As I’m writing this on 1 July, it’s the very first day of the new financial year, yet, I feel like I have been living in it for at least six months. Budgets and plans for 2010 were formulated long ago, and sales pipelines already stretch to the middle of the financial year. Last week, a client was even talking about his Christmas party! FY11 feels like an old friend, not a new acquaintance. Business is a life led in the future, but I do think that it’s important & essential to occasionally spend an afternoon in the past. In fact, I believe that the best thing you can do for your business right now is to cast your mind back over the last year and reflect. You may say that there is nothing particularly revolutionary about that. After all, many people have asked you how the year has gone. In truth, when someone such as a supplier, customer, financier, accountant, or school Mum asks you about your business, the likelihood is that you are measured in what you say. Many of us, with great dexterity, weave a tale of cautious optimism, a little bravado, and a modicum of humility. The real trouble is that we start to believe our own story. This year it is even more important than ever to reflect on the year just gone, because we are still believing that we have been peculiarly blessed with a great alibi. I am sorry, but you cannot use the GFC as the excuse for a “less-than” performance. If we simply put our performance, or lack of it, solely down to the GFC, we will miss out on the opportunity of using the other learnings from FY10 to build a great FY11. Many people I hear talk fairly laissez faire that “..things will come back..” when the GFC is over. NO, things will not go back! The world economy has been stretched to breaking point. Just like the rubber band thats been stretched, the economies will not return to their previous shapes. Instead, they will evolve to new plateaus. Without honest reflection, most of us will not reshape our businesses sufficiently to meet the new world order. Recently, I have been helping a number of companies to reflect on the year just gone. With an emphasis on reflection and a factual look at events and results, rather than a process to attribute blame or express regret, we have been working through questions such as these:
- Could we have done better?
- Was an increase in sales of x % enough?
- How could we have better dealt with the GFC?
- Did we push our use of technology ahead enough?
- Did we develop our products and enhance our service enough?
- How could we have delivered better on our brand promise?
- How did we make our profits?
- Did we give people what they wanted?
- What did our people contribute?
- What shape were we in on 1 July 2009?
- What shape are we in now?
- What did we do to improve skills?
- What do we need to stop / start / continue?
Of course, the most important part of this exercise is then deciding to take action and do some things differently in FY11. Fortunately, and despite my feelings to the contrary, I still have 364 days to do just that.
