A woman had built a successful service business from scratch and enjoyed the lifestyle that went with it – nice house, top of the range car, holidays abroad, dining out, classy clothes, trips to the theatre – she’d earned it all.
She had a permanent workforce of fifteen people and about thirty-five part time outworkers who all relied on her for their income.
Then the bottom fell out of the market and the only way for her and the company to survive was to change direction. The car, her pride and joy, was the first to go along with the dining out and theatre.
She had enough good clothes to still ‘look the part’ and they’d last a while. But, as time went on, employees became disaffected, morale was low and she was losing confidence in her own abilities to successfully ride the storm.
Could she do it?
The answer at this stage was: Possibly. Yet she was smart enough to realise she’d reached a point where she was ‘too close to the wood to see the trees’ and couldn’t do it on her own.
She didn’t wheel in a business coach with a track record running companies; she approached someone who would help her think differently. And, together they got results within weeks:
- After a get together of the core workforce fourteen were totally ‘onside’ and the remaining one, who clearly wasn’t, left the company.
- She was made to follow up a potential contract that had gone suddenly quiet: She discovered there’d been a misunderstanding that was about to scupper the deal. She was able to clear it up and get an order that immediately put £25,000 into her company’s funds and not only considerably eased the financial pressure but also boosted her personal confidence.
- She was made to ‘go play’ with those who still owned the make of car she’d had and found they automatically regarded her as one of them – whether she happened to actually own one at the moment or not.
She and her company did ride the storm; she got another dream car, a second home in Europe, where she now spends much of her time…
The ‘moral of the tale’ is in the story – what’s your view on what it is? Post your thoughts in the comments here

RSS Feed
Twitter

March 26th, 2010
Linda Mattacks
Posted in
Tags:

