During the first week of February, Britain was blanketed in snow. Over a foot deep in places, several inches even fell in London, causing the London Transport system almost to grind to a halt. It’s been almost two decades since southern England saw so much snow.
I took Lucy for a walk out in to the forest early in the morning when the snow was still falling. It was the first time that she had seen a decent covering of snow and after a few hesitant steps she realised that this might be fun and ran around like a young puppy. There was a distinct lack of wildlife around. No birds singing and no ponies grazing on the winter gorse. All in hiding, waiting for the snow to stop and the temperature to rise. They are adapting to the unexpected circumstances. They don’t have the benefit of a weather forecast but they are very sensitive to change and will have anticipated the arrival of the bad weather.
Inevitably, the disruption to business led to criticism of the authorities.
‘A couple of inches of snow and everything stops.’ ‘In Canada, we have 2 feet of snow, not 2 inches every winter and we cope, everyone gets about.’ That, of course, is the point. Canada always copes because it happens every year, not once every two decades. Canada is geared up to expect snow and has the resources allocated to deal with it. London, on the other hand, is not geared up to deal with heavy snowfalls. The authorities have assessed the Risk versus the Cost and decided that investing in a fleet of snowploughs that might be used once every 10 years is not the best way to spend their budget. They understand the Risks and have taken the decision not to make a contingency plan for heavy snow. They will deal with it when it happens, using their limited resources.
When assessing business risks, always assess the risk of something happening versus the likelihood of it occurring and the effect that it would have. If your decision is to accept the risk and do nothing, that’s fine, but make sure that this is understood by all interested parties. Don’t wait for them to be surprised when they wake up one morning to find themselves snowed in with no means of getting out of the garden!
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Rob Horlock specialises in helping the commercial side of businesses to review and map processes, manage projects ands improve individual and team working efficiencies. This also includes improving the effectiveness of your emarketing, particularly in the area of turning prospects into customers. If you would like to find out more, see http://www.ef-ef.co.uk or email: rob@ef-ef.co.uk
Workplace Efficiency - learning from nature 