10 Years or 1 Year Lived 10 times?
Are you a 10-year-old business, or have you survived 1 year of business 10 times?
If we had known in our first year of business that we would still be here 10 years later, we would probably have made some different choices. Instead, our planning cycles rarely look more than 12 months ahead, at best.
So: 10 years lived or 1 year repeated 10 times?
You have not truly lived a year until the experience from that year feeds directly into your future decisions – for good or for bad.
First, let us establish two facts;
Age does not equal experience
Experience does not equal learning.
To learn,
we must develop a system that carries yesterday’s lessons into tomorrow’s decisions – again, for good or for bad. That means building a business that thinks about what could happen, watches what actually happens, and uses that information to shape its growth.
There is nothing inherently wrong with a 12-month plan. However, the potential problem sits within this loop;
PLAN - EXECUTE - EVENT HAPPENS - REACT - YEAR ENDS - RESET - REPEAT
At the heart of this loop sits an opportunity to do something different:
Observe – what happened?
Learn – what did reality teach us?
Unlearn – Which assumptions and habits no longer serve us?
Update assumptions – what do we now believe to be true?
Change the model – what needs to change in the numbers?
Change the decision – what should we do differently because of that?
Plan again – given what we know, what are we going to do?
Execute – go do it!
Observe again – What happened when we did?
And the loop starts again.
This is how experience becomes cumulative rather than sequential.
To do this, you must remain flexible, dare I say malleable. Many times, the lesson is that we were operating on an assumption that no longer holds or serves us, and we need a partial or absolute pivot. The challenge is that daily business gets in the way, with the need to put out urgent fires. Planning for those fires before they flare usually gets postponed.
So how can your business age come close to equating experience?
Document what happens – capture important events, decisions, surprises, and outcomes
Set KPIs – define what matters to your business before the year unfolds
Monitor those KPIs – watch reality against what you expected
Do not wipe the slate clean – carry lessons forward through budgeting and forecasting
Rehearse possible futures – use scenario planning to test what could happen
Carry good experiences forward – turn experiences into organizational learning
Adapt as reality teaches you – let strategic learning lead the way you operate
Challenge Assumptions that have become the norm – unlearn what no longer holds true
Eat the humble pie – use premortems to expose failure before it happens.
Close the loop – update assumptions, change the model, change the decision, plan again.
In no time, your business experience starts to compound into learning rather than simply accumulated years.
So, I’ll leave you with this question. How old is your business really? Not in years, but in accumulated learning. Answer that, and perhaps the job feels a little less half-done.