Viewpoint: Spinning plates

As business owners, we often find ourselves spinning numerous plates and trying to tackle everything that needs doing at once. For many business owners I speak to, planning of the day, week or month is all well and good, but inevitably there’s a curve ball. That usually leads to uttering the famous paraphrasing of Robbie Burns: ‘the best-laid plans of mice and men often go astray.’

We live in rapidly changing times. The challenges of recent weeks, months and years show us unequivocally that stability is a luxury we cannot expect. Consider, for example, that in a single generation, optical businesses owners have adapted to an entirely new way of communicating with their patients. They have invested in new technologies, changed their product band service mix and considered whether to move to a private model, which was something that was probably not even on the radar for most people pre-Covid.