Carillion took hundreds of suppliers down with it
No captain leaves port without knowing where the lifeboats are. Not because he expects to sink. Because the day he needs one is never a day he gets to plan for.
Most directors never believe that day is coming. Ask any of them, and they’ll tell you the same thing. Twenty years trading, never had a problem, never will. That’s not arrogance, it’s just what confidence sounds like from the inside.
Here’s what they don’t see coming. The captain of the Titanic wasn’t worried about the iceberg either. It was miles away, nothing to do with him. It’s the same for most businesses. The trouble doesn’t start with you. It starts three companies down the chain, in a business you’ve never heard of, having a problem that feels like none of your business.
Then it drifts. Quietly, slowly, one domino at a time, until one day it’s sitting on your own desk, and you never saw it coming because you were never looking in that direction.
That’s exactly why I wrote Before The Wave. Not for the storm. For the calm days before it, when nobody believes they’ll ever need a lifeboat, which is precisely when you should be building one.
Read it now, while everything’s fine. That’s the only point at which it can actually save you.
I’m Mark Smillie.
