A bit of thinking goes a long way

April 4th, 2006

I had a good chat with one of my customers today, who is the General Manager in a $15 M firm. The company is family owned and has a great offering. There are a couple of problems though; as a typical entrepeneur driven company, there is not a lot of structure or deliberation behind their decisions; owner makes gut-feel decisions, General Manager implements, venture may be succesful, may fail. He gave me a couple of examples that would make your hair stand on end.

Since we have just completed some work for this firm, I sat down to have a chat about what we can do next. The GM only had one thing on his mind; help me convince the owner that the next time there is “a great opportunity” knocking, let’s have a good look at it, and put a little science behind our hunch.

Does this sound familiar? How many entrepeneurs are more than happy to spend a few $100k on an opportunity they recognise, but baulk at spending $10k to evaluate it? Is it ego or is it lack of confidence in other peoples judgment?