The Business We Meant to Build

The practical reflection for an owner may begin with two uncomfortable questions. Who or what am I really fighting, and where does this proposed change fit within the ultimate goal? The enemy may be a genuine commercial threat, but it may also be uncertainty, embarrassment, competitive anxiety or the fear of appearing inactive. It may be worth writing down what is known, what is merely expected and what evidence would justify a response. Once those distinctions are visible, the business can decide whether it needs action, preparation, observation or simply the patience to continue doing its real work.

I am not proposing a rebellion against short articles, short meetings or short answers. Some meetings would represent a considerable advance in human civilisation if reduced to four lines, and there are documents circulating through businesses that could probably lose half their words without anybody noticing. Brevity remains a virtue when nothing of value is sacrificed to achieve it. The problem begins when brevity itself becomes the objective and thought is required to fit whatever space remains.

A business does not need to charge the highest price or provide the most elaborate service to build loyalty. It needs to set a price capable of sustaining what it promises, communicate that price honestly and then keep looking for ways to make the customer feel the decision was worthwhile. Peter Merrett’s approach offers a more useful question than simply asking how little can be included before the customer refuses to buy. What thoughtful detail, reliable action or human response might make that customer want to return?

The Force, if we want to continue stretching the metaphor, is already inside the business. It is in the value being created, the customers choosing to return, the cash moving through the bank account, the reputation accumulating one interaction at a time and the reason the owner began the journey in the first place.

Perhaps every business occasionally needs to place its clever ideas back on the table and ask them to justify their continued existence. What problem was this originally designed to solve, does that problem still exist, what does this arrangement cost us to maintain and what would happen if we removed it? Most importantly, does it still take us towards the business and life we intended to create, or have we simply become very good at maintaining something whose purpose nobody remembers?

A business owner deserves an accountant capable of processing the numbers properly because accurate information remains the foundation of meaningful discussion. If the relationship is supposed to extend beyond compliance, however, the owner also deserves somebody prepared to look beyond the applause and test the result against the objective. That person does not need to oppose every idea, dominate every conversation or turn every meeting into an argument. They simply need enough understanding, courage and involvement to recognise when agreement has become easier than advice.

Compliance, viewed that way, becomes an act of stewardship. You are looking after the business, the employees depending upon it, the family relying upon it, the customers trusting it and the dream that caused you to begin the thing in the first place. The BAS is simply one of the recurring moments when the business is asked to put its cards on the table. Whether we look at those cards early enough to learn something from them remains our choice.

Acting early can become a habit just as surely as acting late. Regular conversations with the accountant, monthly reviews of reliable figures and deliberate provision for tax can gradually replace surprise with preparedness. Difficulties will still occur, because no amount of record-keeping removes economic pressure, unreliable customers or simple bad luck. What early attention provides is room to move, time to think and the possibility of responding before the problem becomes the only subject left on the table.

The business you accidentally built may not be a bad business at all. It might be profitable, respected and capable of supporting everyone who depends upon it, yet still deserve examination simply because good businesses can drift just as easily as struggling ones. Success can demonstrate that something works without necessarily proving that it remains what the owner wants.

There is no shame in discovering that an idea was wrong, nor does closing something automatically make the original decision foolish. Business decisions are made using the information available at the time, and hindsight has the unfair advantage of knowing what happened next. The weakness does not necessarily lie in getting the first decision wrong; it may lie in refusing to revisit that decision after the evidence has changed.

Perhaps succession planning therefore begins with a much simpler question than we normally ask. It is not necessarily, “Who will buy my business?” and it is certainly not, “What multiple will I get?” The better opening question may be, “When I am no longer here, where do I expect the value created by all these years of work to be?”

After all the subjects we have wandered through in these pages, I keep returning to the same thought. Business is ultimately a vehicle, albeit one with an extraordinary ability to convince its owner that the vehicle itself is the destination. Turnover, profit, valuation, systems, premises, employees and market share matter greatly, but their meaning depends upon what the person behind them hoped those things would make possible.