Time to go fishing? - Is it time to plan the future of your business?

An American management consultant, spending his holiday in Mexico, happened across a fisherman and started to talk to him.
“Tell me – how do you spend your days?”
“Well I get up at about ten in the morning and have a leisurely breakfast. Then I either come down here to the beach to fish, or if it is a calm day, I go out in my little boat. I take home what I catch and eat it with my family at night” replied the Mexican.
“No, No, No” said the consultant. “You should get up earlier, and spend all day fishing. Then you could sell the remaining fish and use the proceeds to buy a bigger boat and get better rods.”
“What then?” said the Mexican.
“With the bigger boat you would be able to go further out to sea and catch more fish. You could even take on some staff to help with the extra fish. You should open your own processing plant and distribution centre so that you could sell the fish to a wider market.”
Again the Mexican asked, “What then?”
“Well with the profits you would be making you might want to set up a major corporation in America – you could even have a head office in New York”, outlined the now excited management consultant.
“What happens then”.
The management consultant thought for a few minutes and then said, “With say ten years hard work you could earn enough to retire. Then the world is your oyster – you could take it easy, spend time relaxing on the beach or with your family, perhaps a spot of fishing in your little boat…”

Perhaps an unusual story to begin with as I am to spend the rest of this article extolling the virtues of getting help from outside the business. Unfortunately in the story the consultant devised a marvellous strategy, but forgot to consider the fisherman’s objectives and goals.

However many business owners are now starting to look outside the business for a coach to help them find direction or to improve financial performance and they are doing so for some of the reasons identified by the following statistics: -

Family Business Statistics

·  Over 50% will change generation in the next decade

·  Over 75% have no management succession plan

·  Over 60% have no ownership succession plan

·  Over 50% have no long-term strategic business plan

·  Over 70% have not identified the next leader

·  Only 30% successfully transition from first generation to the second, and 15% to the third

If you recognise that your business has any of the issues identified by these statistics then you should consider using a coach/consultant. As consultants we need to add value to the businesses that we work with, beyond what the existing staff and management can do. We must not just rubberstamp what management had already planned to do.

Businesses should use coaches and consultants because they can apply their experience and methodologies quickly and effectively. We have seen many problems before and can use this past experience to help other businesses.

I believe that good consultants help clients to do things. We guide, brainstorm, and above all, we coach business owners to really think about their business and solve problems for themselves. To come back to the Mexican fishing analogy, consultants believe that you should teach a man to fish rather than give the man a fish to eat.