what if this works?

Sometime way back in the mid-1990s, a potential client called needing a commercial produced for his local barbecue restaurant to be aired on local cable TV. His first question was when it could be ready for broadcast. This was on a Thursday.  

Since he had been referred to us by an important client, I said, “Tell ya what: you seem like you’re in a hurry, so we can shoot it tomorrow and edit it by the end of the day Monday.”  

His response to that near-magically fast turnaround was, “Monday?!? Hell, I’ll be out of business by then!”  

And by the way, he was serious. I asked.  

When we arrived at the video shoot location, not only was the client not there yet, but all the meat products we needed for the shoot were frozen. The people he said he’d have there to pose as customers enjoying their meal weren’t there and weren’t scheduled. We were set up for failure, and so was our client, who indeed was out of business not long after that. And not because of the commercial or his airtime placements. 

That story is an outlier, but let’s be honest: the fear of not getting something right away due to lack of prior planning can outweigh everything else. My instinct is to anticipate things that can go wrong and plan for them, but is it possible that my natural instinct is also a little short-sighted? Yep. And here’s what I’ve learned about preparation and planning: 

Prepare for success. 

What if your project, business, or idea succeeds? Success can be even more chaotic than dealing with failure, particularly if you don’t prepare for success at the outset. I didn’t, way back in the beginning, and while we made it through growing pains and various spikes in business that nearly overwhelmed the lack of infrastructure I had in the early days, we eventually reverse engineered a blueprint that is designed to scale and respond to the unexpected. Organized and efficient systems, streamlined and simplified channels of communication, internal R&D projects, long-term staff who are trusted to self-implement the tools we need to be effective, long-term reliable contractors for overflow work, and of course, a constant focus on taking care of client needs in whatever unique ways each individual project requires.  

Think of it like you’re a coach: Preparation for success is your game plan. You’ve got your best players in the game, and they know your expectations and how to carry them out. What you do when things go sideways are your in-game adjustments to the game plan. After all, as a good coach, part of your preparation for success allows you the latitude to adapt as you go along. 

Power goes out in half of Norman, but we still have deadlines? No worries, we’re equipped and prepared. Sudden unexpected increase in business with tons of pressing deadlines? Yeah…we can do that. Somone’s computer stopped working? No problem: we have backup computers ready to go. Best of all, we’ve got the staff and tools for pretty much anything that comes our way, because we’re prepared for success.  

Need to rapidly defrost ten pounds of smoked sausage? Sorry, that kind of needed to be done yesterday. I guess we do have our limits.