Taking shelter during a crisis won’t help your business

This doesn’t necessarily mean throwing tons of money. After all, little things are what make situations tip.

For the past couple of months, my unit had been struggling with some issues (which due to privacy concerns cannot be disclosed).  I was getting stressed out, which is also one of the reasons why I haven’t been writing much lately. My mind was too occupied with stuff that left little to no energies in me to write when I got back home.

Our issues were not directly tied to Franklins and Jeffersons, but to human lives and their wellness.

Our Program Director presented a report of the situation in a Director’s meeting a couple of weeks ago. To our surprise, instead of (what we) the expected “guys, we are going through tough times, see what you can do with what you have” we got a great deal of support. We were granted the human resources we needed to pull up from the situation that we had at hands, and two weeks later my unit is performing better than ever. Our behavioral incidents have gone from around 30 to 40 per week to just 1, and I’m not exagerating.

For the most part, we rely on agencies to provide us with a steady flow of clients, which at the same time allows us to stay in business. If that funding is cut (if the flow is interrupted), we are in trouble. That is why it is important to keep this guys happy. During these past months, those agencies have been also suffering budget constraints which translate into fewer clients being referred. The other bad news, is that we are not the only ones who rely on agencies to get our funding. There’s a myriad of organizations that are in our same business.

All we have to offer are our services. If they are not the best, well… you know what happens.

This is why I think it’s so important to maintain excellence while providing services, and even more during complicated times. When supply is low and demand is sky high your best chance is to be in a position that enables you to “gobble” market share, not through corporate aggressiveness but by being the one that provides the best services in the industry. What would you do?