Recently, I was visiting with a friend who has been working at home since the pandemic started, and I asked how he liked it and whether he planned to continue.

To my surprise, he said he could not wait to get back to the office. He had the typical Zoom fatigue, but he was also tired of being home with the kids not in school and struggled with all the distractions of domestic responsibilities. As a result, he was working late into the night just to stay caught up.

At first, he thought it was great. There was no more commuting, he could hang out in his shorts and t-shirt, and have a leisurely start to the day. What he ended up finding was he missed his colleagues and the social interaction, not to mention the occasional happy hours after work.

The thought of remote work initially seemed like a panacea for many people, although working from home is not a new concept. If we go back in time, our country was made up primarily of individuals working as hunters and farmers, and they sold their products from their homes or within their local communities. Often for these craftsmen, the workspace was combined with their living space.
It was during the Industrial Revolution when factories started sprouting up across the country that laborers, including women, were required to travel to a location to exercise their trade craft. Skilled workers relocated out of the home and community to factories where they worked scheduled hours. This became the norm.

In 1979, IBM did a trial run with five employees, allowing them to work from home, and by 1983 they had 2,000 remote employees. Twitter was the first company to allow its employees to work from home permanently.

It seems that due to the pandemic, business has made a drastic swing to the remote workforce. The pendulum has swung quite far from being in your seat at the office. In my experience, extreme swings one way or the other rarely sustain themselves; eventually an equilibrium is reached somewhere in the middle. We will see a hybrid work experience for many employees going forward.

There is a buzz in the air that working from home will become the new norm, but it comes with its own set of issues.

The sudden change that the pandemic brought created a challenge for leaders and managers who were used to determining productivity by seeing employees in seats at the office. How do you maintain your company culture and work ethic when you can’t see your employees in their offices or cubicles working?

For many leaders, this new work environment has proven difficult to get used to. It’s not easy to manage what you can’t see.

The logistics of leading and managing a remote workforce, and the question of whether the same workforce will be returning to the office is on the minds of most owners and leaders. James Dimon, with JP Morgan Chase, was quoted in the May 24, 2021, edition of the Wall Street Journal saying, “Remote work doesn’t work well for those who want to hustle.” Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon called remote work an “…aberration that they are going to correct soon.”

In many companies there appears to be a stigma associated with those who choose to work from home. Even ambitious and productive employees may be negatively affected if they are not seen in the office; they may be overlooked for recognition and even for promotions.

Many employees are anxious to get back to the office and interact with their colleagues on a more personal basis. They miss the creativity and spontaneous collaboration that comes with physical proximity. But many others no longer want to go to the office.

Some businesses are offering cash rewards and incentives for employees who return to the office. The CoStar Group in Washington D.C. has enticed their employees by randomly awarding $10,000 in cash prizes to an employee every workday. They are also offering all- expense paid trips to Barbados. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal (May 3, 2021), other employers are offering office slippers, gift cards, and free food and drinks.

Whether your employees return to the office full-time, work from home full-time, or opt for a hybrid situation, there are some underlying principles that are necessary to lead and manage this new work environment. Putting these principles into practice will help you ensure that employees continue to be engaged and productive.

Vision and Purpose

To keep employees focused, they need to understand the vision and purpose of the company. Where is the company going and why is it in business? This was necessary when all your employees were coming into the office daily, but it’s even more critical now. They need a clearly articulated vision of what the future looks like, how the company is making a difference, and what part they play in achieving that vision and purpose.

Mission and vision are often posted on the walls of the office for all to see. With a remote workforce a deliberate effort to make communication a priority is necessary – to not lose sight of where the company is headed. It helps remote employees remain clear about the purpose of their efforts.

Roles and Responsibilities

Employees need to know what is expected of them no matter what location they are working from. A recent Gallup poll found that only six in ten workers know what their employer wants from them, meaning 40 percent of our workforce has no idea what is expected of them. This is an enormous leadership and management issue that needs to be resolved wherever your employees are located. Without daily face-to-face interactions, it’s easy to lose sight of what is expected of you. Clear roles, responsibilities, and expectations must be communicated on an ongoing basis.

Goals

To achieve the company’s vision and mission, employees need clear goals. With remote teams, collaborative goal setting is critical to getting everyone involved. This increases accountability, especially when employees know and understand their colleagues’ goals as well.
With remote or hybrid work systems in place, it is imperative that leaders and managers challenge and hold their employees to a high standard of success, not unlike what they did when everyone was working in the office. This may require more frequent check-in than was required when all employees were on site.

Teamwork

Working in teams to create engagement, collaboration, and accountability has been, and will always be, a key factor in an organization’s success. With the amount of social isolation that comes for many with a work-from- home environment, being part of a team is essential to not only business success but also mental and emotional well-being.

Zoom is helpful for keeping teams connected, but onsite meetings with follow-up in-person collaboration likely offers more.

It is far too easy for a remote employee to become disconnected from the office and their colleagues.

Nothing of any great significance ever happens alone – it always takes people working together toward a common vision and purpose.
Bringing people together beyond the regularly scheduled Zoom call will be important for a company’s continued success.

Productivity

How do leaders and managers measure productivity with a workforce that they can no longer see? Leaders and managers have often equated productivity with employees in their seats. They used drop-in visits to gauge output and engagement.

Some companies have started using software tools to track workers’ behavior, such as log-in time and number of keystrokes. But many employees find this intrusive, and it raises the issue of trust. For that reason, tracking the number of hours an employee is logged on to their remote access computer is no longer a good measure of productivity.

Beginning with the end in mind, a Steven Covey principle, may be the best approach. An employer needs to decide what outcomes they are seeking and then determine what the best path is to achieve those outcomes, keeping productivity in mind.

Culture

If the culture of the organization prior to remote work was one of high trust and high productivity, there is no reason to think that would change based on where the employee is located. If the culture was not operating in a high-trust, high-productivity mode prior to the onset of remote work, then that has probably not changed either.

Whether in the office or remotely, leaders and managers still have a responsibility for creating the conditions and culture that support productivity.

This often involves giving employees the tools they need to perform their work, removing the barriers to success, and providing feedback, guidance, and support. This is no different than before. The main difference is not the performance measurement tools utilized, but simply the location where employees are performing their work.

Getting employees back to the office may continue to be difficult. This is where another culture shift may need to take place. With employers such as JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs trying to get their employees back to the office, we may start seeing pushback that will require companies to rethink their positions and consider hybrid options for the returning workforce.

According to Gallup Research (April 27, 2021), “The preference for working remotely accelerated the concept of hybrid teams to an extreme during 2020.” Clearly a one-size-fits-all approach will not work with the desire of so many employees to have the option to work remotely. Companies trying to hire new staff may run into difficulty if they do not offer some type of remote work option.

Trust

When we work with staff and employees directly, we establish a level of trust that they will perform to our expectations, and we can see that on a day-to-day basis.

But remote work changes the equation. How do we trust that our employees are working when we can’t see them?
Creating a culture where employees are trusted to do what they have been asked to do has to be an ongoing responsibility of leaders and managers, and it starts with having a clear vision and direction, establishing clear roles, defining responsibilities and expectations, presenting transparent goals, and building great teamwork.

After that discussion with my friend, I have had discussions with many others working from home since the pandemic started. Most say they love not having to commute, but everyone admitted that it has been difficult to establish a routine that is productive.

They are too easily distracted with domestic responsibilities at home, and they miss the social interactions with their colleagues. All of those who I spoke with said they would prefer a hybrid system, rather than having to go back to the office full-time.

For leaders and managers, the remote work environment creates some challenges that require advanced leadership skills. By focusing on the fundamentals discussed here, leaders can meet this challenge if they are flexible and sincerely interested in their employees’ success. After all, employee success creates business success.

For more on this topic:  The book, The Future of Work, is a collection of advice from a group of six business advisors and consultants across three continents and four countries who specialize in working with small and medium enterprises. Get your copy on Amazon.

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For more information on how to ensure you have a successful business, reach out to me at 503-312-3145 or email me at garyfurr@garyfurrconsulting.com

You can also visit my website at http://www.garyfurr@garyfurrconsulting.com

Listen to my podcast Turning Complexity into Simplicity®

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Growing up, both my parents worked and were careful with money. When I started driving, I made a deal with my parents that I would prepare dinner five nights a week in exchange for them paying for my car insurance. I started with simple meals, and as I got better at cooking, I increased my repertoire. This is how my lifelong love of cooking got its start, and along the way I have learned a number of things about cooking that have taught me lessons about leadership.

Who Am I Cooking For?

Who’s coming to dinner? This is one of the most important questions I can ask, because my goal as a cook is to please my dinner guests. That means I need to know about my guests and what they like. In business, we need to know our customers and what they are looking for, which leads to our strategy. Strategy is an intentional focus on meeting customers’ needs or eliminating their pain.

If I can prepare a meal that would have my guest asking for seconds or wondering when they’ll receive their next invitation, I will have a loyal following. In business, if we meet the customers’ needs, solve their problems or eliminate their pain, they will keep coming back for more of what we have to offer. Keep your strategy simple. Find the need and then organize your business to meet those needs. This principle applies in the kitchen as well. What would my guest love? When I try to overthink or over-complicate the meal, it usually doesn’t turn out well.

What Do I Want the Dish to Look Like?

Food can have a powerful visual impact. Therefore, I envision what I want to serve. As Stephen Covey said in his Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, begin with the end in mind. Before I begin preparing the meal, I need to have a clear vision of what it will be like when I finish preparing it. Often when I am looking at cookbooks, I find a picture of a meal that looks amazing and I think, wow, I would like to cook that. It’s a vision of my end result. It helps when I leave the cookbook open to the picture and work toward making my meal look just like that.

In business success often depends on having a vision or clarity of direction. It is the leader’s responsibility to articulate the vision of the future for the company. Without a clear vision or direction, the business will tend to meander off course and will likely not even meet its short-term or long-term performance goals. Every journey starts with a clear vision of where you currently are and where you want to go. I always know what I’m cooking before I get out the pots and pans.

Develop Your Cooking Skills

I didn’t become a good cook through osmosis. I developed my skills over time, by taking classes, reading cookbooks, and watching cooking shows. One of my favorite things to do when going out to eat at a restaurant is to sit at the chef’s counter and watch the experts at work. I have learned so much about cooking simply by watching other cooks. To become a better cook myself, I am constantly trying to upgrade and improve my skill set. I can’t depend on the skills I learned as teenager making dinner for my parents. To be a better cook, I have to work at getting better.

If you are relying on leadership skills that you learned twenty or thirty years ago, you will not be as successful as you could be. In his book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, John Maxell discusses the concept of the Law of the Lid. He says our own leadership ability determines our level of effectiveness. If you have done nothing to upgrade your skill set as a leader, or to learn from other great leaders, you are getting in the way of your organization’s success. If you want your organization to get better, then you need to get better. To become a better leader, take a proactive approach to your own self development in this area. The best investment you could ever make is in your own self-improvement.

There are so many opportunities available to us today to improve our leadership skills that there are no excuses that justify being a poor leader. Opportunities to learn exist at the touch of our fingers. Great leaders tend to be lifelong learners, and it’s the same for great chefs.

Planning Ahead

Great meals don’t just happen. They require planning. I plan to make sure I have all the right ingredients and tools necessary to go from start to finish without interruptions or that terrible moment when I realize that I forgot a key ingredient. My planning breaks the preparation and cooking process into manageable pieces. Next, I write down a schedule by working backwards to think through how long it takes to prep and how long it needs to cook so that all the dishes will exit the oven or the stove at the right time.

This is critical: I prep all the ingredients ahead of time so once I start cooking, all I need to do is add the ingredient that has already been measured and is ready to go. I don’t have to stop in the middle of the cooking process to prepare another ingredient. For me, this leads to success—delicious meals and delighted guests.

Successful leaders don’t leave results to chance. They plan ahead. A successful leader will create a plan of action that will allow the organization to bridge the gap between where they are now, their current state, and where they want to be, their future state.

All successful businesses have a plan, which is why they are successful. A great leader will make sure they have thought through everything they need in order to execute the vision. They will provide guidance and direction to the team and make sure they have the skills, tools, and ingredients to be successful.

I recommend breaking a vision down into ninety-day goals. Just as I map out the prep time and cooking time to ensure a successful meal, the smart leader will break down the timeline between their current state and their future state into manageable pieces.

A one-year vision can be broken down into ninety-day goals for the entire team. This keeps everyone on the same page, doing their part to work toward the collective goal.

Execution

This is where the rubber meets the road, or the spatula meets the pan. We must be able to execute on the plan. The most important aspect of cooking once I have done all the prep work is to execute the plan in the order it was designed to be prepared, so that the flavors will have the appropriate time to meld with each other, the meal will not be over- or under-cooked, and the end result will be exactly as I envisioned it. This means I have to execute.

This is the point where I typically do not allow anyone in the kitchen with me, because if I am not focusing on what I am doing, the end result will be less than desired, and my guests may not be interested in returning the next time I invite them for dinner!

Business demands excellence in execution. We must deliver to our customers/ clients what they expected to receive, in the condition they envisioned it, and at the time they expected to receive it.

I have seen companies do a great job with strategy, vision, and goal setting, with the right people in the right seats with the right tools to get their job done, and still stumble on execution.

This lack of execution causes customers/clients to look elsewhere the next time. Ultimately, it’s execution that brings my guests back for another meal.

Neither cooks nor business leaders can fly by the seat of their pants and hope that it will all turn out in the end. In today’s fast-paced business environment, we need to be continually learning, growing, and developing our knowledge and skill sets in order to achieve the level of success we desire for our organizations. Like great cooks, great leaders put in the effort to become better at their craft.

For more information on how to create a successful business and improve your leadership skills in 2022, reach out to me at 503-312-3145 or email me at garyfurr@garyfurrconsulting.com

You can also visit my website at http://www.garyfurr@garyfurrconsulting.com

Listen to my podcast Turning Complexity into Simplicity®

For more on this topic, you can find the book, Traction, a collection of advice from a group of six business advisors and consultants across three continents and four countries who specialize in working with small and medium enterprises, available on Amazon.

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Through my consulting turnaround work, I have relationships with many bankers, and often they call me to help their clients. Bankers want you to succeed, and this transcript of a recent phone call with a banker demonstrates that.

Banker: Hey Gary, I have a potential project for you.

Gary: How bad is it?

Banker: It’s bad, really bad. They have lost money for multiple years in a row and the only reason they actually showed a profit this year is they received substantial funds from the Federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).

Gary: Well, we can’t plan on that going forward, can we?

Banker: No, that’s not sustainable, and they don’t have a good plan on how to turn things around. The bank is about to put them in special assets because of their financial position. We can’t loan them any more money.

Gary: Are they open to receiving input and guidance?

Banker: It’s a family business and the son, daughters, and granddaughters are open to input, but the founding father and head of the company is in denial that anything is really wrong, even though they have lost money for a few years in a row now. The dad will be a tough nut to crack. He has a lot of excuses as to why they are where they are. He’s very old school and thinks they just need to put their heads down and work harder.

Gary: Well apparently the pain to remain the same is tolerable. When the situation becomes highly painful, they might be interested in enduring the pain to change. It usually takes a crisis to get people out of their comfort zone. People always hope that it will get better this year or next year, but hope is not a good strategy. They need a plan. Would you like me to meet with them?

Banker: That would be great, they really need your help.

And with that, the call ended, and I set up a meeting with the family.

When I met the family, I discovered that they were barely getting by, surviving on a shoestring. They had no fundamental business principles in place to improve their top-line revenue and bottom-line performance. They had been successful in the past and they were banking on that success to carry them forward, but the business environment had changed, and they were stuck in their old way of doing business.

The patriarch of the family was still in denial and felt they would pull themselves out of it. He thought the reason they were in this position was due to a series of bad decisions.

The son was working six days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, had recently gone through a very tough divorce, couldn’t remember when he’d last had a vacation, and was asking himself whether he really wanted this for his life. In private, he confessed to me that he didn’t want to live his father’s life of working seven days a week for the rest of his life. The son’s daughter, who was in line to take over the business, confessed that she didn’t want her father’s life. I asked them what their banker told them they should do, and they replied that the banker said they should call me.

As part of my engagement process, I conduct a discovery phase that usually lasts four weeks, in which I interview staff and employees, make observations, and have the owners fill out my business assessment, which covers 16 different areas of the business. Once owners have filled out the assessment and come to the last question—what thoughts or impressions have you had as you’ve answered these questions?—their usual answer is, “We have a lot of work to get done.”

The unfolding process as I meet with individual staff members is always fascinating. There is the story that the owners tell when you first meet them, and then there is the story that you get from meeting and interviewing the staff and employees. That is how it goes, and this experience was no different. I asked the owners if their employees knew what was going on in the business and they said no, they had not shared this with the employees. But the employees told me they had a pretty good idea that the company was in trouble, and they were worried about their future. Even though ownership had not talked about the condition of the company, everyone knew. When leaders don’t communicate, employees usually imagine something even worse than what is going on.

In the course of my discovery phase, I learned that this company wasn’t abiding by some basic business principles that help businesses stay on track and succeed. While this business was doing a few things right that had worked for them in the past, they were doing so many things wrong it was no wonder they were not making money. Let’s look at some of the fundamental business principles that every business should pay attention to in order to follow the path of success.

Strategy

Have a clear strategy as to how you will meet customer needs, eliminate their pain, and provide them what they are looking for. I have always defined strategy as finding the customer’s need and providing tremendous value in filling it. The only effective way to know what the customer needs or wants is to be communicating with them. This is particularly necessary as we emerge from this pandemic, which has disrupted the business environment and supply chain in a dramatic way. Your pre-pandemic strategy may not be the same strategy you need post-pandemic, and the only way to determine that is to be communicating with your customers. Once you have found the need—and usually that need or pain point needs to be more like a shark bite than a mosquito bite—the next step is to organize your company in a manner that will meet that particular need in the most efficient and effective manner possible.

If you are communicating with your customers and you’ve organized your business to meet their need, then the easy part is to work really hard not to screw it up in between—and then collect your check. Business success is about solving your customers problems or relieving their pain.

Vision and Direction

This is one of the most common problems I see in business, the lack of a vision or clear direction. Business owners are so busy being busy that they do not take the time to stop and determine where they want the business to be in the future. The problem is that when you do not determine your direction, circumstances outside of you and the business usually determine the direction. Without vision, the business is like a rudderless ship being blown in whatever direction the wind is blowing.

Successful businesses have a clear vision and communicate that to everyone within the organization. The company I was visiting had no clear vision of where they were going. All they knew was to put their heads down and work harder and hope that things would work out.

The son was tired of working harder and was questioning his future. Their staff and employees had no idea where the company was going, other than they were trying to stay afloat. Every day they came to work to do their job uninspired about what they were doing and why. The interesting thing was that this company was vital to people’s lives and the local economy because they provided fresh food to the local market. This is a pretty important part of our economy, and they were missing the opportunity to get their employees excited about what they were doing, why they were doing it, what it provided for people, and where the company was headed.

People want to be a part of something bigger than themselves, something that gets them excited about coming to work and making a difference. But without a clearly articulated vision and direction, it is just another job.

Have a Plan

Without a clear vision, you are unlikely to have a plan of action to bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be. No vision equals no goals on how to get to where you want to go.

Having a plan or a map helps you to see the most efficient route, and it keeps you on course. You can’t just make the plan and forget it. You need to refer to it to stay on track.

The business environment is changing constantly, and we need to continually make course corrections to create a successful future state. When I used to fly an airplane, I would set the coordinates of where I wanted to go, but if I did not check my location and refer to my map, I could easily get off course due to crosswinds or other factors. It is the same in business.

Here is another factor to consider: Your banker will be much more willing to work with you when you have a plan. This is true even if you are in trouble. If your banker knows you have a well-thought-out plan of action on how you will turn things around, they are more likely to work with you.

Leadership

One of the most important aspects of business is leadership. Peak performance depends on it. Leaders set the direction and then help everyone head in the same direction. If a business is doing well or not doing well, it often comes down to leadership.

The problem in this case was that the son was told he was in charge but was not really in charge. His father the patriarch was ultimately in charge and the son continually had to go to him in order to make decisions. The son after years of being under the direction of the father and often being told how bad some of his decisions were, was gun shy to make any decisions about the business without consulting his father first. There is no way to grow the company under this scenario.

The father had become a roadblock towards progress. The son had a number of ideas on how to improve the business and to implement mechanization to help streamline operations, but without his father’s blessing he was stuck trying to just put his head down and work harder.

The lack of a clearly defined organizational structure eliminated a key to success in business, a consistent chain of authority. Every organization needs a structure to help determine how decisions will be made and to whom staff and employees report to.

Marketing and Sales

Marketing is about getting noticed and capturing someone’s attention. Usually if a company is having a cash flow problem, it is a marketing and sales problem. The two go hand in hand in order to generate positive cash flow.

Marketing is too often focused on the company’s mythology and how the company does things rather the benefits and results of what is being provided. It is important to have a marketing plan that communicates and educates your target audience on the advantages, value, and results of doing business with you.

The company had no marketing plan in place. They were relying on the customer base that had always done business with them and made no effort to bring in any new customers even though they had recently lost a substantial account. The attitude was that it was unfortunate, but nothing could be done about it. This passive attitude is one of the reasons this whole scenario was a train wreck in progress.

When it came to sales, the company waited for their customers to call them with their needs. They made no real effort to reach out and communicate with customers.

When a business doesn’t communicate with their customers on a consistent basis, they have no real understanding of the impact they are having on their customers. They may think their customers are happy, but they really don’t know until a customer quits doing business with them as had recently happened to this business.

When I saw that they made no effort to communicate with their customer unless the customer called, and were missing a sales plan, I realized the train was coming off the tracks.

Revenue growth needs to be a proactive activity. We can’t wait for the customers to call us.

The business environment has changed and if you aren’t calling your customers, your competition most likely is.

Waiting for your customers to call you to make a sale puts you at a disadvantage to your competitors; they are calling your customers to get that business away from you. To sell to your current customer base and attract others with your marketing efforts, you need a plan for communicating how you will meet customer needs or eliminate their pain.

The larger your organization gets, the more important it is to have a clear, documented sales process to ensure you’re consistently generating revenue, leading to your success.

Operations

Operations is at the core of most businesses because it consumes the most resources in terms of labor, materials, equipment, energy, and capital investment. In a global economy, competition from other countries can make it extremely difficult. Examining your operations and looking for ways to streamline your processes and procedures is essential to gaining a competitive advantage.

It’s surprising that I have found that companies that have been in business for a very long time often do not take the time to examine their current way of manufacturing and look for ways to create more linear flow or efficiency gains. Far too often, there are no documented processes and procedures on how work gets done, which generates confusion, randomness, chaos, and inefficiency.

Every organization needs documented processes and procedures to create consistency. Once streamlined and documented, you can create standard work procedures, which are the foundation of organizational improvement.

Financial Management

The numbers drive everything in your business. Without a complete understanding of them, you cannot effectively evaluate how your business is doing. The company did not have a good understanding of their numbers, and the owners had trouble reading their financial statements. They were not producing or following a budget. They did not produce a cash flow analysis and they did not spend time reviewing their financials on a regular basis. The family member who was acting as the bookkeeper took over the role from another family member but had no formal accounting background and was struggling.

You don’t need an accounting degree or to be an accountant to take care of your books, but you do need basic accounting knowledge. Doing business without understanding your numbers is a bit like flying an airplane without paying attention to the instruments.

The instruments on the dashboard of your business are the profit and loss statement (P&L), balance sheet, and cash flow projection. Understanding these instruments is critical to your business success. You can’t leave the financial management of your business to chance, hoping things will work out. That’s a surefire way to crash.

Succession Planning

My mentor and the leader of my Mastermind group, Phil Symchych, has said that succession planning tends to happen in one of four places: the board room, the kitchen table, the hospital room, or the funeral parlor. The last two are not good places for succession planning.

The company had no succession plan in place. The patriarch was approaching 80 years old, his son was questioning if this was the life he wanted, and his daughter (the next in line to take over the business) didn’t want to live the life that her father was living. And even though she was thought to be the next in line, nothing had been discussed or decided as to the path they should take. The company had no plan to prepare the daughter for her eventual position as head of the company.

Having a succession plan does not mean that you are planning on selling your business right away or passing it on to a new generation immediately. It does mean that you are planning for the future of your business should anything happen prematurely to anyone in ownership. Succession planning takes time, and it cannot be done effectively in crisis. It often takes two or three years to create a solid succession plan. Succession planning forces you to take a hard look at your business; it has benefits for the future but also the present.

Going It Alone

Banker: How’s it going on that potential project?

Gary: The assessment went well, and I provided them with a game plan on how to move the company forward. But they have stalled on making a decision to hire me. The son and other family members see real value, but the dad still thinks they can fix it themselves.

Banker: That’s really too bad. They need your help.

My business assessment covers sixteen critical areas, and I’ve only discussed a handful here. The list above represents the key areas that were lacking in the company I was evaluating, and it is a good place to start if you are looking at your own business. That company did not move forward after I provided them with the assessment and plan of action. They were busy being busy, and the patriarch felt that they could fix the problem themselves. Of course, if they could have, they would have already done so.

Don’t make the same mistake. You can’t fix your situation by using the same behavior and tools you have been using. With a return to business fundamentals, you can improve your top-line revenue and bottom-line performance.

For more information on how to ensure you have a successful business, reach out to me at 503-312-3145 or email me at garyfurr@garyfurrconsulting.com

You can also visit my website at http://www.garyfurr@garyfurrconsulting.com

Listen to my podcast Turning Complexity into Simplicity®

For more on this topic, you can find the book, Traction, a collection of advice from a group of six business advisors and consultants across three continents and four countries who specialize in working with small and medium enterprises, available on Amazon.

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In my former career as an executive, I also flew a company airplane to get from one location to another in a timely manner. Although I liked the time savings, but I was a reluctant pilot at first. Thanks to the help of an amazing and patient flight instructor, however, I acquired the necessary skills and logged many hours of flying time. There are many similarities between flying an airplane and successfully running a business. Here are seven key steps to pilot your business to greater success.

Clarity of Direction

All flights start by knowing where you want to land the plane on the other end of your trip. Without a destination in mind, how can a flight be successful?

It is the same in your business. You need to know where you want the business to be at a specific point in time, such as December 31, 2022. If you don’t know where you want to be, you are unlikely to arrive at your destination or you won’t know it when you get there. It would be similar to just taking the plane out for a joy ride and coming back to the place where I started. Meandering is not a successful business strategy.

Have a Plan

Any lengthy flight requires a flight plan. This is where I would sit down with an aeronautical map and plot my course to ensure that I wouldn’t get off track and end up somewhere other than where I wanted to be. This usually resulted in marking out landmarks to use as checkpoints along the way to ensure I stayed on course and didn’t venture too far off the main flightpath. Whenever I flew to eastern Oregon, I had to be sure not to stray into U.S. military airspace around Boardman. This is where my plan kept me safe.

In business, we can set 90-day goals to ensure we are on the correct path and don’t venture too far away from our vision and direction. Your 90-day goals are checkpoints that will help you and your employees to stay on track.

Pre-flight the Airplane

Before every flight, it is the pilot’s responsibility to do a pre-flight check of the airplane to ensure that everything is operational. This is one of the most critical aspects of flying. I know an individual who crashed his airplane…twice…as a result of not pre-flighting the plane before he took off.

This is similar to doing a systems check of your business to make sure everything is working according to plan. Is your marketing plan in place and working? What about your sales plan? Is the accounting department keeping up with the data entry, accounts payables, and accounts receivables? Are you measuring and monitoring your key performance indicators (“KPIs”) for your business? All of the various aspects of your business, need to work together in harmony, to create a successful and sustainable future. Pre-flighting your business protects you from unexpected outcomes.

Fuel

This is an area that seems to get pilots in trouble the most. Many private plane crashes are due to pilot error, and the most common problem is fuel. Either they run out of fuel, or the fuel is contaminated. When the pilot does a fuel check, he plugs a device into a small outlet in the bottom of the fuel tank to dip the tank in order to see if there is any water, which is heavier than fuel, in the tank. Water in your fuel can cause you to have major engine problems and potentially crash the plane.

The second check is to turn on the power and look at the fuel gauges. What do they read—full, half full?

Smart pilots take this one step further and don’t trust their fuel gauges, so they get on a ladder and dip a measuring device designed for the type of aircraft they are flying into the top of the tank to measure the actual amount of fuel in the tank.

The fuel in your business is cash flow. Without sufficient cash flow your business is going to crash and burn. Are you tracking the movement of cash in and out of your business with a cash flow projection? Are you measuring the daily, weekly, and monthly cash reports? Cash is critical to your success just like fuel is critical to flying an airplane.

Take-off

Taking off requires a tremendous amount of power to generate enough lift to get the air flowing across the wings. But once you have enough speed, it’s easy to get lift and gain altitude.

In your business you can get lift and altitude by ensuring everyone is headed in the same direction, working for the same common vision, and focused on their 90-day goals. Clarity of direction and goals give you the lift you need to gain greater success in your business.

Flying

I have always considered flying the easy part. Once you have executed all the steps necessary to have a safe flight and taken off, flying the aircraft is relatively easy. But as a pilot, you can’t let down your guard. You must be on the lookout for other planes in your area that may not see you. As a business owner, you need to be looking out for anything that might impede your business success, such as your competition or government or environmental regulations.

One of the most critical aspects of flying is paying attention to the instruments on your dashboard. Reading and understanding those instruments is critical to survival. The instruments on the dashboard of your business are the profit and loss statement (P&L), balance sheet, and cash flow projection. These are your business instruments that help you determine whether your business is on track to be successful or not. It would be foolish to fly and not pay attention to your instruments, and it’s just as foolish to run a business without keeping an eye on these financial instruments.

While you are flying on a straight and level path toward the destination you have previously determined, you may need to adjust your course because there are other factors at play that could potentially push you off course, such as a crosswind. A crosswind may require you to make a course correction, which involves turning the yoke of the airplane in the direction you want to go. But if you let go of the yoke, the airplane will spin back in the direction it was previously headed due to momentum. To overcome that momentum, you must keep pressure on the yoke until you are once again in straight and level flight.

In business you must keep the pressure on the business yoke to ensure that everyone continues to head in the direction you have outlined and do not go back to business as usual. If you don’t keep some light pressure on the yoke of your business, individuals within your company will tend to go back to what they are most comfortable with, which may not be the direction you intend to go. That’s just human nature. You can keep pressure on the yoke by holding individuals accountable to the vision and their 90-day goals.

“Shut up, I’m landing the airplane”

For me and most pilots, landing the airplane is the most difficult part. You are basically trying to slow the airplane down and time the landing just right so that just as the wheels touch down, the airplane stalls. This means you have slowed the airplane down enough that you no longer have any lift, and the plane can’t fly any more. It is essentially a controlled crash. Landing required tremendous concentration and focus, and I would ask my passengers to not talk while I was landing the plane. Sometimes I would have to ask more than once.

In business many employees are being constantly distracted, costing you productivity and money. As a society we are addicted to distraction and the dopamine charge we get from all the electronic devices demanding our attention.

It takes a lot of concentration and intense focus for your business to achieve the level of success you are looking for. According to statistics, every time someone gets distracted it takes 23 minutes to get refocused. If someone is distracted multiple times a day, hours of productivity are lost. In an airplane, it only takes a few seconds of distraction to turn a great flight into a disaster.

We know the stakes are high for a pilot flying a plane, but a successful and sustainable business is a high-stakes effort too. If you want to gain greater success and increase top-line revenue and bottom-line profit, apply these seven steps with the professional discipline of a veteran pilot.

For more information on how to create a successful business in 2022, reach out to me at 503-312-3145 or email me at garyfurr@garyfurrconsulting.com

You can also visit my website at http://www.garyfurr@garyfurrconsulting.com

Listen to my podcast Turning Complexity into Simplicity®

For more on this topic, you can find the book, Acceleration!, a collection of advice from a group of six business advisors and consultants across three continents and four countries who specialize in working with small and medium enterprises, available on Amazon.

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Since moving to downtown Portland, Oregon, a few years ago, I’ve enjoyed watching some very tall buildings being built. I noticed how the construction crews dig a deep hole and pour a lot of concrete that is reinforced with steel rebar and other structural supporting devices. I’ve been amazed by how much work goes into the foundation before the visible structure of the building is begun. Of course, I realized that a solid foundational structure was necessary to build a stable building, but I hadn’t realized the investment of time and resources that goes into that solid foundation.

Like a tall building, a strong business that will weather storms needs a solid foundation. But unlike a building, where the foundation is designed to last for the life of the building, a business foundation needs to be continually examined for cracks that might create an unstable situation. These cracks in the foundation of a business are often caused by not adhering to the basic fundamentals of business success. These cracks start off small and then tend to grow with neglect and time.

Here are seven fundamentals that every business should adhere to in order to maintain a strong foundation.

Strategy

It is critical to your business success to develop and communicate your strategy. It is also important to continue to examine your business strategy to determine if it is relevant in the current business environment. The business strategy you created for your business when you started may not be as effective in today’s fast-moving and evolving business environment. A business is a living and breathing entity that must evolve and change with time as well as environmental, governmental, and economic conditions. These outside forces beat on the business, like rain, sleet, and snow do on a building. Without a dynamic business strategy to weather the storms of constant change in business, your business will struggle and could decline.

I define strategy as finding the need of your customer and then organizing your business to meet that need in the most efficient and effective way possible. Due to the various events affecting business today, it is important to determine whether your business strategy is still important to your customers today. To do so, you must be communicating with them—often. Too many business owners go along conducting their business as usual without reaching out to their customers to see if they are truly meeting their needs and solving their problems. Then these same business owners are surprised when they lose that customer to the competition who has been communicating with them. The best advice is to keep your strategy simple and to communicate with your customers often.

Create a vision of your future

I have seen many organizations that have not clearly defined their vision or direction for the company; when this happens, the employees generally come up with their own version. More often than not, the employee version is different than where the owners of the company want to go. A strong business foundation has a clear vision of the future. This clarity is critical to your success. The most successful businesses that I have encountered have a strong and compelling vision for their organization. They know where the organization is going and have planned for their future success. They do not leave it to chance.

Without a clear direction for your organization, it will never arrive where you want to be in the future. It’s the same as a journey. If you don’t know where you want to travel to, then it’s hard to get there.

Start by deciding where you want your business to be three years from right now. What do you want the organization to look like? How big will it be? How much revenue will you generate? What will be your net profit? How big will your market share be?

It’s good to ask yourself a lot of questions about how you envision your business to look in the future. Then work backwards from there. If you want your business to be in a certain position three-years from now, where would you need to be in two years? Working backwards again, where do you need to be a year from now in order to put you on the path for your two-year and three-year vision of the future.

Communicate your strategy and vision

In order to get everyone in your organization pointed in the same direction, you must clearly communicate the vision of the organization. It does the organization no good to keep the vision confidential only for the executive team. The number one reason employees don’t share in a company’s vision is that they don’t know what it is.

Your vision must be shared with everyone. How else will we get everyone heading in the same direction? Most important, employees want to be a part of something that is bigger than themselves, and a clearly articulated, compelling vision can give them what they are looking for.

Create a plan of action

A plan of action is necessary to avoid two common problems. One common problem is that a year seems like a long time, so you wait to get started on achieving your one-year vision. The alternative problem is that achieving your vision seems overwhelming, so you might procrastinate starting.

This is why you need a plan to bridge the gap between your current state and your desired future. You can chunk your one-year vision down into a plan of action called 90-day goals. To accomplish your one-year vision, each person needs 90-day goals. Creating a dynamic vision for the future of the organization is like putting everyone in the same boat, on the same river, and the 90-day goals get everyone paddling in the same direction.

Pay attention to your numbers

The numbers drive everything in your business. Without a complete understanding of the numbers, you cannot effectively evaluate how your business is doing.

I flew an airplane for a number of years and to ensure a safe and successful flight, I had to pay attention to the instruments on the dash of the airplane. It wasn’t wise to fly by the seat of my pants and simply hope that everything would work out. The instruments meant life or death in an airplane and knowing how to read them and what they meant was critical to survival.

Unfortunately, many business owners are not paying close attention to the instruments on their business dashboard—the profit and loss statement, balance sheet, and cash flow projection. It is imperative to know and understand your numbers and to take a deep dive into what they mean. Too many business owners rely solely on their profit and loss statement to determine how their business is doing, but that instrument is a lagging indicator. Usually by the time you get the results it’s too late to make any changes. Your cash flow projection is one instrument on your dashboard that looks ahead.

Marketing and sales generate cash

In my experience, if a business is having a cash flow problem, it’s tied to a lack of effective marketing and sales. That’s because cash flow is a lagging indicator of your marketing and sales efforts. Recently, I was working with a business that was losing money every year and operating on a marketing and sales system that had been installed many years before, when all they had to do was answer the phone when a customer called. They were making little effort to market their business and made no effort to reach out to their customers. When we shifted their focus to proactive marketing and sales, their cash flow improved significantly.

Marketing is about capturing your customers’ attention. Your marketing needs to be focused less on your mythology or how you do things and more on why you do it and the benefits and results for those who will purchase your product or service. As a business owner, you need to create a marketing plan that will get you noticed by your target audience.

Once you have attracted your potential customer to your business, you need to get them to buy your product or service. This is where your strategy really starts to pay off. If your strategy has been to find your customers’ needs or wants and you have organized your business to meet those needs or wants in the most efficient and effective way possible, then the selling stage should be much easier.

If you want to be highly effective at selling to your potential customers, it is necessary to have a sales plan for how to engage and lead the customer through the sales process. If you want consistent results with selling, then create and document an effective sales plan that can be followed by anyone doing the selling.

Revenue growth should not be left to chance

It’s simply amazing how many business owners leave their revenue growth to chance. What do I mean? I mean that far too many business owners do not approach their customers or potential customers proactively. Instead, they react—by waiting for the customer to call them. You cannot wait for the business to come to you; you must go and get it.

Communicate with your customers more times than you think you should. If you are not communicating with your customers, your competition is. Be proactive by reaching out and building the relationship with your customer, asking how you can better meet their needs. Show interest and a desire to help them to be successful.

There are many opportunities to improve your business success. These are just a few of the basics. Your business success is up to you. Now is the time get back on track.

For more information on how to create a successful business in 2022, reach out to me at 503-312-3145 or email me at garyfurr@garyfurrconsulting.com

You can also visit my website at http://www.garyfurr@garyfurrconsulting.com

Listen to my podcast Turning Complexity into Simplicity®

For more on this topic, you can find the book, Acceleration!, a collection of advice from a group of six business advisors and consultants across three continents and four countries who specialize in working with small and medium enterprises, available on Amazon.

--- END POST ---

Everything within an organization rises or falls based on leadership. When good things happen in a business, it’s because of good leadership. When things go south in a business, it is usually due to poor leadership. There’s no avoiding the truth: It all comes down to leadership.

So how do you go about becoming a more effective leader? I have outlined 10 steps to effective leadership based on my 40-plus years of C-level business experience and interacting with hundreds of business owners.

STEP 1: CREATE A COMPELLING VISION

As a leader, it is your responsibility to create a dynamic and compelling vision for your organization—a vision that lets everyone in the organization know where the company is headed in the future. A compelling vision is one that employees want to be a part of and are inspired by. This gives them something to look forward to that is bigger than themselves. Your task is to envision the future state of your business and then articulate it in such a way that employees want to invest in getting there.

STEP 2: COMMUNICATION

I have worked with many organizations in which CEOs and owners have a strong vision for the company, but they failed to communicate it to everyone else. Communicating the vision is not a one-time thing and it’s not a sign on the cafeteria wall. Ongoing communication is required in order to gain buy-in from your employees. As a leader, you can’t over communicate the mission and vision of your organization.

STEP 3: LISTEN

People want to know that they have been heard, and this requires genuine listening skills. The key is to listen with the intent to understand, not to reply. Most people listen with the intent to reply, so they really are not listening at all but instead they are thinking of their response to what the other person is trying to say. Listening takes practice so you can allow others to express themselves, without interrupting. I would suggest that as a leader, you always try to speak last, allowing others to express themselves fully, before you engage.

STEP 4: EMPATHY

Better listening leads to greater empathy for the problems facing individuals and teams. When you use empathy, you show that you care. Research has shown that 64 percent of people quit their job because they dislike their boss or employer. Why? Because they don’t feel that their boss or employer cares about them. Developing your listening and empathy skills can reverse this trend. When you take the time to genuinely listen and empathize, you will see your employee attrition rate go down.

STEP 5: BE MORE TRANSPARENT

The members of your organization want to know what is going on within the organization. People sense when information is being hidden; when leadership doesn’t discuss what is going on, the trust level diminishes significantly. Your staff and employees want to be a part of the solution, but they need information to do that. When leadership doesn’t honestly discuss what is happening, staff and employees create their own version of what is going on. More often than not, that version is worse than what is actually happening. Don’t allow misinformation to take over your organization.

STEP 6: GIVE CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE

Not giving credit to those who deserve it and taking credit yourself creates a toxic environment within the organization. When leaders take credit for what others have done, it creates a culture of animosity and secrecy in which employees will no longer share ideas that could benefit the business. Eventually these employees will go elsewhere—somewhere their ideas are appreciated and where leaders will give them the credit they deserve. The more you give praise and credit for good ideas, the more ideas that will be generated.

STEP 7: BE A COACH

We manage things, and we lead people. Our goal should be to help others achieve success. Good leaders coach their employees to help them meet expectations. Good leaders are engaged in helping their employees to be successful. As a leader, it is your responsibility to evaluate the progress of the individuals in your charge, the progress of various teams, and the progress of the organization, and then help coach them to even greater success. It is your responsibility to encourage others and cheer them on when they face challenges and succeed.

STEP 8: BE CONSISTENT

To have a successful company and maintain the drive and direction toward your vision, you must be consistent with expressing your mission, vision, and values to your employees. You have to repeat these foundational principles multiple times. In fact, you must repeat them so many times that your employees grow sick of hearing about them. Then, you will know that you have gotten the message across. Unfortunately, in many organizations, employees know that a communication’s push on mission and values never really leads to changed behavior. So, they think, this too will pass. If you are going to go to the trouble of creating a compelling vision or a new direction, you must be consistent in discussing it with your employees, and you have to show up every day and lead congruently with that message.

STEP 9: CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

Leadership means continually upgrading your skill set. Chances are you learned to be a leader from someone that you worked for, whether good or bad. Chances are you learned these leadership skills early in your career and have not made any significant effort to upgrade and develop new skill sets. But leaders cannot rely on leadership skills learned even just a decade or two ago. To be effective, you must continue to grow and develop all of your skill sets. If you want your business to change, you must change. Be a great leader and get on the path of continuous improvement.

STEP 10: PUT YOUR EGO ASIDE

One of the best things you can do is put your ego aside and accept responsibility for how the business is doing. A real leader doesn’t pass the blame off to others and refuse to take responsibility. When a leader does that, it’s disheartening. Everyone knows that isn’t leadership. Again, whether a business is doing well or not comes down to you as a leader.

Accept the fact that you have made mistakes and ask your employees for help in correcting those mistakes. You can even ask for help in becoming a better leader. Leaders who put ego aside and accept responsibility when things go wrong and give credit to those who deserve it when things go right will gain the loyalty and respect of employees.

Learn these ten steps to more effective leadership, practice them continually, and watch as your employees grow and excel under your leadership and guidance.

If you would like to learn more, give me a call 503-312-3145 or email me at garyfurr@garyfurrconsulting.com

You can also visit my website at http://www.garyfurr@garyfurrconsulting.com

Listen to my podcast Turning Complexity into Simplicity®

For more on this topic, you can find the book, Full Speed Ahead, a collection of advice from a group of six business advisors and consultants across three continents and four countries who specialize in working with small and medium enterprises, available on Amazon.

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Whether a business is doing well or not comes down to leadership. If you want your business to do better in 2022, then you need to become a better leader. Everything within any organization— including yours— rises and falls on leadership.

I recently discussed the concept of leadership with my good friend Lyn Cikara, a leadership coach, before she lost her life to cancer. She was writing a book on leadership, and I asked her why the countless books, seminars, and training sessions on leadership haven’t eliminated the leadership issues within organizations. We concluded that the various personalities within an organization make leadership complex.

Furthermore, many leaders are relying on talent and skills that they learned years ago, while leadership in the 21st Century is different. I also propose that the leadership skills used pre-pandemic are not the same skills needed coming out of the pandemic. The business landscape has changed dramatically, and your leadership skills may need updating so you can lead at a higher level.

A couple of years ago, I was working with a leader of a large organization here in Oregon. The leader had been hired by the company’s headquarters, located on the East coast, to run the Oregon operation. Previously, this individual had been managing his own small business in another state and he had been hired because he had industry knowledge and experience. However, he was currently struggling in his new position trying to manage a much larger organization with multiple locations.

To my surprise, I discovered that he had not done anything to upgrade his leadership skill set since he graduated from college. He was able to run and manage his own small business with his wife and a small group of employees. Now he was trying to lead and manage a much larger company with multiple locations, a direct staff of 15, and 150 employees. He was failing and needed help. He had essentially taken on a role that was beyond his capacity, thinking that because he had managed his own small business, that he could easily manage this much larger organization. Unfortunately, he lacked the leadership skills necessary.

If you are relying on skills and techniques, you learned 20 or 30 years ago, you are most likely falling short. As a leader, you need to be continually developing your ability to lead others. Continuous improvement is not an option if you want to be a successful leader.

John Maxwell’s 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership discusses “the law of the lid,” which says that our ability to lead has a lid on it that will determine our overall effectiveness. The lower the leader’s lid, the lower the ability of the organization to rise above that lid. Where is your lid?

If you would like to learn more, give me a call 503-312-3145 or email me at garyfurr@garyfurrconsulting.com

You can also visit my website at http://www.garyfurr@garyfurrconsulting.com

Listen to my podcast Turning Complexity into Simplicity®

For more on this topic, you can find the book, Full Speed Ahead, a collection of advice from a group of six business advisors and consultants across three continents and four countries who specialize in working with small and medium enterprises, available on Amazon.

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When I was COO of a $40-million company with seven locations, I was responsible for the finance department and learned quickly how important it is to have a good relationship with your banker. Business doesn’t always go as planned, and those are the times that your relationship with your banker can be critical to your future success.

I speak with many business owners, and few ever tell me that they have a solid relationship with their banker. When I ask business owners whether they know their banker, they usually say no, or that they haven’t spoken in a long time. My advice is always the same: Make time to get to know your banker sooner rather than later. If you don’t solidify the relationship when times are good, it will be difficult to do so when times are bad.

I have surveyed ten small and mid-market bankers on what they look for in their best customers. Their responses fell into these five key areas:

1. Financials: Bankers want their customers to have a deep understanding of their financials and provide accurate information when asked for it. Bankers understand that the numbers drive everything in your business, and that if you lack a complete understanding of your financials, it is like going to a sporting event and not being able to see the scoreboard. You may think your team is winning, but you are not really sure. As a business owner, you need to understand your P&L and your balance sheet, and I would highly recommend that you develop a cash flow projection as well.
2. Credit: It is important as a business owner to understand the principles of credit. Bankers like to think of credit from five different angles.
   • Character: In order, for your banker to understand your character, they need to know you as a person. This takes time. Your character involves your past business experience within the industry, credit history, referrals, as well as your standing within the community.
   • Capacity: Do you have the capacity to repay the money you are borrowing? Bankers will perform a debt-to-equity ratio on your financials to help determine your capacity to repay the debt.
   • Capital: What kind of capital do you have invested in the business that will help to reduce the risk to the bank? You must have skin in the game.
   • Collateral: Do you have both business and personal collateral invested in your business? Again, do you have skin in the game?
   • Conditions: What are the current conditions in the economy and your industry? What are the current market trends, and are they trending in your favor?
   • Proactive Communication: This was high on the bankers’ lists of what they are looking for. Regular communication is paramount to any healthy relationship. When times get tough, however, many business owners stop communicating with their banker. That is not a good strategy.
3.  Good Business Practices: Bankers are looking for businesses run according to solid business practice. If you are shooting from the hip, you will not have a good relationship with your banker. Have a vision of where you are going and a plan of action on how you will get there.
4. Proactive Approach: If you run your business reactively rather than according to a plan of action, that will be a red flag to your banker. They understand that business doesn’t always go as planned, but the bank wants to see you acting in accordance with a plan that is headed in a clear direction. By taking a positive, proactive approach, you increase your chance of success and reduce the risk to the bank.

Your banker wants to help you succeed, and that’s why they want to see you engage in good business practices. The better you are in these five areas, the more confident your banker will be that your business will be able to weather the storms that come your way.

If you would like to learn more, give me a call 503-312-3145 or email me at garyfurr@garyfurrconsulting.com

You can also visit my website at http://www.garyfurr@garyfurrconsulting.com

Listen to my podcast Turning Complexity into Simplicity®

For more on this topic, you can find the book, Strengthen Your Business, a collection of advice from a group of six business advisors and consultants across three continents and four countries who specialize in working with small and medium enterprises, available on Amazon.

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For 22 years, I flew a company airplane with my previous company. Our seven locations were spread out and flying between locations was much quicker than driving. As part of my pilot training, I had to learn how to deal with a stall, a spin, and a nosedive, in case one of these events should ever happen. Learning and remembering these tactics was critical to my survival.

Every business owner knows that business doesn’t always go as planned. They’ve all experienced business stalls, spins, and nosedives. Sometimes businesses get themselves into trouble and can’t see the way out. Recently, I have seen this as businesses try to navigate the current economic slowdown.

One of my roles as a consultant is to help business owners find their way out of a nosedive, righting the business, and returning it to a level flight path. If your business is currently in a nosedive, these seven keys will help you recover:

1. Sometimes business owners are so busy being busy that they don’t stop and look at the big picture.
Stopping may sound counterintuitive, but it’s necessary for seeing and understanding what is happening within your business. You can’t keep doing the same thing and expecting different results.

2. Stop the business from bleeding cash.
A line-item expense analysis is necessary to find the leaks. Approval for expenses over a certain amount should be installed.

3. Create a budget and use it as a tool to compare budget to actual on a weekly basis.
Highlight the variances and ask tough questions to get to the bottom of those variances.

4. Rely on your instruments and data.
As a pilot, I had to be able to read the instruments on the airplane dashboard. These instruments helped to ensure a successful takeoff, flight, and landing.

The instruments on your business dashboard are your P&L and your balance sheet, and they are critical to the survival of your business. They will serve you well if you use them as tools to compare the same period of time such as Q1 2020 to Q1 2019 and 2018. This will help you monitor the progress of your business.

5. Develop line-item metrics.
What is the cost of goods sold as a percentage of revenue? What is each line-item expense as a percentage of gross profit? How do these percentages compare to your very best year ever? Track these percentages on a weekly or monthly basis to develop a trend line to help you ask better questions, in order to make better decisions.

6. Generate a cash flow projection.
Realize that your P&L and balance sheet are lagging indicators. A cash flow projection is the one instrument you can use to look ahead at the movement of cash in and out of the business.

7. Develop a flash report of the critical information you need to better manage your business out of your nosedive.

• What are the weekly sales and how do they compare to budget?
• What are the YTD sales and how does that compare to budget?
• What has been shipped and invoiced this week?
• What are the current account payables and account receivables?
• What is the current cash on hand?

These are examples of critical information that can help you steer your business out of trouble.

These seven keys don’t encompass everything you need to get your business back on a level flight path, but they will begin the process of pulling you out of a nosedive.

If you would like to learn more, give me a call 503-312-3145 or email me at garyfurr@garyfurrconsulting.com

You can also visit my website at http://www.garyfurr@garyfurrconsulting.com

Listen to my podcast Turning Complexity into Simplicity®

For more on this topic, you can find the book, Strengthen Your Business, a collection of advice from a group of six business advisors and consultants across three continents and four countries who specialize in working with small and medium enterprises, available on Amazon.

--- END POST ---

Is your strategy for moving forward from the Covid-19 crisis the same strategy you had before the crisis? If so, you may want to reconsider your business strategy going forward with what many are calling the new normal.

The pandemic has caused a major disruption to business as usual. Many businesses were running smoothly and making money, and the current crisis is not unlike driving a car at 60 mph and suddenly crashing into a brick wall. It’s time for some damage control and assessment. While I don’t believe that the car you were driving is totaled, I do believe that business as usual will not get you the results you are looking for. Rather than limping along, trying to get by, we all need to re-evaluate how we deliver value to customers.

Here is my simple definition of strategy:

• Finding the need that the customer has
• organizing your business to meet that need in the most efficient and effective manner possible, and then
• collecting a check

Your customers’ needs may have changed slightly or dramatically since the crisis. The only way to understand what your customers’ current needs are is to communicate with them regularly on how you can help them be successful moving forward.

Focus more on how you can help your customers rather than trying to sell them something. Knowing what problem or pain they are experiencing and then organizing your business to address those pains is good strategy. Remember, this may be slightly or dramatically different than it was before Covid-19.

I run into far too many businesses owners who never call their customers and are running on autopilot. The result of this Covid-19 crisis and the subsequent shutdowns is that business has changed and we need to understand how that has impacted our customers. There is no reason to make this more complicated than that.

Once you have a complete understanding of those needs, you need to make sure you are organized to effectively and efficiently meet those needs. After you have done that, collecting the check is the easy part.

If you want to increase top-line revenue and bottom-line profit. Give me a call 503-312-3145 or email me at garyfurr@garyfurrconsulting.com

You can also visit my website at http://www.garyfurr@garyfurrconsulting.com

Listen to my podcast Turning Complexity into Simplicity®

Learn more on this topic, you can find the book, COVID Business Strategies for Small and Medium Enterprises, a collection of advice from a group of six business advisors and consultants across three continents and four countries who specialize in working with small and medium enterprises, available on Amazon.

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