Funeral Service Times August 2017 March 2019 | Page 38

38 BUSINESS ADVICE
In planning your journey,
expect it to change
Carl Benfield spent 16 years as a British Army Officer and 11 years in commerce. He now runs Refresh
Business, a consultancy specialising in strategic direction. In the previous article, he examined the
importance of goal setting in the funeral service industry. In this second of three articles, he talks
about planning the route to get there
THE JOURNEY
In the last article, we used the metaphor
of sailing in a storm to demonstrate that
keeping your eyes on the horizon (where
the goal is) can stop you getting seasick
(getting into difficulty). So assuming we are
confident in where we want to end up, we
need to know how to get there.
THE START
Now here is probably the most obvious and
fundamental point: to plan your journey,
you need to know where you are now. In
business, this means a clear identification
of your market, it means understanding
your numbers - not just profit and loss and
balance sheets, but how sensitive they are
to changes in your environment. It means
understanding your team so you know their
MARCH 2019
capabilities. Most of us have a very good
gut-feel about this, but sometimes we can
get complacent. Imagine you are in the
middle of the ocean; it’s been a couple of
days since you left a harbour and you know
you’ve been travelling west at a certain
speed. So broadly you know where you
are - right? But what about those pesky
tides and ocean currents? What about the
wind that has been blowing you off course?
Where are you know? It’s just the same in
business; triangulating our position with as
much information as we can lay our hands
on about our current situation is the best
way to start thinking about where we want
to get to.
THE PASSAGE
Once we know where we are, we can plan
our route and now you’ll see why I have
chosen sailing as my metaphor. If you’re
sailing, there is very rarely a straight line
to a destination; you need to consider the
wind direction, when you think you are
going to need to “tack” and change course.
You will need to understand those tides and
currents we spoke about before. You may
even need to manoeuvre around obstacles
such as reefs and wrecks, or other ships
and yachts (the competition). Now some of
these things will be easy to plan for; as an
example tides are very predictable. Other
aspects you will know are likely to happen
- such as a change in wind direction.
And others you will have no warning of
whatsoever. Do I need to relate instances
in business when similar things happen?
Quite.
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