The more I talk to entrepreneurs and business leaders, the more I realize that so many of us share similar experiences. A dear friend recently received a call from her largest client – they were considering cancelling their contract with her firm. Nice timing – happy holidays. The frustrating thing was that it was a political decision, not a financial one. Ugh. Bad news that makes sense is a lot easier to handle. Getting kicked in the gut over political positioning within a company can be unbearable.
Her dilemma brought to mind a similar experience I had several years ago when my largest client lowered an equally devastating boom. I was actually out of town meeting with this client when the fairly-new manager (and career politician within the company) took me out to lunch. Just as nice as can be, he said “We’re replacing your software with our company standard offering…but we’ll give you a great reference.” That’s like the dreaded I want to break up but we can still be friends.
This news was not a complete surprise to me. I had been part of the team evaluating our software against their corporate standard solution. The team had determined that the systems they were currently using (ours!) were better suited to their operations and switching offered no clear financial benefit, which is what made this so much more difficult. The verdict made no logical or financial sense.
For those of us with attention issues or what I call shiny penny syndrome, it’s hard enough to focus. At this time of year, it feels nearly impossible. The only way I’ve found ANY success with this is to visibly post my priorities and goals in front of my face as a constant reminder. Just to be clear: your goals are what you want to achieve, your priorities are those things you need to focus on to achieve them.
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