When it’s just not good enough

Recently my boss said to me, that from what he had heard, one of my clients wasn’t really making progress. When I asked where he had heard this, he said from the client themselves!

I was astounded and reeled off a list of all the things I know they have accomplished in the last 12 months – here are just a few: –

  • Completely changed the way they think about the clients experience of their business – to such an extent that they have
    • Completely refurbished the waiting area and made it bright and inviting
    • Completely refurbished the toilets. (isn’t it funny how much you can be judged on the standard of these?!)
    • Created new welcome packs
    • Created better telephone and welcome scripts that the team are using to make the customer feel welcome
  • Started working on streamlining their business processes by
    • Taking on board and learning a new CRM system
    • Sharing out clients between the team and allocating responsibility for work being completed
    • Looking at the working environment for the team and making it better
    • Systemising some key processes that have allowed the partners of the business to release work and free up time for other things
    • Looked at how they can price more consistently and profitably (still needs a little work – but this is a massive mindset change)

And most amazingly for me, the partners had finally managed to have a holiday without having to check emails and take calls (I’m not saying they didn’t take sneaky peaks – because sometime it’s hard to let go)

So why isn’t this enough progress? Probably because it is so easy to forget all the great things we have actually achieved and so easy to remember the things we haven’t. (That “To Do” list is always so long!)

Time for a change – keep a note book – and every time you achieve something (no matter how small) or make a difference to someone, write it down – and then diarise that at the end of every week, month, quarter you re-read that list and remember… you are good enough, no, scratch that, you are Amazing!