Follow your plan

You’ve undoubtedly read the story of Captain Sullenberger who landed the US Airways jet in the Hudson River and saved 150 lives in the process. I have listened in amazement to the conversation he had with the air traffic controllers when the plane encountered some birds that shut down both engines rendering the massive jet powerless and gliding to a landing. What was amazing about Captain Sullenberger was the calmness in his voice. He did not panic; he simply let his training take over.

Recently, I spent a day with author Joe Calloway. As Joe looked at my business and what I was and was not doing, he gave me a piece of advice I think is brilliant. Here’s the advice, “Whatever you would do in the long term, do in the short term, and don’t panic.” In other words, work your plan. Let’s explore this some more with an example specific to our industry.

Your biggest client owns a successful factory in town. They have not been affected by the recession one bit. You do all their maintenance work. After all, that’s what your company specializes in. Their complex looks great and you have practically every major building around there as well. However, in the last three months, you’ve lost several accounts in other office parks you maintain. You are getting worried and have a conversation with your big client. The owner says he wants a new pool in his backyard and an outdoor room at his house. You maintain it, but normally don’t do construction work. He asks you if you’d like to bid it. You have never done a project anything close to this, but you need the work. You turn in your bid and the client selects you. You start the job and, one day, the owner of the company that normally did all the install work for your client says hello and wishes you luck with the job.

He says, “Man, you blew my bid out of the water. I was surprised.” You learn that your job was over $150,000 less than his and now you feel sick. You spend that night looking at your bid and you realize there are several mistakes and now that you think about it, you don’t think you have anywhere near enough man hours in the job to do it right. You regret taking the job and wish you would have stuck to what you know best. What you should have done was told the client, “Oh, we need work, but it has to be the kind of work we do best. And building a pool is not what we do, and the last thing I’d want to do is mess up our relationship with you.”

You should have worked your plan and stayed focused on what you do best – maintenance. You should have put together a plan to market more of the services you do offer and not ventured off in an unknown territory. You should not have panicked and should have done in the short term what you should do in the long term, which was not take the job and focus on what you do best.

This is just one of the many examples I could come up with to show you why it’s dangerous to panic and veer off the plan you have. Captain Sullenberger had every right to panic and make hasty decisions. He did not and it paid off. I think we as green industry professionals need to do the same thing.