Fall is typically a good time for business activity. In conversations with our predominantly transportation clientele, most companies are climbing their way back to previous revenues but not staffed or equipped to the point they were pre-recession. The result, fewer cooks making more meals and thus everyone is busy, busy, busy!

When things are going well, it’s easy to make the mistake of thinking you’re more or less invincible. I’ve come to realize all business walks a tightrope and even with a net, it’s tough to recover from a fall like most have gone through this past couple of years. For those of us big and small who survived, it’s been an education in humility.

Business by its nature is made up of peaks and valleys. You can never let up. The hard work and focus we’ve all applied during this past recessional valley needs to continue even when we find ourselves nearing the next peak. Like the song says, “keep your eye on the road and your hands upon the wheel.”

I believe the business world has shifted to a new path that none of us have gone down before.

A long standing supplier to our company closed its doors last week. We moved away from them 2 years ago after 10 years of being a loyal customer. Why? They didn’t listen or respond to some key concerns we had. Instead the owner bad mouthed his competition and dismissed our request as some kind of bluff. As it turns out, he was easily replaced by a better alternative. That being said, I was still truly sorry to see his business fail… it was an unnecessary tragedy.

Lee’s Quote for the Day

“Having your own business for twenty years is just like a marriage but without the sex…on second thought, having your own business is exactly like being married.”

In our business, the thing we try to avoid like the plague is letting a project slip to the bottom and stay there too long. It doesn’t happen very often as most projects have a deadline and deadlines are what keeps our world moving.

The bulk of our work stems from a pending need like; we are totally out of brochures, we need material for an ad placement today, we have a customer event next week and so on. Not so different from our transportation clients’ customers, an immediate need creates action. When there are no deadlines on the client side or ours, we usually try and make one up. Nothing keeps a project on track like a timeline that all parties have committed to.

Back to the topic at hand. When something has slipped through the cracks and is nestled comfortably at the bottom of the pile, everyday it stays in that position it grows like a nightmarish monster on steroids. Everyday it’s avoided it becomes an even bigger project to take on. Some tried and true remedies follow:

5 tips to stay on top

1. There is a reason why it slipped to the bottom. Figure it out. What is your associated fear with this project? You could be suffering from a case of BPP “Bottom of the Pile Paralysis”.
2. Create a hard deadline. Make an appointment to meet and present the project in question. Most times that will get you off the fence and get things rolling
3. Break the project down into smaller sections. If it’s a day’s work, book off an hour to make progress. Once you make progress of any kind the monster will shrink to a manageable size.
4. Approach it with confidence. You’ve done it before. Recall those victories and use that to start the ball rolling.
5. If all else fails declare defeat and delegate it in its entirety to someone else. You can’t afford to have baggage that negatively impacts your performance and service standards. Better this than further BPP behaviour.

Lee’s quote for the day

“It’s not that I work well under pressure…it’s more like I need pressure to work well!”