Emergency procedures – your back-up plan
Pilots have emergency plans. They don’t set out needing to use them and we all hope they never have to. But they’ve g
ot them in the event of an emergency, so they know what they have to do.
In the same way you and your business should have a back-up plan.
I know this flies in the face of all the advice you receive from business coaches, self-help and positive thinking gurus. But I believe an important part of anyone’s business plan is a back-up plan – what will you do if the whole thing doesn’t work out?
You certainly should not spend every waking moment worrying about what you will do if your business fails. That’s a waste of time and a real distraction from what you need to be doing which is focusing and working to make your business a success. That’s exactly why I think it’s necessary to have a back-up plan prepared before you start out. Otherwise, you can end up wasting a lot of time and energy worrying about it in the midst of a crisis.
Just like the pilots with their emergency procedures you need to have a considered and workable solution if the worst happens.
So, my advice for anyone considering starting up a business is to give a little thought to what you would do in the unfortunate event that your business does not work out. Don’t write a huge document, but do have a real plan, then put it away and don’t think about it further.
Then, if in a month or a year, your actual and projected cash flows are miles apart and you start to panic, you can remind yourself that you have a plan just in case things go really awry. That’s comforting, and should allow you to get straight back to the things that matter – making that next sales call, thinking clearly about your next strategic move or whatever.
Having run my own business for more than 20 years now, I have been fortunate not to have needed to implement my “emergency procedures” but I do have a back-up plan of action if I ever need it. It’s one less thing to worry about while trying to run a successful business.
