Weather or Knot to Achieve Profit Growth: Wilt Thou Let Us Meet?
Everyone has had a bad travel experience due to inclement
weather. Were you able to turn the apparent problems into
an advantage? You might have had extra work to do and a
laptop computer with you, and been able to complete an
assignment better or faster than would otherwise have
occurred. Or did you simply get frustrated? Or oversample
the free drinks the airline provided you?
I had quite an unusual travel experience that I want you to
share with you as a personal challenge to you, to help you
empathize with how irresistible forces can create emotional
reactions that delay or harm your enterprise's growth.
Imagine yourself in this situation: You and your
colleagues have planned and prepared carefully for the most
important presentation your organization has ever made, a
presentation that may garner you an important relationship
that will lift your organization to future success (you
hope) beyond everyone's wildest dreams. You are justifiably
excited and are looking forward to the meeting.
Although the presentation is not scheduled until 11 A.M. on
Wednesday, you take no chances and plan to fly to the
far-away city early the preceding Tuesday afternoon. You
have carefully watched the weather reports and see no
reason to expect any difficulties.
The whole team leaves an hour early on Tuesday for the
airport, in a city only 12 miles away. You arrive to
discover a blinding fog that begins just near the airport,
something that occasionally happens in your area during
spring when warm air passes over the cold ocean water
located next to the airport. Feeling a little concerned,
you check the airline's monitors and see that all flights
for the rest of the day have already been canceled. With
wide eyes, you rush toward the ticket counter to find
hundreds of people already in line.
Seeing no hope there, you quickly call your travel agent to
find out what your alternatives are. Bad news! The fog is
getting worse and is expected to last through Wednesday.
What to do?
No problem, you think. You can drive to another airport
and fly from there. More bad news! All airports but one
within three hundred miles are also fogged in (they are all
located on the water in similar weather conditions). Every
flight for days has now been booked from that one open
airport. What do you do?
Well, you can handle that. You'll just drive to an airport
500 miles away and get a plane there. It'll take most of
the night, but that is all right. Then you encounter still
more bad news: There are no flights from that airport that
will get you to the meeting before 6 P.M. on Wednesday.
What next?
You and your colleagues decide to charter a plane to get
you to the meeting. You find the Yellow Pages and start
calling every charter company listed. Too late!
Many people have called before you, and the closest plane
that is available is 1,600 miles away. Plus, it has to
find someplace to land in order to pick you up and then to
take you where you want to go. What now?
You decide to just call the people you're meeting with,
explain what happened, and offer to reschedule. They're
reasonable people. They'll understand. Worse news! They
can't meet again for several weeks, and that is too late
for them to work with you. Even more disturbing to you is
knowing that they may be meeting with some of your key
competitors in the next few days. There must be something
you can do. What?
How about a video conference or a teleconference instead?
No good. Their video conference facilities are tied up and
they don't want to go to a public facility. They think a
teleconference is a bad idea.
They implore you to get there on Wednesday, and they will
stay as late on Wednesday as needed in order to meet with
you.
Wow! You have to do something! What do you do now?
You call back that air charter outfit that had one plane
left to see if they'll fly to the one open airport 100
miles away. If they will, you can then fly down on
Wednesday morning early and still be in town before the day
is over.
Awful news!! The plane has to get a crew first, which will
take several hours, before the flight can start out toward
the airport. And there is a bad rainstorm in their area
that may delay takeoff for additional hours. There is a
curfew on the airport where you want the plane to pick you
up, so they may not be able to arrive before tomorrow
morning. By then, the flight crew could be over its
allotted flight time that the government allows and not be
able to leave on Wednesday.
What the heck, it's only money! You tell them to get the
plane to the airport, bring an extra flight crew if
necessary, and you take your team to the car rental counter
to get a car to take you to the other airport. No luck.
You call ahead and find that there are also no hotels near
that airport that have rooms available. You all decide to
go home and drive to the other airport early the next
morning in your own cars. More problems arise overnight,
but you overcome them. You're doing great!
The next day, you turn on the television and find out that
the fog is gone at the airport. What good luck! You can
fly down on a regular flight this morning. You head with
your team to the airport.
Oh, no! You can't believe your eyes; all the flights are
canceled this morning, too. But the weather is perfect.
You finally learn why. There are no planes! Before the
fog closed in, the airlines took off with every plane they
had (planes can take off in fog conditions that don't
permit landing).
The first flights will arrive around 11:00 A.M. and
thousands of people are standing by for these flights. You
have no reasonable hope of getting a commercial flight
until Thursday. That will be too late! You quickly call
the charter outfit, who agrees to divert your plane to this
airport so you do not have to drive an extra 100 miles.
You head over to the charter terminal. You keep getting
updates that assure you that the plane will arrive at 11:15
A.M. But 11:30 comes and goes, then 11:45. Now it's noon.
You keep calling your potential partner. They say, "We'll
wait for you." Finally, the plane lands at 1:15 P.M. You
start to rush out. The pilot stops you. "We have to
refuel, first." Finally, the fuel truck arrives, you
refuel, receive a long air traffic control delay, and
eventually take off at 2:30 P.M.
You call your potential partners and tell them that you are
about to take off and will arrive in their city at 4:00
P.M. local time. They agree to hold the meeting as soon as
you arrive at the offices, around 5:00 P.M.
The charter pilot is very helpful and asks you if you want
to have a taxi waiting when you land. There is a good
catered lunch on board. It's a beautiful day for flying.
Life is looking better.
You arrive at the potential partners' office at 4:45 P.M.,
and they are not quite ready for you. At 5:15 P.M., they
troop in and thank you for getting there. They seem quite
amazed by your story, and seem a little skeptical that this
could have happened. However, the meeting goes well.
On the following Tuesday, your contact calls to tell you
that everything has gone through smoothly. Hooray!!!! He
then says that they had decided to check into your travel
story, and he was able to confirm that your firm had gone
through all of this on behalf of their company. In fact,
it was your response to the situation that impressed them
the most, and allowed you to be a bigger winner with them
than you would otherwise have been.
Although it seemed that the irresistible force of the
weather was retarding your progress, it actually provided
you with an opportunity to show what you can do as a
resource. Many people would have simply given up because
the situation seemed hopeless or overwhelming. You
resisted stalled thinking and persisted in turning the
irresistible force into your tailwind.
As you read through this experience, did you find yourself
tempted to stop short of the goal? Don't worry, everyone
is tempted that way, except perhaps saints. But it's what
you do that counts.
What will you do about irresistible forces?
Copyright 2008 Donald W. Mitchell, All Rights Reserved
----------------------------------------------------
Donald Mitchell is chairman of Mitchell and Company, a
strategy and financial consulting firm in Weston, MA. He is
coauthor of seven books including Adventures of an
Optimist, The Irresistible Growth Enterprise, and The
Ultimate Competitive Advantage. You can find free tips for
accomplishing 20 times more by registering at:
====> http://www.2000percentsolution.com .
