Still in the Hunt

Gerry Raker

I was hunting Alaskan Brown Bear. The track was absolutely huge, dwarfing my own boot print. Standing on the frozen snow that easily held my weight without the aid of snowshoes, I wondered how big the bear must be since it broke through the same thick crust with every step. I was overjoyed when we first found the track high on the open mountainside; training, planning, persistence and luck having struck a bargain, but that was when we were in a spot where the terrain was wide-open, the profile of anything moving would be clearly visible at a distance.

Now my guide looked at the track and at the dark timber that swallowed up the path that the bear decided to venture down. I signaled to proceed with a confident nod of my head. Nothing but that track and uncertainty lay ahead of us. There are no guarantees in hunting.

If you’re going to hunt bears, respect for what they are and can do is in order. However, being afraid would only complicate things and could possibly cause a temporary state of paralysis exactly when it’s action that’s required. When you’ve invested so much time and energy to be in the right place at the right time, you still have to be instantly ready to trust your intellect, draw on your training and experience, evaluate what’s unfolding in front of you and know when to pull the trigger. A moment of indecisiveness and you can come up empty-handed or, worse yet, become the hunted.

I like to hunt, so I end up using hunting analogies at work as I figure out how to coach our organization through the tough times that our industry is dealing with. If you’re going to be in business, respect for what it is, the environment that it’s operating in and knowing what it can or cannot do is in order.

The global recession, along with the banking and housing bust and a horribly slow recovery, caught us by surprise. The truth of what was happening was masked by the unwarranted certainty of a quick recovery just because that’s what happened in the past. Suddenly, instead of being on the track to success, we found ourselves in the bear’s den. Our company had to dramatically reduce its size and restructure its operations in order to cut back far enough to get expenses in line with what we’re able to sell.

Social confidence in our organization, a false security or expectation created by the repetition of things when times are good, was shattered. While it was an unexpected and unsettling experience for everyone involved, it certainly wasn’t a time for hesitation or for fear of the unknown to take over. It was time to tap the strength of every employee’s personal self-confidence. It was time to bring instinct, ingenuity and innovation into play.

The pressure was on, as risks had to be weighed and mitigated on the spot with no margin for error. Once the challenge was accepted, there was no option to restore the company to its old self. The choices made to survive economic reality were creating the new company we’ve become. GT

Gerry Raker is the business team leader and owner of C. Raker and Sons, Litchfield, Michigan.