Drown or Surf

This week I attended a Business Breakfast Meeting where Phil Jones, CEO of Brother UK was one of the guest speakers. His talk, as expected was informative, inspiring and made you think.

You can follow Phil on twitter @PhilJones40 and you should as he's a great speaker, a great communicator and puts what we all think into words very well - sharing how Brother UK has fared under his leadership and what we'd all like to do for our own companies.

But this isn’t a blog about Phil (sorry Phil if you’re reading) - ok it is so far - but it’s about making you think.

One of his slides was entitled Drown or Surf, and was a clear reference to having your staff being in the right frame of mind, with the focus on wellbeing and how that helps with surfing as opposed to drowning. It was that that made me think, somewhat laterally - had we ever drowned?

I look back to 1999 at all the technical difficulties that we have faced and we've never once been beaten. No IT issue big or small has ever gone unresolved. Yes some may have taken some time, most haven't, but we've never lost. However what we have lost at times is sight of this important fact.

Day to day our helpdesk solves problems, and more besides, but the focus is always on that day. We should remember though that when disaster or adversity has struck we have always found a way, always found a solution and the fix. So when a day could have gone better, perhaps we need to think of the 17 years that we have been doing this and just how good we are.

That in itself is pretty powerful, and cause to believe in what we do.