Running a Service Business is without a doubt the hardest job in the world.
The reason is because there are endless variables. No matter how many systems you have in place you can’t plan for everything.
Imagine this scenario… you and some people on your sales team are pitching a giant project to a major corporation. It goes amazingly well. You do your presentation to the absolute best of your ability. They love it. You offer far superior service and a better price than your competition. You are a shoe in.
Your soon-to-be clients invite you out for dinner that night. One of your sales associates has too much to drink and obnoxiously hits on the female CFO.
You just lost the contract. How do you build a system for those kinds of variables?
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Look at how much preparation NASA spent to have a guy remove two short pieces of filler material that were sticking out of the space shuttle’s belly. They had guys testing the operation on earth in large water tanks.
Teams of aerodynamic and thermal experts spent four days developing and refining the plan, and experienced spacewalkers such as astronaut David Wolf practiced the techniques underwater at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The Globe and Mail: NASA’s shuttle quick fix: a blade, Velcro and duct tape
And look at Osama Bin Laden. We had a plan to capture him. We knew he was spending the nights in a particular place… the Tarnak Farms. How hard do you think it would be to capture a rogue dude like OBL on some farms? Logistically too hard. Here are the juiciest parts of that “service” business determining this was too much of a job for us.
The CIA Develops a Capture Plan Initially, the DCI’s Counterterrorist Center and its Bin Ladin unit considered a plan to ambush Bin Ladin when he traveled between Kandahar, the Taliban capital where he sometimes stayed the night, and his primary residence at the time,Tarnak Farms.
By early 1998, planners at the Counterterrorist Center were ready to come back to the White House to seek formal approval. Tenet apparently walked National Security Advisor Sandy Berger through the basic plan on February 13. One group of tribals would subdue the guards, enter Tarnak Farms stealthily, grab Bin Ladin, take him to a desert site outside Kandahar, and turn him over to a second group.This second group of tribals would take him to a desert landing zone already tested in the 1997 Kansi capture. From there, a CIA plane would take him to New York, an Arab capital, or wherever he was to be arraigned. Briefing papers prepared by the Counterterrorist Center acknowledged that hitches might develop. People might be killed, and Bin Ladin’s sup-porters might retaliate,perhaps taking U.S.citizens in Kandahar hostage.But the briefing papers also noted that there was risk in not acting.’Sooner or later,’ they said,’Bin Ladin will attack U.S.interests,perhaps using WMD [weapons of mass destruction].’19
The CIA planners conducted their third complete rehearsal in March, and they again briefed the CSG. Clarke wrote Berger on March 7 that he saw the operation as ‘somewhat embryonic’ and the CIA as ‘months away from doing anything.’21
Counterterrorist Center officers briefed Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh, telling them that the operation had about a 30 per-cent chance of success.
From May 20 to 24, the CIA ran a final, graded rehearsal of the operation, spread over three time zones, even bringing in personnel from the region.The FBI also participated. The rehearsal went well. The Counterterrorist Center planned to brief cabinet-level principals and their deputies the following week, giving June 23 as the date for the raid, with Bin Ladin to be brought out of Afghanistan no later than July 23.
The CIA’s senior management clearly did not think the plan would work. Tenet’s deputy director of operations wrote to Berger a few weeks later that the CIA assessed the tribals’ ability to capture Bin Ladin and deliver him to U.S. officials as low.
That comes from this section of the 9-11 Commission Final Report – RESPONSES TO AL QAEDA’S INITIAL ASSAULTS
We never went through with the attempt because it was logistically too hard.
NASA knows what can go wrong yanking on “filler material” in space. And the military knows what can go wrong in an ambush.
Take the movie Black Hawk Down, it’s all about a complete service systems failure because a guy fell out of a helicopter. 2 helicopters down, 19 American service men killed and over 1000 Somali’s dead because one guy fell out of a helicopter. That’s the service business for you.
And now, back to the business world. Who goes into service businesses? Small time operations – mom and pop shops. People who know the least about business are the people venturing into the hardest businesses in the world. And why do they do it? Because the don’t have any money to have actual products. It’s always harder being poor. It’s just the way of capitalism.
You will hear scary statistics like:
?According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, over 50% of
small businesses fail in the first year and 95% fail within the first
five years.? That’s found here:
Google Answers: Percentage of new businesses that fail.
It’s no doubt because many of those businesses are service-oriented businesses. The poor blokes getting into them have no idea what they are up against.
If NASA and the U.S. Military are so scared of doing service, don’t feel bad if things go wrong in your service business. They are bound to. Just try not to panic and then try to learn from your mistakes. If you make it out alive you will have learned one of the all time hardest skills given to mankind – running a service business.
If you are in a service business, you can definitely succeed. You just need to work harder than you have ever worked before… do things you never knew you could do. Oh, and while you are doing all of that, get reading. Here are some books you should have under your belt:
E-Myth Mastery
Author: Michael E. Gerber
This is real popular right now. And that’s because it’s great advice.
The Leadership Challenge, 3rd Edition
Author: James M. Kouzes
You are going to have to be one of the best leaders in the American business world if you want to succeed in your small service business. Read this:
Selling the Invisible
Author: Harry Beckwith
Our entire office read this book. You need to understand how people buy and continue to buy services. This is a new perspective on what you think people are buying from you.
Best wishes! And don’t forget the words of Vince Lombardi:
But I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour, his greatest fulfillment of all he holds dear, is the moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle – victorious.