in business – the person whose enthusiasm and belief in his or her enterprise carries them through the tough times, undaunted and head held high. But anyone who’s taken a ride through the Business Storm Cycle knows that nobody comes through it unscathed. If you’re in business, you’ll experience it more than once – from the dizzying highs of the Tornado, when your startup kicks into gear and [...]
We’ve all seen the heartbreaking news photos of people standing in the rubble of their homes or places of business after a tornado has passed through. While the devastation wreaked on your enterprise by the Business Storm Cycle phase we call the Tornado – that period of hypergrowth and tumbling margins—is more fiscal than physical, it can leave you and your staff with that same sick feeling of having barely survived a disaster, wanting to [...]
These days, those three words – better, faster, smarter - have become the goal for all sorts of businesses. Do a Google search and you’ll see them applied to banking, car manufacturing, data analysis, urban design, government, transportation, and even things like shoe design, cocktail making, and cleaning out horse stalls. Clearly, every business in every industry needs to be better, faster, and smarter in order to compete in the twenty-first-century world. The best IT [...]
So, you’ve weathered the hyper-growth phase of the Business Storm Cycle we call the Tornado, suffered thru the Avalanche phase of shrinking margins, and you’re now in the consolidation phase, looking around at the devastation these storms have left behind and wondering how to begin to put things back together. During the consolidation phase, your job as the leader will be to get your company ready for the next Tornado. The bulk of the work [...]