FUNDAMENTALS
LEADERSHIP
Planning for Growth
LEADING THROUGH THE WORST AND THE WHAT IFS
by Jeffrey Tesch
the Coronavirus has taught businesses within the mort-
I f
quarters in the company’s history. Coronavirus was just making its first rumblings in the United States, and RCN was in growth mode as far as the team was concerned. The very next day, I called an emergency meeting with all of RCN’s managers to discuss remote proto- cols and discuss with each of them what their departments would need to successfully transition to working remotely should the situation arise. Less than a week later, RCN’s first round of employees went remote and the following week, the entire company was working remotely. I don’t relay these experiences to brag about the foresight I had, be- cause I did not think the worst would happen. But as the CEO of a compa- ny with over 100 employees that are counting on me to make sure they continue to receive a paycheck, even when unprecedented times occur, it would have been foolish of me not to prepare and know what a “worst case scenario” would look like. I share these two stories as a warning to other business leaders. If you do not have a plan in place to shore up your business so that it can survive even the most incomprehen- sible situations, you are not doing your job. That’s not to say you have to do this all on your own, in fact, I strongly encourage you to enlist the help of other members of your
gage industry anything, RCN Capital included, it is that they need to be prepared for the worst, and more importantly, the “what ifs.” What if something happens to a member of the Executive Management team? Is there a succession plan in place? If the market faces a significant chal - lenge, is your business equipped to ride out a downturn? If a once-in-a lifetime pandemic hits the United States, what is your plan? It is so easy to become focused on growth initiatives, especially when things are going well and opportunities abound, that those “what ifs” fade into the background. But any good business leader knows, having a plan in place to deal with all of the “what ifs” is how you ensure that your business can not only survive, but thrive when it matters most, during the worst of times. BE PROACTIVE I’ll never forget the looks on the faces of RCN Capital’s Head of Trea- sury and RCN’s Comptroller when I met with them at the beginning of March to request they run a P&L that showed zero closings. I’m pretty sure they thought I had lost my mind. Why was this request so unusual? Because RCN was having one of the busiest, most profitable first
26 | think realty magazine :: october 2020
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