Crazy, busy small business owners and executives continue to focus on achieving their strategic goals. Once achieved, they usually slow down, which is evident by how many times I have heard, “I am so busy I don’t have time to market.”
Then, when they aren’t so busy, sales leads begin to slow down and past success has turned into desperation.
Peter Drucker, considered by some to be the “godfather of modern management,” suggested the companies most at risk were those experiencing rapid growth. Then, when these same rapidly growing businesses achieved their original objectives, firms became obsolete, he opined. New thinking must be employed to keep the company moving toward the future.
Rapid growth challenges the original assumptions identified within the strategic plan. This is part of the reason Drucker believed that every three years an organization should engage in abandonment exercise where every product, every service, every policy, every distribution channel, every process is assessed or challenged by this one question:
“If we were not already in it, would we be going into it now?”
By engaging in abandonment, the executive leadership team is forced to test their assumptions. This reflection looks to answer these questions:
* Why didn’t this work even though it looked promising three to five years ago?
* Is it because we made a mistake?
* Is it because we did the wrong things?
* Is it because the right things didn’t work?
Drucker contends that without intentional abandonment, complacency will overtake the organization that won’t be prepared for market changes. This creates a reactive culture instead of a proactive culture. A reactive culture wastes the limited resources of time, energy, money and emotions. Symptoms of a reactive culture include high turnover, low productivity, increase in actively disengaged internal customers (employees) and dismal profitability.
Finally, by engaging in abandonment, the organization becomes more capable of planning for uncertainty. Given the current speed of change, there is a direct correlation between change and uncertainty.
No longer is the traditional business planning question “What is most likely to happen?” being asked. Now the question to be asked is “What has happened that will create the future?”
Are you as a small business owner, executive or top performing salesperson ready to invest the time to reflect and take that leap of abandonment to ensure your business remains viable three to five years down the road?
Leanne Hoagland-Smith is an author, speaker and executive coach. Her weekly column explores issues that impact the bottom line of firms with fewer than 100 employees. She can be reached at 219-508-2859.
