The well practiced art of never forgiving

One of my goals is to teach people how to move on and stop wasting the valuable life that they have been given and always look for the opportunities in a challenge.

Last week I took a call from one of my senior mangers, urgent it said, as I glanced at my phone at the start of a busy day. She had arrived at one of our retail sites where we had just employed a new manager… to be handed a resignation!!! Arghhhhhh. Given that she had a personal interest in putting this girl up for the role it was even more of a challenge for her to have to report the departure to me.

There are two ways that any employer can deal with this type of moment which will occur in all businesses…
One: we can lock down, air our frustrations and shut the employee out of any process going forward. I mean, aren't we entitled as there has been considerable time and money invested in her recruitment and training? Or two: we can accept that people’s lives change, that people make mistakes and that there is, at the very least, an opportunity that can be salvaged from this.

Fact: before the team member joined our ranks she was a customer and loved our brand. She is also a woman that has, as most women do, an extensive range of networks, friends and contacts. Surely it is better to create a positive space around the departure and protect the brand. A departing employee that has had a good experience in exit is a lot more likely to continue her initial advocacy and that, to me, simply just makes great business sense. Yep, cut out the emotion and look for the business opportunities in every challenge that arises and never close any doors (we have had so many capable people rejoin our ranks). This departure is not a personal stick-it-to-us moment; it is simply a woman who has changed her mind or had a circumstance change. This stuff happens and possibly happens a lot more with the number of women that we employ (180 on the payroll last time I looked)!!! Next time you are presented with a challenge, take this approach: depersonalize and look for the opportunities and determining the outcome that you want to achieve. Not only will you save yourself time but you will nearly always come up with a better result than you had originally.

Business is not personal… a departing employee is not the same as your man telling you he's having an affair and moving out so react accordingly... Good luck!

Global Women - Out on the town in Nelson

Today is Sunday and I am in Sunny Nelson at a Global Women Retreat. Yep, it really is sunny for all you sun starved Aucklanders. I hear that you are not even having to water your vege gardens as you have so much rain. So I guess that's a positive in some ways. The retreat has been excellent and a wonderful time to extend my pattern of thought and continue to meet so many women from such diverse backgrounds and all with huge levels of capability. Sure I already know a lot of these women but the surprises have come from the new connections that I have made both with and without a glass of Jane Hunter’s Pinot in my hand...

I have yet to hear from my travelling son. His last email simply insisted that I stopped worrying and trusted that he was having a great time so I guess I have to hear that message.

And whilst there has been a huge requirement to focus on the content of our well organized days at the retreat I have a had a few lapses which have resulted in the design of our WOW entry and the development of a menu for the new Birds Wine Bar environment (our first one in Barton Street, Hamilton). It’s amazing what ideas a new space can generate and I still have an hour plane flight to go!!