Moss Growin' on You, Part II

As a prelude to my post, let me tell you first that my Peach of an Offer is Still Available. I am offering incentives for free sessions for referrals as well. Ask me!

You have a business and things are kind of okay but employees are nervous and so are you. You wonder how you can streamline and get your "back burner" marketing plan back up to the front.

1. You're not sure if your systems are working anymore

Yesterday I took one case study and today I'm going to take another, dramatic example:

This particular company brought me in during the Mother of all Crisis: Embezzlement. Yes, the CFO ran off will a million dollars by cooking the books for two years. I was brought in to find out what the "real" books were by re-creating 2 years of activity for a multi-million $ company. Yeah, fun right?

The owner then 'fessed up to allowing himself to not know parts of his business because he'd rather be selling, and hey, that's why there's a CFO. This was a sort of family run business and that there were all kinds of exciting high jinks and drama, like having my office broken into and the computer stolen, etc. But after the dust settled a little, I decided to take this once in a business lifetime opportunity to create a manual for them that described the way everything in the office was done.

This manual was created by interviewing the employees, compiling all the information and finding the blanks and filling them in with something that pulled the components together. When I had the first draft, I had those same people go through the processes and edit the manual to make it more accurate. Can you see where I'm going with this? Cross-training. Yep, now there was no Big Magic behind each job. It all made sense and the owner and everyone else could use this manual whenever they were not quite sure what should happen next. And, of course, before I left, I reminded them that this needed to be updated every time they made a new decision on how to operate. (We can only hope for these small miracles...)

Change often comes as a result of a crisis.

There are always things that are working and not working for you. What gets pushed to the front burner is the thing that's making the most noise. Just like the squeaky wheel, it may not be the most crucial thing to be dealt with.

When placed in a business crisis that lasts more than a couple of days, our thoughts can start driving us through that rut over and over until we are only responding to the crisis at hand. This is how many businesses lose their way. The 'trance of fear and crisis'.

It's takes more than a "snap out of it!" I think we can work on that one together, though.

We awake, be well and dream!