Adaptability: Crossroads Decisions
By Marc Weiss - CEO, Management One
When I was young in the retail consulting business one of my client’s spouses required a meeting to prove that I would provide value to her fledgling retail store. He was a successful businessperson, and he was doing his due diligence. All fair, as I have always been good with skepticism. After he was satisfied with my answers and felt good about hiring me, the conversation switched. He started talking strategy and was asking some incredibly challenging questions. I do not recall much of the conversation, it was over 32 years ago, but I do remember one thing he shared.
He talked about the 3 or 4 four decisions I would make in my life, he called them crossroads decisions, and each of those 3 or 4 decisions would have an impact for a decade or longer. That settled into my psyche forever.
One score and fifteen years later, his words were prescient. I can look back and clearly know the long-term impact of those few decisions. The starting point for these decisions starts with the building of Management One®. My career to that point was really an education that has served me to this day. The first crossroads decision was moving to Chicago from Cleveland, which gave my future business partner and me the time to take many long hikes and work out the vision and strategy of our future business together. The second was 25 years later buying my partner out as our visions veered and had differences on where to take the business.
My family was still young when we moved to Chicago.
Pulling them out of school and away from friends they loved and felt comfortable with was a difficult decision. However, I felt the pull of Chicago as my business had grown to be larger there than in Ohio. I also did not know I would be taking on a partner when I moved. At the time, it seemed like a good business decision and a better opportunity to grow the business. In the early ’90s business was done directly. You visited clients. There was no screen sharing, email was in its infancy, and I can still recall the high-pitched noise when I logged on to the internet and heard the familiar, you’ve got mail. We were just starting to create reports that could be downloaded onto floppy disks and then sent over the new Internet to clients. Who knew what a game-changer that would become?
Today the move to Chicago would not have been necessary, but then the partnership may never have materialized, had the move not happened. I still have regrets about moving the family. They were happy. How different might their lives be if we had stayed in Cleveland? They are happy and successful today, so things worked out. However, Management One may not have been born if the move did not happen. It took Evan, my business partner, and me to build it.
So, decision 1 was a game-changer.
Bringing on a partner was easier because I got to work with my best friend, and we gave each other the courage to do something bigger than what we could do independently. It also meant the business had to grow, as we needed to now support two families. When we talked about the business and where we could take it, we were in total alignment. We had very different skills and abilities and a new business needed both.
Decision 2 was buying out my partner after building the business together for 25 years. It was divisive and it was very hard on both of us. But we no longer had a shared vision.
Decision 3 is in front of me and it will lay out the next chapter of my life.
I have taken the crossroads concept and expanded on it for the independent retail community. We make 2 to 4 decisions a year that will determine what will happen over the next two to three years and sometimes cascade into the future, depending on the results. We get so tied up in the daily grind that we don’t always take the time to step out and really think about the few key decisions we make that will impact us for years to come. An important hire, a merchandise direction change, a new lease, an investment in becoming Phygital. (Blending digital experiences with physical ones. The purpose is to bring the best parts of the physical customer experience into the digital realm and vice versa.)
Independent retail businesses have made key decisions over the last three years. We are at a point now where those decisions put us on different paths. Do we continue to explore and expand, pull back, or shift directions? Strategic decisions can layer onto each other as we respond to cultural and technological changes and emerging trends.
Without being as dramatic as Pythagoras. “Choices are the hinges of Destiny.” However, I like this thought from an unknown source. “Unsuccessful people make decisions based on their current situations. Successful people make decisions on where they want to be.”
Onwards and Upwards.
Marc