© 2007-2010. Sigrid Caroline Schroder. All Rights Reserved.
BUSINESS MODELS FOR THE REALITY AT HAND
The Model at the Heart of the Business
At the heart of any business is not the plan but the model. At the heart of any business is not the plan but the model. Without a functioning model adaptable and actually adapted to human, technological and economic change, there can be no healthy business. I help you think it through. I partner with you to ask the “impertinent questions” and derive the pertinent solutions. Whether you are in crisis, growth or turnaround phase, I bring clarity to your thinking and strategies. Has your model turned upside down? Has your commercial world turned upside down? Have your strategic marketers obscured your model amidst rather overly creative brand extensions? When you are beset by problems, I help you think through to the other side.
Does your model have hidden, or not so hidden, dysfunctions? I will team with you to think inside and beyond your model. I am independent intellectually, emotionally and financially: I have not bought into your model.
In the end, it’s not the revenues, not the cash flow, not the costs: it’s the model. Your model drives the numbers. Don’t wait for the erroneous assumptions, the guesswork and the risks to affect your numbers. By the time the weak acquisition, the faulty strategy, or the troubled operation affects your numbers, you are well on the way to expensive and often irremediable trouble; you may be well on the way to court.
DEBUG, DEVELOP, TURNAROUND & ORIGINATE YOUR MODEL
There is not a model which does not need debugging, for now or the future. The model not debugged will eventually crash unless later turned around. Don’t wait to get to the brink or the decline.
Turnaround is crisis driven: When the model is broken, impaired, ill-conceived or outmoded, problems from cash flow to personnel devolve from this. It stresses company, customer and the future. Solutions are harder, but we asked the right questions, sometimes the unthinkable questions, such as whether the economics have disappeared and the time to move on has come. All too often, the latest wave of technology, business strategy or politics has obsoleted the model, or threatens to do so. Partner with us to look at the stories behind the numbers, the model behind the stories and the path ahead.
Whether you have high currency invested in your business model through time, capital, production and personnel or you are just founding your company, the model at the heart of your business planning needs constant review.
Has the world changed? Has our information about the world changed? Is your model refractory to those changes and misperceptions? You have planned for the risks but have you thought of all the critical contingencies? Do you know what you sell? Are you selling cheap volume or luxury solutions; do you add an intangible benefit to the lives, business or happiness of your customers? Is there some business somewhere easily accessible, affordable and attractive to your customers dumping an equivalent model on the market and destroying your profit margins and your long-term repeat business? Do you need to change what you sell?
If you have never done exactly this before, have you asked the right questions? How much time have you got before your model has to pay or has to pay more? How do you define your success? Does your business model collect the low hanging fruit first? Is it scalable, rampable, digestible?
Is it simple? Have you built-in obstructive complexity, in love with a challenge? Do people function as your model needs them to function? Is your model cheaply replicable? Is there someone somewhere easily accessible and attractive to the people you want as your customers dumping an equivalent model on the market and destroying your chances of profit margins and any long-term repeat business? Do you need to change to a new model?
© Copyright 2007. Sigrid Caroline Schroder. All Rights Reserved.
