Hi all,
Time for a pre-mortem, I think.
How are we all to deal with this latest unforeseen shock?
It’s not as though SMEs weren’t already reeling!
I had intended to write this piece about a report by the House of Commons Business and Trade Committee which came out just before the Iran situation started. It concluded that “small businesses are operating under pressures comparable to, and in some cases exceeding, those experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic. Many firms have been forced to pass on rising costs and are now ‘reaching the limits of what customers can absorb.’” With fuel, energy and manufacturing input prices rising again, it’s likely those limits will already have been breached.
Covid was the largest test of this company’s restructuring around a team-led, high-performance mindset. The foundation of our response was the use of a tool called the pre-mortem – very deliberately pushing ourselves to think through what could go wrong in any future crisis. Even though, as in the current situation, we had no advance notice, a shock like this inevitably triggers a chain of consequences we can anticipate and plan for.
And while a pre-mortem can be done formally if needed, it doesn’t have to be a big set-piece exercise; it works just as well in real time – quickly in Teams, or even on your own as a bit of structured thinking to bring into wider discussions. The point is simply to step back, look ahead, and prepare for the downstream effects before they hit us.
There is one real advantage SMEs have over the large companies and corporate behemoths: speed. In times like these, size can become a disadvantage – the bigger the organisation, the slower the decision?making, the longer the chain of approvals, and the harder it is to adapt. SMEs can move quickly, react to early signals, and make practical decisions in the moment before the market shifts around them. Use that advantage.
In the meantime, I commend you to spare some time for your own pre-mortem.
Click here to view our pre-mortem template.
