Reflecting On The Past – Planning For the Future
by Gene Muchanski
Editor, The Dive Industry Professional 

July is an ideal time for industry planners.  According to strict planning theory, what we are implementing this year was planned last year.   July then is a good midpoint correction period to tweak our original plans and make any changes that need to be made.   It’s easier to make minor changes to our overall strategy than to recreate the wheel or change horses in the middle of the stream.  For instance; you made plans to exhibit at a number of dive shows from January through June.  Now ask yourself if you met your goals or fell short.  What did you do right and what would you change for next year?  Does your first half of the year performance change what you are going to do in the second half of the year?  Well, now’s the time to make that change, while we have a little breather in our schedule.

Of course, if you are flying by the seat of your pants, you didn’t plan anything last year and you probably are just doing what you’ve always done, getting what you’ve always gotten, and expecting a different result.  But let’s move on because that type of person can’t be helped and they probably aren’t reading this article anyway.

This summer I am writing a series of articles on Unifying The Diving Industry.   I feel that the best way to master something is to teach it.  It worked for me in Tae-Kwon-Do, Scuba Diving Instruction and Small Business Consulting.  We are writing an industry white paper on Uniting the Diving Industry and doing it in a step-by-step fashion so that anyone who wants to can follow the plan and implement it to make their business more successful and help grow the industry.  It’s only been a few weeks, but I am already seeing an increase in the number of people that are following our Blog, subscribing to our Weekly News Broadcast and subscribing to our Monthly Newsletter.  Of course, it’s going to get increasing difficult to follow our plan in the future because we will soon be calling on people in the industry to do something, participate in something, cooperate in something, lead something, and finally to contribute something.  At some point, and I don’t know where that is, we will have uncovered the underlying root causes of the industry’s problems and be faced with some difficult decisions to make.  Of course, if we have gathered a good following of people who want to help make the industry better, we will be at a new crossroads, with plenty of help, to build a more dynamic industry.  Let’s hope for the best at this time and see what happens.  Looking forward to your input.