Courage Goes to Work by Bill Treasurer

Courage Goes to Work by Bill Treasurer

Author:Bill Treasurer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Published: 2011-06-20T16:00:00+00:00


TRY Courage Involves Exploration

TRY Courage involves accepting challenges that you have never faced before. For companies, few firsts are as risky and consequential as entering a new market. A new market entry can have a dramatic impact on the entire business. For one, it requires a significant financial investment. When you enter a new market, there are incumbents who have an established and entrenched reputation among the market’s customers. So gaining entry into the market requires a lot of advertising and business-development dollars. Beyond money, entering a new market requires establishing a whole new network of professional relationships. You’ve got to learn the players so that you can know the playing field. Finally, entering new markets requires training employees in the skills, practices, and standards that are unique to the market. Each layer of commitment (financial, relationship, training) deepens your entry (and investment) into the market. Still, there are no guarantees that 106 you’ll be able to outshine the competition and establish a market presence. So the risks of new market entry are very high, which makes such ventures ripe for TRY Courage.

Chicagoland is construction land. As the saying goes, Chicago has two seasons: winter and construction. Contractors follow the dollars, and when new money is appropriated by the state or government, companies that win contracts can do quite well. Aldridge’s transit division grew when the company won work as part of a massive government highway-spending bill. Appropriations like this come in waves; and in between waves (that is, in troughs), when the government money for projects dries up, construction companies often shrink (by laying off workers) to account for the loss in demand. The leaders of Aldridge Electric, facing a construction trough, made a more difficult and courageous choice: They decided to expand the company’s capabilities by entering a new market.

America is going green, and as it does, money is shifting to businesses that support renewable sources of energy. Knowing this, Aldridge Electric, the rough-and-tumble electrical construction company from Chicago, decided it was time to become a wind farmer. While wind power currently accounts for only .25 percent of U.S. power output, it is expected to rise to 6 percent by 2020. Companies that are willing to Jump First can, potentially, reap the benefits of growing with the market. Though unconventional, wind farms, with their large electrical turbines, are all about electricity, so it’s a logical business play for Aldridge. But jumping into this new market is a risk, requiring much TRY Courage. For starters, wind farms are an emerging, and therefore unproved, market. There is no guarantee that they will grow as predicted. Also, 107 there are no wind farms being built in Chicago. Aldridge employees working on wind farm projects will have to travel out of town. While Aldridge has done a substantial amount of work outside of Illinois (for example, wiring the Chesapeake Bay Bridge), most have been one-off projects. Wind farms will require a greater number of employees who are permanently “portable.” Quite a challenging proposition for workers with families in Chicago.



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