EPMA BusiMom Blog: March 2010

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Watching Con Ed fix electic poles made me think about long term planning

This past week I was without electricity for 5 days and just got power back on Wednesday night. It was rough but not that bad. Could have been worse...Haiti comes to mind or perhaps New Orleans, Afghanistan and Iraq...anyway, not a blog about disasters and war zones.

This is about long term strategic planning...YAWN. Could be a snoozer but I'm simply AMAZED that people and large corporations FAIL to plan or to look at the big pictures.

Con Ed failed in many many places with our storm clean but I want to know if they are thinking about the next big storm????

1. How much is this clean up costing?
2. How much do most clean up's cost? Only TWO weeks ago we had 2 -3 feet of snow topple down trees and power lines.

ARE THEY THINKING ABOUT BURYING THE ELECTRIC LINES?????????????

Ok, sure, I get the expense, time and coordination with various municipalities, but, let's think LONG TERM.

If they were to put up with the expense of tearing up streets and sidewalks to never have to replant a million poles, get hundreds of thousands of people "back on line, take tree off lines, maintaining trees that grow and surround lines...it seems to me that if they buried the lines a lot of expensive problems would go away.

How does this concern you? If you live where the lines are buried you are probably wondering where I'm going with this...

YOU NEED TO BE THINKING ABOUT LONG TERM PLANNING!

1. How often do you go the cheaper or easier route for it to only cost more in the long run???

2. When you make decisions do you do a cost analysis to see if makes sense, 1, 5 or 10 years down the road?

3. Do you throw money and time at things because you "need it now?"

4. Are you constantly putting out fires?

If you said yes to any of those - then you've lost money. No argument. Now, all of us have made mistakes and have spent money only to realize later that we've screwed up - but, are you making the same mistakes over and over and over again?

S.W.O.T. analysis is one of the more popular models to help you with large decisions. Also, pay attention to small decisions you make regularly. Analyzing several small issues, projects and costs can add up and perhaps save you a bundle.

Watching Con Ed has certainly inspired me to do some heavy cost AND time analysis to see where I might stack up in the long run!