Owners and Senior Managers – Passively – Obsessively - Avoid Change……Until It’s Too Late….

By Sid Chadwick

“Culture eats Strategy… for breakfast”…….

  …………Peter F. Drucker, Management Consultant, Educator and Author

INTRODUCTION:

Multiple References are available for whom we developed – well over a half-million $’s of additional, immediate business opportunities – from current customers….through use of a unique Customer Survey process, we refined over three decades.

However, I’ve learned, slowly, that not everyone wants that.

Through that process, we also developed - over a dozen current customers – for each of those clients - who wanted to discuss developing a Long-Term Agreement – to save time and $,  and increase productivity – for both supplier and buyer.

I’ve had to learn that not everyone wants that (though most bankers wish their commercial print customers – would develop those agreements – for improving the stability of their customers’ business, and reducing risks.)

Through that process, we also developed – well over one hundred requests for additional products and services – from current customers – for each of those clients. (Products and services their customers didn’t know about, or had forgotten – were available.)

I’ve had to learn that not everyone wants that additional business – at decent prices - from current customers (rather than discounted prices – required to win a new customer).

At one of those clients, we fearlessly took-on a new client who was in Chapter 11.  We stepped forward to get involved because of a 20+ year relationship with their best, newly acquired Account Executive – who asked us to get involved. (This business is still - often - about – “Relationships.”)

Note: Our Survey Results shocked them, and were instrumental in them getting out of Chapter 11….!

SUMMARY:

A close personal friend has spent much of the last week (really parts of several years) attending to a nephew in the ICU of a hospital, and in support of his grieving mother and father. 

Attending doctors have this week told the family, with this being his 5^th such hospital stay, and his kidneys and liver shutting down, that he won’t be leaving the hospital this time, though he repeatedly at each previous hospital stay - promised - everyone - he would quit drinking.

There’s a pervasive, rare sense of both grief and bitterness - for his impending and unnecessary loss….He’s 40 years old.

Somehow, there’s a parallel here, that’s hard to miss.

“If you want to achieve greatness, stop asking for permission”…..Anonymous