Brexit on horizon! Five mistakes to kill our strategies as a reaction.

Will the Brexit ever happen? Well that's a billion dollars question!

What we can do about it is just securing our solutions and our strategies until the reality comes up finally. We would like to share our thoughts and a few avoidable mistakes that may make trouble for your business, specifically if your operation is happening inside the UK.

1. Spending all your credit and cash on your supply chain model. 

What we hear from media nowadays is that companies are focusing on their stock. They buy a lot since they would like to secure their supply and production. That's smart but then what?

Whatever you have bought, will be used one day completely and then either you must buy stuff more expensive due to tariffs set after Brexit or eventually you should find another solution. It's great to buffer the chaos for a while to test the market situation if it happens but what we would like to ask you is thinking deeply about the amount of cash or credit that you are spending. It might be possible that the amount can support you to change your operating model to a safer one. Either make your supply chain model completely local or start your production or supply out of the UK. It gives you a chance to use the cash in a better way.

2. Ignoring the power of branding. 

We always believe in simple explanation and that is one of our policies in consultancy. We would like you to understand problems and solutions so well that you can implement them. Now, simply I explain to you what branding means: "Keeping your promise to your customer" Sometimes people do not mind to buy a product or service more expensive which is "Made in Britain"! Either they believe in the quality or you can make a brand for yourself by proving to them that you didn't take your operation/production out of since you would like to pay your tax inside the country! Or sometimes you would like to keep your customers happy by promising them fair prices even if your operations get more expensive!

Example: When Huawei got under sanctions of US, everyone predicted that their mobile phone market will go down. Surprisingly, this didn't happen! The brand has such a great impact on Chinese people that they started buying more and more and the company kept almost the same level of mobile phone sales numbers as before! Here is news that you can read about the company and the patriotic purchases.

3. Strategic planning in a way that you lose your agility. 

Sometimes when we are in an uncertain situation, we forget basics of management easily by focusing only and only on our objectives without considering real situation regarding sources and resources.

Example: For a specific scenario or the planning, we don't have enough employees and obviously we cannot hire more and then we change the organizational structure, change roles and responsibilities and make a big mess!

4. Making it complex for yourself. 

One of the methods to plan strategies and business risk in uncertain situations is scenario-based strategic planning. The problem is that business owners and CEOs would like to dive as deep as possible. They would like to define as many as scenarios that they can. That's not bad at all but the question is that these scenarios should be explained to your people to give them some hints and to ask them for the solution! Not everyone is so detailed oriented as you are! Also, in reality, scenarios need practical preparation and we usually don't have that much sources and resources to deal with many scenarios.

Simply, there are not more than 3 major scenarios:

• Exit
• Stay
• Continue the uncertainty

If out of each one, we make another six or seven sub-scenarios then preparation for each one makes our people confused and tired. You may think that no CEO or board member will come out with such a proposal but our experience with many companies in different situations proved us that there are always leaders who think by defining too many scenarios they are putting the business in safe side!

5. Mixing your personal opinion with business. 

We wouldn't like to discuss this since you know it better but just imagine that you are for or against Brexit and imagine that all your strategies are based on your personal opinion. Sometimes we forget that what we desire for is not what might happen in the future! Basically, we believe in our wishes! Especially when the procedure gets longer!

There are many more to mention but the above ones are the major ones from our point of view. Wishing you good luck with your Brexit strategic planning!