Growth

As a business owner, I know from experience that many decisions have to be made on the basis of forecasts. Forecasts in the sense that we can't predict the future, we can only provide our (personal) estimation of it, based on a variety of factors and inputs. For the past few years, one of the "givens" was growth. Of course all that has changed recently, determined for many of us on shores quite distant.

Today I helped a friend cope with the negative consequences of growth. His business, like many, is experiencing a challenging business environment, yet his business model has been based on expectations only a handful of months old. Those expectations being positive growth, and to be honest, quite realistic ones at the time. His response to this is to streamline the business, so that the many stakeholders in the business (shareholders, family, employees, contributors) may continue to be involved in a sustainable long term business.

In more simple terms, this means cutting costs and working smarter and more efficiently, and in businesses where the primary cost is labour, this inevitably means jobs. And that is an incredibly hard decision, and as I discovered today, a decidedly unpleasant one to have to make.

So today was pretty tough, for me as an onlooker, for my friend as an employer who has agonised and dissected the possible scenarios over the last 2 weeks, and of course and most importantly the people affected. It's natural to assign blame, as people will, but even some of the smartest people in the world were recently lulled into the dumbest decisions, in at least one particular country.

Business at times gets a bad rap, possibly in some cases deservedly, but many small business are essentially a manifestation of the owners (and staffs) personality and they really do care. Business owners have a considerable responsibility, and have to be eternal optimists, have a high quality crystal ball, and have a vision that we believe in. And when times are tough they hurt as badly as anyone, in many cases worse.

It's a little simpler in nature. Things are planted, and then grow, and then we harvest. But then, the right conditions have to exist, some of which are well outside the control of the gardener (such as weather) ...

Maybe it's not that different.

And in my "garden"? Well, times are tougher for sure, and the weather isn't fantastic, but we're thinking, planning, and changing endlessly, to try and avoid any oncoming drought. Realistic is the right word, sprinkled with cautious optimism!