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This is the fourth installment of an interview between Seth Morgan, Founder and CEO of MLA Companies and Stone Payton of Business RadioX Studios. In this section they discuss right-sizing strategy in a small business.
Seth ended the previous section with this observation: “All of these difficulties require us to be flexible and quick on our feet as we continue to try to serve our clients as they serve their customers and vendors and other parters.”
Are you wondering how to be flexible and quick on your feet in your business? MLA doesn’t just consult, we also execute. So we can help with that.
Stone: So so I fall into this trap. I’m the number two guy in our Business RadioX network and I and I run a studio. I’m a little too quick, I think, to start implementing a strategy before I have some of the foundation pieces in place. What counsel, if any, might you offer? What ducks should we get in a row before we start trying to form a strategy.
Seth: I think if you’re a big business you can go out and hire a big consulting firm and spend time doing market research and building up this case for what every possible outcome you might be. Even with that expertise, you might be able to get to the point where you know exactly what the risk is to this question that we’re that we’re struggling with. But you still have to decide to actually execute.
I think the more realistic version for the rest of us is we need to spend time thinking and planning and being thoughtful, maybe praying about that decision and then seeking counsel from a board of advisors or management team, or just the people that you rely on. And then we’re going to execute on some portion of that and we’re going to watch the response.
This is very much what our model is built around. And I know it may sound a little counterintuitive and clunky. But it normally happens in a very organic way. And the reality is we’re doing that all the time. We are iterative learners. It’s part of our creativity and our ingenuity as people. We are constantly processing the data of what just happened and how do we respond to that.
Your vision and mission and values all matter. Those are all extremely important things to understand. We spend significant time on those questions ourselves at MLA, but we believe they are best contextualized with actual data.
If you and I started a business tomorrow, we could absolutely theorize that we were blue in the face about awesome grand plans and ideas, missions, values, visions. But the reality is it would be Stone and Seth starting a business with certain skills, weaknesses, fears, and courageous moments. We would be in essence the sum of our own weaknesses, failures and opportunities that existed. We believe very much at MLA that we’ve got to understand those things. But sometimes the only way to understand them is to actually put them into action and watch what happens. That’s right-sizing strategy.
This doesn’t have to take three years, Sometimes it happens even the course of a meeting. Sometimes we purposely instigate an argument with the intent of drawing to the surface the things that we suspect might be there so that we have better data to then actually go back and solve the problem that’s been presented to us.
We find so often this is where our clients get stuck. They go off and talk to some consulting group and they get told to clarify their vision. Or they talk to someone else has who has a canned process that they buy into.
By contrast, we’re going to help you see what’s underneath the surface to help clarify the question that’s actually in front of you. So you can then get to the solution that probably you already know what it is. You just don’t have the context to get to it.
We believe that those who sit around the table and have to make the decisions should be held responsible for them. You are the stewards of your business, not us. But we are willing to have a seat at the table, and to be part of the execution.
MLA will help you see what’s underneath that surface to help clarify the question that’s actually in front of you. Contact us to learn more.