So you’ve come through the Business Storm Cycle, bruised but still in business. You know that you need to rebalance and realign your people, processes, and IT. If you recognize yourself in that description and you’re reading this now, you’re probably saying, “Yeah, that sounds great. But how can I do it? What are the steps I would have to go through to make that happen in my company?” You may have considered hiring an expert to do it for you, but wondered if you could afford it.
Let me turn that question around and ask instead; can you afford not to?
You need professionals who already have experience riding out the storms. They’ve been through the entire cycle many times with many different companies, and they’ll be able to see far more objectively and clearly than you can. When I’m hired to help a company reinvent itself, I use many different communication techniques to bring people together, including things as low-tech as posters hung up in the hallways and “town halls,” as well as e-mails and social media. We let people know how and why we are going to transform them into a better, faster, smarter company that will be ready for the next Tornado. Together, we move the entire staff away from being worn out, tired, and disappointed to becoming enthusiastic and hopeful once again. We let them know that they’re not failures; instead, they are successes, because they made it through the Tornado alive—and now we’re going to get ready for the next one that’s going to come along.
The fact is, as the head of your business, your hands are already full—and your expertise and knowledge are more valuable to your business when you’re working on your enterprise. If your house’s plumbing went south, you probably wouldn’t pick up a wrench and fix it yourself. You’d hire an expert plumber, because he or she would do it faster and better than you could, and your time is worth money. The same holds true here: If you have never survived the Business Storm Cycle before, you won’t be able to speed things up; in fact, you’re very likely to slow down the process.
There are smart places to cut corners and costs – but be wary of false economies that wind up costing more than an expert fix would have.