It’s Difficult to Make Predictions

It’s Difficult to Make Predictions, Especially About the Future*

Let’s blame that time that I was contributing to an economics blog, but this is a quote I take with me in many aspects of life.

The fact is: we can not control the things that happen to us.

And so it is in business. The unpredictable can come from outside our business or even within. When this happens: our resources, our tasks, our people, our logistics, and more will be affected and we will have to readjust to accommodate the change

So how does a business plan for the unpredictable? It can’t, the question itself does not make sense.

What a business can control is its own mission.

Knowing why you are in business, what you want your product to achieve for your clients and why those clients matter will navigate you through any storm of turmoil and change.

The summary of this knowledge is your Mission Statement.

It includes a summary of “who” you are: why have you entered this business, and why do you value your product or service. How will you help your clients and why are they your particular clients? How do you want to be thought of, both by your clients and by your employees? What values and priorities do you want to project to the world?

Refer to this document regularly, and when an unpredictable change impacts your business, limiting or changing what you can do and how: remind yourself why you are doing these things. This “why” information will dictate how to change the “what” and “how”.

Staying true to this mission means the work that came before will not be wasted or lost, and you will be providing a consistent experience to both your employees and clients.

*Niels Bohr**
**Or maybe it was Mark Twain, speaking with Socrates and the Dalai Lama over tea at Winston Churchill’s house.