BUSINESS CAPABILITY WORKSHOP
GINA COOK, BDO AUCKLAND, 9TH SEPTEMBER
Gina is an advisory partner with a background in tax consulting and compliance. She firmly believes that every business should have a recovery plan – now more than ever. This is not the same as a business plan or a marketing strategy; it is a short-term (90-day) plan, which is closely monitored, reviewed at least monthly and adapted to suit changing circumstances.
Gina presented a six-point plan:
1. Connect with your professional advisers (lawyers, accountants, mentors) to benefit from their different perspectives, and cover off your unknown unknowns.
2. Think about how you can re-invent the business:
Innovate (e.g., a hairdresser in lockdown could start selling clippers and styling accessories)
Re-engineer (e.g., a brewery could make hand sanitiser as well as beer)
Adapt (e.g., what services could you deliver online?)
Widen your lane (e.g., the baker who started offering recipe kits for people to make their own cupcakes in lockdown)
3. Assess your personal and professional budget requirements – being brutally honest.
4. Look for opportunities, assess vulnerabilities, identify the critical challenges.
5. Work on SMART goals and actions.
6. Pull everything together as a complete package. Keep it specific and stay flexible.
When encouraging her audience to take the next steps, Gina echoed a message shared by Sian Jaquet at her workshop in July: there is a reason why, in aeroplane safety briefings, passengers are told to put on their own mask before helping others with theirs. Business owners cannot take care of others if they are not taking care of themselves. She also urged everyone to “focus on what you can do”, because, in these extraordinary times, trying to make predictions or second-guess what is going to happen in six, nine, 12 months is just too hard.
Her thought for the day was a quote from Henry Ford:
When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.
