Wise Up Wednesday: Failure Is Not An Option… Or Is It?
“Failure is Not an Option” is a phrase associated with Gene Kranz and the Apollo 13 Moon landing mission. Although Kranz is often attributed with having spoken those words during the mission, he did not. The origin of the phrase is from the preparation for the 1995 film Apollo 13.
In preparation for the movie, the script writers, interviewed the Mission Control guys and one of their questions was “Weren’t there times when everybody, or at least a few people, just panicked?” Their answer was “No, when bad things happened, we just calmly laid out all the options, and failure was not one of them.
And the rest as they say, is history. The tag line for the whole movie, “Failure is not an option” was born.
But sadly for you as a Specialist Contractor in the construction and engineering industries, failure is very much an option!
What You Can Do To Protect Your Business
You might not be able to change external factors that are impacting your business, but you can take action on those internal factors you CAN control;
- increase your effective marketing and sales activity
- don’t just work for any new Contractor check thoroughly
- don’t ignore the commercial and contractual risks
- read and understand the contract – is it onerous?
- do what the contract says when you should do it
- records, records, records should be your mantra
- smarten up your buying where you can
- look for alternative sources of labour (not easy – but it is doable)
- don’t ignore under valuation and slow payment – take action
- get advice sooner rather than later about problems especially payment
Ignoring All This Is Not An Option
It’s too late to wish you had read, understood and applied the advice when work has dried up, your margins are through the floor, and the Contractor is not paying you…
99% of contractual problems end up with you not getting paid, and not getting paid has cost literally thousands of construction Subbies their business in the last few years!
Failure Is Not An Option – Don’t Let It Cost You Your Business!
90% of the time you could have protected your profits and your business by the simple expedient of thinking objectively about your business and taking positive action in the right areas.
When bad things happen, you need to calmly lay out all the options. Top of your list should always be call StreetwiseSubbie and speak to one of our experts.
We are already helping lots of Specialist Contractors just like you to take action on all of the above, protecting businesses and recovering hundreds of £thousands of pounds on their behalf.
So, if we can help you please give us a call on 01773 712116 or click here to send us an email.
You can also go to our Commercial and Contractual page here.
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