Still Moving by Deborah Rowland

Author:Deborah Rowland
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781119164906
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2017-03-20T00:00:00+00:00

Overcoming My Story

It was an extraordinarily difficult situation to confront – yet the experience was an indicator to me that I was becoming more able to exercise good Edge and Tension. And on reflection, I can see now how the time consciously invested in my personal and professional development was paying off. I had become more able to not get unconsciously thrown by experience but to recognise my response to it as a product of both my story and the system’s story, as Chris had helped me do that evening on the Tuscan hilltop. I was learning to stay calm and connected rather than fearful and anxious in troubling situations, which allowed me to act in service of the whole and not just act out of my own projected needs (needs which at times, meant that I not very helpfully did nothing).

I had to close down a division within my consulting company. Twelve months earlier we had set up as a subsidiary of the main consultancy business, a new product‐led division, and had brought in a Commercial Director. In that 12‐month period much goodwill and effort had been expended in market sensing, creating a product range, sourcing and training a distribution network, and conducting a high profile sales and marketing campaign. Each month I would receive sales updates with red, amber and green new business opportunities, and I was told we were always on the brink of converting an amber prospect into a green fee‐paying client. Yet, at the end of 12 months, a sale had still not been made.

I felt torn. My Commercial Director was still saying that success was just around the corner, that it was far too early to pull the plug, but all the indicators were telling me that this was an illusion. Twelve months in and we had sunk 20% of our annual profit into the division’s launch and yet still no income. The Chairman and Chief Financial Officer were getting jittery, and I needed to make the call. Personally, I didn’t want to hurt the Commercial Director, and I feared the reputational risk of owning up to failure, but this time I was able to put my fear of confrontation and loss of relationship or impending rejection to one side, and squarely face the difficulty to say, ‘This can’t go on’.

At a specially convened board meeting we took a vote on this fledgling division. I had all the data, and I described the situation simply as it was. There was nothing pejorative, I just laid out how much had been invested, with minimal return, and quite ruthlessly went through each future client prospect to reveal how far we were from securing a sale. I went beyond the facts to describe how I was feeling about the situation – torn between my loyalty to having this division and my colleagues succeed, and my prime responsibility for ensuring the viability of the whole business. The board took a vote, and it was to close the division down.

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