Comment: by Peter Schofield, director of Schofield Britten Consulting Group
"Well, what were you, me, and just about every other businessman doing during the month?"
So said a regional director of Natwest when discussing the performance of one of our companies.
These conversations are probably going on right now all over the UK, as the country reflects upon a reduction in performance during April and May. However, the conversation I refer to above was held during the first few weeks of July 2002, right after the Golden Jubilee and World Cup.
Sales during May and June had fallen by over 50% and led to much questioning about the wisdom of earlier decisions to build new offices and significantly increase headcount. With the FD pointing to the P&L and the operations director pointing at the growth targets, our management team were torn between shelving expansion plans and forging ahead regardless.
Eyes on the wrong ball
The answer to the rhetorical question posed by the banker was that national holidays in May, followed by corporate World Cup events throughout June attended by the Great and the Good of the business community, meant the collective eyes were well and truly off the business 'ball'.
Upon further investigation, behind each of those sales predictions that had failed to come to fruition, there had been a client where one or more of the decision-making team had either been on holiday, extended weekend breaks, or had just deferred progress-task decisions until "everyone was in the right frame of mind".
Impact
The accumulative effect was that they did nothing other than tread water for almost two months. No recruitment, no capital expenditure, no progress on M&A projects, no management development, no public relations exercises. Indeed, none of the things that they had previously decided would take their organisations forward.
Considering the complexity of some of these projects and the size of the organisations concerned, it's not an exaggeration to say that these lack-of-decisions impacted upon thousands of people.
What did you sign off?
Bringing this up to date, think about your own in-house decisions, and those made by your own clients during April and May this year. How many progress tasks and project stalled during this period? How much more could have been achieved if everyone had maintained focus?
We will soon be in July and then hitting the summer holiday season; that annual period where managers start deferring decision-making until September, meaning we had all better get moving if we're not going to see a set of disappointing performance figures for our organisations next month.
Told you so!
As The Confidence Yo Yo referred to in the previous post covers, the collective result of another month of organisational procrastination will have certain sections of the media and credibility-seeking analysts rubbing their hands in self-righteous glee at the prospect of their prophecy of a double-dip becoming self-fulfilling at last. It's a low news time and they have to write about something after all - but it doesn't need to be that way!
Forge ahead and reap the rewards
Back in 2002, we took the view that our clients' needs hadn't gone away, they just hadn't been in the right frame of mind. We simply put additional effort into getting things back on track and that's what happened in the majority of cases. Whereas June's sales were 50% behind budget, July's sales were 180% ahead.
The inclement weather at the end of 2010 saw a drop in GDP. Those who kept perspective, applied a dose of common sense and refused to be led by irresponsible media predictions of a double dip, forged ahead with their plans and took the rewards.
Without doubt April and May have been a particularly poor for some sectors due to supply problems, holiday disruption and general procrastination and lack of focus within management teams throughout the UK.
Surely, if we each resolve to get our own house in order, focus and act upon what we want for our organisations, rather than allow ourselves to dither and waste business oxygen, the quicker we all move on from this collective paralysis?