REFLECTIONS OF AN How do other industries deal with problems?
Article by Dr Michael S. Galvin
mobilityserviceslimited.com
Planning, business cycles and the future
The old saying: that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail… like many old sayings is very true. But how do you plan in a rough sea, as your business bobs around in a storm of regulation for regulation’s sake, change in customers’ travel and working patterns, inflation, driver shortages, principal/agent shenanigans, migration to electric vehicles, a third world charging infrastructure and an increasingly hostile operating environment?
Well, I suppose the retort is; with some difficulty. So what should businesses do, what should the industry do? Sit on our hands and wait for the good times to roll? Hope for the best? Wait for the storms to go by? Well, any sensible person will hopefully counsel against such a course of inaction.
It's your legacy – own it!
Business management is not about getting through another day, week, month or year and breathing a sigh of relief that it has been achieved. And business ownership certainly should not be based on scraping through either. Your business is your legacy, it is the thing that will decide how you and your family will be equipped for the future. It is a big responsibility and with the right approach exit will make a big difference to you all. But while you are content to sit back and hope that somehow someone, a third parent will magically appear and make everything right, you are wasting time and risking yours and your family’s future.
Classically we should all periodically review where we are, where we want to get to, what are the inhibitors to growth, profitability and ultimately a successful exit or a successful handover to a future generation. Within that review we should be considering what is in our influence and control and what is outside it.
That which we can influence or control we should and that which is outside of our control, we should where possible, mitigate against.
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I talk to probably more businesses and their owners in this industry than most and I must say I never cease to be amazed how isolated many people are from the rest of the industry. I am also surprised how many people are content to be isolated from decisions, policies and the processes that support them even at a local level. New regulations, new initiatives, low traffic neighbourhoods are good examples, and are just accepted as happening, regardless of the effect on people’s businesses - they sit back, moan and leave it at that.
Now let’s be realistic not every problem has a solution waiting to be found, but in amongst many problems are pragmatic exemptions, slight tweaks and the like that will solve your problem without wrecking the whole which the establishment will fight tooth and nail to avoid. But if you are a small business sweating to keep up with the day to day, the extra hours needed to deal with such problems may genuinely be beyond you. But isn’t that where trade associations come in? Are not relatively small sums contributed by the many to the enabler to deal with external issues? Yes, you need the right people, the right strategies and probably at times the right advice but as in many other industries, the worse aspects of the increasing number of obstacles to doing business successfully can be avoided or at least mitigated.
The future is now
The mantra of: “its nothing to do with me, I will be retiring in a few years”, is not true either. Do you want something to sell or pass on or has your life’s work been exactly that; a life’s work? Unless we as an industry begin to think strategically about where we want to be, what threats are looming, what threats are currently eroding our businesses and how we will deal with them all, what a lot of people are going to be able to enjoy is knowing that all they did was a life’s work. The comfortable retirements, the pleasure of watching a new generation take over and run their businesses will be a forlorn and lost opportunity.
Turning up to the odd trade show and letting off some steam about what has happened, how unfair it all is and how it is making yours, your drivers’ and your customers’ lives a misery and ruining your business may be a type of therapy, but it is not going to solve anything.
MAY 2023 PHTM
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