A recession typically pushes a management team's focus into becoming very micro (budgets, staffing, banks, costs, refinancing, saving money). If you're not having a macro conversation right now, you'll be disconnecting from your business vision. Worse, if you're not connected to your vision, your staff will almost certainly be feeling rather lost and detached, and your business will move into the next boom in that way.
A way to reconnect
Remember why you started the business? Remember why you come to
work each day?
The easiest way to connect with your original vision is to
rediscover your business history. It is described as a "camp fire"
conversation. We ask each other, "What's the history of this
business? Back then, what were we trying to achieve?"
The key word in this history conversation is perspective. The
danger of trying to reconnect with your vision straight from a
recession is taking the recession's negativity forward into your
future. As a result, the re-set vision will be too small. It won't
fully accommodate company traditions, culture or values because
it's still connected to lots of angst, anxiety and anger.
If you try to build a future vision, but unwittingly include the
recession's negatives, it won't be connected to your original
business intent. You'll miss out the perspective of where you
originally began.
Document your history
We've been advising clients to document
their business journey, moment by moment, and reconnect back to
those many instances. People normally begin by saying, "On day one
we did X, Y and Z." But they must go back before day one because
this is not when most businesses actually begin. In some cases,
people spend years planning their business before launching and
it's rarely an instantaneous start-up. They may have frustrations
from working for someone else, or spot a market opportunity and
spend time in research. Recognising your early history as part of
the total business journey is vital.
Having a camp fire conversation with business partners doesn't
necessarily need a facilitator or coach. It's something people can
easily do themselves.
Here are some questions to get started.
- How did this business start?
- Why did we launch originally - only commercial gain or did we have a cultural aim too?
- What were we trying to achieve?
- What were we hoping to do?
Not just the money
Gaining perspective takes us back to the question of why we got into business originally - and it's rarely just the money. We had a client who was a financial planner, earning in excess of £200,000 each year. He didn't call us because he wanted more money - he realised he'd spent the last seven years working hard to build his business and earning £200,000 a year, but the cost had been not spending time with his children.
By the end of that year we had taken our coaching client from
working 6.5 days a week and earning £200,000 a year to working 4
days a week and still earning £200,000. The joy we received from
the job was fulfilling because this man now had more time with his
family.
When you reconnect to your own history, you'll remember why you
first set the business up.
A camp fire example
Shirlaws has grown into the international company we are by practicing what we preach, both commercially and culturally.
As part of moving our business through the recession, we asked our founder Darren Shirlaw to spend the time to put on paper our camp fire story from 1994 (when he first began researching what would become Shirlaws) to today. If you want an example, or would like to know the Shirlaws story, you can read it here.
Get your team round the camp fire
For other businesses, the management team needs to get together
around their own camp fire. Get the vision conversation going.
Reconnect and discover where you're up to and how to direct the
conversation towards the future. With perspective, people will say,
"Yes, let's talk about this."
Without the whole business history, and without the perspective it
brings, people may have a vision conversation that could go
anywhere. It won't necessarily be connected to your business
journey, but be influenced by the recession.
What's important is to return to the foundation stone you laid. Go
back to first principles by taking a historical perspective.
When you laid your foundation stone, what did you write on it?
WHAT TO DO NOW
If you haven't done so already, review the actions from my last blog post - Understanding the Power of WHY.
Remember that reasons (the WHY) and history are important to you, but only valuable to your business if you share them.
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