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Spring Is Just Around the Corner

 

Spring is just around the corner, but we are not yet out of the woods of wild 30–40 degree daily swings in temperature, gutter gushing rainstorms and bright and blustery late winter days. The economy is also searching for its course, alternating between rare good news up market days and the seemingly endless stream of bad economic news.

Against this backdrop, it is more important than ever to continue focusing on what you need to do to both sustain and drive your business forward.

In order to assist these efforts, we offer a few articles of interest:

• A Reader Helps Us Rethink Our Advice: A Fresh Approach to Advisory Boards provides a response to a reader on why now, more than ever, an advisory board can be useful and how to jumpstart the process of initiating a board.
• Chicago Business Leaders Survey - Insights is a summary of the second Blackman Kallick survey-testing the pulse of Chicago-area business leaders. While more pessimistic than the earlier survey results, there are a number of interesting items to consider including cash reserve positions and the disparity between declining sales and steady staffing levels.
• Leading Change in a Downturn provides insights into the difficult issues involved with helping individuals cope with change when the external environment is up for grabs as well.
• The Changing Nature of Your Banking Relationship ... Some Ideas to Consider looks at how you need to modify your behavior to deal with the new realities in the banking system.

The prominent theme in the banking relationship article relates to proactive planning. Yet, in the current gyrating business environment, many have indicated that they cannot plan. In fact, we would argue that a more disciplined approach to scenario planning is an absolute requirement today. A February 28 article from the Economist, "Managing in the Fog," discusses the challenges and opportunities inherent in scenario planning. Lego, the Danish Toymaker, uses its monthly operations board meeting to both look in the rear view mirror as well as discuss what is likely to happen over the next twelve months. Also discussed in the article are Cisco's capabilities to monitor sales activities and other financial information on a daily basis to enable the company to quickly identify and react to regional and market trends.

While it may not be easy, the notion of a rolling 12 or 18 month forecast or a quicker month-end close should help position you to make the hard decisions necessary for the weeks and months ahead.

Finally, a few thoughts about planning as well as doing something about the plans once they are in place:

"In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work."
– Peter Drucker

blog.BlackmanKallickStrategyInsights.com

Sincerely,

Barry S. Cain, former Managing Director, Strategic Services
David Spitulnik, former Director, Strategic Services
Suzanne Lane, Senior Manager, Strategic Services
 

This publication is part of Blackman Kallick’s marketing of professional services, and is not written tax advice directed at the specific facts and circumstances of any person and/or entity. Contents of this publication are of a general nature, and you should not act on this information without obtaining professional advice from your business advisor that is appropriately tailored to your individual needs and circumstances. This written advice is not intended or written to be used, and cannot be used by any taxpayer, for the purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed under the Internal Revenue Code.