When you always do what you always did!
The rugby season is upon us and already there is gloom in Ulster, and I haven’t even collected my season ticket yet! After three great pre-seasons wins against the English sides Newcastle and Worcester, and the Italian side Viadana, Ulster came down with a bump on Sunday at Newport in Wales.
Newport Gwent Dragons are usually the fourth of the four Welsh regions in the Magners League, though Connaught usually challenges them for the very bottom spot! On Sunday afternoon they comprehensively beat Ulster. Particularly galling for us Ulster fans, was our inability to change tactics quickly enough. We have the players, but not the tactics. When wave after wave of forward play was repulsed you would have thought that we would have tried something new, not so!
Now that the pain of the defeat is easing and I can talk/write about it, it occurred to me that there was some sound business as well as rugby lessons that could be learnt from the Ulster defeat. As a management consultant I had a client who said “if you always do what you always did you will always get what you always got!”. Ulster forwards and coaching staff please take note! Another axiom which I based my work on, and still do, was the need for ‘meticulous planning before execution’ in other words ‘planning before doing’. I think the Ulster back room staff should have realised with former Welsh Rugby Legend Colin Charvis organising the Newport pack that they weren’t going to be a push over and our tactics should reflect Newport being well organised.
Finally, whenever I was developing a strategy for a client we always developed an alternative approach, in case some of our assumptions weren’t right! What is Plan B? Was always a question that clients who worked with me for many years asked. Plan A didn’t work on Sunday, what was Plan B, was there one?
On Monday I met with our business partner who is a farmer, Alan Chambers. Farmers do not have a big reputation for business planning, but I think that this generality undervalues the business skills of the farmers. Alan is a man who has to always have a plan B. With the changeable weather in this part of Ulster there needs to be fluidity (sorry for the pun) in his planning. The last few weeks have seen significant rainfall in County Down and this has stopped the farmers getting the barley out of the fields yet. We are hopeful that the combine harvesters should be able to get to the fields today. Today is a nice sunny morning, the question is, “will the combines get bogged down?”
When this year’s barley is harvested, Alan will dry it for a few weeks and have it tested for malting suitability. Given the rain and the likelihood that not all the barley will be useable, he has already developed a plan B should we have insufficient good Barley from him. He has identified other parts of Down and Ireland where the crop hasn’t been affected so badly, so we’ll have plenty of local barley for our beer.
Oh if only Ulster had developed such an efficient plan B, then I would not be living in fear of meeting the top Welsh region next weekend; the Ospreys! Stay tuned for the Rugby report next week, which I fear will resemble a description of the victory of the Little Bighorn! (I guess it depends which side you are on!)
Only 10 days before the Magnus Barelegs Festival. If you are in Ireland, get to Killyleagh for the 18th – 20th September. The festival lasts all weekend with the main events being a re-enactment on Saturday and the town procession and parade on the Sunday followed by boat races in Viking long boats. Please feel free to come and say hello. I’ll be the big guy balancing on the wall, trying to look professional (and failing) while commenting on the rowing races!
Until next week “ May St. Patrick guard you wherever you go, and guide you in whatever you do and may his loving protection be a blessing to you always.”
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Isn’t it amazing when things seem to operate in a bigger plan. My humble blog talks about Plan B in the morning and in the afternoon Harvard Business Review send me the following on Facebook “Harvard Business Review - Every aspiring entrepreneur has a plan A. But did you know that your next plan— plan B—is the one most likely to work? Find out why by watching Harvard Business Publishing author John Mullins talk about his latest book, Getting to Plan B, with Stuart Crainer of the Financial Times.”
