Folding up the England flags – 4 years is a long time

June 28, 2010 SEO, Website Development, Website Strategy No Comments

All over the UK, houses are returning to pure brick and glass as the long-suffering England supporters fold up their flags and put them into storage.

There are many analogies that can be drawn between business and the failure of England to beat Germany yesterday but the subject I’d like to focus on today is the 4 year gap before the next World Cup.   Whatever people may say about the coaching of the team, the players themselves, and whether the second England goal not counting was a pivotal point, the simple fact is that England are out, lessons may be learnt, and it’s time for business owners to turn their football passions to some practical use.

Looking back to the 2006 World Cup, it would be fascinating to see how well individual businesses have move forwards in that 4 year time period.   This means not just from a financial perspective but in other ways as well (e.g. improving efficiencies).  

Focusing purely on the financial perspective, all those ardent England supporters who run businesses would hopefully have progressed somewhat in the past 4 years.  It is perhaps worth putting a percentage figure on that – has business risen 10%, 20%, 30%, more%?   Perhaps it’s declined?   The Custwin business, for example, has seen an increase of over 300% (financially) since the last World Cup.

But it’s not just about financial improvement of course – businesses can advance in many other ways.  The key point here is that in a 4 year period, businesses should have advanced. 

In another 4 years time England should hopefully be at the next World Cup.  2014 seems a long way off and there’s so much potential for businesses in this country to advance within that time period.  In our day to day work we witness businesses failing from just one perspective (poor website and online marketing strategy, which is like a cancer eating away at the potential success of so many businesses), but there are many ways to create business efficiency and growth, the ‘web’ being just one (albeit an important one).

I’d encourage any business to look back to the last World Cup and assess how things have progressed (or not) since then.  If the view is that things should have been better then perhaps it’s worth focusing on what can be improved in order to put the business into a much stronger position in both the short term and the longer term – leading up to the next World Cup.  

Not every business initiative will work.  For example, many companies try to enhance the strength of their website but don’t gain the results they feel are deserved.  Much like Frank Lampard, the goal seemed to have been achieved but something just didn’t go right.  In the case of the England team, that negative experience probably had a detrimental impact on their performance in the rest of the game. 

But it would still have been a poor excuse. 

So what if the goal didn’t count?  Surely the efforts before that point should have been stronger, and surely the knock-back should have created more passion into turning that negative into positives (through more goals)?   Turning this to business,  the company that has spent time and money on strengthening their website may have felt they’ve reached their goal but if the strategy behind those website changes was flawed then the goal (gaining more business) wasn’t actually achieved.  The company then has the choice of thinking “well, that didn’t work – the web is rubbish” or thinking “we need to beat our competitors so let’s turn this around into a good result”.  Sadly, whatever business initiative hasn’t worked in the way desired (web or otherwise), it’s too easy to think that it just didn’t work and to take the focus off that subject when instead the failure should be analysed in more detail.

4 years is a long time in business and there is much opportunity to re-allocate the passion for England into a passion for business success in England.  So take a few minutes to see how successful your past 4 years have been and picture yourself sitting there, watching the first England match of the 2014 World Cup.   Will your business have progressed or not?  

When the time comes to take the England flags back down from the houses in 2014 you may or may not be pleased about how the team have performed.   But to be in the position where you can sit back and think “actually, it doesn’t matter – my business has advanced brilliantly while my competitors have fallen by the wayside”, is a pretty good consolation prize.