At the offices of Smart Business, we recently lost power after a car hit a telephone pole (or so the rumor goes). Everyone was sent home early, and traffic was congested enough that clearly we weren’t alone in our plight.
A lack of technology brought us to a screeching halt.
Luckily, everyone was back in business the next day, but it made me wonder.
First of all, how did we exist without computers and cellphones, and why couldn’t I think of a single task I could do without technology?
Secondly — and more directly related to business insights, advice and strategy — where did we go wrong in our planning? Why didn’t we see that one little thing that could stop business operations for multiple companies up and down our street?
Time to think about the worst-case
It’s hard to find time to plan for the obstacles, hurdles or little blips like a power outage, even though we all know they are coming at some point.
I did have some contingency planning in place like setting up automatic saves in Microsoft Word so I didn’t lose what I was working on, but I still had to stop writing.
A friend of mine says that she has a tiny back-up generator at her desk that provides power for three hours. What a great idea, but like many great contingency plans, we don’t consider them until it’s too late.
Just think about how snow blowers, generators and snow shovels become scarce just before a winter storm hits. Or, like in my case, you’ve spent hours driving around trying to find batteries before a hurricane makes landfall.
Perhaps it’s a good exercise to schedule time once a year, or once a quarter, to doomsday plan. What are our worst-case — or even tiny-headache — scenarios, and what can we do about them right now?
Go one step further and strategize
Take this kind of planning a step further, and you’re in the realm of strategic planning that all successful businesses need to do. (And if you’re already strategically planning, then don’t make the mistake of forgetting to include some contingency plans.)
For example, when I spoke with Jack Lee-Harris of Green Lawn Cemetery for this month’s Uniquely Columbus, we got to talking about cremation trends. (Who knew?)
Cremation is on the rise. In Portland, Oregon, around 80 percent of people are cremated. Here in Ohio we are only at 20 percent, but the national percentage is 50 percent.
As a result, Green Lawn is making plans to get ahead of this trend. Lee-Harris says they know they need to change their offerings to better accommodate more inurnments, second rites of interment, scatterings or green burials, so they are developing those plans now.
Imagining what’s ahead, whether it’s industry related or an unexpected issue is something we all need to do on a regular basis. It is, after all, the only way you can try to be ready for what’s next.
