Avoiding business pitfalls: The critical role of the playbook

Do you remember your playbook? And if you do, are your people still following it? I know how things can fall to the wayside as new ideas take your focus, but remember to stick to the core practices that keep your business afloat.”

Doug Phares, managing director, Silverwind Enterprises

In this column, I spend a lot of time discussing what you should be doing. I’ve gathered much of this advice by doing the wrong thing and learning the hard way over the past 30 years. The crux of the issue is that I can give that kind of advice because it's within the context of, “I did this wrong, but I learned my lesson, and you can too.”

This time, I didn’t learn the lesson — at least, not as fast as I should have. Early in my career, I worked in advertising with retail clients. Our sales team would sit around a table and talk about all the things our customers foolishly weren’t doing: they weren’t merchandising correctly, missed advertising opportunities, and were generally behind the game. If only they’d listened to us, we cried; they’d all be doing so much better!

Well, that attitude carried over to other areas of my career, including buying and managing businesses as an executive. I say this to emphasize that I absolutely had the following events coming to me.

I recently jumped into operating a franchise with my son. And we chose a franchise specifically for all the guard rails and guidance that came with it. It gave us a long road map of how to get from our concept to our official opening. When we picked out a date to launch six months in advance, we felt we had the situation well in hand with our spreadsheets and weekly plans.

I believe Mike Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

As we approached the grand opening, we encountered more problems. While our plans were sound and well-researched, that didn’t matter to the permitting department, vendors, the utility company, or anybody else.

As the date approached, we were quickly running out of time to open the doors. At one point, my son and I were so close to getting mad at each other that we just broke down laughing. We were both giving it our all, and our staff was doing great work. But about eight things were supposed to be ready by then that had yet to come through due to a smattering of logistical issues.

Looking back on it, some of what got in our way around this pitch point was that we weren’t using the playbook. That’s a little embarrassing because, as I mentioned, we chose a franchise operation specifically to have access to that kind of instruction. But as we got busier and busier, it became easier to skip the extra instructional videos because we knew better and already had so much on our plates.

Now, it seems obvious that doing the extra training would have saved us more time in the long run. You’d be shocked to learn how much faster inventory goes when you know how to do it correctly. And I’m mostly kicking myself because this was a lesson I already knew.

I built a record of success throughout my career by sticking to the playbook. And that didn’t mean just following it myself — it also meant making sure that my team knew the playbook and knew how to use it. There are times and places to be innovative or creative and make big, sweeping changes. But when it comes right down to it, almost any business’ core operations can be written down in a playbook and followed.

The point of this exercise isn’t just to offer some long-overdue apologies to my former clients who were going through something that I didn't understand at the time. I also want you to consider: do you remember your playbook? And if you do, are your people still following it? I know how things can fall to the wayside as new ideas take your focus, but remember to stick to the core practices that keep your business afloat.

Ultimately, we had a successful launch that could have been better but was still good. We were able to dig ourselves out of the hole we found ourselves in. However, if we’d followed the playbook from the beginning, we wouldn’t have had a hole to dig out of. We’d be on a hill and have a better vantage point to see further and with more clarity.

Revisit your playbook and ensure that you don’t accidentally get lost, as we did and lose sight of your business’ core processes.

Doug Phares is the former CEO of the Sandusky News Group. He currently serves as managing director of Silverwind Enterprises, which owns and provides management services to small businesses. He can be reached at doug@silverwind.biz.