Improve My Business

If you follow McDonald Consulting Group on Facebook, you know that I’ve been on the road a TON lately – both around the country and around the world. I’ve been keeping a list of things I’ve learned that may help you in your business – even if you don’t plan on doing any traveling:

1) Research. Research where you are going, how you are going to get there, if the hotel has free shuttle service from the airport, how you find that shuttle – you get the idea.

In your business, this step is also key – know what you want to do, how you want to do it, what your alternatives are, what’s been tried (and worked, or failed) already, and why… the more you research, the better you’ll be prepared. This research can be external (what competitors are doing, how they are doing it, etc.) or internal (what is coming down the pipeline; what impact that will have in your area; what training is being requested by your organization; how this training will positively impact your group, what changes may need to be made as a result, etc.)

2) Hope for the best, but plan for the worst. In my travels, I carry one complete outfit in my carry-on bag if I’m checking luggage (and yes, when going to Asia for 3 weeks, I actually pack more than one bag so I have checked baggage…) so, in case I’m stranded, or my luggage goes on a better/different trip than I do, I have clean clothes for the next day (especially useful when doing business the next day…)

In your business, planning for the worst may be in the form of a disaster recovery plan – something that looks at contingencies for a variety of scenarios – from fire, to employee strike, to acts of God, to transportation strike.

It may also be how you determine your budget for next year (conservative estimate for sales, or raw materials costs, etc.) which may allow you to have a buffer or cushion in case your “rosy, optimistic” estimate is off-base.

3) Sometimes, even the best-laid plans go awry. Deal with it. I select my airline seats as soon as I book the flight – and check them a few times before day of departure to see if anything better has opened up. Yet, if the airline chooses to change planes to a different configuration, that extra-room or aisle seat that I thought I had may not be so. I used to fuss and fume about it mentally all during the flight [look at how little leg room I have! I can’t believe I have to sit in THIS seat!]; now I just realize that the flight, even if trans-pacific, is only 15 hrs max – and I can put up with anything for 15 hours…

Same thing goes for business. Business resilience is a learned skill – how an organization can bounce back quickly from a tough break (even if the break was of their own making, like defective product). If your organization seems to get side-tracked by the least little thing, let’s talk about how to develop resilience in your organization.

4) Entertainment makes the time go by quickly. I carry a personal entertainment device that has music, movies, and podcasts loaded on it. I have playlists that range from ‘sleep music’ to ‘mary’s mix’ to ‘upbeat’; and movies that range from chick flicks to murder mysteries to TV series. I can easily entertain myself if I have already seen all the movies that the airline is offering; and I typically have a book or two packed as well.

In business, I can tell the groups that spend a lot of time preparing information vs. the groups that don’t. As an example, I recently attended an all day session, where we had two ends of the spectrum presenting – from the “opening act”, who had jokes and jabs at audience members sprinkled through the presentation, to the dry presenter who was determined to do “manslaughter via PowerPoint” – hours of droning on, and on, and on… The ‘opening act’ had put some thought and effort into his slides to make them more interesting to the audience, while the other presenter simply made sure we had the info we needed.

How often do you simply ensure that folks have been told what they need to hear, instead of ensuring that they have also received the message? If you spend a little more time on the presentation to zing it up a bit, your audience will appreciate it!

What preparation tips do you have? Post a comment to share!