How my fridge dying on me, and the impact it had, made me think about creating a risk register for my business
Last Tuesday my alarm shook me from my slumber at a ridiculous time and, after debating strongly with myself whether to snooze it, I leapt out of bed. No time to snooze today as I had an early zoom call to conduct an interview with a client in China (wahoo, the joys of global time zones now that work is remote).
I threw on some clothes to be presentable for the camera and then, to ease the pain of the early start, I stumbled into the kitchen to make a cup of tea.
Beep went the hi-tech kettle once the water reached boiling point and without thinking I followed my normal process for making a cup of tea. All good so far; however, when I went to get the milk from the fridge I realised it was warm.
“Damn it!” I thought; “I must have left the fridge door open last night. Oh well, warm milk in a cup of tea is not the end of the world, now I better jump on that zoom…”
Oh how wrong I was to be; later that day at lunchtime, I went to make a sandwich and it was then that I realised everything in the fridge was warm…this was not a good sign…
Yep, my fridge had gone kaput and that meant I would have to deal with it. Of course we all have to deal with these things, that’s not my point, the point of this story is that as a small business owner stuff like your fridge going kaput can become quite the problem. Suddenly I had flashbacks to when my printer died on the night before a major workshop for a new client (who insisted that they needed a signed contract before I could proceed) and I found myself rushing around town at 11pm trying to find a late night printer to help — when you are a small business you most likely don’t have the luxury of an IT team or even a spare printer to hand.
The danger last week was that I had a full on week planned with no potential slack so a fridge dying on me was a major worry in case it needed lots of attention. Not to worry I told myself, I’m in a rental property so I’ll get my landlady to sort it out.
One quick phone call later, the problem had been logged with the managing agent of the flat and I was assured that an engineer would come to visit in the next couple of days. All I had to do was sort out what to do with all the food in the fridge [the creative ways I found to either eat, give away or utilise it is probably worthy of another blog ;) ]
Ah, if only everything was so simple. The next day, the agent rang me back to say that there had been a change to the plan and that the landlady wanted to just buy me a new fridge instead of the engineer.
“Happy days!” I thought, “So when will this fridge be delivered?”
It would be a few days later which, while this was great to hear, was not ideal as I was meant to be visiting clients that day.
“Ok, a fridge is important,” I told myself, “I’ll just rearrange the client meetings and get this done.”
If only everything was so simple; I won’t bore you with details but suffice to say that the fridge didn’t come that day so my postponed meetings were to no avail. Not only that but the new day for delivery was slap bang the day I had an important client workshop to deliver over zoom.
“Hmm, I don’t think having deliverymen in the background of my workshop would be an ideal scenario but I can’t get a client to rearrange a whole workshop with 15 attendees because of my silly fridge.”
It definitely did not help that the delivery slot of anytime between 7–7pm meant it was like playing Russian roulette. Not to worry, one quick call to the company delivering the fridge and using my best EQ skills I managed to secure a guaranteed 1pm delivery and they even waived the normal £50 fee for such a service. The only downside was that it meant a few more days of tea with no milk and eating out.
Roll on to today, the big day of the revised fridge delivery and…clearly someone, somewhere was smiling down on me because the new fridge was not only delivered without a hitch but I had timed it for the lunchbreak of my workshop so the attendees were none the wiser that, as they munched on their soup and sandwiches, I was busily directing 2 deliverymen to set up my new fridge and dispose of the old one all before I had to leap back into facilitation mode. They may never know…unless they read this blog that is…
So here’s the thing: as a small business owner, you are forever surrounded by a catalogue of risks, risks that to normal businesses just simply wouldn’t be a risk. They have the luxury of multiple people to step in, the ability to throw money at a problem to sort it and less need to stack their days to the point that a last minute need to do something different leaves them in a perilous position.
Don’t get me wrong, I love these risks as they make running my small business incredibly real (and weird badges of honour I will no doubt look back on) but maybe a mini risk register wouldn’t go amiss so that next time it isn’t so stressful.
I guess I better get brainstorming; in the meantime anyone want an old fridge?
Faris is the CEO and Founder of Shiageto Consulting, an innovative consultancy that helps firms and individuals sharpen their effectiveness. Connect with him here
Success = IQ x EQ x FQ
