Create An Emergency Plan

A series of events this week leads me to say ‘CREATE AN EMERGENCY PLAN!”

NOW, this doesn’t have to be an emergency in the true sense of the word, but a situation that causes you to put your business at risk, or exposes vulnerabilities in your business practices is enough to make you sit up and take notice. I went to a talk yesterday morning and a quote the speaker attributed to Warren Buffet, (in a different context) but seems to make sense here, was, ” When the tide goes out, you get to see who is swimming naked.”

The point is, there are lots of situations that we are vulnerable to, and until we are tested, we may never know where those holes or flaws in our system are. But waiting until we get the wake-up call may be too late and hopefully it doesn’t take a real emergency to incite us to make changes. Looking at your business and taking stock of simple practices can help you understand what you need to address now. it could be as simple as not having extra keys should you lose one or take one home with you by accident or a situation where if something happened,employees don’t have a way to get in touch with you. Another possible flaw would be if your employee doesn’t know the best course of action to follow should an irate customer complain about service or make threats, or firm prices may not be set and promises are made that compromise your business. Whatever it is, try to plan ahead and put a system in place that will protect you and your employees so that in a case of an emergency, you are ready!

xo, jan