Oh the pressure

What to do or what not to do.... The saga of having two customers with a crisis at the same time and just you to try and sort it all out.....

It doesn't matter how efficient you are or how organized you are, sometimes the inevitable happens.... Two jobs with the same priority..... Oh what a nightmare.

Well, that is where I have found myself this past few days.... Madly " burning the candle at both ends" to do my best to resolve the things that need to be resolved and keep both customers happy. This is no mean feat at all and does take its toll on the body when you get older!!!

Now, the thing is this - I consider myself an efficient and well organized person and I still struggled to make it all happen without suffering from stress... Is there anyone out there that has some constructive ideas on how to drop the stress factor, when you find yourself in situations like the one mentioned above?

Making a difference

Isn't " making a difference" in people's lives a wonderful feeling?

It is such an encouragement to continue imparting the knowledge you have, when people you have been mentoring or coaching succeed. 

Recently I was really touched by some feedback received from a GM of a company I have been doing some training with.

 She wanted me to know that the training I do is more than just educating people -

 QUOTE - "May you experience an overwhelming request for training as your training does so much more than just educating us, it builds you up and creates a desire to do better, to improve not only work performance, but to better your personal outlook on life"

Now isn't that just awesome... 

 

 

 

 

Frustration

I have recently experienced 2 full days down on our email system..... What a nightmare indeed.

I am amazed at how much business is really done via email and feel horribly frustrated at not being able to communicate well with customers and I don't even want to think about potential customer loss!

We are a small business and rely on service providers to handle certain aspects of our requirements within the business realm, how frustrating it is not to be a "computer boff", and be able to answer back or ask pertinent questions of our IT provider .. And above all get satisfactory answers.

What's the answer here? 

Running out and getting a computing degree will take too long, can't afford to get another "expert" in to argue the point and cannot contain myself anymore....a fuse is about to pop.

Traveling

Somehow when people are traveling they forget about risk management and in doing that they put you at risk... Thank goodness we can commit our journey to God and he takes care of us.

Unlike India..... Which has rather "random" driving as I think of it, South Africa has supposed structure to make driving safer, efficient and less stressful - one wouldn't think so by the number of accidents we see just driving between JHB and Howick.

The sad part about these accidents is all the lives that are affected by them in one way or another and very often it's the innocent that take the beating.

How do we reduce the accident numbers? This is an ongoing project and why we can't get it right beats me.

It seems to me that there is no consequence, or very little consequence for bad driving managed by our government - the consequence that is in place is not strictly managed and thus people have the freedom to do as they please, resulting in the carnage we see on our roads.

So, what do us " goody goodies" need to do about the situation then?

Well, I will leave that up to you..... I'll continue to try and make a difference wherever and whenever I can, in some way or another, and if pressure needs to be brought on the authorities to manage our roads, driving, drivers license process, etc more effectively, then I will be willing to introduce them to the CLIP system methodology and way of thinking.

For me the CLIP system does wonders when it is embraced........

Safe travel readers .......

Christmas Day 2013

Today is going to be a special day for me and one that I have been really looking for the whole year..... Christmas with the whole family.... Brothers, sisters, children, grandchildren, nephews, nieces, great nephews, great nieces, etc........who could ask for more!!!

A special day with special people ..... Life is too short to miss out on these occasions, so in 2014 we will have to bring about some change where we can fellowship more often than once a year ..... We are all getting on in age now!!!!

2013 Comes to a close

An eventful year 2013 was for me. Our business Harmie and Shanie com cc grew really well this year. We took on a full time interpreter ( welcome Phindile), because of the growth in sustainable business thinking training workshops and material writing in our local language ISizulu.

Brian- our resident artist had a good number of commissions this year, even sketching topics outside of his wildlife and portraits. A great sketch of a helicopter for 15 squadron was one of these a normals.

Gail embedded herself in Ethembeni work and has grown tremendously in coping with Govt. Officials.

I have been toiling all year with which direction the company should be going, and suddenly realized that they way we have been going is the direction but, we need to focus on our excellent training products - sustainable business thinking - covering ALL industries and at entry level, middle management and senior levels. Getting registered as a certified training facility with the Dept. Of Ed is a priority.

It is all about keeping it simple, user friendly and leaving participants with ideas they can immediately put into practice to improve the companies sustainability.

So, all that's left to say is...... ROLL ON 2014

Interesting indeed

It is always really interesting to meet people attending a training workshop... Different walks of life, different ideas, different thoughts - in fact just plain different in every way.
I recently ran a series of sustainable business thinking training sessions for DSV, a JHB based freight forwarding company and suddenly realized that these participants were a bit different to my normal, variety type audience..... They were thinking in unison, to a degree.
They were all involved in a one topic thought process, namely freight forwarding ..... This made it very simple for me to give examples relating to the industry and not having to, as I normal would have to, give a wide variety of examples to accommodate the different industries represented ..... It certainly was a breeze.
These workshops were most enjoyable and productive - people were implementing change the very same day they had the training and this carried through to the end of the 8th day. How encouraging is that!
Training is always a challenge, but with people embracing change so promptly, as in this series of workshops, it makes training really worthwhile.... I just love imparting knowledge to people who really want to develop and grow within the work environment.
Aah, the  satisfaction of a job well done is a good feeling.