Being Ready

Tomorrow I leave for Chicago to exhibit and attend GraphExpo, the largest printing industry exposition of the year in the United States. I’m writing this on Monday and have no idea how I’m going to be ready for the show in time, but I know I’ll find a way. Being ready matters. Preparation, prioritization and focused execution will get me from here to being ready.

Preparation

If the event is big, then you need to start planning for it six months out or more. What will you announce? At big shows, people expect big announcements and that means your show preparation should be on the tasks necessary to be able to make that announcement. In other words, as with many things in business, start at the end. In your mind’s eye, envision how your own booth would look. Or, if you do it like us, which booths will you co-exhibit in?

The point is to have a clear vision of how you want the show to go. Armed with that vision you can begin to create a plan to make the vision a reality. What will it cost? What resources, people and otherwise will you need to pull it off? Think and dream big during this phase. You can always scale back.

Prioritization

When you are done with the preparation phase, you should have a long list of tasks. Now it’s time to sort those tasks so the big brush strokes get taken care of first. While the devil is in the details, most folks will excuse a few lesser details not being complete right on launch day as long as you get the big parts right.

As the event grows closer, it’s time to look at the list again and begin to re-prioritize so that all the broad strokes get completed. Once you have those checked off the list, the lesser details need to be dealt with and you probably won’t get them all done. That’s the boat I find myself in today. Little things (such as the shirts we ordered to wear at the show) may not get here in time. We ordered them too late. It’s not the end of the world and I have to remind myself of that.

A couple of the technology tasks we wanted to complete probably won’t happen. We’ve prioritized in such a way, however, that none of the missing technology will effect our demonstrations at the show. We’ll need to dot these i’s and cross these t’s before we can ship, but those are worries for another day.

Focused execution

With less than a week to go, most of your personal and business life has to be put on hold. The focus must be on the upcoming event. It’s a moment in time you can never get back. In our case, a major partner is announcing a joint-venture product and we certainly can’t let them down. So I wrote a couple week’s blog posts over a holiday weekend. I can take time off whenever I need it. There is nothing that special about those three days to me. It never ceases to amaze me by the amount of work that one can get done in four to five days when you are staying focused and on task.

So my plan for being ready is simple: Preparation, followed by prioritization and wrapped up with focused execution. You can use the process six months out and then do it again as the event approaches. What are you doing to always be ready?