For Britain in 1940, the Second World War must have seemed very dark indeed. It had to bring its defeated troops back from Dunkirk, and the German Luftwaffe was reducing London to rubble through the Blitz. Britain must have, to almost every man, woman, and child, feared mightily for the country’s and their own futures not knowing if the United States would ever come to the party (which of course it did a year later, after Pearl Harbor).
That almost excluded one key man, that of Winston Churchill. On a diet which seemed to be a fat cigar, a bottle of Scotch whisky, and no more than two hours sleep a day, he maintained that the Allies would prevail. He had to totally rely on delegation to have army, navy, and air force perform. That delegatees would turn UK manufacturing into a well-oiled supply chain and that others would raise food production over and over to help feed the nation. He needed others to develop and work convoys that brought necessary imports in, which kept the people alive and the war machine in business.
Perhaps his greatest own contribution was to ensure bright ideas happened. He knew that dithering or procrastination would cost time and lives, so for things that needed his affirmative decision he would pen Action This Day on his instruction memos. It was his first world war role that saw the invention of the tank, his support for science that saw DNA analyzed, as prime minister he approved the famous bouncing bomb, and so on. Through the possible expedient of diarizing a copy of the action memo, he had a control to ensure he could confirm these things occurred.
So why should you dither? We know there isn’t the expediency of a war, but are you surely returning to our bumper book of excuses if you are not already doing some things differently? We’re sure you would have nodded along to a lot of suggestions in this book, but have you taken any one of them anywhere, beyond saying to yourself: That’s a good idea.
Let’s remember that you are here because you feel your business has reached, and is not moving, above a plateau—that somehow a glass ceiling exists keeping you where you are today. But we are all agreed you want to do something about it—so really, why don’t you add some thoughts to Action This Today, now?
OK, so maybe it is our fault. We have within our text caused you to stop and hold your breath more than once. We suggested you might stop and see if the impediment to growth is actually you or maybe people acquired for one purpose but now just hanging on because of your inertia. We queried whether you had people on board where outsourcing might be better and whether people you have, have ideas you should listen to.
We suggested the product or service might be holding you back. We asked impertinently if it could be simplified, replaced with software, or even abandoned altogether. If not that, we wondered if you were focused on the wrong customers, the problem makers, and the ones who simply take advantage. If you also said no to all of those, we considered all the monetary aspects, from holding too much of the wrong inventory to getting the price wrong and ignoring possible financial assistance out there.
We even contemplated whether you really wanted to be in your business at all.
Having eliminated the wrongs—all the reasons we were asking you to stop—we contemplated change, more positively. We had a cornucopia of great suggestions. You might remember reference to the treasure map and its special locations: Organic Beach, Integration Peak, Geographic Cove, Doubling Bay, Sellup Landing, Hooksky Island, and Lottery Lagoon.
It was about here too we raised the thorny issue of your idle website and miniscule contribution to social media. You could argue it didn’t fit in at this juncture, but that beautifully reflects the disruptive nature of the Internet and your head-in-the-sand reaction to it.
All of the foregoing was assuming you wanted to be in the widget business at all. So we challenged the basic tenet of whether you should actually make them or have that done by others. Heresy perhaps, but you were not pre-ordained to spend a life making them.
As if that wasn’t enough, we got to mention some other useful growth vehicles—growth in capacity, growth with new hires, international expansion, and licensing. All great in their own right but none producing the step-change you wanted for your business. And suggested a fresh pair of eyes might help.
So it came to be that we mentioned the delegation, controls, and accountability, focusing on identifying which right things done daily, measured by your people, lead toward the desired strategic goals. Now, whilst you could criticize us, the authors, for not warning you of their arrival, think about it for a minute. If section one started with these topics, you would never have bought the book. Instead we suggested changing a punctured tire would allow you to improve the remainder of your journey. Surely, allegorically, that is the key to unlock your business and move it to the next level? The very thing we promised with the title.
Altering our course, we labored on growth via acquisition partly because it happens a lot and it rarely produces the desired outcome. We provided pages of be-awares that not only minimize the risks of an acquisition going awry, but which might actually reduce the price you pay, or in the wrong circumstance, allow you to walk away. And all this good stuff is doubly good. No, not an author’s ego trip but the fact that, stood on its head, it is a great guide should you wish to sell rather than buy.
In amongst this whole book, the word trust emerges. Perhaps that will be your mantra going forward? You trust yourself with your business decisions and if you think about it, you trusted yourself with your choice of people you’ve hired into the business. So why not in turn trust those people to have the business’s best interests at heart as they go about their work? Within an aspiration and with controls around your delegation of course.