The world according to Panto…….

As I get increasingly older, Christmas traditions become more important. No I am not going to refer to the British failure to deal with snow and ice. I am thinking of something much closer to my heart, the peculiar British tradition known as pantomime. You know the sort of thing, girl falls in love with girl, transvestites abound, ghosts creep up behind you, fairies wave their wands and it is all deemed suitable for a family audience.

Traditionally (that word again) we at Orchard Growth Partners have offered our contacts an early Christmas present in the form of some tips and ideas to help businesses improve their performance in the year to come. This year we have decided to look at the lessons that can be learned from those familiar pantomimes that we all know and love.

Pantomime has many lessons for business leaders (oh no it doesn’t! Oh Yes it does! Isn’t that a bit tenuous? Oh no its not….). For example King Arthur demonstrates the value of leadership, Snow White examines the benefits of leftfield collaborations, Cinderella shares the secrets of successful rebranding and Dick Whittington shows how simple tried and trusted solutions can crack new markets.

Of course there are many of you who are of the opinion that the world at present is one gigantic pantomime or at the very least a farce. Incompetent business leaders, bungling bureaucrats and bickering politicians have caused many of us to hold our head in our hands and wonder at the craziness of it all.

And yet that does both these forms of entertainment a great disservice. Good pantomimes, like good businesses, require skill, imagination and hard work in order to succeed i.e. put on a great show and get punters to part with their hard earned money. A pantomime that was put together by the incompetents, bunglers and bickerers above would not be funny and would fail as totally as everything else they seem to do in their day jobs.

I guess there are many people out there who are looking to put the year of 2010 “behind them”, even though 2011 will bring its own worries. To them and everybody else out there I wish you a very merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year.

S’no(w) use complaining if the trains aren’t running……….

Waking up to six inches of snow yesterday reminded me of the excitement we used to feel as children when occasionally schools would be shut for a day or two. How different things are when you are trying to run your own business.

According to the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry half of London businesses were operating at 50 per cent capacity yesterday. Not surprising when 20 per cent of the UK’s workforce stayed at home due to snow that fell mainly on the South-East and East Anglia. At a time when we are all trying to focus on doing the basics well, meeting our promises and keeping our customers happy, business shutting down for a day or two is the last thing that is needed. Perhaps now might be a good time to assess how effectively business continuation plans operated yesterday? (Transport companies and local authorities might want to look away now).

Business continuity or disaster recovery planning often brings to mind IT back-up systems, alternative office space and off-site bomb proof safes full of data disks, spare cheque books and lists of passwords. Large scale plans for large scale disasters. Not surprising given the events of the last decade. But how well do plans cope with small scale, although far more common, events such as snow fall or flooding?

• Yesterday, did managers know what was expected of their staff when transport links were not operating?
• Did staff know what was expected of them?
• Were parents able to work effectively from home, as planned, when the schools and nurseries were also closed?
• Did somebody access and change the office voicemail message so that callers were not frustrated by a lack of information.

Some of these questions may seem low level or even petty but even small problems can have a large impact when customers’ expectations are not being met. After all, how does it look when your clients are well planned and coping with the same conditions if you are not? Hopefully most businesses coped well yesterday but I am sure all experienced something that could have been done better. Now may be the time to reflect on what happened and revise business continuity plans accordingly.

No-one can control the weather but don’t let poor planning be the reason why your business loses customers.