“Impossible, that can’t be done.” I remember vividly the words of the President of the division, words that made the CEO and CFO hesitate in the business plan I had just proposed. The President was a 30+ year old veteran of the industry. He had been to every position in this business/industry. He knew the entire supply chain upstream and downstream, and he was responsible for global corporate accounts. He was the subject matter expert; he was the Guru.
We were in a long cycle business dominated in one end by suppliers with access to better raw material prices and brand recognition, and in the other by overseas competitors with killing prices, lower distribution costs and a clear go to market strategy: win on price every time. We had none of those things. We were a regional company with a few global accounts, so in the proposed plan, the focus was to target the biggest market which was underserved by us.
The business plan: refocus our product offering, by bundling delivery systems, processing systems, technical assistance and productivity assessments with local infrastructure at a higher price point. “Impossible, that can’t be done, we have never done it like that.”
Several weeks later, one of corporate accounts shut down their largest operation. We lost immediately ~25% of the total production volume’s demand, a huge gap in our yearly plan, “impossible” to recover” once again, Mr. President said. That’s when we got our chance to present our plan again, “are you confident this is going to work”? The CEO asked, I said we are positive, (By then we had finished all the research, we had verbal commitments from customers, our operating partners, had already secured permits, equipment, and we were ready to sit down and negotiate the contracts).
It was a smashing success for the company, we increased our business EBITDA in the region, filling the gap within the same fiscal year. I remember the words from Mr. President, “I know I said it was impossible and couldn’t be done, I was wrong, congratulations, nice win”. I didn’t hesitate for a second to commended him back, “see, I took your advice and put it to use, I considered your experience in this new business model and made sure we had covered all your concerns. This is not my win. This is our win”.
It doesn’t matter where the ideas and plans come from, winning or losing is a team effort (or at least should be.
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