Take the long view
When taking a long-range view that looks past the potholes immediately ahead, Clark goes back to a lesson he picked up from the published works of business mogul and Google investor Ram Shriram: The head of a company has to work on the business, not in it.
You’ve hired people to take care of the day-to-day operations. Your job is to make sure that those people are put in the best possible position to carry out their daily and weekly tasks by ensuring that the company is in the best possible position to succeed when times are good and endure when times are trying.
“Positioning the business to weather a down economy is something that falls onto senior management,” Clark says. “That is a major responsibility of senior management in any company. You need to look to the future and what you think the future is going to hold, then act accordingly.”
Acting accordingly means using the information at your disposal to paint the most accurate long-range picture that you can. If the projections say revenue will begin to swing upward, you might make preparations for additional hires or reduce travel restrictions. If projections aren’t as positive, you might need to rein in spending.
“Entering the fourth quarter of 2007, I was really advising our management team to enter 2008 in almost a hiring freeze,” Clark says. “The last thing you want to do is hire in January and lay off in August. That turned out to be the right advice, but more importantly, the management team followed that advice. That is why we need to get out of the details of the company and take the visionary view.
“In the end, your decisions will probably be driven by three things: cash, employees and customers. You want to accumulate cash, keep your good people and keep your good customers. That should be your focus in this economy.”
How to reach: AmeriQuest Transportation Services, (800) 608-0809 or www.ameriquestcorp.com
