Plane Crash Lessons

The recent plane crash where a whole board of a company died should cause concern for owners and directors of private companies.

On top of this, recent research coming out from Stanford Universtity highlights that more than half of private business surveyed cannot name a successor to their CEO.

In my experince in private companies, the percentage would be more like ninety percent do not a working succession plan for a staff member to take over if the CEO or MD died suddenly.

In fact how many family board members or senior executives travel overseas on the same plane ? I bet the board members who died earlier this week did not believe it would happen to them.

Have a look in your own business and role play a situation where a couple of your senior leaders
are no longer able to come to work.

What is your back up plan ?

There are plenty of examples in Australia where where this has happened and guess who was first to knock on the door. ?

The bank of course ! After all they hold most of the outstanding loans.

I have recently come across two large medium size companies and they both do not have any Business Continuity Plan ( BCP ) in place. And, in both examples, the CEO was not interested. One of these is a small listed entity with a turnover of $70 million.

Go ahead and do the role play or simulation and see what gaps you identify.

A great book to read for families in business

I have just finished reading for the second time a book titled Strategic Planning for the Family Business by Randel Carlock and John Ward.

Last year research by KMPG and FBA in Australia indicated that only 26% of family companies have a formal business strategy in place. This book is a great insight into the issue of intergrating the needs of the family with the need to ensure the business is the vehicle that generates the resourses to meet the family expectations.

Many business owners sometimes become confused with business planning and strategic planning. This book will help make sense of the the whole issue of strategic planning.

My concept of strategy is that it is the tactics you are going to use to get to where you want to be in the future.

For example, I have just started a new boutique business consulting company with two collegues ( http://www.symphony3.com.au/ ) and when determining our internal operational strategy, we have decided that the admin will be done online. That is a clear strategic decision made to eliminate the need for physical facilities. In fact we will look to outsourcing secretarial work online.

Also its import to be clear that strategic planning is worthless unless there is first a strategic vision ( John Naisbit )

The book is available online at amazon.com