Irresistible forces dog our footsteps and affect our businesses. This article explores the way that your reaction to irresistible forces determines your success.
I'm sure you've had a bad travel experience due to inclement weather. When that happened, were you able to turn the apparent problems into an advantage? For example, you might have had extra work to do and a laptop computer with you, and been able to complete an assignment better or faster than would otherwise have occurred. Or did you simply get frustrated? Or oversample the free drinks the airline provided you?
I had quite an unusual travel experience that I want you to share with you as a personal challenge to you, to help you empathize with how irresistible forces can create emotional reactions that delay or harm your enterprise's growth.
Imagine yourself in this situation: Your firm has planned and prepared carefully for the most important presentation your organization has ever made, a presentation that may provide you an important relationship that will lift your organization to future success (you hope) beyond everyone's wildest dreams. You are justifiably excited and are looking forward to the meeting.
Although the meeting is not scheduled until 11 A.M. on Wednesday, you take no chances and plan to fly to the far-away city early the preceding Tuesday afternoon. You have carefully watched the weather reports and see no reason to expect any difficulties.
The whole team leaves an hour early on Tuesday for the airport, in a city only 12 miles away. You arrive to discover a blinding fog that begins just near the airport, something that occasionally happens in your area during spring when warm air passes over the cold ocean water located next to the airport. Feeling a little concerned, you check the airline's monitors and see that all flights for the rest of the day have already been canceled. With wide eyes, you rush toward the ticket counter to find hundreds of people already in line.
Seeing no hope there, you quickly call your travel agent to find out what your alternatives are. Bad news! The fog is getting worse and is expected to last through Wednesday. What to do?
No problem, you think. You can drive to another airport and fly from there. More bad news! All airports but one within three hundred miles are also fogged in (they are all located on the water in similar weather conditions). Every flight for days has now been booked from that one open airport. What do you do?
Well, you can handle that. You'll just drive to an airport 500 miles away and get a plane there. It'll take a good part of the night, but that is all right. Then you receive still more bad news: There are no flights from that airport that will get you to the meeting before 6 P.M. on Wednesday. What next?
You decide to charter a plane to get to the meeting. You grab the Yellow Pages and start calling every charter company listed. Too late!
Many people have called before you, and the closest plane that is available is 1,600 miles away. Plus, it has to find someplace to land in order to pick you up and then to take you where you want to go. What now?
You decide to just call the people you're meeting with, explain what happened, and offer to reschedule. They're reasonable people. They'll understand. Worse news! They can't meet again for several weeks, and that is too late for them to work with you. Even more disturbing to you is knowing that they may be meeting with some of your key competitors in the next few days. There must be something you can do. What?
How about a video conference or a teleconference instead? No good. Their video conference facilities are tied up and they don't want to go to a public facility. They think running a teleconference is a bad idea.
They implore you to get there on Wednesday, and they will stay as late on Wednesday as needed in order to meet with you.
Wow! You have to do something! What do you do now?
You call back that air charter outfit that had one plane left to see if they'll fly to the one open airport 100 miles away. If they will, you can then fly down on Wednesday morning early and still be in town before the day is over.
Awful news!! The plane needs a crew first, which will take several hours, before the flight can start out toward the airport. And there is a severe rainstorm in their area that may delay takeoff for additional hours. There is a curfew on the airport where you want the plane to pick you up, so they may not be able to arrive before tomorrow morning. By then, the flight crew might be over its allotted flight time that the government allows and not be able to leave on Wednesday.
What the heck, it's only money! You tell them to fly the plane to the airport, bring an extra flight crew if necessary, and you take your team to the car rental counter to get a car to take you to the other airport. No luck. You call ahead and find that there are also no hotels near that airport that have rooms available. You all decide to go home and drive to the other airport early the next morning in your own cars. More problems arise overnight, but you overcome them. You're doing great!
The next day, you turn on the television and find out that the fog is gone at the airport. What good luck! You can fly down on a regular flight this morning. You head with your team to the airport.
Oh, no! You can't believe your eyes; all the flights are canceled this morning, as well. But the weather is perfect. You finally learn why. There are no planes! Before the fog bank closed in, the airlines took off with every plane they had (planes can take off in fog conditions that don't permit landing).
The first flights will arrive around 11:00 A.M. and thousands of people are standing by for these flights. You have no reasonable hope of getting on a commercial flight until Thursday. That will be too late! You quickly call the charter firm's dispatcher, who agrees to divert your plane to this airport so you do not have to drive an extra 100 miles.
You head over to the charter terminal. You keep getting updates that assure you that the plane will arrive at 11:15 A.M. But 11:30 comes and goes, then 11:45. Now it's noon.
You keep telephoning your potential partner. They say, "We'll wait for you." The plane finally lands at 1:15 P.M. You start to rush out. The pilot stops you. "We have to refuel, first." Finally, the fuel truck arrives, you refuel, receive a long air traffic control delay, and eventually take off at 2:30 P.M.
You call your potential partners and tell them that you are about to take off and will arrive in their city at 4:00 P.M. local time. They agree to hold the meeting as soon as you arrive at the offices, around 5:00 P.M.
The charter pilot is very helpful and asks you if you want to have a taxi waiting when you land. There is a good catered lunch on board. It's a gorgeous day for flying. Life is looking better.
You arrive at the potential partners' office at 4:45 P.M., and they are not quite ready for you. At 5:15 P.M., they troop in and thank you for getting there. They seem quite amazed by your story, and seem a little skeptical that this could have happened. However, the meeting goes well.
On the following Tuesday, your contact calls to tell you that everything has gone through smoothly. Hooray!!!! He then tells you that they had decided to check into your travel story, and he was able to confirm that your firm had gone through all of this on behalf of their company. In fact, it was your response to the weather probloem that impressed them the most, and allowed you to be a bigger winner with them than you would otherwise have been.
Although it seemed that the irresistible force of the weather was retarding your progress, it actually provided you with an opportunity to show what you can do as a resource. Many people would have simply given up because the situation seemed hopeless or overwhelming. You resisted stalled thinking and persisted in turning the irresistible force into your tailwind.
As you read and considered how you would react to this experience, did you find yourself tempted to stop short of the goal? Don't worry, everyone is tempted that way, except perhaps saints. But it's the actions you take that count.
What will you do about irresistible forces?
Copyright 2008 Donald W. Mitchell, All Rights Reserved
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