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Monday, January 17, 2011

YOUR BUSINESS + A CRISIS: ARE YOU PREPARED ?

People don’t like to think about emergencies. Not in their personal lives and certainly not in business. But as a small business owner you can’t just stick your head in the sand.


If you own a small business (in terms of people, not sales) it is imperative that you are prepared for all emergencies.


Let’s start with thinking about you as the business owner. If something happened to you or a member of your family and you could not be involved in your business for a few days, weeks or months…. could the business survive without you? Do you have someone in place that can run things or take charge while your gone?


You may be the healthiest person on the planet….but a car accident or a medical crisis with a family member can have your spiraling out of control and the last thing that you are going to be thinking about is your business.


Do you have a back up plan?


Do you have a manager or key employee that can handle things while you are gone?


Do you have an operations manual? Do you have anything documented? Those are a lot of things to think about. And unfortunately I have seen too many businesses where there is no documentation of any kind.


Now let’s say that you are just fine but that your key employee leaves. Can your business survive? Have you given one employee too much power that if they left they can cripple your business?


Do you have job descriptions for all of your employees? Including yourself?


Is everyone trained in everyone else’s job?


Let’s go one step further. What if your building burns down? I’m just saying…..


Do you have everything documented and taken OFF SITE ???? Do you have backups of your backups? Have you tested your backup system lately? Have you tried re-storing your backup tapes to be sure they work?


As the old saying goes “been there…done that…”. Yes, my backup tapes said they were “just fine”. They weren’t. And then came the crash. Of course it was two weeks before the end of the year when I usually run every single report with data from January through December. Two more weeks and I would have been fine. But I wasn’t. And it couldn’t have come at a worse time.


Are you starting to get a bit nervous because you don’t have a backup plan and I’ve made you think about things that you never wanted to think about?


Don’t stick your head in the sand. Accidents happen. Emergencies happen. Loyal long time employees leave you hanging. Stuff happens.


Be prepared. Get your business organized. Start today.


Organizational Consulting Services


http://www.organizationalconsultingservices.com/

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