What do Tylenol, New Coke, Jack-in-the-Box, Bag Leaf Spinach, Katrina and the World Trade Center have in common?  They were all disasters.  More specifically, they were all business disasters, and the outcomes of each of these disasters were completely dependent on managing needs and resources.

 

In a global economy where labor is cheaper for “the big boys” overseas and markets are flooded with less expensive goods, where disgruntled employees or other malcontents take out their frustration on a business directly or its customers there are few businesses that do not regularly suffer scarcity, adversity or disaster. Applying Business Triage, Customer Triage and Marketing Triage principles, you can identify and concentrate on those who most need your services and space.

 

The first step in each of these triage techniques is to identify and categorize your desired outcomes based:

– Critical/Essential Outcomes – Those that must occur to meet the overall financial or service mission

– Urgent/Important Outcomes – Those that facilitate the overall financial or service mission, but are not essential to that mission.

– Supportive/Optional Outcomes – Those that facilitate the overall financial or service mission, but are ancillary and thus not necessary to the mission.

 

Once the outcomes are classified into these categories, you must identify the processes that result in the desired outcomes.

 

Once the processes are identified, they too must be categorized:

– Critical/Essential Processes – Those that must be supported to meet the desired outcome

– Urgent/Important Processes – Those that facilitate the desired outcome, but are not essential to meeting the desired outcome.

– Supportive/Optional Processes – Those that facilitate the desired outcome, but are ancillary and thus not necessary to meeting the desired mission.

 

Next the resources needed for each process are identified and categorized:

– Critical/Essential Resources – Those essential to the process and without which the process will fail

– Urgent/Important Resources – Those that facilitate the process, but are not essential to the process.

– Supportive/Optional Resources – Those that facilitate the process, but are ancillary to the process and the absence of the resource will not affect the efficiency of the process.

 

Graphically:

Critical/Essential Outcomes
Critical/Essential Processes	Urgent/Important Processes	Supportive/Optional Processes
Critical/Essential Resources Urgent/Important Resources Supportive/Optional Resources	Critical/Essential Resources Urgent/Important Resources Supportive/Optional Resources	Critical/Essential Resources Urgent/Important Resources Supportive/Optional Resources

 

Urgent/Important Outcomes
Critical/Essential Processes	Urgent/Important Processes	Supportive/Optional Processes
Critical/Essential Resources Urgent/Important Resources Supportive/Optional Resources	Critical/Essential Resources Urgent/Important Resources Supportive/Optional Resources	Critical/Essential Resources Urgent/Important Resources Supportive/Optional Resources

 

Supportive/Optional Outcomes
Critical/Essential Processes	Urgent/Important Processes	Supportive/Optional Processes
Critical/Essential Resources Urgent/Important Resources Supportive/Optional Resources	Critical/Essential Resources Urgent/Important Resources Supportive/Optional Resources	Critical/Essential Resources Urgent/Important Resources Supportive/Optional Resources

 

Essential/Critical Outcomes are fully supported first with all available resources, then Urgent/Important and finally Supportive/Optional.

 

When applied to customer triage and marketing, the objective is to identify and categorize the market based on the best fit to the outcomes/services you triaged above. In other words:

 

First identify and categorize your ideal customers, those who can most benefit from your services:

– Critical/Essential Customers – Those that benefit most from your service mission and capacity and are thus most likely to be repeat customers.

– Urgent/Important Customers – Those that benefit from your service mission and capacity, but can obtain similar services from your competitors and they know it.

– Supportive/Optional Customers – Those that benefit minimally at best from your service mission, but are better served by your competitors.

 

Once the markets are classified into these categories, you must identify the best means of reaching the desired markets.

 

Once the means of reaching the market are identified, they too must be categorized:

– Critical/Essential Means – Those that must be used to reach the market.

– Urgent/Important Means – Those that facilitate reaching the market, but are not essential reaching the market.

– Supportive/Optional Means – Those that might reach the market, but are not as effective as required.

 

Next the resources needed for each means of reaching the market are identified and categorized:

– Critical/Essential Resources – Those essential to reaching the market and without which the message will fail

– Urgent/Important Resources – Those that facilitate reaching the market, but are not essential to delivering the message.

– Supportive/Optional Resources – Those that facilitate reaching the market, but are ancillary to delivering the message and the absence of the resource will not affect the message.

 

Graphically:

Critical/Essential Customers
Critical/Essential Means	Urgent/Important Means	Supportive/Optional Means
Critical/Essential Resources Urgent/Important Resources Supportive/Optional Resources	Critical/Essential Resources Urgent/Important Resources Supportive/Optional Resources	Critical/Essential Resources Urgent/Important Resources Supportive/Optional Resources

 

Urgent/Important Customers
Critical/Essential Means	Urgent/Important Means	Supportive/Optional Means
Critical/Essential Resources Urgent/Important Resources Supportive/Optional Resources	Critical/Essential Resources Urgent/Important Resources Supportive/Optional Resources	Critical/Essential Resources Urgent/Important Resources Supportive/Optional Resources

 

Supportive/Optional Customers
Critical/Essential Means	Urgent/Important Means	Supportive/Optional Means
Critical/Essential Resources Urgent/Important Resources Supportive/Optional Resources	Critical/Essential Resources Urgent/Important Resources Supportive/Optional Resources	Critical/Essential Resources Urgent/Important Resources Supportive/Optional Resources

 

In August of 2003, New York City suffered its most recent blackout. Arnie owned a small convenience store and ice creamery faced a business triage decision.  With the power out he had 50 gallons of ice cream in the cabinet that would soon melt.  This was no small loss, but it would be compounded by the fact that he had over 100 gallons of ice cream in the back.  

 

Arnie knew that he had a problem on his hands.  His needs (refrigerator) exceeded his resources (electricity).  Arnie needed to make a simple triage decision.  He had to decide where he could focus his efforts and his remaining resources so that his business would in fact reopen when the power came back on.  He also needed to plan for as short a recover as possible.  It takes a lot of effort to get rid of over 100 gallons of ice cream and a lot of dumpster space.  The clean-up would be horrendous and if the blackout lingered too long his store would be filled with stench of sour milk and rotting ice cream.

 

Arnie ran a neighborhood store and his customers had already been in to purchase what he had on hand.  With an old cigar box he had given up his computerized register and was going business “the old fashioned way”.  But what to do with the ice cream?

 

Arnie doesn’t know if he was the first store owner to think of it, but in the sweltering heat Arnie struck upon an idea, give it away.  After all, what would he be losing?  The product would be ruined before refrigeration could be returned. So he simply gave away the ice cream.  A small handmade sign in the window soon drew people in off the street.  “Free Ice Cream.  

 

In no time he had a line.  He was giving away the ice cream, but what to hold it in?  Ice cream cones!  The cones were actually cheaper than Styrofoam cups, and Styrofoam have an unlimited shelf life.  Would the ice cream cones go bad during the blackout?  No, but you can’t give people ice cream in their hand, and the small loss in the cost of ice cream cones was less than the larger loss than the cost of Styrofoam cups.  

 

To Arnie’s amazement, many people tried to pay him for the ice cream.  Wanting to get rid of it as quickly as possible, before it all went bad and he had to carry it out back where it would create a horrendous stench, he simply refused.  To his greater amazement people began to buy other items in the store, items that in all likelihood he would not have been able to sell at that moment in time simply because before the free ice cream sign he didn’t have many customers.  Before he had given away all the ice cream, Arnie found that his store shelves were bare and his cigar box overflowing.  His acceptable loss, the ice cream, had gained him an unexpected profit.

 

But that’s not the end of Arnie’s story.  The power came back on and Arnie was resupplied with both ice cream and merchandise.  He also saw a tremendous increase in business.  People didn’t just come because he had given away ice cream.  They came because they felt that Arnie cared about them.  He had taken a tough decision and turned it into a benefit for those around him.

 

Arnie is just one example of businesses surviving and flourishing because of efficient business triage.  Johnson & Johnson (cyanide in Tylenol) and Pepsi-Cola (needles in bottles) are two “big business” examples of the same principle.  

 

In the business world triage missteps, failure to define an acceptable loss has resulted in product failures and brand damage (Coca-Cola with New Coke and Jack-in-the-Box with tainted hamburgers).  The lesson of business triage is that when a business faces scarcity, adversity, or disaster prioritizing goals, outcomes and processes while judiciously allocating resources maximizes business success in good times and bad.