Showing posts with label cautiously optimistic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cautiously optimistic. Show all posts

Monday, June 17, 2013

Thank Goodness It's Monday #413

SUMMER SLUMP?
LET’S GET TOUGH & LET’S GET GOING

Optimistic, but cautious.
 
In my recent travels I’ve been asking folks both entrepreneurial and “corporate” about their outlook and that’s what a great many of you told me.

And that’s true for matters both business and personal. 

Big "that’s-not-insightful" DUH? 

Well, it sort of depends. Frankly, at first a great many folks responded with a cheery, sugar-coated optimistic noise. Seems we all want things to be getting better.

We understand that a half-full attitude helps.

But there are lingering doubts. When pressed many of you reveal your cautious outlook. And I’m going on the record with it now simply because, for many TGIM readers, it seems there’s still a great deal of evidence of a less-than-robust climate in the days immediately ahead. 

You tell me: It’s evident when you look at your P&L, compare notes with your business colleagues, read the news, go shopping, or just talk with your neighbors.

 Still, times change. And somewhat predictably so.

Any economic prognosticator can produce charts showing that things financial rise and fall in cycles. Granted, just where in the cycle you or your company or your family might be at any particular moment is often a highly speculative matter.

But there’s still –

The universal given: Hard times will end – eventually.

TGIM Takeaway: Although no one knows exactly when the upturn will come for any particular segment, it will come earlier for you when you put some preparing-for-prosperity strategies in action today.

Bonus factor: If you’re one of the individuals or companies already prospering, if any ideas in this roundup are above and beyond what you’re already doing, implementing them in these harder times should prove extra valuable as the situation brightens for all. So --

Let’s take the upcoming Summer Slump season head on. Resist the urge to coast between Memorial Day and Labor Day. There’s plenty to do starting immediately that will pay off immediately and in the more prosperous future.

Here’s a roundup of –

Preparing-For-Prosperity
Summertime Strategies

● Keep it up. To be there at the recovery you must survive now. If you’re reading this, the odds are good that you’re at least doing something right. Keep at it. Keep striving. Keep an optimistic outlook.

● Challenge assumptions. Resist the urge to play everything safe by becoming ultra-conservative. Clearly nothing is carved in stone these days. So nothing can hurt a business or personal situation more than continued reliance on old assumptions that are now proven unreliable.

TGIM ACTION IDEA: Failure to be open to new ideas will trap you in a dead end. So, even in difficult times (maybe especially in difficult times) test established “truths” for your life and your business.

Result: You’ll either prove that they’re still true or you’ll begin to discover today’s better way.

● Be guided by numbers. Numbers are emotion-free indicators of where things were, are, and may be headed. Even if you’re more of a “people person,” it’s now more important than ever to use numbers to plot, compare, and analyze the effectiveness of decisions.

Caution: This is not a call to cut and chop and freeze and slash prices, expenses, and people across the board when things like budget numbers don’t work out to the penny. 

● Put on bifocals. Don’t neglect the need to look long while you look short. The challenge is to objectively assess the current health of your situation, then conform the actions needed to pull through the immediately difficult times with those necessary to keep moving toward long-term goals.

TGIM ACTION IDEA: When short-term results aren’t satisfactory, don’t counter simply by freezing up or knee-jerk reacting in the next short term. Instead, study and attack the underlying problems and plan to cure them for the long term.

● Don’t undervalue advertising, marketing or PR. Because immediate results from investments in these “promotional” areas are sometimes hard to measure, they often get short-changed when money is tight. Yet this may well be precisely the time when enhancing a product or an image becomes more important, not less. Dramatize your unique aspects and make them known and, at least, you’ll gain top-of-mind awareness.

● Attract and keep good employees. The future belongs to those who are ready to seize it. It’s practically a universal truth that there’s a shortage of skilled workers for any job worth doing. So putting a little effort into acquiring and motivating good employees or “partnering” relationships now is hardly a risk. 

Good folks are out there now. And they’re looking for good partners. Be proactive in your outreach. On the other hand, not letting valued partners know, by word and deed, that you understand how their success and yours success is linked most definitely is a mistake.

● Trim fat, and then toughen muscle. No business or individual can survive in tough times (or good times) supporting people or relationships that aren’t doing the job. But that doesn’t mean you should cut more than the marginal performers (who should be set free in any circumstances). 

TGIM ACTION IDEA: Set standards and stick with them. Don’t leave room for poor performance. Tell people, “Let’s get tough and let’s get going.

● Build skills. Now, when you may have the time, make productive people more productive. Make the most of their existing talents. Work at keeping engaged and keeping morale high. Give people the training they need to build a solid base of skills for future expansion. Make everyone more sales minded and customer conscious. Build discipline and leadership skills across the board. 

● Add to your skills. Use any slowdown to personal advantage. Skills and knowhow you acquire now, while you have more leeway with how you structure your time, will enhance your success when business activity begins to build again.

TGIM ACTION IDEA: Add to your existing strengths but also allow some time for shoring up weaker points. But most of all, keep current with evolving new technology. The future belongs to those who are prepared to live in it.

● Lead yourself first – and you automatically prepare the way to leadership in a prosperous tomorrow.

Getting tougher. And getting going. 

See you in the winner’s circle.

Geoff Steck
Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing
8 Depot Square
Englewood, NJ 07631
201-569-5373
tgimguy@gmail.com  

P.S.  “[Good men] should not shrink from hardships and difficulties, nor complain against fate; they should take in good part whatever happens, and should turn it to good. Not what you endure, but how you endure, is important.” Seneca the Younger (5? BCE – 65 AD) suggested that in a treatise of Moral Essays as translated by John W. Basore in 1928, another period of particularly difficult times.