All small businesses involve a certain amount of crisis planning and management. The ability to make decisions that will affect your business in a positive way means that you can deal with unplanned events, from small problems to outright catastrophes.
Preventing problems relies on your being able to recognize a negative decision when you make one. Adding up the pros and cons of decisions you make can help with your perception of where you went wrong when you decided to do one thing rather than the other.
Most negative decisions come from not realizing underlying problems and issues that should have been considered. Most of the time, small business owners become excited over an idea and rush into opportunities without fully exploring the downside of their decision. An example of this would be expanding your business into a geographical market that already has what you have to offer and at a competitive or lower price.
Any major decisions within your business will be time consuming, so look closely at your objectives and realize you may have to give up something to get what you really want. Always have an alternative plan in place so you have something to fall back on if what you considered a positive decision turns into a negative one. Going back on a decision you made because it isn’t working out is difficult because it gives you a sense of failure, even if you haven’t failed. However, it does give you a lesson in decision making.
How do you ensure that the majority of your decisions are positive instead of negative? Start with information gathering and learn to dig through your information to find the parts that pertain especially to you and your business. The more experience you have with this, the easier it will be. Some people have a natural born ability to make decisions while others tend to respond emotionally rather than rationally. If that sounds like you, realize that the emotional factors come into play because you are so attached to your business personally. Putting things in perspective will mean looking at it from an outsiders view.
Dealing with major changes in your business and responding accordingly is a learned habit and as you gain more experience and your business grows, the positive decisions will far outweigh the negative ones.
© Chris Draper, DemGen Inc. 2014
image courtesy of emcguirldesigns
