The phased approach to building business August 24, 2009, by Peter Mirus in Coaching
In business as in life, the space between the current situation and an improved situation can seem very far. I think it is important for business development consultants and their clients to keep this in mind: not everything needs to happen at once.
Many business improvements, whether marketing strategy or IT solutions, can be done incrementally to accommodate constraints in time and budget.
Example 1: Let's just say that your current brand (logo, colors, typeface, marketing copy, etc.) is a liability: outdated, ugly, uncomfortably worded, poorly presented, whatever—it doesn't effectively represent your organization. You don't have to go through the entire brand renovation process at one time. If your brand is a liability, you can take positive structured steps to create new standards, and then roll out the new brand strategically and incrementally—starting with the most visible presentations and moving on from there.
Example 2: Your network needs dramatic upgrades, but IT consultants keep offering you "all or nothing" solutions. Well, good consultants knows how to plan phased deployments/upgrades as well as prudent ways in which to stretch the IT dollar. The consultant might start with improving infrastructure and support to your most critical users, and move forward from there.
The important thing is to firmly establish the fundamentals of the solution approach and create a development timeline, not just including tasks to be performed but also goals to be accomplished.
Then you need to put a big mark on that timeline to indicate at which point during the process the transformation will produce measurable results. Make it possible to celebrate the moments at which you turn liabilities into assets, and then continue building from strength to strength!
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