BUSINESS BASICS NUMBER 8
Always have a backup plan. That is an essential business basic. In the ideal world, we don’t need a backup plan because everything always goes according to Plan A.
We do business in the real world of course. Things go wrong. Disasters happen. The unforeseen becomes the seen. The real world isn’t always cooperative, pretty, predictable, or friendly. That’s why we need a backup plan. We need to have a Plan B, Plan C, Plan D, and maybe a few beyond that depending on your circumstances, creativity, resourcefulness, and how well you know the alphabet.
Sometimes we might wish that the real world was ideal. However, we know that it would present no true challenges, no true struggles, and therefore no true victories. As a great colleague of mine decades ago would say during occasionally stressful moments on the team to add levity and bring us back to reality:
“ Anybody can work under ideal conditions. ”
You don’t want to be just anybody. In addition to your Plan A, have the Plan B, Plan C, and whatever other backup plans you feel you need. Always have a backup plan. After all, anybody can work under ideal conditions. But that’s not where we work now, is it?
