Obituary for Your Business
An obituary for your business is something that most business owners fear to do. However, this undertaking can actually help you brand your business to ensure that the accurate image that you would like to portray is realized. If you want your business to thrive in the marketplace in terms of relevance and continuous exposure, then it will be best if you will develop an obituary for your business.
Just like an obituary for people who passed away, an obituary for businesses is commonly used when a company would like to imagine what could possibly happen in the future if they did not thrive in the marketplace or if they fail to achieve their business goals. Different stakeholders provide the details of the make-believe corporate death so that people involved in the operations can be aware of what could happen if the business fails. Learn more about this document by reading the entire article.
Underlying Questions to Answer When Developing an Obituary for Your Business
An obituary for your business can be a combined effort of all the people who will be at the meeting where the document can be created. You may need a team meeting checklist for this activity. On the other hand, it can also be an individual exercise that can be discussed one-by-one once all the meeting attendees are done writing their own version of the obituary for your business. Listed below are some of the underlying questions that are essential to be answered when making an obituary for your business:
- How would you like your business to be remembered? If there are success stories that you would like people to remember about your company, what would they be? These questions can already define whether your business has succeeded when it comes to presenting itself in the marketplace. Is your brand taking you in a positive corporate route or do you already need to develop a new image that your customers can relate to? You may also see business proposal examples.
- What can be the alternative for the business in terms of what it can offer to people? External threats include the businesses that you thrive in the marketplace. How different are their marketing activities and strategies compared to yours? How do they interact with the market? Knowing the strengths of your competitors through an obituary for your business will allow you to adopt measures that can help you step up to the level, or even higher, of their performance. You may also see business application examples.
- What image or brand does your business currently have? You should have an idea of how you are perceived by your current and target customers as they can actually contribute to the success of the business, and the other way around. It is not common to talk about the death of the business, but doing so will allow you to see the operations in another perspective. If you know that your brand does not work anymore and people do not take its credibility, then you can easily turn things around and make your simple business effective and sustainable.
- Who will be affected by the loss of the business? Identify the entities or stakeholders that will be affected if the business will close. Aside from knowing the people who make the business successful, this will also allow you to give more importance to the contributions of your employees and other people who are involved in the company. You may also see business statement examples.
- What are the things that the brand fail to accomplish? If you’ve talked about the legacy of the brand already, you should also think of the vision that was not realized and the objective and goals of the business that you fail to implement. This can help you to be more eager in making this work for your advantage.
Steps to Follow While Making an Obituary for Your Business
Keep in mind that an obituary for your business is only an activity and not something that you will actually want to be published elsewhere. You are doing this to face actual and current problems so you can resolve it as a team. Here are the steps that you can follow if you want to have an obituary for your business:
- Ensure that all the stakeholders are aware of the purpose of the obituary for your business and that they fully understand why there is a need to create one.
- Plan a company meeting with the management and the leaders of the operations team of the business.
- Identify the threats present both within the workplace and the external environment. You can do this per department or division so you can have an overall view of the threats that the company should be ready for.
- Put together all the concerns of each department and place it in one document. This will be used as the basis of your business’ obituary.
- Review the write-up and discuss specific areas as necessary.
Why Create an Obituary for Your Business
You have to make sure that you will be honest, transparent, and objective especially when developing and reviewing the meeting notes or any other document from the obituary for your business-creation activity. This document gives the people access to the details that most companies do not want to expose and the management does not want to talk about. However, coming clean and ensuring that these discussions will occur can help the business identify factors that can negatively affect everyone. Here are a few of the reasons why we think it is important for you to create an obituary for your business:
- Creating an obituary for your business is an easy activity. Though other people think that it is complex and tedious, it can actually be done within a day or in one discussion seating. An obituary for your business helps people understand what could potentially happen which can help them relate further to your business and the risks that it faces. You may also like business emails.
- An obituary for your business can help you change the corporate direction of your business. Since an obituary for your small business is an activity that will let you think of future possibilities, this will allow you to take measures that can protect the company from impacts of external and internal threats and risks.
- You can make the top management more involved when it comes to facing the problems of the business. There are certain areas of the business that are taken care of by different entities both from the business operations and the management. If there will be an obituary for your business, then the entire company can have a discussion on how to refocus efforts of people no matter which part of the business they belong to. You may also see business analysis examples.
If you have an obituary for your business as an exercise, the best result that you can get is that you can be more prepared for a crisis. Taking action to prevent negative things is better than actually facing it and not knowing what to do. You may also see business questionnaire examples.
This exercise can help you strengthen not only the current operations of the company but also the strategies and activities that can make the business even better and more competitive. Be reminded of the items presented in this post while making an obituary for your business and it is for sure that you can have higher chances of making your company achieve its smart goals and objectives.
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