The Business Death Wish

Business planning is fun.  A lovely distraction from the daily grind and a chance to dream about a bright, prosperous future. That’s the easy part.

An extreme story I heard last week involves a small business who have decided to undertake a bit of a re-structure. They’ll be losing a director, who has asked to take £70,000 with him, so they’ll also be losing some staff to pay for that. They’ve also decided to move offices and change the working hours of the remaining team, to cut costs.

This is scary enough, if you’re an HR lawyer, but what’s scarier still is that THEY HAVEN’T TOLD THE TEAM!

With weeks, if not days to go, no-one has done the difficult job of explaining the plans to the wider team. They just can’t face the fallout and, if we’re honest, just don’t want to hear themselves saying out loud what they’ve been quietly planning behind the scenes. I guess there will just be a sign on the door one day at work, saying “follow these directions to find your desk”.

OK, this is an extreme example, but true and certainly not unique. What’s more common is huge amounts of time, money and energy invested in business strategies, growth plans and change management  (lucrative for the consultancy industry, if nothing else), followed by lacklustre delivery and disappointing results.

This is because businesses appear to believe that they have employed robots, with no independent thought, who are also mind readers.  Sadly, for most of us, this is not the case.

So, 2010 seems to be the year of change for pretty much everyone. Make sure your plans stick and your team are as committed to this new course of action as you are. It’s not difficult, just different.