THE BUSINESS WE MEANT TO BUILD

How good businesses lose their way

Chapter 7 – Courage Before Convenience

I have rarely seen a serious business problem arrive without warning. The owner may eventually describe it as sudden, unexpected or impossible to predict, but there were usually signs sitting quietly in the background long before the problem became impossible to ignore. A customer had begun demanding more while paying the same price, an employee’s attitude had deteriorated, a valuable client had become an expensive distraction, or the tax account had slowly been treated as an alternative source of working capital. None of these issues necessarily looked disastrous when they first appeared. They merely required an uncomfortable decision, and discomfort has a remarkable ability to convince us that tomorrow might be a better day to deal with it.

Tomorrow, unfortunately, has its own collection of problems waiting for us. The customer who might have objected to a modest price increase is now deeply offended by the larger increase required to restore the margin. The employee whose behaviour could once have been corrected through a straightforward conversation has become part of the culture, perhaps even teaching others that standards are optional. The poor client has consumed more time, created more stress and pushed away opportunities to work with better people. The tax debt has not disappeared simply because another payment seemed more urgent. Convenience may have bought a little peace, but it has generally done so with somebody else’s money, somebody else’s time or the future strength of the business.

We sometimes imagine courage in business as something dramatic. We picture the entrepreneur risking everything, launching a revolutionary product or standing before a room filled with sceptics while announcing an idea nobody else can see. Those moments may require courage, but they are not the form of courage most businesses need each day. More often, courage is a conversation held before breakfast with someone we would rather not disappoint. It is looking at the figures when we already suspect what they will say, admitting that a decision has not worked or accepting that a relationship has become commercially unhealthy. There may be no applause, no inspirational photograph and certainly no conference speaker waiting to turn the moment into a social-media quotation.

That may be why convenience wins so often. Convenience rarely introduces itself as weakness, avoidance or procrastination. It sounds reasonable, considerate and even commercially responsible. We tell ourselves that now is not the right time to increase prices because customers are already under pressure, that an employee deserves one more chance, that a difficult client represents too much revenue to lose or that the tax payment can be caught up when trading improves. Each explanation may contain an element of truth. The problem is not necessarily the first delay, but the repeated decision to accept the explanation without asking what the delay is costing.

Perhaps the better question is not whether the decision is difficult. Most worthwhile business decisions become difficult precisely because something valuable is at stake. The more useful question may be what happens if the matter is not dealt with now. Will the margin continue to decline, will the behaviour become normal, will the debt grow, or will the owner become so accustomed to carrying the problem that it is eventually mistaken for part of the business model? A leaking pipe does not improve because the bucket underneath it is regularly emptied. If the imperfect flow can be stemmed, it may be worth asking why we continue to polish the bucket.

This is where the idea of acting as a “silent” partner in a business has always mattered to me. The word silent remains in quotation marks because genuine partnership does not mean sitting politely beside the owner while a preventable problem grows. It means understanding the business well enough to recognise the consequences of delay and caring enough to raise the matter before the choices disappear. The adviser should not take control of the decision, because the business and the dream belong to the owner. However, an adviser who understands the business should be prepared to ask what the owner may be avoiding, what continued delay will cost and what evidence would justify waiting any longer.

There is an important difference between challenging an owner and attempting to control one. I cannot know what every owner should do because each business carries its own history, risks, family responsibilities, ambitions and definition of success. A difficult employee may possess knowledge that cannot be replaced overnight, a price rise may genuinely require careful timing, and a large client may be supporting cash flow during a difficult period. Those facts deserve to be understood rather than brushed aside in pursuit of some neat textbook answer. Even so, understanding the complication should help us make a better decision, not provide an endlessly renewable excuse for avoiding one.

I have often wondered why we turn our heads away when adversity is already flying towards us. It does not require an unusually high intelligence to recognise that an unpaid account, declining margin or unresolved behaviour problem will probably not repair itself. Yet watching from the sidelines can sometimes be painful because the owner often knows exactly what is happening. They may explain the problem in extraordinary detail, describe every possible consequence and even predict how it will eventually end. The only part missing is the decision that might change the ending.

This is not an accusation of weakness. Business owners carry more decisions than most people ever see, and decision fatigue is real even if it does not appear separately in the financial statements. There are wages to pay, customers to satisfy, suppliers to manage, families to support and government obligations that arrive with admirable punctuality regardless of whether the business has enjoyed the same consistency. It is understandable that an owner might choose temporary peace when one more difficult conversation feels like the final straw. The danger appears when temporary peace becomes a permanent strategy and the unresolved issue quietly takes ownership of the business.

The old expression “a stitch in time saves nine” has survived because it describes more than sewing. A conversation held early may remain a conversation, while the same matter addressed six months later may require lawyers, compensation, debt recovery or the ending of a relationship that might once have been repaired. A modest price adjustment explained properly can often be accepted more readily than a desperate increase imposed after years of falling margins. A tax liability provided for as it arises is a financial obligation, while the same liability repeatedly deferred can become a threat to the owner’s sleep, confidence and freedom to make other decisions. The stitch may be boring, inconvenient and almost invisible, but so is much of the work that protects a business.

That is part of what I call the Discipline of Boring. If a decision needs to be made, then eventually someone must make it, just as invoices must be issued, debts collected, records reconciled, margins reviewed and promises followed through. We are often attracted to improvement when it involves something new, but improvement can also mean removing what is actively causing harm. There is little value in introducing another system, attending another seminar or discovering another strategy while a known detriment continues to drain the business. Constant and Never-Ending Improvement cannot operate effectively while Constant and Never-Ending Avoidance is being allowed to run the place.

CANEI was never intended to mean constant reinvention. It is not an instruction to replace every system, chase every opportunity or become dissatisfied with everything already achieved. It is a commitment to improve what matters and remove what diminishes the result. Sometimes improvement is exciting, but often it involves returning to an old issue and finally doing what we already knew needed to be done. Progress may come not from adding something new, but from ending the repeated tolerance of something that should no longer be there.

The numbers often expose this conflict before the owner is prepared to name it. In What the Accountant Saw, the important question is rarely limited to what appears in a particular column. The figures may show declining margins, increased wages, rising debtor days or an expanding tax liability, but behind those movements sits a collection of decisions, habits and postponed conversations. Numbers cannot tell us everything, yet they are frequently less inclined to accept our explanations than we are. They may be asking whether the story we tell about the business remains consistent with the evidence the business is producing.

Timing sits at the heart of 20 Days Too Late. Advice sought after a transaction has been completed, a deadline has passed or a relationship has collapsed may still help explain what happened, but the opportunity to change the outcome may already have disappeared. I do not want an owner to find their own story sitting within that book after the event, recognising every warning sign and wondering why nobody asked the right question earlier. More importantly, I would rather they did not recognise themselves and then continue in the same direction. Reflection only becomes useful when it is allowed to influence the next decision.

There may be an issue in your business today that does not need another month of thought. It may need more information, professional advice or a carefully planned conversation, but that is different from allowing convenience to postpone it without end. The question only the owner can answer is which decision is being delayed because comfort is presently winning. It may also be worth considering who benefits from the delay, who carries the cost and whether the decision becomes easier or harder with every passing week.

Courage before convenience does not mean acting recklessly or confronting people merely to prove that we can. It means refusing to pretend that avoiding a difficult matter has resolved it. Those who depend upon the business, including employees, customers, suppliers and family, may all benefit when the owner is prepared to protect the dream from problems that have been permitted to remain for too long. There is no time quite like the present, although the present may first require us to admit that we do not know what to do. When that is the case, perhaps the most courageous decision available is also the simplest one: ask.