One of my acquaintances is in a real muddle, and stressing out beyond the point of sensible.
His business is circling the drain hole, and he is drowning in things that he thinks he needs to do, and things that his various service providers, suppliers and customers have told him he must do, now, or sink.
Problem is, they are all different, and all come from the perspective of the person offering the advice.
Over a beer, during the Christmas break he observed I had been the only person he knew who played in this space, and had not offered a ‘perfect solution’ to his problems, so he asked my opinion.
I do not have all the details of his situation, so have no solid base from which to offer a view, but suggested he ask himself what I call ‘The Framing Question’
‘What is the one thing I can do, such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary’
Answering this question will lead logically to several others, such as ‘How’, which leads onto a set of steps, which begins to sound like a plan!
You can have a plan that is really long term, which often resembles a dream until you put specific milestones and performance measures in place, and work towards it progressively. Exactly the same thing can be said about the tasks that confront you on a daily basis.
Making sure that the daily tasks build towards the longer term one is simply a cascade of the daily answers building over time. The daily answers will vary, the longer term answer should not.
In my acquaintances case, the answer was ‘Cash’
He is now working on executing a plan we developed on the back of a coaster that manages his cash better, and will generate more of it.
The plan was for 90 days, which was all he had left if nothing changed, with targets and tasks, and he now has a cascade of monthly, weekly and daily priorities that he and his staff will work on before anything else.
What is the one thing I can do…..?
A simple question, but clear and with no room for wriggling.
