Mark Twain
I think I’ve mentioned my love of Mark Twain once or twice in this space previously. One of the topics upon which Twain commented was the weather. His most famous quote (which may not actually have been written by him) was that “Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.” Well, I’m not sure we can do much about the weather (we’ll save the climate change discussion for another day) but we can use it for a quick thought about business.
Every weekend, I get up early – too early for most – to play golf. The first thing I do when I roll out of bed is check the weather. You see, there have been a lot of mornings when the forecast is miserable and yet my group plays without a problem or rain gear. A quick look at the radar and live conditions show us that while the broad area forecast heard during the previous night’s news is accurate (and not good), the specific hyper-local forecast that concerns our group may be pretty different (and OK for several hours)
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That’s the business question today. How often do we read or hear broad economic or business sector forecasts and react as if they’re gospel? Just because business conditions are seen as lousy doesn’t mean our business is going to get wet. First, we need to do some investigating just as we would for the weather. Where are the storm cells? In what direction are they headed? How fast are they moving? What can we do before they arrive to be ready? Can we avoid them completely?
Too many folks don’t take the time to dig for information specific to their situation despite more information than ever being readily available. Where I play golf is 15 miles from my home. I’ve come home many times and found a storm had hit our neighborhood while we stayed dry on the course. Like the weather, we can’t do much about overall business conditions but we can make sure that the forecast we’re using is accurate for our market sector and our enterprise.
Thoughts?
Consult Keith 