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This short newsletter is sent to you every Tuesday. For those of you who watch TV, you will surely find that your favourite TV show occurs every week or every day at the same time. School starts and ends at the same time every day. Have you ever wondered why? The simple answer is that humans function better in predictable environments. The recent Eskom ordeal is testimony to this fact. To a large degree, I think that most South African’s would have coped with “load shedding” as long as they knew what times it would occur. They could then plan around the lack of electricity and reconfigure their lives accordingly. It took some time for Eskom to deliver semi-accurate load shedding schedules.
Predictability is a key factor for survival. If you know that there will not be a harvest, you would make an alternative plan to find food. If you know that it is going to rain, you take an umbrella (thus preventing you from getting cold, wet and sick). In his book “The Rockefeller Habits”, Verne Harnish says that an entrepreneur has only two roles to play: to predict and to delegate. It is his ability to predict that will determine the strategies he undertakes. It is the results of the strategies that determine success or failure. Successful entrepreneurs constantly scan their environments for information that will feel the predictability algorithm going on in their heads. The most apparent feedback right now is that the world economy is slowing down, that car sales are dropping, that fuel prices are increasing. Possible predictions are that people will swap over to smaller, more fuel-efficient cars; perhaps gas guzzling 4X4s will lose tremendous value on the second-hand market.
All sorts of possibilities now unfold. Re-finance products for 4X4 owners. There might be arbitrage in the engines of 4X4s (the 4X4 engines might be able to be used in another environment, where the current form of generating power is more expensive than using a 4X4 engine). There might be an opportunity to create a business that “pimps the ride” of smaller cars, because even though, economically, people need to trade down, they still have an ego-need to be seen in a snazzy car.
What are the implications, on your business, of the world economic changes, the environmental changes, the South African economic changes, and all the other changes that are taking place on a daily basis? How can you take advantage of these? Notice my words. I did not say, “How can you protect yourself?” That would be a passive, external locus of control response. My question is: “What can you actively do to make these changes of benefit to you?” If you think there is nothing you can do, then you are not thinking hard enough. |
