A Tool for Crisis Control

In today's episode, Pete Mohr dives deep into the art of critical thinking for business owners. If you've ever felt paralyzed by unexpected challenges, Pete offers a simple framework to help you navigate through the storm. It's not just about identifying the problem; it's about understanding its impact and taking actionable steps.

Here are a few things Pete covers:

• The roots of critical thinking in healthcare and its application in business.
• The "What, So What, Then What" framework for tackling unexpected challenges.
• How to assess the impact of a situation on your business using the 5P framework.
• The importance of CPA (Communication, Process, Accountability) in crisis management.
• Real-life examples, including how to handle key personnel leaving your organization.

It's time to take action:

After listening to this episode, your first step is to identify a recent challenge in your business. Apply the "What, So What, Then What" framework to it. Evaluate its impact on your 5Ps and set up a CPA plan to tackle it.

Download Link: For more insights and actionable steps, visit speaktopete.com.

Are you looking to make some changes in your business and your life in 2024?  Head over to speaktopete.com and book a chat with me to see if we're the right fit!

Transcript

Pete Mohr: 0:35

Welcome back to the business owner breakthrough podcast, I'm your host, Pete Moore. And if you've been feeling a little bit more like an operator than an owner of your business, then this podcast is really for you, we're gonna dig into today's subject. And it's all around critical thinking. And it comes from its roots in healthcare. And at least as far as I can trace it, it goes back to Dr. Rolf, William Bailey, and in the health care industry, where they're dealing with critical incidents all the time. But if we overlay this on to our businesses, as business owners, we talk about a lot our businesses and our lives are sort of combined, like ying and yang. And you know whether these critical things are happening in our lives that may affect our business, or whether they're happening in our business that may affect our lives. It's all around how you're thinking about it, and what you're going to do about it. And this framework, which is really nice and simple, which is why I love it when something happens when something lands on you like a bomb. And it wasn't that very long ago, when we had to deal with a lot of the stuff around COVID. I've had in my previous business experiences, a general manager leave a week before we were going on a family vacation. I mean, we've had just so many different things, I had one of my employees flip over one of our service vehicles on the road. And we had to deal with that, and deal with his health and deal with all the sort of other things that were going on there. We've had a variety of different things. More recently, I've had one of our key individuals at shoe topia, shoe stores, leave, he's been with me for about eight or nine years left on great terms and all of that stuff. But ultimately, he was one of the top three people in the organization. And that has a big implication. So if we look at these things that land upon us unexpectedly in most cases, how are we dealing with it? Are we you know, getting paralyzed by these sorts of things? Or do we have frameworks that help us roll through and make actionable steps and that's why I love this particular framework that we're going to roll through a little bit here today. And when you think of it, named, whatever has just happened. And and if we go back to when my first manager General Manager laughed, it's like, okay, George is leaving. And that even just saying it out loud, lets you start putting things together and acknowledging that things are happening the way they happen. And I like to look at this as is it controllable? Or is it uncontrollable, and if somebody has made up their mind, or let's say your landlord has elected to tear down the building that you're in, you are going to have to move it's sort of out of your control. So you need to make actionable steps to move ahead along the way. So the first thing is just understanding whether or not whatever is just happened is within your control, or whether it's outside of your control. And the next thing is to really dig down into whatever data you can get on this, so that you can start to make the decisions that you're going to need to make because the first part is what what just happened here. Second part is, so what and the so what you need is much to gather as much information as you possibly can gather, so that you can make the decisions on what is going to happen here. What are the implications. And if we overlay the five p framework, which I know any listeners here are familiar with your promise, your product, your process, your people and your profit. Think about all five of those. What are the ramifications on this particular incidence? On your promise? Is it going to change the way you do business? Is it going to change your product or your service offering? Is it going to change the process that you currently use in your business to deliver your services? Is it going to change the people we look at the people, we think about our ideal client, we think about our teammates, and we think about all of the other outsourced suppliers that help deliver our promise, right? And then is it going to change our profit? Because all of those pieces are so important in the critical decision making that you're going to do in the then what portion? Right? So this is, so what how is it going to affect both good and bad because sometimes there's good ramifications. And I'll use one more recently, were one of the people that I'm on a call with every couple of weeks as sort of a moderator and coach. She just had a ferry that comes to their town closed down for an extended period of time, which had really big effects on the entire small town in the fact that there were so many people coming over on the ferry every day. But one of the good things that came of that is she was able to hire two of the people to come work in her business that were outstanding on the ferry and outstanding and will be outstanding in her business going forth. And she was able to capitalize on something that you know, off the bat looked like it was going to be pretty bad for the business. So what are the goods things, what are the bad things? That's sort of the so what side of things? Right? The idea here is that we don't just recognize a situation we need to evaluate its impact, and what are the costs? And what are the benefits to you, both in your business and in your life? And business and life? Blend together? Right? Then what is the actionable steps? So now that we know what the issue is, we've gone through the so what the ups and downs of everything here? Now it's around, then what? It's really the game changer of the whole situation? What are you going to do about it? Lay out the action plans. And this is where another one of the frameworks that I've talked about a lot comes into play, and it's the CPA, right? Or how are you communicating? What are the processes that you're going to change and drive around this? And who is going to be accountable for whatever happens, as we deal with this particular situation? So think about how am I going to communicate what I want as the business owner to happen based on what we know now based on the so let's think about what you need to change on the process management side of things in order to enable and make this stuff happen. And think about who is going to be the person that's now in charge. And I'll I'll reframe that back into the current leaving of one of our managers within she topia, what happened here is that we talked right off the bat, literally, within minutes of getting that notification with the rest of the team communicated throughout what was happening, we looked at our accountability chart, we went through how this particular job can be divvied up at least in the short term until we make further term plans. And then we set an aligned accountability within our team as to who is going to take over those jobs. We looked at the timeframe of how long we had with that particular person, we wanted to clear up some of the process and make sure that everybody knew how the work that he was had been doing would be cross trained, would be documented, with videos with documentation with all sorts of different things so that we could cross train and work through any of the issues that we didn't already have cross train. And then we aligned in assigned accountability, the four A's, right, we assess it, we address it, we align it, we assign it. And I can't tell you how nice and smooth that process was. And this is yours in mind. Do you know when that first general manager of one of my early businesses laughed, it was a problem, let me tell you, it was not fun. But this last one was a lot easier to maintain and manage. And quite honestly, I wasn't really even hands on with it. And I'm so proud of some of the things that we have set up in our business in order to deal with this sort of thing. And what I want for anybody listening to this podcast is that same sort of thing, when you set up your CPA, when you set up your five P's, when you think about critical thinking in a quick way and are able to assess and address things without being stalled. It changes the parameters of how things continue on for you. It lightens your load, it lessens aggravation, it lessens overwhelmed, and we talk a lot here about turning your frustrations into freedoms. And Nothing's ever perfect around this. But using some critical thinking tools and some steps like what so what and then what, what just happened here? So what how is it going to affect me? Then what what action steps are we going to take to move the ball here down the road, so that we can get back to where we need to get? That's the goal. That's your job as the business owner to work through these things, communicate them properly, to everybody that needs to know so that you can continue on in a healthy way. Right? So All right folks grasping the what So what then what concept can be your ticket from being swamped in the details to steering with the dashboard, we talked about details to dashboard in the past as well. If you need help, aligning your business, your goals, your actions, getting some frameworks like this that are going to help you make the decisions that you need to make on a daily basis. Then simply reach out to me at speak to pete.com speak to pete.com and we'll see if we're right fit for carrying on some crucial conversations. Just being you one on one as we roll through to create a better life for you through your business and as you move from operator to owner of your business. So that's it for today's business owner breakthrough Podcast. I'm Pete Moore and keep pushing those boundaries and breaking through those barriers now go and make it a great day.

Buzz Burbank: 10:22

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