Have you ever created a personal fitness program that backfired? Maybe you decided to lose those love handles and whip yourself into shape. So, you went on a juice diet that left you feeling dazed and starved, and you bought yourself some “magic bullet” piece of exercise equipment guaranteed to work out every muscle in your body at the same time. Sure, it had been years since you’d really exercised, but you pitched yourself into [...]
Business owner, do these complaints sound familiar to you? Why is productivity down? Why are margins falling when revenue is soaring? My back office just can't keep up or give me good data It seems like my technology team is always fighting fires If so, it’s likely that you are going through one of the transitional phases of the Business Storm Cycle. Whether that’s the rapid growth phase of the Tornado, where sales are suddenly [...]
Tornados – those hypergrowth phases of high sales revenues and low cash flow – can sneak up on you. You don’t realize one is there until your company is whirling around your ears, and you’re right in the midst of it. That drastic percentage of increase in revenue is what causes a Tornado. The front office goes crazy, while the back office gets more and more lost, trying to figure out what to do with [...]
Who’s more likely to survive a powerful storm: The person who prepares for what’s coming, and has a plan in place to deal with the likely outcome or the one who didn’t bother to check the weather report that day? The answer’s pretty obvious, but it’s amazing how many otherwise smart and forward-thinking individuals in leadership fail to prepare (and thus prepare to fail) for the predictable phases of the Business Storm Cycle ahead of [...]
You’re caught up in the Business Storm Cycle – and though you may not have heard its name, you’re certainly aware of its impact. Maybe you’re caught up in the Tornado, that hypergrowth phase where sales are exploding and you’re running as fast as you can to keep up. Or perhaps you’re stuck in the Avalanche, watching your margins shrink as your growth declines. Or you might be in the doldrums of the consolidation phase, [...]
What do you do when the weather report warns of an impending large-scale storm? You hit the hardware store for flashlights, batteries and candles, nail sheets of plywood over your windows, and make sure your storm cellar is ready for occupation. You buy gas for the generator if you have one, and you line up with your neighbors for milk and bread at the supermarket. In other words, you prepare. You may not be able [...]
It doesn’t matter if you’re in an accelerating or decelerating phase of the Business Storm Cycle; the transformation is a similar process. What you’ll find on the upper slope when you’re accelerating is that you don’t have the right applications; you have people in the wrong roles, or you don’t have enough people. On the deceleration slope, you’ll find you have redundancies. You probably have double or triple entries. You have too many people on [...]
Have you ever seen a tornado up close and in person? I promise you, it’s not something you can ignore or overlook. The sky goes black; the wind starts to blow, and suddenly the trees are bent over sideways. If you’ve been listening to the weather reports, you’ve probably already prepared for its impact as well as you can; grabbing your flashlight, taking supplies down into your storm cellar if you have one, or getting [...]
So – you’ve hit the hard wall of slowdown we call Consolidation. You’ve gone through the heady, wild sales spike and rapid growth of the Tornado, and suddenly you’ve stalled. Sales are down, and you’re not making your margins – not even close. Now what? This is not the time to point fingers and blame people for whatever brought your Tornado to an end. No one did anything wrong. Everything you are experiencing is a [...]