Let’s face it; the American economy
has been stalling for quite some time now. Businesses that have stabilized themselves
for rough times will no doubt feel less pain than those who continue to operate
as if there was no downside. But yet, the technology boom still rages on bringing
products and services to market at a rapid pace. We can find those troubles
appearing as product recalls, downsizing, and bankruptcies. With fluctuating
ideas and thoughts about where our economy is headed, it brings with it many issues,
risks, and problems.
The strength in consumer spending
has been fading, causing some serious offsets and slowdowns in corporate
profitability and factory activity. Those slowdowns are driven by falling
productivity, rising costs, as well as low energy and currency volatility. Add
to all of that the continued practice of big business pulling up stakes and
moving jobs offshore, and you will wonder, when will things ever get back to
normal.
Most smart businesses today are
increasing their issues management and long-range
analysis practices. They know how to better
prepare themselves for rougher times ahead. Issues analysis rests on the
ability to understand exactly what issues may be heading your way before they arrive.
To successfully analyze and manage the
issues that are currently afflicting your organization, or potentially will, a
few basic practices must be understood. When viewing current issues it is imperative
to remind yourself that your current issues can, and probably will become your
future issues as well. But realistically thinking, it is more likely that those
issues will strengthen over time, and become much bigger issues if not properly
managed.
Identifying what can go wrong today,
will give you a huge advantage later on in the future. Today, it is very common
for businesses to focus solely on just a short-term
(1-5 year) issues analysis. That practice is not only dangerous, but it is also
not forward thinking enough. Short term thinking is great, but, you should not
stop there. Long term planning creates better contingency actions that can also
be applied to short term issues as they arise.
You know your business, and you know
what keeps it operating. You also know what can bring it down. Every element of
your business, whether it’s a small aspect today or a large one tomorrow, can
potentially be the domino that starts an endless negative reaction. Identifying
potential issues today, before they occur, is the smartest thing a business can
do.
Identifying issues doesn’t require
vast amounts of research data. Some organizations will overwhelm themselves
with their painstaking research and data collection efforts, just to realize
the most simple of common sense things. You can use surveys and audits, you can
monitor the economic futures, and you can also hire an outside company to come
in and do it for you. But, common sense and simplicity usually always triumphs
at the end of the day.
To conduct a thorough issues
analysis for short term and long term identification, just a few simple processes
are necessary to navigate through. If you do not already have a team in place
to work through these processes, I suggest putting together a small team of up-to
four very forward thinking individuals to tackle this for you. Be sure to not have
a team comprised of a single generation. Mix it up, and include every diversity
aspect you can find. This will provide you with different views, and that is
exactly what you will need.
To begin, your team must first
identify every function of your business. What makes it tick, from the least important
to the most important? Identify those functions separately under different
titles such as minor issues, immediate issues, dangerous issues, and
catastrophic issues, or something similar. Have your team creatively identify
everything that may, can, will, has, or probably not create an issue. No matter
how small the issue, it must be identified. If your secretary has only one
computer, and it fails, that is an immediate issue. How long will it take to
replace or fix the computer? What data was lost? Who, down range will now not receive
communications from your secretary? Everything must be considered. When
identifying your functions, include all of your products and services, because
they are the major functioning elements of any business. A loss of a supplier,
or raw materials, will greatly create a domino effect throughout your
organization.
Next, an adequate analysis of current
social, economic, technological, and political change must be understood. What
are the current impacts on your organization? A continued effort to monitor
those elements will be crucial for long-term
analysis. Furthermore, it is vital to understand how one simple change in any
one of those areas can affect the functioning
of your business.
As your team identifies all of the
potential issues that can occur, have them develop common sense contingency
plans for each. Be sure to identify many avenues that can potentially resolve
an issue. Record your issue response plans in descending order from simple
tactics to more extreme tactics. Also, it is of vital importance to include communications
strategies with every issue identified. How will you communicate to those who
need to know about an issue? Who will need to know? The faster you can
communicate an issue to those who can manage it, the better it will be solved.
No communication and the issues begin the knockdown path of the domino road.
Identifying the impact and response
scenarios of each and every issue that may surface within your organization,
will better prepare it for success. Creating a separate “Issues SOP” (standard
operating procedure,) and publishing it to all of your departments will
establish issues cohesion. New ideas can be realized, uniformity, and early issues
warning can significantly enhance functioning levels. Learning to not go
headstrong at an issue without an impact/response analysis is also critical.
How many times have you thought you had solved an issue, only to see it pop its
ugly head up again? Use well thought out strategies that have a higher degree
of success. It makes no sense putting a band-aid on issues when you could have performed surgery. Fix things the right
way from the start. If your salesperson said that they corrected an issue, don’t
just leave it at that. Go back, analyze the decisions made and determine other
impact/response scenarios. Then decide if what he/she did was within acceptable
parameters for solving that issue. Again, you want to solve them, not just
identify them. You want to create plans to eliminate them, not just get through
the day. Shame on the person who encounters an issue,
and then thinks he/she had fixed it, but then they never go back to analyze it further for all of the what
if’s.
Issues and problems are a great
reminder that something somewhere was not right. The smart person, the smart
business, will be glad that it happened. For now that it has shown its ugly head, it can be thoroughly severed
from existence.
To
identify your current/future issues, or for more information
Contact:
Outstory Public Relations Group
A
Modern Public Relations Agency
Solving
Problems, Changing Attitudes, and Creating Understanding
Outstory
PR Group solves business and public relations problems. We serve organizations
of for-profit, non-profit, governmental authority, and well-known persons. We
develop and manage creative problem-solving campaigns for businesses small and
large, both nationally and globally.
Call
Outstory PR Group Today: 704-904-0682
Website:
http://outstoryprgorup.com
Shawn
Stoffel
Shawn@outstoryprgroup.com
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