Hi, my name is David. I own a company called PassionFruit Ltd. I love growing passion fruits! We operate in the north of New Zealand. We are keen to export to Australia and the USA. We have a good reputation and revenue. Last year we turned over $10M.
12 months ago...
I remember clearly. It was a Thursday evening and I just wanted to leave my office. My son Jack had a football game that night and I really wanted to cheer for him. They played against the top team in the league!
My team was strangely silent. I felt something was wrong. I looked at them, but they didn't look back. Huh? I started asking questions. They didn’t give me a single straight answer! I kept asking and discovered that one of our orders went to the wrong customer!
My team didn’t tell me and they were not even solving the problem! What the heck? They were just hoping it would solve itself! I burst out in anger. I must admit I started shouting...
They finally confessed and I realised that they made a series of mistakes on that day. It wasn’t just a single accident! They started pointing fingers and blaming each other. I painfully realised that they didn’t understand my instructions the week before and they were incapable of working on their own. It was so painful. They fooled me all week! I thought they knew what they were doing. I did the same order a million times! Another long evening and missed family activity were waiting for me...
Last week...
Thursday evening, I just wanted to leave my office. My son Jack was playing against the same team when I had that horrible long night to fix the issue my team created.
But today was different. My team did their daily check-in in the morning. They agreed on the highest priorities and worked on them. Business as usual and a few curlies to solve. They knew what to do and left me all to focus on my favourite activity in the company, which is sampling my amazing Passion Fruit harvest! To be honest I already prioritised their work up-front so I just needed to answer a few questions during the day. But they all knew what they needed to do and did it well.
As a matter of fact, since last year we doubled down on automation and some digital gadgets I hated for so many years. Online business used to frustrate me. I was annoyed as my son Jack was constantly on his phone, but I could not use any of the business applications those “smart” gurus suggested to me on YouTube! I hated when they educated me about bloody conversion rates! Who cares. Does it make money or not? I am here to grow the best passion fruits in New Zealand. Anyhow...
Now we have a webshop and everything is connected internally and to social media. I still don’t know how it all works, but my team can handle it. I don’t even care how they do it. As long as I make money and can get home on Thursdays to watch the footy games.
I want to run this business and semi-retire at the same time. If I make enough money on autopilot, I can finally spend time with my hobbies. Kids are already teens and the house is paid, so it is finally my time to slow down and enjoy what I earned. I might join that charity thing Jack told me about, planting trees or something…
About the Author
Laszlo Csite is a business/agile coach who helps PASSIONATE and kind leaders and teams to be extraordinary and fulfil their potential. He is also a digital/CRM product owner, who helps great ideas to grow into admired digital/physical products and brands.
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