In aviation there is a rule around the weather and when a pilot is allowed to fly an aircraft. It’s called Visual Flight Rules, or VFR. The average private pilot is only allowed to fly their plane under VFR conditions, i.e. when you can see the environment around you with your eyes and you know where you are going.
What sometimes happens is that the conditions change, it becomes cloudy and the pilot can no longer see the ground. They do not know how to fly their plane on what the instruments are telling them alone. Tragically what then happens in some cases is the pilot becomes confused and crashes, often with fatal results.
The same thing happens in business. Business owners run things okay when the (economic) weather is fine. They continue along flying by the seat of their pants, looking like the experienced pilot they think they are. But things don’t stay like that forever. Business conditions change, it becomes cloudy and then stormy. A business owner who is trained to run his business by looking at the financial instruments and dials will more often than not survive the stormy times and come out the other side. A business owner who does not know what the financial dials are telling them, or even what dials to look at, will possibly crash and burn.
So, prepare for bad weather. Do you know how to fly your business in cloudy conditions, what dials to look at and what those dials mean?
If so, well done. If not, you should consider joining my next Construction Business MasterClass and learn with a small group of like-minded business owners how to fly your business in bad weather as well as good.