Helping Hands

Moving house and home is no easy matter but it certainly doesn’t have to be stressful if you plan it right. The furniture went last week and to be quite honest that was the worst part as the lads moving my antique pieces were about as careful as a couple of monkeys and then demanded an extra forty quid because it was ten miles more than I’d suggested. I won’t be using them again, but when you don’t have the bodies to give you that helping hand it never works out well. All the rest of my gear will just go from my storage place a car load at a time so I know nothing will get broken. More over taking less at a time will enable me to sort it better at the other end and so allow a far more relaxed time to enjoy the new house without troubling the love of my life with my clutter and pressure from me.

We ordered some new business cards for my colleagues and were told that delivery was included. We wanted them quite urgently and yet the difficulty of getting hold of them has meant we have to collect them even though we’ve already paid for delivery. That’s a company we won’t be using again. One of my properties has had a flooded basement so last week we ordered a pump via the internet with two to three days delivery. Now a whole week later we still don’t have it. They told us they sent it to the courier company within two days and it may be another three days before we see it. Had we known in advance we could have gone to a shop like in the old days. However it’s supposed to be simpler on line.
There is a massive trade for people who can help or rather for those who can serve to help. Whenever we have a problem, we want someone to make that problem go away as soon as possible and that is how business generally creates wealth by either solving a problem or creating a pleasure. Imagine if you were planning a big eventlike a wedding and someone let you down on delivery it could be absolutely catastrophic to the happy couple and potentially damaging to the business who failed their promise. None of us are infallible, and mistakes do happen but the way you put those mistakes right make the difference between satisfied customers who may tell one or two people about your service, and a disgruntled customer who is bound to tell as many people as possible about how bad your service is.

One of my businesses made a mistake recently where the client had stationery and marketing materials made with the wrong details on it. We simply accepted the blame and paid for it all to be redone even though it was the clients own fault for not double checking. Sometimes you not only have to offer the helping hand, you have to pay for it. That’s just the way it is in business and if you spend time, money and most importantly more energy on arguing over details nothing except regret will be built up both with customers and potentially within the business employees themselves. You have to program yourself for success in any business and unless you commit to a compelling future for your business it’s unlikely that it will survive and even less likely to thrive in this modern world of great expectations.

A business that I have used for several years suddenly became very hard to contact recently. One of their numbers was unobtainable, I left telephone messages that were not returned and sent email requests without any response. I presumed my contact was on holiday and when I got a phone call a fortnight later I thought I was right until I learned he had sold the business and the new people just had a very slow response time. Every business needs to grow to create a compelling future. Some may think this is just a wish but it really is a necessity. Without the ability to achieve, feel the joy of success and contribution there is no meaning to the business. We don’t really want anger to drive us into action; it should be our vision to design our future the way we want, not be led by circumstances. As we achieve each objective we have pursued in business we should already have the next compelling goal in our sight. There is always a place for those who are willing to give.

Before we can achieve anything we need to evaluate what steps must be taken to bring it about. This can bring out lots of questions particularly about systems, what we have in place and what we need to change to bring about the desired effect. Working to a system reduces mistakes and can increase the benefits and speed of working by reducing mistakes. We all need to have a system in place to speed up practices. Creating systems can be a daunting prospect as often you don’t realise what you need until a problem occurs and then you understand you could have done it differently. This comes with experience and like with most things a helping hand goes a long way.

Endeavour to help who you can to make their life easier.