I Hate Fridays

Truthfully I did not know where to start this thought. I hate Fridays or I strive for predictability or I love surprises. You would not think all of those are relative and you probably do not see the connection to business.

So lets start with the consistency and the hate of Fridays, which is Friday workday and not Friday after work (I love Friday after work). As a leader of a B2B business and a proponent of lean it makes me strive for standardization and consistency. I follow statistics and patterns and enjoy our forecasting meetings. I see the upcoming pattern when one domino falls what will be the next and so on. When things do not follow that pattern then I need to know why and how to fix the lack of balance.

So this leads to Fridays, which in our B2B world means that it is typically going to be very slow in actual sales. Customers are planning to escape work and will place their purchase early the next week, Friday is not for buys.If someone actually started purchasing on Fridays I am sure they could get a better deal because it feels like you are starving most Fridays. I am sure if I was in retail sales  or service then Fridays would be grand but for us it is slow. This is very predictable so I should like it but as a unit manager especially if the week has been slow to begin with, this is very frustrating.

Occasionally though we are surprised with an end of the week customer surge. rather a surprise. If you live in the lean world you might use the term special cause or even defect. As said earlier I would be trying to fix this, but now all I can do is smile when this happens and enjoy that very unique Friday.

Have a happy week-end

Cheers,

Lorne