FIRE!, Aim, Ready..."
by Linda Rink,
President of Rink
Consulting
Are you caught up in the "Gotta get it done" race? A proposal is due today, a project just got a green light, a new client called, a deadline has been tightened.
For many of us, the urge to DO often supersedes the time to plan. As we unfortunately know, however, this can come back to bite us.
Case in point
I recently worked on a research project for a fairly large international client. Because of language and other communication difficulties, I unknowingly had failed to clearly define my scope of work in the beginning. And it didn't help that my proposal had been put together very quickly. No surprise then, that I later discovered that my understanding of the project scope and my client's were not the same - and that I was facing instant and non-negotiable "scope creep" in the middle of the project.
Client had a deadline, and despite my attempts to explain why it was now unreasonable due to scope changes, it did not matter. The fault was all mine. By not ensuring at the project's outset - before the contract was signed - that the client's expectations and mine matched, I had set myself up for trouble.
Should I have known better? Of course! What was my excuse? I had to get the proposal done on time!
Do you have a marketing plan and do you follow it?
How many of you don't write a business or marketing plan every year because you just don't have the time? Then how do you know where to best spend your marketing dollars or your time? Or do you just react to opportunities as they come along?
Keep in mind that it's very difficult to measure the ROI of a tactic or expenditure if you have not set up your criteria for defining its success, as well as the framework and tools for measurement, before implementation. Sure, you've fired a shot, but you don't know whether or not you've hit a bull's-eye!
Get it out the door!
Launching a new service? Are you overly concerned with just getting it "out the door" as quickly as possible? I can tell you from experience that trying to "tweak" a new product or service after it's been launched can be a disaster. Once a customer is dissatisfied, the probability that they will come back is automatically much, much lower.
Train yourself to slow down
Years of work experience usually help set off internal alarms - the kind that say, "Whoa, slow down!" But sometimes the adrenalin kicks in too much, and you find yourself racing to just "get it done." Of course, that's exactly the time to take a deep breath and slow down.
Go through your mental checklist of what should be done to reduce the risk of something going wrong. Perhaps a more detailed step-by-step plan is needed, or you need to gather some more information, consult with other colleagues, or double-check your assumptions.
When in doubt, stop and focus - before you shoot yourself in the foot. Because that's what will happen when you FIRE before you're ready.
Do you have stories of "firing" before you're ready? Send them to me at [email protected] and I'll share them in future Business Builders. Bonus points go to humorous ones!
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