Calamity
~2 m
Session 6 - Calamity
Managing the crisis
The trouble with a business is that it’s hard to predict the future. There are many things that might go wrong:
- a crazy world leader might introduce tariffs and destroy your business
- the stock market may go crazy and 1/3 of the worlds economy may vanish overnight
- a new competitor may appear from nowhere with a better, lighter, faster, cheaper option
- a fake social media campaign may discredit you and your customers lose trust
- you might accidentally fail to pay your taxes and go to jail
- you might run out of cash, even though your order book is full, but you can’t pay your bills with future money
Review
From the last session, we will review:
- A contractual agreement with your first customer outlining the business agreement (money, marketing, growth targets)
- A marketing plan to use the information gained to grow the business
- A sales plan to find customers willing to give you money
Vendball review
You’ve done well in your Vendball business. The tennis club loves the product, the members are clocking up more aces and longer baseline rallies than ever before.
Vendball calamity
Life is never simple. The ITF have been looking at the steady increase in serving speeds and duration of deep baseline rallies. They are worried that we’re heading back to the problems of the late 1990s that resulted in the 2002 rules. They’ve decided that the mass of a type 2 ball will stay the same, but the diameter will increase by 6% and the pressure range will change from 70-90kPA to 50-70kPa above atmospheric. Changes will come into effect 1 Jan next year.
It’s a shame that you have to redesign all your tubes, pressure and safety systems.
Homework
- How will you recover from this calamity
- What resources have you got (capital, time, people, goodwill)?
- What resources do you need (time, people, money, luck)?
- What outcome are you planning for
- How do you know when you’ve achieved your outcome
- What contingencies have you made for failure
- What contingencies have you made for success (parties, rewards, holiday, downtime etc.)
- How will this recovery impact your goal of getting to scale before exiting the company?
- What is your scale target (%local market, %global market, timeline)
- what resources do you have / need
- Will you need external help